Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

LEI'TERS. 153
him rob a poor one, I should break the compact.
Law is not law, if it violates principles of eternal
justice. If drunken foreigners are hired to vote for
a member of Congress, and the vote of that member
causes the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law,
probably because he wishes to obtain some still higher
office, am I bound to sell my soul to perdition because the iniquity has been framed into a law? The
dictionary does not contain words enough to express
my detestation of all laws framed for the support of
tyranny. To keep that unrighteous compact with
fellow-citizens was bad enough, but to keep it with
rebels, who have over and over again violated all
their part of the compact, is adding imbecility and
absurdity to wickedness.
TO MISS HENRIETTA SARGENT.
WAYLAND, July 26, 1861.
One can't think about anything else but the war;
and where is the prophet inspired to see the end
thereof? All seems to me a mass of dark thunderclouds, illumined here and there with flashes of light
that show God is behind the clouds. I have never
in my life felt the presence of God as I do at this
crisis. The nation is in his hand, and he is purging
it by a fiery process. The people would not listen to
the warnings and remonstrances of the abolitionists,
uttered year after year in every variety of tone, from
the gentle exhortations of May and Channing to the
scathing rebukes of Garrison; from the close, hard
logic of Goodell to the flowing eloquence of Phillips.
More than a quarter of a century ago, Whittier's pen
of fire wrote on the wall, -
"Oh! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth, -
The gathered wrath of God and man! "