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

154 LETTERS.
In vain. The people went on with their feasting and
their merchandise, and lo! the storam is upon us!
Every instance of sending back poor fugitive slaves
has cut into my heart like the stab of a bowie-knife,
and made me dejected for days; not only because I
pitied the poor wretches who trusted the government in vain, but because I felt that all moral dignity was taken out of the conflict by such incidents,
and that the enthusiasm of the soldiers and the people must be diminished by it. A soldier needs a great
idea to fight for; and how can the idea of freedom
be otherwise than obscured by witnessing the wicked,
mean, unmanly surrendering of poor trembling fugitives? The absurd policy of the thing is also provoking. To send back those who want to serve us,
to be employed by rebels to help them in shooting
us! It seems to me as if the eyes of the government
were holden, that they cannot see. Still pursuing
the old policy of years —willing to disregard the
dictates of justice and humanity, for the sake of conciliating the few slave-holders we have left to be conciliated. I have said all along that we needed defeats
and reverses to make us come up manfully to the
work of freedom..... Yet these last battles, with
all their terrible incidents, have made me almost
down sick. Night and day I am thinking of those
poor soldiers, stabbed after they were wounded, shot
after they dropped down from fatigue. My heart
bleeds for the mothers of those sons. And shall all
this awful havoc be made without removing the
cause of the war? without abolishing that detestable
institution which will always be marring our prosperity and troubling our peace, so long as it is allowed to exist? But my belief is that order is to