I do not propose that the regiment which I am planning
should be called anti-slavery in special, or have a platform or a policy; if
others attribute these things, it is their own affair. I expect men to join me
from personal sympathy with me; if they ask for pledges, of course none will be
given them.
. . . The only way for anti-slavery men to share in the
control is to share in the sacrifices. . . . All I ask, now, is an opportunity
to fight, under orders, carrying with me such men as I can raise. I will
risk the rest; having faith in the laws of gravitation.
Our two military companies were both ordered; one has gone
to Boston, and not a person in town seemed to think of anything but seeing them
off. Margaret1 reports not a boy at the High School; then the male
teachers vanished; then the girls.
_______________
1 A neice.
SOURCE: Mary Thatcher Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p.
154
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