We are met to initiate — I might perhaps, rather say, to
inaugurate — a great movement, one that is full of promise to the slave and the
slaveholder, and our whole country. It is not so much to awaken interest in
their behalf that we have come together, as it is to give expression to such
interest — a practical and effective expression.
We are here for the purpose of making a public and formal,
and, as we hope, an impressive confession that the North ought to share with
the South in the temporary losses that will result from the abolition of
slavery. Indeed, such are our relations to the South in the matter of slavery,
that, on the score of simple honesty, we ought to share in these losses.
SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith:
A Biography, p. 231
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