Stanton has waked up and ordered me to plump myself down in
Tennessee, right in the centre of the accursed institution, and go to work.
Having sent Fred Douglas there to stir up, I suppose, he wants me to organize
and utilize the batch. Well, it is what I came here to do and as that is undoubtedly
the best place to do it, I am most happy to go. McKim said I could not reasonably
expect to be obliged “to rough it at the Continental” all the time.
My new place for work is to the South what Buffalo was to
the West and East — a centre from which to radiate, and I have determined
either to burn slavery out, or be burnt by it myself.
Yesterday I went out to camp with Morris L. Hallowell and
stopped a few minutes to see Lucretia Mott. She accepts very gracefully the
present state of affairs, but looks forward to a state of society when war will
be unnecessary. So do I, but told her that this war was a civiliser, not
a barbarism. The use of the musket was the first step in the education
of the black man. This she accepted. She is a great woman. If you want to know
how great she is draw her out on principles not on specialties.
SOURCE: Preston Stearns, The Life and Public
Services of George Luther Stearns, p. 308
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