My friends, I am not sorry to see you thus excited. I am too old to look on such scenes with astonishment. I entertain no sudden heat. Pardon me that I am cool today.
To me, Massachusetts is the twelve hundred thousand persons in it; or, more emphatically, it is the thoughtful, it is the moral, it is the religious, people of Massachusetts. To me, Boston is the one hundred and sixty thousand men within her limits; or, more properly speaking, it is the moral and religious part of them. I am proud of Massachusetts: it is the grandest State in the world, I think. I am proud also of Boston. I respect and venerate her manifold excellence. I know her past history, and look for a future far more glorious than the deeds of Pilgrmi or Patriot Fathers have rendered days gone by. For this reason, I tell Boston her faults; whereof the noble city is not conscious, else had she never done those deeds of shame. I do not hesitate to expose this wickedness to you, who easily understand it all; and even to men not familiar with such thoughts, whose disapproval was most grateful unto me,—such men could not believe that our Boston was an accomplice with Carolina in this foul work. I say I am proud of Boston,—not of those controlling men, who darkly misrule its politics, whose Machiavelian craft is like the Venetian poisons of old time, which destroyed sight, hearing, feeling, every noblest sense, and only left the vegetative life: I am ashamed of them. I do not hate them; I shall never belittle their excellence; I do not scorn them. I may be allowed to have pity for them,—not the pity of contempt, but the pity of charity and love. I am not proud of them; but of the sober, moral part of Boston, I am proud,—thereof is New England proud. It is the grandest city in this world; it is the humanest city, the most thoughtful city, on this continent; it is the furthest advanced in its humanity.
But the Boston which the South knows, listens to, and respects, is a very different city. It is a Boston that consists of some twenty or thirty persons, perhaps a hundred, "men of property and standing;" and some two or three thousand flunkies,—I do not know exactly how numerous they are. That is the Boston which the South knows. Now, that Boston, which the South knows, hates freedom, hates democracy, hates religion. In 1835, it put
