January 4, 1861
“We commence a new decade with the same confidence in the principles we espouse, the same assurance of success in the cause we advocate, that we felt at the commencement of our labors, — only greatly strengthened by the experience gained, and the progress made toward the goal of final victory. It has been a long, desperate, and (humanly speaking) most unequal struggle with the organized religious sentiment, the political power, the combined wealth, the recognized respectability, the popular feeling, the business selfishness, the satanic malignity, and the universal brutality and ruffianism of the country; but, from the hour the bugle of freedom first sounded its notes in favor of immediate and universal emancipation, the movement has advanced with slow but irresistible power, under Divine guidance, confounding the wisdom of the wise, contemning the might of the strong, taking the cunning in their own craftiness, unmasking the hypocritical, swallowing up all the rods of the magicians, breaking sects and parties into fragments, vanquishing all opponents, its poverty more than a match for all the wealth of the land, its spirit sublime and unconquerable , its truths self-evident, and its results glorious in the annals of historic achievement; and still,
“Against the wind, against the tide,
It steadies with upright keel,”outstripping all competition, and with the haven of righteousness and peace full in view.”
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