Quotation by Henry David Thoreau

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African (Americans) freedom (25) Civil War (16) Brown, John (11) liberty (9) government (9) politics (8) civil disobedience (8) abolitionism (6) prayer (5)

Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision.... It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitated to set this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854), in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 4, pp. 393-394, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

Thoreau here refers to the return of the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns, from Boston to the South.

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