William Lloyd Garrison's "To the Public"

     When we are far removed from things it's easy to be apathetic about them.  We are susceptible to this in America; while people in other countries starve and shiver in refugee camps, we go to sleep sleep in our warm beds with full stomachs, without a care in the world, taking for granted our blessings and not caring to step in and help those who are not as fortunate, if only because it doesn't affect us directly.  It seems that the northern states shared a similar attitude towards slavery in the south in 1831.  This is what Garrison was so worked up about in "To the Public," that because slavery didn't affect people in the north directly, they did not see slavery as the big problem it actually was.  They didn't want to take immediate action, assuming slavery would run its course, that over time moderate steps would be taken to gradually end slavery.  But Garrison will have none of it.

"I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice.  On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.  No! no!  Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him moderately to rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; --but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present."

Real people, real lives are effected by slavery, Garrison says; imagine yourself as one of them.  I know I fall into the apathetic category more often than not, but real lives are at stake here.  We need people like Garrison to remind us of this and to call us into action.