7987. SLAVES (Emancipation), Time and.—[continued].
At the age of eighty-two,
with one foot in the grave and the other
uplifted to follow it, I do not permit myself
to take part in any new enterprises, even for
bettering the condition of man, not even in
the great one which is the subject of your letter,
and which has been through life that of
my greatest anxieties. The march of events
has not been such as to render its completion
practicable within the limits of time allotted to
me; and I leave its accomplishment as the work
of another generation.—
To Miss Fanny Wright. Washington ed. vii, 408.
Ford ed., x, 344.
(M.
1825)
