friends in their behalf, until the year 1852, when Mr. Sumner, who had recently been elected to the Senate of the United States, interested himself for their release. He prepared a very elaborate and able paper for the purpose, which was submitted to the Attorney-General. In consequence of these efforts, President Fillmore granted them an unconditional pardon, and they were released after an imprisonment of some four years. It having transpired that the Governor of Virginia was purposing to arrest them, if pardoned, it was arranged that, immediately on their release, a carriage should be in readiness to take them by night to Baltimore. From that city one was despatched at once to Harrisburg, and the other to Philadelphia.

ANTISLAVERY ORGANIZATIONS.

mences of opinion among antislavery men. Serious difficulties of the situation. Differences on the question of political action. - Garrisonians. Their distinctive doctrines. Modes of operation. - Leading men and women. -Liberty party. - Differences therein. Conventions at Port Byron and

Macedon. Gerrit Smith nominated. — National convention of the Liberty party. John P. Hale nominated. Liberty League. Its advanced opin

ions. - Nomination of Gerrit Smith by convention at Auburn. convention.

NOTHING affords more striking evidence of the gravity and difficulties of the antislavery struggle than the conflicting opinions and plans of the honest and earnest men engaged in it. It was fashionable to stigmatize them as ultra, pragmatic, and angular, and to hold up their differences and divisions as a foil and shield against their arguments and appeals. Thousands consoled and defended themselves in their inaction because antislavery men were not agreed among themselves. But the facts were that some of the ablest, most honest, practical, and sagacious men of the nation were engaged in that struggle; and their differences of views and plans arose not so much from their infirmities as from the greatness and gravity of the problem they attempted to solve, and the blind and inextricable labyrinth of difficulties into which the compromises of the Constitution, the concessions of the fathers, the persistent policy of the government, and the constant aggressions of the Slave Power, had involved the nation. Slavery had inwrought itself into every department of society, political and commercial, social and religious. It had polluted everything it touched, and poisoned the very fountains of the nation's life. Men could turn in no direction without encountering its pestiferous presence, its malignant and allgrasping power. Even in the broad light of this day of free

dom, now that the whole system has been swept away, with all the revelations which have been made, he must be a bold man who presumes to say exactly what they should and should not have done. How much less could they, in the dark night of slavery, in deadly conflict with the Power itself, never more arrogant and dominating, decide with perfect accuracy what to say or what to do. To err under such circumstances was not only human, but evidently no matter of surprise.

The most radical difference was that which separated those who rejected from those who adopted the principle of political action. The former were generally styled the "old organization," or Garrisonian Abolitionists; the latter embraced, the Liberty party and those antislavery men who still adhered to the Whig and Democratic parties.

Having adopted the doctrine of "no union with slaveholders " as the fundamental idea, the corner-stone of their policy and plans, the Garrisonians of that period directed their teachings, their arguments and appeals, to the establishment of the necessity and the inculcation of the duty of disunion. Believing, in the language of Edmund Quincy, the Union to be a "confederacy of crime," that "the experiment of a great nation with popular institutions had signally failed," that the Republic was "not a model, but a warning to the nations," that "the hopes of the yearning ages had been mournfully defeated" through "the disturbing element of slavery"; believing, too, that such had become the ascendency of the system that it compelled "the entire people to be slaveholders or slaves"; believing also that "the only exodus for the slave from his bondage, the only redemption of ourselves from our guilty participation in it, lies over the ruin of the American state and the American church," they proclaimed it to be their “unalterable purpose and determination to live and labor for a dissolution of the present Union by all lawful and just though bloodless and pacific means, and for the formation of a new republic, that shall be such not in name only, but in full, living reality and truth."

But to destroy such a system as slavery, thus completely

interwoven with everything in church and state, permeating the mass and diffusing itself through tlie very atmosphere of public and private life, involved the breaking up of institutions and associations hallowed by time and the most tender memories. In attaining the great good sought there could not but be much incidental evil; in rooting up the tares there was manifest danger of injury to the wheat. But these consequences and conditions this class of reformers promptly accepted, and, with an unsparing iconoclasm, they dashed to the ground whatever idols of popular faith interfered with the people's acceptance of the doctrines they deemed of paramount importance. Abjuring party organizations, coming out from the churches, and condemning with unsparing censure whatever in their esteem gave countenance and encouragement to slavery, they necessarily assumed an attitude of antagonism to those they so severely condemned, and uttered many sentiments that grated harshly on the popular car. But, while thus obnoxious to the charge of indifference to the passions, prejudices, and even the principles, of the dominant classes of society, and committed, as many thought, to theories more abstract than practical, it was always seen that to the sigh of the individual bondman their car was ever attent, and that for the help of the poor and trembling fugitive their hand was ever open and generous.

From the annexation of Texas, in 1845, to the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law, in 1850, they pursued with a good deal of vigor this line of policy. Discarding religious and political organizations, the ballot, and all the enginery of its legitimate and effective use, they denied themselves many of the ordinary methods of reaching the popular mind, and relied mainly on the use of the press, the popular convention, and other meetings of the people. They not only held such convocations by special appointment at various points at the North, but they always observed the anniversaries of national independence and of West India emancipation as days specially appropriate to their mission to the American people. To the annual meetings of the American, New England, and the several State societies were added fairs, held for

the twofold purpose of putting funds into their exchequer and of bringing their ideas before the people. In carrying forward. this work, Garrison, Phillips, Quincy, Douglass, Wright, Foster, Burleigh, and Pillsbury were among the recognized leaders and advocates. Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, though not distinctively belonging to their organization, largely sympathized with their efforts, and were occasionally welcomed to their platform. In the same work they were assisted by the pens and voices of several women. Among them were Mrs. Child, Mrs. Chapman, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Abby Kelly Foster, and Lucy Stone. During a portion of these years, too, Garrison, Douglass, Henry C. Wright, and James Buffum were in Europe, and presented the cause to the British public.

But the men who agreed in the principle of political action were not always in full accord as to the best methods of applying that principle. Exercising for themselves that freedom of thought and speech which they claimed for others, as they considered the great subject, with its really inextricable and insurmountable difficulties, involving principles at once recondite and infinitely delicate and perplexing in their application and adjustment to the fearful problems before them, they often failed to see eye to eye. They differed not only in their estimate of fundamental principles, but frequently in their proposed modes of action. Some had accepted the doctrine of the unconstitutionality of slavery, and several able arguments were prepared in defence of that position. Others held that it was a local system, that its extension was to be resisted, its power overcome, and itself extirpated, under the Constitution and through constitutional modes of action. These diversities of opinion elicited no little feeling, and led to divisions and sometimes to mutual denunciations.

In June, 1845, a State convention was held at Port Byron, in New York. An address was presented, not only setting forth the unconstitutionality of slavery, but, perhaps in deference to the very general criticism that Abolitionists were men of "one idea," stating and elaborating somewhat fully the different objects government should have in