actually had the face to propose to James Gibbons a union meetJ. Leavitt. ing at our anniversary, and Leavitt had said in the Emancipator that the Society would probably have to call in the help of the old Committee to keep it alive! I thought Garrison's election as President would be as effectual a way [as possible] of telling them and everybody else whereabouts we stood. His nomination was received with a burst of applause. The question of who should be editor of the Standard was also one of great importance. Great opposition was made to David Lee Child on account of his bias towards Whiggery, but the matter was referred to the Executive Committee to do the best they could in the premises. The meeting went off with the greatest harmony possible. Wendell Phillips's speech at the public anniversary was one of the most magnificent orations I ever heard or read. As every act by which Northern freemen were protected in their liberties was regarded by the South as an infringement of the Constitution, the progress of disunion was Lib. 13:55. considerable in the year 1843. Massachusetts passed, in answer to the Latimer petition, a Personal Liberty Act Lib. 13:34. forbidding judges and justices to take part in the capture of fugitive slaves, and sheriffs, jailors, and constables to Lib. 13:170. detain them. The Governor of Vermont recommended a Lib. 13:65. similar measure. Maine rejected it, as being tantamount to disunion; but imitated Massachusetts in appointing an agent to protect the State's colored seamen in Southern ports.1 Lib. 13:45, 50, 74, 183. In his admirable report recommending a Personal Lib. 13:35. Liberty Act, Charles Francis Adams said: "It is the slave representation which . . . is effecting, by slow but sure degrees, the overthrow of all the noble principles that were embodied in the Federal Constitution." Joint resolves were accordingly passed by the Massachusetts Legislature, praying that the clause of the Constitution 1 A memorial of Boston shipowners to Congress on this subject elicited a report from the Committee on Commerce (Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts, chairman), affirming the unconstitutionality of the Southern laws by which colored seamen were arrested and kept in jail while their vessels lay in port, and sold as slaves if charges were not paid. But the House refused leave to print it (Lib. 13: 24, 26, 30; 15: 7). CHAP. III. 1843. 14:21, 27. providing for the representation of slaves might be removed from that instrument;1 and these were presented to Congress-in the House by the elder Adams, and not Lib. 13: 206; received. In the Senate they were received with reluctance, and leave to print was refused. King of Alabama termed them "a proposition to dissolve the Union," and so did the General Assembly of Virginia in a counter memorial, which was promptly printed by the Senate. Lib. 14: 38. Lib. 14:21, 27. Lib. 14:42. John Quincy Adams, in conjunction with Giddings, Slade, Gates, Borden, and Hiland Hall, had, earlier in the year, issued an address to the people of the free States, Lib. 13: 78. warning them that an attempt would be made at the next session of Congress to annex Texas. The "real design and object of the South," they declared, "is to add new weight to her end of the lever.. We hesitate not to say that annexation, effected by any act or proceeding of the Federal Government or any of its departments, would be identical with dissolution"-as being in violation of the national compact. "We not only assert that the people of the free States ought not to submit to it,' but we say, with confidence, they would not submit to it."2 1 Mr. Garrison had proposed this a dozen years before (ante, 1: 264). 2 William Slade, elected Governor of Vermont in 1844, discussed annexation at great length in his message to the Legislature, saying: "Upon the consummation of the threatened measure, I do not hesitate to say that it would be the duty of Vermont to declare her unalterable determination to have no connection with the new Union, thus formed without her consent and against her will. To carry out this determination would not be to dissolve the Union, but to refuse to submit to its dissolution - not to nullify, but to resist nullification" (Lib. 14: 170). And John Quincy Adams, in an address at North Bridgewater, Nov. 6, 1844, held this language: "The hero [Andrew Jackson, Lib. 14: 181] enquires, who but a traitor to his country could appeal, as I have done, to the youth of Boston [Lib. 14: 169] to oppose by arms the decision of the American people, should it be favorable to the annexation of Texas to the United States. No! the people of the United States will never sanction the annexation of Texas, unless under the delusion of such fables as the Erving treaty [Lib. 14: 165, 169, 182]; and if the faction of its inventor, invested with the power of the nation, should consummate the nefarious scheme, by the semblance of the people's approbation, to imbrue their hands in blood for wicked conquest and the perpetuation and propagation of slavery, then I say to you my constituents, as I said to the young men of Boston: Burnish your armor-prepare for conflict and, in the language of Galgacus to the ancient Britons, think Lib. 13: 191; cf. Lib. 15: 58, [62]. 66 So Judge Jay, about to sail for Europe, wrote to Gerrit Smith: 66 Rather than be in union with Texas, let the confederation be shivered. My voice, my efforts will be for dissolution, if Texas be annexed." We go one step further," commented Mr. Garrison, "DISSOLUTION NOW, Texas out of the question." The sequel will show which Lib. 15:82. of these classes of disunionists had root, and which would wither away before the glare of the Slave Power. But it may be noticed here that the group of anti-slavery Whigs led by Adams, who were content with the Union as it had been formed, and even as it had been altered by the admission of fresh slave States, but drew the line at Texas, did not find an enthusiastic response to their disunion menace in the Liberty Party. Lib. 13:191. MSS. Mar. 27. Lib. 13:91. As usual, Mr. Garrison's mind had been occupied with many subjects besides that which claimed his chief attention. Great was the popular fermentation over Millerism, which drew off many abolitionists from the ranks, including Charles Fitch and J. V. Himes, and was controverted by the editor of the Liberator in two elaborate articles. Communism and socialism also diverted many. In June, Lib. 13: 23, Mr. Garrison attended as a spectator two meetings, in the Chardon-Street Chapel, "for the discussion of the questions pertaining to the reorganization of society and the rights of property," in which Collins took a leading part. He heard nothing which attracted him to the doctrines. advocated.1 A few weeks previously he had replied to of your forefathers - think of your posterity!" (Lib. 14: 182.) Compare the position taken by Josiah Quincy in the House of Representatives, speaking to the bill for the admission of Louisiana, Jan. 14, 1811: "I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion that, if this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligations, and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation—amicably if they can, violently if they must" (Life of Josiah Quincy,' p. 206). 1 On Dec. 16, 1843, Mr. Garrison wrote to H. C. Wright in Dublin (MS.) : "John A. Collins is almost entirely absorbed in his 'Community' project at Skaneateles, and is therefore unable to do much directly for the antislavery cause. He goes for a community of interest, and against all individual possessions, whether of land or its fruits of labor or its products; but he does not act very consistently with his principles, though he says some urging for an expression of his views on "the prop- Lib. 13:47. erty question": "We can only say that we have, at present, 'no thunder' to expend upon its discussion, pro or con, for reasons that are satisfactory to our own mind. We hope to be always ready to give our coöperation to every Christian and feasible attempt 'to regenerate and redeem our species,' come what may." In December, Charles Burleigh saw him at the Fourierite Convention of Friends Lib. 13: 195, of Social Reform held in Boston, where he spoke, "and spoke well, but not in accordance with the views of the Community leaders." Capital punishment, too, was a frequent topic of the Liberator's editorial page, owing to a rather flagrant clerical demonstration in support of itso that the Massachusetts Legislature was satirically petitioned to make the hangman's office a ministerial perquisite. Finally, amid all these phases of opinion, a revolution was taking place which is thus described in a letter of Edmund Quincy's to R. D. Webb: "I am told that Garrison's opinions, as well as Rogers's, have been greatly modified of late with regard to the Bible. He is pretty well satisfied that God has not grown wiser by experience, and that he did not command people to cut their brothers' throats a thousand years before he commanded them to love one another. As a man I rejoice at his progress, but I don't know whether I do as an abolitionist. It was so convenient to be able to reply to those who were calling him infidel, that he believed as much as anybody, and swallowed the whole Bible in a lump, from Genesis to Revelation, both included. They say that in Connecticut they always keep one member of every pious family unconverted to do their wicked work for them. I suppose my policy is something of the same sort." he does the best he can in the present state of society. He holds, with Robert Owen, that man is the creature of circumstances, and therefore not deserving of praise or blame for what he does 3-a most absurd and demoralizing doctrine, in my opinion, which will make shipwreck of any man or any scheme under its guidance, in due season. Still, it cannot be denied that circumstances are often very unfavorable to the development of man's faculties and moral nature; and if, by a reorganization of society, these can be rendered more favorable,- as doubtless they can,- let it take place. But it is an internal rather than an outward reorganization that is needed to put away the evil that is in the world." Compare Lib. 14: 3, 168. 14:3; MS. Dec. 29, 1843, Burleigh to J. M. McKim. Lib. 13:23, 63: 14:23. MS. Nov. 27, 1843. Cf. ante, 2:426. MS. Jan. 30, 1844, to R.D. Webb. Jan. 24-27, 1844. CHAPTER IV. "No UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"-1844. G | ARRISON'S favorite hobby of the Dissolution of the Union," as Quincy dubbed the doctrine slowly evolving in the abolition mind, was discussed in Faneuil Hall and at the State House at the twelfth annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Quincy himself reported, for the business committee, Lib. 14:18. resolves deeming it "the only true and consistent position to withhold support and sanction from the Constitution of the United States; and to present to the consciences of our countrymen the duty of dissolving their connexion with the Government, until it shall have abolished slavery." Stephen Foster presented an elaboLib. 14:18. rate protest as of the Massachusetts Society against the Constitution and the Union, which was ordered printed. Lib. 14:18. Mr. Garrison was at the front with a resolution, "that Lib. 14:19. the ballot-box is not an anti-slavery, but a pro-slavery, argument, so long as it is surrounded by the U. S. Constitution, which forbids all approach to it except on condition that the voter shall surrender fugitive slavessuppress negro insurrections- sustain a piratical representation in Congress, and regard man-stealers as equally eligible with the truest friends of human freedom and equality to any or all the offices under the United States Government." Later in the proceedings, he introduced and maintained other resolutions condemning the nature, and showing the natural consequences, of the "bloody compromise" on which the Constitution was founded, and urging the duty of withdrawing allegiance |