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d I shall find an echo in the breast of every human being. (Cheers.)"[14] But while Garrison's method of agitation was not original, it was new to this country. He spoke as one having authority, and his fiery earnestness warmed the frozen feeling of the Northern people, and startled the entire South. One year from the formation of the society above alluded to (December 4, 5, and 6, 1833), a _National Anti-Slavery Convention_ was held in Philadelphia, with sixty delegates from ten States! In 1836 there were 250 auxiliary anti-slavery societies in thirteen States; and eighteen months later they had increased to 1,006. Money came to these societies from every direction, and the good work had been fairly started. William Lloyd Garrison created a party, and it will be known in history as the _Garrisonian Party_. While Mr. Garrison had taken the position that slavery was constitutional, there were those who held the other view, that slavery was unconstitutional, and, therefore, upon constitutional grounds should be abolished. The Whig party was the nearest to the anti-slavery society of any of the political organizations of the time. It had promised, in convention assembled, "to promote all constitutional measures for the overthrow of slavery, and to oppose at all times, with uncompromising zeal and firmness, any further addition of slave-holding States to this Union, out of whatever territory formed.[15] But the party never got beyond this. Charles Sumner was a member of the Whig party, but was greatly disturbed about its indifference on the question of slavery. In 1846 he delivered a speech before the Whig convention of Massachusetts on "_The Anti-Slavery Duties of the Whig Party_." He declared his positive opposition to slavery; said that he intended to attack the institution on constitutional grounds; that slavery was not a "covenant with death or an agreement with hell"; that he intended to do his work for the slave inside of the Constitution. He said:-- "There is in the Constitution no compromise on the subject of slavery of a character not to be reached legally and constitutionally, which is the only way in which I propose to reach it. Wherever power and jurisdiction are secured to Congress, they may unquestionably be exercised in conformity with the Constitution. And even in matters beyond existing powers and jurisdiction there is a constitutional mode of action. The
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