at slavery, so aggressive and
defiant, must be fought to be put down, and that if the Constitution was
its bulwark, as all believed, provided a tithe of what the South as well
as the North had said of its evils was true, the whole country, and not
the South only, was guilty in tolerating the curse. In 1821 Lundy began
publishing his Genius of Universal Emancipation, seconded, from 1829, by
the more radical Garrison. In 1831 Garrison founded the Liberator,
whose motto, "immediate and unconditional emancipation," was intended as
a rebuke to the tame policy of the colonizationists. "I am in earnest,"
said the plucky man, when his utterances threatened to cost him his
life, "I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will
not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." These were startling
tones. Had God turned a new prophet loose in the earth?

The abolition spirit was a part of the general moral and religious
quickening we have mentioned as beginning about 1825, and revealing
itself in revivals, missions, a religious press, and belief in the end
of the world as approaching. The ethical teaching of the great German
philosopher, Emanuel Kant, denouncing all use of man as an instrument,
began to take effect in America through the writings of Coleridge.
Hatred of slavery was gradually intensified and spread. In 1832 rose the
New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 the American Society was
organized, with a platform declaring "slavery a crime."

[1833]

[Illustration: Portrait.]
John G. Whittier in 1833.

This declaration marked one of the most important turning-points in all
the history of the United States. It drew the line. It brought to view
the presence in our land of two sets of earnest thinkers, with
diametrically opposite views touching slavery, who could not permanently
live together under one constitution. May, Phillips, Weld, Whittier, the
Tappans, and many other men of intellect, of oratorical power, and of
wealth, drew to Garrison's side. State abolition societies were
organized all over the North, the Underground Railroad was hard worked
in helping fugitives to Canada, and fiery prophets harangued wherever
they could get a hearing, demanding "immediate abolition" in the name of
God.

The Abolitionists proposed none but moral arms in fighting
slavery--papers, pamphlets, public addresses, personal appeals. They
deprecated rebellion by slaves, and urged congressional action against
s