ll-balanced and admirable
character; with them were associated Joshua Leavitt and Elizur Wright.
Among the Massachusetts recruits was Whittier. The sixty-four members
were largely made up of merchants, preachers, and theological students.
Almost all were church members; twenty-one Presbyterians or
Congregationalists, nineteen Quakers, and one Unitarian,--Samuel J. May.
There was a noticeable absence of men versed in public affairs. The
constitution was carefully drawn to safeguard the society against the
imputation of unconstitutional or anarchic tendencies. It declared that
the right to legislate for the abolition of slavery existed only in the
Legislature of each State; that the society would appeal to Congress to
prohibit the interstate slave trade, to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia and the territories, and to admit no more slave States; and
that the society would not countenance the insurrection of slaves.
Garrison, who had been visiting the Abolitionists in England, was not
among the signers of the call to the convention, and the constitution
was hardly in the line of his views; but he wrote a declaration of
principles which after some debate was adopted. It was impassioned and
unsparing; pictured the woes of the slaves and the essential wickedness
of the system; denounced compensation and colonization; declared that
"all laws admitting the right of slavery are before God utterly null and
void" and "ought instantly to be abrogated"; and called for a universal
and unresting agitation.

CHAPTER V

CALHOUN AND GARRISON

Thus, with the beginning of the second third of the nineteenth century,
the issue as to American slavery was distinctly drawn, and the leading
parties to it had taken their positions. Let us try to understand the
motive and spirit of each.

In the new phase of affairs, the chief feature was the changed attitude
of the South. In the sentiment of its leading and representative men,
there had been three stages: first, "slavery is an evil, and we will
soon get rid of it"; next, "slavery is an evil, but we do not know how
to get rid of it"; now it became "slavery is good and right, and we will
maintain it." To this ground the South came with surprising suddenness
in the years immediately following 1833. What caused the change? The
favorite Southern explanation has been that the violence of the
Abolitionists exasperated the South, checked its drift toward
emancipation, and provoked