k and temperate manner in which you have
treated the subject. If all Abolitionists were like you, there would be
much less opposition to your enterprise. But, sir, depend upon it, that
hair-brained, reckless, violent fanatic, Garrison, will damage, if he
does not shipwreck, any cause.' Stepping forward, I replied, 'Allow me,
sir, to introduce you to Mr. Garrison, of whom you entertain so bad an
opinion. The gentleman you have been talking with is he.'"

Or take Harriet Martineau's first impressions on seeing him. "His aspect
put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in
me. I was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance glowing with
health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation and gentleness. I did
not wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop
window without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it as the
most saintlike of countenances."

The appearance of such a man on the stage of our history as a nation, at
this hour, was providential. His coming was in the fulness of time. A
rapid review of events anterior to the advent of Garrison will serve to
place this matter more clearly before the general reader. To begin,
then, at the beginning we have two ships off the American coast, the one
casting anchor in Plymouth harbor, the other discharging its cargo at
Jamestown. They were both freighted with human souls. But how different!
Despotism landed at Jamestown, democracy at Plymouth. Here in the germ
was the Southern idea, slave labor, slave institutions; and here also
was the Northern idea, free labor, free institutions. Once planted they
grew, each seed idea multiplying after its kind. In course of time there
arose on one side an industrial system in which the plantation
principle, race-rule and race-slavery, were organic centers; and, on the
other, a social system in which the principle of popular power and
government, the town meeting, and the common school were the ganglia of
social expansion. Contrary ideas beget naturally enough contrary
interests and institutions. So it is no matter for surprise that the
local interests and institutions of the thirteen revolted colonies
lacked homogeneity and identity. What was calculated to promote the
general welfare of the Northern one, it was quite possible might work a
totally opposite result in the Southern. For, indeed, while there were
slaves in them all, the slave system had taken root in Southern soil