hat the
people of the North might be induced to reflect upon their debasement,
guilt, and danger in continuing in partnership with heaven-daring
oppressors, and thus be led to repentance."

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting in January,
1843 "dissolved the Union," wrote Quincy to R.D. Webb, "by a handsome
vote, after a warm debate. The question was afterward reconsidered and
passed in another shape, being wrapped up by Garrison in some of his
favorite Old Testament Hebraisms by way of vehicle, as the apothecaries
say." This is the final shape which Garrison's "favorite Old Testament
Hebraisms" gave to the action of the society:

"_Resolved_, That the compact which exists between the North and the
South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell--involving
both parties in atrocious criminality--and should be immediately
annulled."

At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American Society resolved
likewise that there should be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of
the same year the New England Society voted by a large majority to
dissolve the 'covenant with death, and the agreement with hell.' Almost
the whole number of the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time
placed upon their banner of immediate emancipation the revolutionary
legend "No Union with slaveholders." _Cathago est delenda_ were now ever
on the lips of the pioneer. 'The Union it must and shall be destroyed'
became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his utterances on
the slavery question.

The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the Government which
they were seeking to overthrow was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in
a letter returning to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission as a
justice of the peace. Says he, "To me it appears that the vices of
slavery, introduced into the constitution of our body politic by a few
slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of
our National Government that literally there is no health in it. The
only remedy that I can see for the disease is to be found in the
_dissolution of the patient_.... Henceforth it (the Constitution) is
dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it,
and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays
upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear
patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly
declaring that, while I retai