n my own liberty, I will be a party to no
compact which helps to rob any other man of his."

The Abolition agitation for the dissolution of the Union was assisted
not a little by sundry occurrences of national importance. The
increasing arrogance and violence of the South in Congress on all
matters relating to the subject of slavery was one of these occurrences.
Freedom of debate and the right of petition, Southern intolerance had
rendered well nigh worthless in the National Legislature. In this way
the North, during several months in every year, was forced to look at
the reverse and the obverse faces, of the Union. These object-lessons
taught many minds, no doubt, to count the cost which the preservation of
the Union entailed upon the free States--"to reflect upon their
debasement, guilt, and danger" in their partnership with slaveholders.
Another circumstance which induced to this kind of reflection was the
case of George Latimer, who was seized as a fugitive slave in Boston in
the autumn of 1842. From beginning to end the Latimer case revealed how
completely had Massachusetts tied her own hands as a party to the
original compact with slavery whose will was the supreme law of the
land. In obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused to the
captive the writ of _habeas corpus_, and Judge Story granted the owner
possession of the fugitive, and time to procure evidence of his
ownership. But worse still Massachusetts officials and one of her jails
were employed to aid in the return of a man to slavery. This degradation
aroused the greatest indignation in the State and led to the enactment
of a law prohibiting its officials from taking part in the return of
fugitive slaves, and the use of its jails and prisons for their
detention. The passage of this personal liberty measure served to
increase the activity of the anti-Union working forces in the South.

Then, again, the serious difficulty between Massachusetts and two of the
slave States in regard to their treatment of her colored seamen aided
Garrison in his agitation for the dissolution of the Union by the keen
sense of insult and injury which the trouble begat and left upon the
popular mind. Colored men in Massachusetts enjoyed a fair degree of
equality before her laws, were endowed with the right to vote, and were,
barring the prejudice against color, treated by the commonwealth as
citizens. They were employed in the merchant service of her interstate
trade