st_ cleave to the right. I cannot choose
but obey the voice of God.

" ... Do not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have
been one. We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and
deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on
the floor of Congress! The moment we say no to this, the Union
ceases--the Government falls."

The Texan struggle terminated in the usual way, in the triumph of the
slave-power. Texas was annexed and admitted into the sisterhood of
States, giving to the Southern section increased slave representation in
both branches of Congress, and thereby aiding to fasten, what at the
moment appeared to be its permanent domination in national affairs. As
Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the North fell far short of
its protestations when the crisis came. It swallowed all its brave
words, and collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to its
jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The whole North except the
small and irrepressible band of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down
by the revulsive wave of this disastrous event. Writing to his friend
Webb, Garrison discourses thus upon the great defeat: "Apparently the
slave-holding power has never been so strong, has never seemed to be so
invincible, has never held such complete mastery over the whole, has
never so successfully hurled defiance at the Eternal and Just One, as at
the present time; and yet never has it in reality been so weak, never
has it had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it been so
filled with doubt and consternation, never has it been so near its
downfall, as at this moment. Upon the face of it, this statement looks
absurdly paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are groping in
thick darkness; but it is that darkest hour which is said to precede the
dawn of day."

CHAPTER XVII.

AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.

Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the most earnest of men. It
was almost next to impossible for him to understand that his way was not
the only way to attain a given end. A position reached by him, he was
curiously apt to look upon as a sort of _ultima thule_ of human endeavor
in that direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances
of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung around his
personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer.
His was not a tolerant mind. Differenc