r it would then be (as it is at this moment) a mockery and a
laughing-stock. Nevertheless to think of whipping the South (for she
will be a unit on the question of slavery) into subjection, and
extorting allegiance from millions of people at the cannon's mouth, is
utterly chimerical. True, it is in the power of the North to deluge her
soil with blood, and inflict upon her the most terrible sufferings; but
not to conquer her spirit, or change her determination."

He, therefore, proposed that "the people of the North should recognize
the fact that THE UNION IS DISSOLVED, and act accordingly. They should
see, in the madness of the South, the hand of God, liberating them from
'a covenant with death' and an 'agreement with hell,' made in a time of
terrible peril, and without a conception of its inevitable consequences,
and which has corrupted their morals, poisoned their religion, petrified
their humanity as towards the millions in bondage, tarnished their
character, harassed their peace, burdened them with taxation, shackled
their prosperity, and brought them into abject vassalage."

It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under the circumstances, was
for speeding the South rather than obstructing her way out of the Union.
For hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater peril than that
which hung over it during the months which elapsed between Lincoln's
election and the attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions
to which the free States fell a prey in view of the then impending
disruption of their glorious Union. Indeed no sacrifice of anti-slavery
accomplishments, policy, and purpose of those States were esteemed too
important or sacred to make, if thereby the dissolution of the Union
might be averted. Many, Republicans as well as Democrats, were for
repealing the Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of New Mexico
as a State, with or without slavery, for the enforcement of the Fugitive
State Law, for suppressing the right of free speech and the freedom of
the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering the Northern
position in opposition to the extension of slavery to national
Territories, in order to placate the South and keep it in the Union.
Nothing could have possibly been more disastrous to the anti-slavery
movement in America than a Union saved on the terms proposed by such
Republican leaders as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Thomas
Corwin, and Andrew G. Curtin. Th