ngame and Wilson, Sumner and Adams, Palfrey and Mann, Chase and
Hale, and Phillips and Giddings? Who taught the _Christian Register_,
the _Daily Advertiser_, and that class of prints, that there were such
things as a slave and a slave-holder in the land, and so gave them some
more intelligent basis than their mere instincts to hate William Lloyd
Garrison? What magic wand was it whose touch made the todying servility
of the land start up the real demon that it was, and at the same
time gathered into the slave's service the professional ability, ripe
culture, and personal integrity which grace the Free Soil ranks? We
never argue! These men, then, were converted by simple denunciation!
They were all converted by the "hot," "reckless," "ranting," "bigoted,"
"fanatic" Garrison, who never troubled himself about facts, nor stopped
to argue with an opponent, but straightway knocked him down! My old
and valued friend, Mr. Sumner, often boasts that he was a reader of the
_Liberator_ before I was. Do not criticise too much the agency by which
such men were converted. That blade has a double edge. Our reckless
course, our empty rant, our fanaticism, has made Abolitionists of some
of the best and ablest men in the land. We are inclined to go on, and
see if, even with such poor tools, we cannot make some more. Antislavery
zeal and the roused conscience of the "godless comeouters" made the
trembling South demand the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Fugitive Slave
Law provoked Mrs. Stowe to the good work of "Uncle Tom." That is
something! Let me say, in passing, that you will nowhere find an earlier
or more generous appreciation, or more flowing eulogy, of these men and
their labors, than in the columns of the _Liberator_. No one, however
feeble, has ever peeped or muttered, in any quarter, that the vigilant
eye of the _Pioneer_ has not recognized him. He has stretched out the
right hand of a most cordial welcome the moment any man's face was
turned Zionward.

I do not mention these things to praise Mr. Garrison; I do not stand
here for that purpose. You will not deny--if you do, I can prove
it--that the movement of the Abolitionists converted these men. Their
constituents were converted by it. The assault upon the right of
petition, upon the right to print and speak of slavery, the denial of
the right of Congress over the District, the annexation of Texas,
the Fugitive Slave Law, were measures which the anti-slavery movement
provoked, and