Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

A third Clerical Appeal ended the ostensible ¹ partnership of the two signers. It was an enlargement of their original position as to the rights of pro-slavery pulpits and pastors against ‘invasion,’ and left no room for further debasement of the standard of anti-slavery principle. The debate was now transferred to the Spectator, which, from being a medium, turned participant on its own account. It had lately become the property of John Gulliver, one of Mr. Fitch's deacons in the Free Church, who was thought to have repented of his ² bargain, and to be seeking a way to make it profitable by converting it into an organ of sectarian abolitionism. To do this it was necessary to make the movement sectarian, which it had not heretofore been, and to break down the man and the paper which barred the way to such a consummation.

In the meantime, words of cheer and confidence began to reach Mr. Garrison from all quarters, and with the advent of the cooler weather the various anti-slavery³ societies, from West to East, in an unbroken roll, denounced the Appeal, and upheld the intended victim of it in formal resolutions of approbation. Naturally, the Quaker element was only attached to him more closely by his peace utterances, and the support sent up from Pennsylvania was consequently of the strongest. Goodell, in his Friend of Man, expressly asserted the right of⁴ Garrison and the Grimkes to their opinions along with other Quakers—like Elliott Cresson, for example. Whittier, as might have been expected, was not wanting with a letter of encouragement. N. P. Rogers, in the⁵ Herald of Freedom, declared of his friend: ‘Under⁶ God, William Lloyd Garrison is the mover of American Anti-slavery. But for him I know not why there should be now a single anti-slavery society in the whole land’; and added, that the clerical dissenters ‘cannot take a ’