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

[288] be one of the temporary secretaries. Phelps and Tappan were placed on the business committee. When the tug of war came, over a simple resolution of approval of the Board's attitude in the pending money controversy, both sides were fully heard, and again the Board was sustained, by a crushing vote of 142 to 23. Wendell Phillips then offered, on behalf of the Society, to resume harmonious cooperation with the Executive Committee under the arrangement of June, 1838, but withdrew the resolution in consequence of the contemptuous ¹ manner in which it was received by Stanton and the New York delegation. Their part was made up—to ignore the State Society, and to work henceforth with its opponents, in face of the clearest evidence that, if moneygetting was their real object, they were closing the purses of the great bulk of the abolitionists of Massachusetts. Lewis Tappan openly advised a division of² the State Society into two parts, and said he should promote it if he were a citizen resident. J. G. Birney, speaking of the Abolitionist, said for the Executive Committee that ‘We felt the need of this new paper in³ Massachusetts,’ and declared that under the Constitution of the American Society every member, who was a legal voter, was morally bound to go to the polls, and, if he had conscientious scruples against so doing, ought to leave the Society. So the meeting broke up, with the issue plainly drawn; the Massachusetts Society, nevertheless, pledging itself anew to redeem its obligations by May 1.

None of the New York brethren was quite satisfied with the Liberators record of his part in the proceedings. Stanton recalled against the editor his language⁴ at the time of Abbott Lawrence's catechism in 1834, and⁵ especially when, rebuking the colored people for having voted for that candidate, he said: ‘I know it is the⁶ belief of many professedly good men that they ought not to meddle with politics; but they are cherishing a delusion which, if it do not prove fatal to their own souls, ’