Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 4

The physical strain put on Mr. Garrison in the first moments of his wife's helplessness temporarily disabled him also; but he was able, in the latter part of January, to attend the Anti-Slavery Subscription Festival, and the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery² Society. At this meeting Mr. Phillips made an elaborate speech on the danger of a premature reconstruction of the seceded States, and the importance of demanding the political enfranchisement of the freedmen in any scheme that might be devised, as the only means of preventing the enactment of apprenticeship or other oppressive laws by their late masters. His text was a resolution, introduced by himself, in these terms:

That, in our opinion, the Government, in its haste, is ready to sacrifice the interest and honor of the North to secure a sham peace, thereby risking the introduction into Congress of a strong Confederate minority to embarrass legislation, and leaving the freedmen and the Southern States under the control of the late slaveholders, embittered by their defeat in war, and entailing on the country intestine feuds for another dozen years; and we listen in vain, either from the leaders of the Republican party or from its journals, for any such protest as would arrest national attention, or create a public opinion definite enough to avert the sacrifice. Lib. 34.22.

There was good reason for exclaiming against the crude and hasty methods by which the President seemed anxious to reestablish the machinery of local self-government (by the whites) in the conquered territory held by the Northern armies, and for demanding that no State should be readmitted to the Union until equal rights, fair-play, and protection to the freedmen had been fully secured; but