1. To the objection, that the action of the Society virtually3 does away with the rights of conscience of its members, and4 narrows the anti-slavery platform, we reply, that this charge can be sustained only by showing that none are allowed to retain their membership in the Society excepting those who subscribe to the action alluded to. But no such test is required— the Constitution remains unaltered—the platform remains the same as hitherto—as a condition of membership, nothing more is required than an assent to the doctrine, that slaveholding is
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William A. White,1 etc., from the cause East; Arnold Buffum, from the West; Thomas Earle, with C. C. Burleigh and J. M. McKim, editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman, and Thomas S. Cavender of Philadelphia; and James S. Gibbons of New York.
Mr. Child, in accordance with a notice already given, withdrew from the editorship of the Standard, and was replaced by a committee of three, consisting of Sydney Howard Gay,2 office editor, Edmund Quincy, and Mrs. Chapman.
He joined in the protests formally entered against the new policy by some of those whose names have just been given.
The nature of the objections will appear from the following extracts from Mr. Garrison's rejoinder through the Liberator, on his return to Boston:
1 Of Watertown, Mass., a graduate of Harvard College in 1838, an ardent abolitionist, and most zealous and generous promoter of the temperance, as lecturer and journalist (Lib. 27: 92).
2 Wendell Phillips wrote to Elizabeth Pease in October, 1844 (Ms.): ‘The tri-editorship was my plan, and Gay my peculiar selection. Don't you like him?’ Of this colleague, ‘a very well-looking man of about thirty,’ Quincy writes to Webb (Ms. June 14, 1844): ‘He has not been much heard of in the cause, but has been engaged in it for several years. He belongs to one of the best of our New England families (in the Old World sense of good family—hereditary gentility, successive generations who have not demeaned themselves by doing anything useful), and is a man of excellent talents, good taste, and good education. . . . Last summer he accompanied the agents of one of the series of the Hundred Western Conventions as a volunteer, receiving only his travelling expenses. He also attended our Hundred Massachusetts Conventions, so that he has had some experience in the field. He was also for a time the editor of the village paper published in Hingham [Mass.], so that he is not without some knowledge of the details of a newspaper establishment. He is, moreover, in perfect unity with the Boston Clique, which is a great thing, you may be sure.’
4 All three protests.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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