John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[259] self-assertion of the Northern people broke suddenly into expression. Fort Sumter was fired on, and every one of twenty millions of people received a shock that gave him a new kind of an organ for a heart. The dramatic nature of this climax was greatly enhanced by the slow manner of its coming on, by the dreadful waiting of the previous months, by the cowardice and inefficiency of the politicians, and by the dumbness of all the oracles. Garrison, at this juncture, is as empty as the prophets of Baal: he knows nothing. Earth's remedies have failed. No one is abreast of the situation. Lincoln only waits. At this moment, when the catastrophe is in the sky and the thud of Fate's footsteps can be heard, there occurred that thing which Herndon had spoken of in a prophetic letter one year earlier. Herndon wrote his last letter to Theodore Parker on December 15, 1859. “The Republicans in Congress,” he says, “are grinding off the flesh from their kneecaps, attempting to convince the South that we are cowards. We are cowards, that is, our representatives are. . . . The South is now catechising the North. To this question, ‘What is the true end of man?’ it stands and shiveringly answers, ‘ The chief end of man is to support ’”