Ernest Crosby, Garrison the non-resistant

[58] occasionally in his writing, it was because he took the individual as the incarnation of a wrong. His personal geniality and benignancy among his acquaintances were so great that it seemed impossible that he was the man who could, when occasion demanded, thunder against wickedness in high places. There was no limit to his courage when attacking the evils of slavery. While at Baltimore he showed again and again his willingness to run any risk in stigmatizing the conduct of those who were engaged in the slave trade, if necessary by name; and one ruffian who threatened him, he invited to come and meet him.

He was free, too, from some of the common defects of reformers. There was nothing abnormal about him, except his philanthropy. As a boy he was active in sports, a good swimmer and skater. He sympathized heartily with the struggle of the Greeks for independence, and, having not yet formulated his belief in the immorality of war, he thought seriously of volunteering to fight in their behalf. His constitution was strong, and, so far from suffering from indigestion (which accounts for so much sour criticism of things as they are), he declared that he never knew that he had a stomach. And yet there was something of New England asceticism about him, for which I do not propose to apologize.