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Liberator commented, “and then allow the seceding States to trample upon its flag, steal its property, and defy its authority with impunity; for it would then be (as it is at this moment) a mockery and a laughingstock.
Nevertheless to think of whipping the South (for she will be a unit on the question of slavery) into subjection, and extorting allegiance from millions of people at the cannon's mouth, is utterly chimerical.
True, it is in the power of the North to deluge her soil with blood, and inflict upon her the most terrible sufferings; but not to conquer her spirit, or change her determination.”
He, therefore, proposed that “the people of the North should recognize the fact that the Union is Dis-solved, and act accordingly.
They should see, in the madness of the South, the hand of God, liberating them from ‘ a covenant with death’ and an ‘agreement with hell,’ made in a time of terrible peril, and without a conception of its inevitable consequences, and which has corrupted their morals, poisoned their religion, petrified their humanity as towards the millions in bondage, tarnished their character, harassed their peace, burdened them with taxation, shackled their prosperity, and brought them into abject vassalage.”
It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under the circumstances, was for speeding the South rather than obstructing her way out of the Union.
For hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater peril than that which hung over it during the months which elapsed between Lincoln's election and the attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions to which the free States fell a prey in view of the
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