Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[130] rocking the nation from side to side. To him (need I name him?) with at least equal truth may be applied the language of Burke to Fox: “It will be a distinction honorable to the age,¹ that the rescue of the greatest number of the human race from the greatest tyranny that was ever exercised, has fallen to the lot of one with abilities and dispositions equal to the task;— that it has fallen to the lot of one who has the enlargement to comprehend, the spirit to undertake, and the eloquence to support so great a measure of hazardous benevolence.”

At the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Mr. Garrison was put upon a committee with Whittier and Stanton and the Rev. Orange Scott, to consider a resolution of Whittier's on political action. He reported for himself and colleagues a resolution,² which was adopted, that abolitionists ought neither to organize a distinct political party, nor attach themselves as abolitionists to any existing party, yet were ‘solemnly bound, by the principles of our civil and religious institutions, to refuse to support any man for office who will not sustain the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of petition, and the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and the Territories; and who will not oppose the introduction of any new slave State into the Union.’ On his own behalf, Mr. Garrison introduced resolutions directed against the annexation of Texas, which he declared the main topic for anti-slavery agents in their discourses, and the urgent motive for active petitioning to Congress and persuasion of Congressmen, and against which the duty of a general remonstrance belonged especially to the clergy and to religious bodies. These, too, received the Society's endorsement, as did resolutions offered by³ George Bourne in censure of prominent ecclesiastical palliations or bold defences of slaveholding during the past year. Such, for example, was the popish action of⁴ the Congregational General Association of Connecticut (at Norfolk, Litchfield County) in June, 1836, under the lead of Leonard Bacon, in opposition to the practice of