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

[133] tionists on account of their political activity, and the Doctor's old complaint because of their organization, intensified in view of their gathering numbers and strength. ‘It is one of the evils attending associations,’¹ he said pointedly, ‘and an argument against them, that, by growing popular, they attract to themselves unworthy members, lose their original simplicity of purpose, become aspiring, and fall more and more under the control of popular leaders.’

It will appear later how far these strictures owed their weight and significance to their clerical rather than to their personal origin. The next assaults on the agitation and its leader were, though equally impersonal at first, distinctly clerical and sectarian. The Pastoral Letter of the General Association of Massachusetts to² the Orthodox Congregational churches under its care was issued about the middle of July.³ It had two distinct aims—one, to complete the sealing of the churches against anti-slavery lecturers; the other, to draw off their communicants, both male and female, from the public lectures of the Grimke sisters, who, during the month of June, had excited unprecedented interest in Eastern Massachusetts by their eloquent appeals (generally in churches) on behalf of the slave. Historically, this document marks the transition from the general political use of the New England meeting-house, since the days when ‘the church and the organized town⁴ consisted of the same persons,’ to its special use and estimation as a sanctuary; or, in other words, from the Puritan theocratic form of government to the separation of church and state. Moreover, it was, in connection with Miss Catherine Beecher's newly published “Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with reference to the duty of American Females, addressed to Miss A. ”