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

[245] to temptations of expediency, and would draw to itself adventurers and the disappointed of other parties. East and West were harmonious in this view. The Philanthropist, in Cincinnati, opposed with forcible arguments¹ the desire of some Ohio abolitionists to run a special candidate for Governor. At Utica, N. Y., Goodell, in his² Friend of Man, ably and with much particularity set forth the political creed of abolitionists, which he summed up in one profession: ‘We will vote for no man who votes against liberty.’ His articles received the explicit endorsement of Mr. Garrison, who ³ reproduced them in the Liberator, and their doctrine was embodied in the twenty-one resolutions on political action presently adopted, after a whole day's discussion,⁴ at the great meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society at Utica in September.⁵ In New York city, the Emancipator published approvingly the forms of political anti-slavery pledges beginning to be circulated there, and reading: ‘The undersigned, legal voters in the city of New York, will not vote for any man as Representative to Congress who is not in favor of the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,’ etc. At the impressive Young Men's Convention held at Worcester,⁶ Mass., in October, with Goodell, Beriah Green, and H. B. Stanton in attendance, nineteen resolutions on political action were reported from the business committee, whose chairman was Wendell Phillips, Mr. Garrison being one of his colleagues. They bound abolitionists to vote for no man not opposed to slavery; to vote for immediate emancipationists irrespective of party; to bargain with neither Whigs nor Democrats; to merge in neither; to catechise the candidates of both. They claimed, nevertheless, the right to form an anti-slavery party, while advising against it.

In a word—a word not yet formulated—the abolitionists, with perfect clear-sightedness, maintained that