[292] and of an association composed of many elements, is important, and essential as much to the harmony of the whole body as it is to personal free agency. 3. The hue-and-cry now raised about the obligation of abolitionists to go to the polls, whether their views of human governments will allow them to do so, or not, we are satisfied, is in the vain hope of crushing the non-resistance enterprise, and proceeds from hatred of non-resistance principles rather than from any special regard for the slave. It is remarkable, too, that those who have suddenly become the most rampant for political action are clergymen—a very ominous sign of the times, by which more is meant than meets the eye!Thanks to the indefatigable exertions of Collins, the1 new General Agent, the Massachusetts pledge was redeemed in the five weeks before May 1. In the meantime, as a specially appointed agent of the Society,2 Mr. Garrison entered upon an active lecturing tour in Plymouth, Bristol,3 Worcester, Middlesex, and Essex Counties, everywhere strengthening the friends and discomfiting
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1 Right and Wrong in Mass., 1839, p. 138;
3 At New Bedford, on the evening of April 15 (Lib. 9: 66), Mr. Garrison had Frederick Douglass, a six-months' freeman, among his auditors. The future great negro orator thus describes his impressions in his Life and Times (ed. 1882, p. 214): ‘Soon after becoming a reader of the Liberator, it was my privilege to listen to a lecture in Liberty Hall, by Mr. Garrison, its editor. He was then a young man, of a singularly pleasing countenance, and earnest and impressive manner. On this occasion he announced nearly all his heresies. His Bible was his text-book—held sacred as the very word of the Eternal Father. He believed in sinless perfection, complete submission to insults and injuries, and literal obedience to the injunction, if smitten “on one cheek to turn the other also.” Not only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept holy. All sectarianism was false and mischievous—the regenerated throughout the world being members of one body, and the head Christ Jesus. Prejudice against color was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves, because most neglected and despised, were nearest and dearest to his great heart. Those ministers who defended slavery from the Bible were of their “father the devil” ; and those churches which fellowshipped slaveholders as Christians, were synagogues of Satan, and our nation was a nation of liars. He was never loud and noisy, but calm and serene as a summer sky, and as pure. “You are the man—the Moses raised up by God to deliver his modern Israel from bondage,” was the spontaneous feeling of my heart as I sat away back in the hall and listened to his mighty words— mighty in truth, mighty in their simple earnestness.’ Mr. Douglass's account is certainly tinged by his general recollection of Mr. Garrison's views at this period. The latter was speaking not only as an abolitionist, but as an agent.
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