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

If political action were the imperative duty pretended by Birney, how many were needed to begin to perform it, that it should have been postponed till now? But ‘pro-government’ men were not agreed as to the duty. Elizur Wright had said: ‘The ballot-box is not an abolition argument.’ And, still more pointedly, the same writer had held that ‘abolitionists have but one work: it is not to put anybody into office or out of it, but to set right those who make officers. It is not an action Upon Church or State, but upon the materials of both.’ Neither, he continued, is it to abolish slavery ‘by machinery, political or ecclesiastical,’ but by appeals to the heart. Touching the capital sought to be made of his once having voted for Amasa Walker,¹ Mr. Garrison said:

I am quoted, by Mr. Birney, as “having set the example of² voting for a professed abolitionist, and encouraging others to do the same.” As to this citation—cui bono? I humbly conceive that it concerns no man, or body of men, to know how many or how few times I have voted since the adoption of the A. S. Constitution; or whether I have, or have not, changed my views of politics within a few years. What I may have said and done, and what the Constitution enjoins, are wholly distinct questions. I deny to no individual abolitionist the right to inculcate the doctrine that it is the religious duty of every man to go to the polls; but when he assumes that the Constitution of the Parent Society maintains that doctrine, and aims to get it endorsed by the Society, as such, in the hope that he shall thus be able to create a schism in the abolition ranks, I pronounce him a disorganizing spirit, however pathetically he may talk about breaking the chains of “the poor slaves,” or of his fears that they will be left to perish unless he can succeed in making others swallow his political dogmas.

It is quite remarkable that some of those who have been foremost in protesting against being reckoned my followers— who have been loudest in their boasts that they follow no man —who have been unwilling that I should be regarded as the