This candid utterance produced the sensation, in both camps, which Mr. Garrison anticipated, and proved an invaluable weapon in his hands. In the meantime, however, a local anti-slavery convention held on November 13 and 14, in Warsaw, Genesee County, N. Y., under the1 very eye and hand of Myron Holley, resolved that ‘every motive of duty and expediency which ought to control the action of a Christian freeman, required the abolitionists of the United States to organize an independent political party’; and proceeded to tender the nominations of President and Vice-President to James G. Birney, of New York, and Francis Julius Le Moyne,2 of Pennsylvania. Gerrit Smith was already prepared to support3 the movement,4 feeling that seven-eighths of the abolitionists of New York State were in favor of it. Goodell doubted if such were the fact, and doubted his own duty.5 Mr. Garrison dubbed the action ‘folly,’ and said of the6 nominees: ‘We have too much confidence in the self-respect and good sense of these gentlemen to suppose that they will countenance a movement of this kind. They will decline this nomination.’ So in fact they did—Birney (December 17, 1839) on7 the ground that the time was not yet ripe, and that the abolitionists would be divided; Le Moyne (December 10)
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2 Of French and Scotch-Irish parentage, Dr. Le Moyne was a man of exceptional force of character and public spirit: a liberal patron of the higher education, of popular libraries, of missionary work among the freedmen; a model farmer; an ardent naturalist; a skilful physician,--now most widely known as being the first to introduce ‘cremation’ in the United States, by a bequest for building a furnace (Washington, Pa., Reporter, Oct. 22, 1879). His taking an adverse part in a colonization debate is noticed in the African Repository for June, 1834 (10.126).
4 See his letter to Joshua Leavitt (Lib. 10.17), reviewing Lewis Tappan's and Gamaliel Bailey's objections, and Mr. Garrison's views as set forth in the address of the Mass. Board (ante, p. 311). Mr. Garrison's reply appeared in Lib. 10.19.
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