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

Such a party, it is superfluous to say, was not, and could not be, the antipode of the Slave Power. That distinction remained to the Garrisonian abolitionists. Their moral warfare was conditioned by none of the clogs of party—neither by fealty to the Constitution of the United States, nor by ends conformable to that instrument, such as abolition in the District and other Territories, the suppression of the inter-State slave trade, and the exclusion of new slave States from the Union; nor by considerations of numbers. ‘A political contest,’ said the editor of the Liberator, ‘differs ¹ essentially from one that is moral. In the latter, one may chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. In the former, profligacy and virtue, good and evil, right and wrong, meet on equal terms. Success depends wholly on numerical superiority.’ A political party, furthermore, must have its prizes of office. ‘All are invited to join,’ wrote James C. Jackson to Francis² Jackson, ‘for all can have the privilege of struggling for promotion. The ladder is made for all, and all are invited to commence its ascent,’ whether for a town office or for something higher. ‘Can any man tell,’ he asked, ‘what increase of power, moral power, William Goodell would have by which to abolish slavery, if he were elected to the office of roadmaster in the ancient and honorable village of Whitesboroa?’

Finally, a party must have its exclusive candidates, and cannot tolerate support of its principles in the person of a candidate of another party. Thus, the reelection of N. B. Borden, a vice-president of the Massachusetts Society and president of the Fall River Anti-Slavery Society, who had already been a Representative in Congress, was opposed by the Liberty Party, professedly because, as an anti-slavery man, he deemed it wiser to vote for Harrison than for Birney.³ More extraordinary efforts to defeat him could not have been made if he had been an avowed apologist for slavery: