Chapter 5: Texas.—1845.
Garrison joins in the Massachusetts movement of the conscience Whigs against the annexation of Texas, but their disunionism oozes away after the event.Formal assent to the Disunion doctrine was given, with a will, by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery1 Society at its annual meeting in January, 1845. As a2 consequence of this action, Ellis Gray Loring resigned his place on the Board of Officers. ‘Poor Garrison,’ exulted the Boston Post, “who appears to be broken down, mentally and physically, has taken such a rabid course that he is driving from him some of those who have heretofore been his most active supporters.” Lib. 15.19. Mr. Loring hastened to notify this Democratic sheet that the alienation was not personal:
Not concurring in the “ disunion” doctrines adopted by the3 Society, I thought I should misrepresent it by remaining an officer; but it is painful to me to have it intimated that an honest difference on a single point of duty could drive Mr. Garrison and me asunder. On other points we cooperate; and never, during the fourteen years in which I have been honored by his friendship, have I felt for him a deeper attachment and respect.4 I cannot accept even an implied compliment at the expense of one whose past services and present value to the cause of human freedom I feel to be unequalled.Elsewhere, the Liberator's cry, ‘No Union with Slaveholders!’ (now printed weekly at the head of the paper) was caught up and re-echoed in the abolition ranks—by the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, in5 February; by a vast majority of the Eastern Pennsylvania
