John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[177] even great men, are the children of their age. Garrison took up the propagation of the Anti-slavery cause by means of Democratic societies — a means which ties up any cause into little tight knots as it goes along, much as certain forms of crochet work progress by adding little groups of hard knots to other groups of hard knots. The machinery of his movement made vigilance essential. He might be outvoted, his newspaper might be taken from him, his control might be destroyed at any juncture. He is obliged, at intervals, to throw himself into the intrigue of Anti-slavery government, with the words of Moses on his lips and some vote-getting, hall-packing device in his mind. This was not true of the earliest years of the movement; but came about through the mighty logic of natural law as the movement spread.

Persecution purifies any new religion. As the wave of persecution which had held the Abolitionists together from 1830 to 1837 began to subside, quarrels broke out. It was not until 1850 when the triumph of the Slave Power in the passage of the Compromise Bill, gave rise to a new and short persecution, that the Anti-slavery people enjoyed again a short period of unity and peace. The inevitable quarrels over creed and