Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

Resolved, That the one grand vital issue to be made with¹ the Slave Power is, the dissolution of the existing Ameri-can Union.

Resolved, That an Anti-Slavery conscience which is bounded by 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, instead of presenting any barrier to the aggressions of the Slave Power, may be safely disregarded and scoffed at by the South, as hypocritical in its pretended opposition to slavery, cowardly in its spirit, and spasmodic in its action. John Randolph's phrase; Lib. 25.109.

On May 22, “against the strongest popular remonstrances—against an unprecedented demonstration of religious sentiment—against the laws of God and the rights of universal man—in subversion of plighted faith, in utter disregard of the scorn of the world, and for purposes as diabolical as can be conceived of or consummated here on earth” Lib. 24.82. (to use Mr. Garrison's language), the final passage of the Nebraska Bill took place in the House. Two days later in Boston, while the city was² still profoundly moved by the five months struggle to avert this calamity, Anthony Burns was arrested as a³ fugitive from Virginia, and the popular excitement at once rose to fever heat, during a week without a parallel since the days of the Revolution. Various anniversary conventions—of the abolitionists and the woman-suffragists among others—brought great numbers of people to the capital of the State while the case was on trial; but also from the suburbs men poured in expressly to defeat the slave-hunter—in one case, that of Worcester, as a⁴ town delegation. Other pens must fill in the picture which we can only outline here—how Burns, like Sims, was kept a prisoner in the Court-house; how a mass meeting in Faneuil Hall, on the evening of May 26, was⁵ addressed with impassioned eloquence by Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker, urging everything short of violent resistance to the rendition of Burns; how a magnanimous attack was simultaneously⁶ made upon the ⁷ Court