Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

‘ [493] the highest degree.’ ‘We owe,’ he said, ‘an obligation to the laws, but a higher one to the communities in which we live; if the former be perverted to destroy the latter, it is patriotism to disregard them.’¹ ‘I cannot,’ he continued, ‘sanction, and will not condemn, the step you have taken. Your justification must be looked for in the character of the papers detained, and the circumstances by which you are surrounded.’

Even more frankly, when the postmaster in New York,² Jackson-like, ‘took the responsibility’ of refusing to³ despatch the papers of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Kendall wrote him that he could not sanction his action, but would do the same thing if he were in his place. Postmasters had a right to inspect all news matter, and if this tended to beget the commission of the most aggravated crimes, it was their duty to retain it, or even hand it over to the civil authorities,—with the risk, to be sure, of suffering for improper detention. Anti-slavery publications tended directly to produce the horrors of slave insurrection at the South, being calculated to fill every family with assassins. Southern demonstrations against them, as ‘power which is exerted in palpable selfdefence,’ were not lawless. Abolitionists might have a right to circulate their documents in New York, where it was lawful, but not in Louisiana or Georgia. The State laws against such circulation were not voidable in the case of Federal officials, nor could postmasters and mail-carriers be protected against the penalties of State laws. ‘Was it to give impunity to crime that ’