‘
[
61]
therefore the
South will have more to lose than to gain by it.’
Dr. Channing, in a sequel to his pamphlet on the
1 “Duty of the
Free States,” was ready to make slavery extension (though not slavery itself) a ground of disunion:
Better that we should part than be the police of the slaveholder, than fight his battles, than wage war to uphold an oppressive institution.
So I say, let the Union be dissevered rather than receive Texas into the confederacy.
This measure, besides entailing on us evils of all sorts, would have for its chief end to bring the whole country under the Slave Power, to make the general government the agent of slavery; and this we are bound to resist at all hazards.
The free States should declare that the very act of admitting Texas will be construed as a dissolution of the Union.
Lib. 12.97.
In the nature of the case, it could not be the
Liberty Party that would join
Mr. Garrison in his attacks on the Constitution and Union, under which it had undertaken to thrive and prevail.
Common prudence dictated that
2 it should avert from itself the odium sure to attach to the doctrine of disunion (however qualified) among a Union-worshipping people; that it should assist in fastening the odium on the Old Organization.
This course
3 was promptly pursued by the
People's Advocate of
New Hampshire, which, from being an independent paper under the editorship of
St. Clair and others, had shrunk
4 to a department in
Leavitt's
Emancipator. Speaking for the
Liberty Party men of
Ohio, in distinction from some of their brethren in the
East,
Salmon P. Chase wrote:
‘We think it better to limit our political action by the political 5 power, explicitly and avowedly, rather than run the risk of misconstruction by saying that we aim at immediate and universal emancipation by political action. We regard the Liberty Party not so much as an abolition organization as a political party, willing to carry out the principles of abolitionists so far as they can be legitimately attained by political action.
We think that all these objects can be accomplished in full harmony with the Constitution, which instrument, as we believe, does not sanction nor nationalize slavery, but condemns and localizes it. ’
