John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[137] with some almost superhuman agency, was moving upon it to devour it. Slavery, during the whole course of its long suicide, was, in its own view, striving to save itself from destruction. The Abolitionists brought into the conflict the element of Fate. The South knew that no form of compromise could bind Garrison. It felt this with the instinct of the hunted animal. It aimed a blow at the enemy, Abolition; and it struck free speech, it struck the right of petition, trial by jury, education, benevolence, common sense. Slavery began its death agony in 1830, and was driven from one step to another merely as a consequence of the nature of man. If the South could have smiled at Abolition, if it could have kept its temper and lent no hand in assisting the Abolitionists to bring forward their cause, then the way of the reformers would have been hard. This would have happened, perhaps, if Anti-slavery in America had been a pioneer cause, a new light leading the world. But our Anti-slavery cause was a mere means of catching up with Europe. The moral power of humanity at large prevented South Carolina from smiling at Abolition. The slave-owners trembled because they were a part of the thing