Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American Society resolved likewise that there should be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of the same year the New England Society voted by a large majority to dissolve the “covenant with death, and the agreement with hell.” Almost the whole number of the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time placed upon their banner of immediate emancipation the revolutionary legend “No Union with slaveholders.” Cathago est delenda were now ever on the lips of the pioneer. “The Union it must and shall be destroyed” became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his utterances on the slavery question.

The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the Government which they were seeking to overthrow was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in a letter returning to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission as a justice of the peace. Says he, “To me it appears that the vices of slavery, introduced into the constitution of our body politic by a few slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of our National Government that literally there is no health in it. The only remedy that I can see for the disease is to be found in the dissolution of the patient. . . . Henceforth it (the Constitution) is dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it, and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly declaring that, while I retain my ”