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[340] within parties and fought among themselves with no less bitterness. Wrath is infectious and the wrathful temper of the nation became epidemic. The Ishmaelitish impulse to strike something or someone, was irresistible. The bonds which had bound men to one another seemed everywhere loosening, and people in masses were slipping away from old to enter into new combinations of political activity. It was a period of tumultuous transition and confusion. The times were topsy-turvy and old Night and Chaos were the angels who sat by the bubbling abysses of the revolution.

In the midst of this universal and violent agitation of the public mind the old dread of disunion returned to torment the American bourgeoisie, who through their presses, especially those of the metropolis of the Union, turned fiercely upon the Abolitionists. While the compromise measures were the subject of excited debate before Congress, the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society fell due. But the New York journals, the Herald in particular, had no mind to allow the meeting to take place without renewing the reign of terror of fifteen years before. Garrison was depicted as worse than Robespierre, with an insatiable appetite for the destruction of established institutions, both human and divine. The dissolution of the Union, the “overthrow of the churches, the Sabbath, and the Bible,” all were required to glut his malevolent passion. “Will the men of sense allow meetings to be held in this city which are calculated to make our country the arena of blood and murder,” roared the Herald, “ and render our city an object of horror to the whole South? . . . Public opinion ”

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William Lloyd Garrison (1)
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