Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

“ [341] should be regulated. These Abolitionists should not be allowed to misrepresent New York.” In order to suppress the Abolitionists that paper did not blink at any means, however extreme or revolutionary, but declared boldly in favor of throttling free discussion. “When free discussion does not promote the public good,” argued the editor, “it has no more right to exist than a bad government that is dangerous and oppressive to the common weal. It should be overthrown.” The mob thus invoked came forward on the opening of the convention to overthrow free discussion.

The storm which the New York press was at so much labor to brew, Garrison did not doubt would break over the convention. He went to it in a truly apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. “Not knowing the things that shall befall me there, saving that bonds and afflictions abide with me in every city,” he wrote his wife an hour before the commencement of the convention. His prevision of violence was quickly fulfilled. He had called Francis Jackson to the chair during the delivery of the opening speech which fell to the pioneer to make as the president of the society. His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which he was paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian fashion. Belief in Jesus in the United States had no vital influence on conduct or character. The chief religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery, they had uttered no protest against the national sin. There was the Roman Catholic Church whose “priests and members held slaves without incurring the rebuke of the Church.” At this point the orator was interrupted by one of those monstrous products of the