Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[249] his propaganda in the stronghold of the abolitionists, lecturing first to a distressingly slim audience in the¹ great Odeon, and with hardly more satisfaction in the smaller Marlboroa Chapel, which had escaped the fate of Pennsylvania Hall. He reported to the annual meeting of the Society in Washington that the colonizationists of Boston were paralyzed by the abolition spirit:

They appeared, as many did, to be under the spell cast² upon them by the individual (Garrison) who represents the abolition cause. Whatever might be thought of that man, it was useless . . . to deny to him either talent or influence. That man had powers capable of effecting mighty purposes. He had power to excite and direct the imaginations and passions of men. He was equal to efforts which go to the subversion of governments, and to effect great moral revolutions in society. Mr. Gurley had no doubt that this individual acted under an illusion cast about him by his own powerful imagination. His purpose, no doubt, was, like Moses or like Mahomet, to effect a great revolution in civil society, and to be the founder of a new basis of civil and social institutions.³

This was complimentary in comparison with the accusations brought against Mr. Garrison by Cresson's brother-in-law and fellow-colonizationist, the Rev. Mr. Dickey, who publicly accused the editor of the Liberator⁴ of Fanny Wrightism—of advocating the equal division of property, the prostration of all law, the abrogation of marriage, and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes