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the slave. As against the principles of the Revolutionary fathers, ‘ours,’ it says, ‘forbid the doing of evil that good may come’; while the Constitution pledges the Society ‘never, in any way, [to] countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by a resort to physical force.’
The non-resistants alone obey this to the letter, and yet are bade get out or ‘amend the Constitution.’
Assuredly, the founders did not all appreciate what they were doing when they subscribed to this doctrine: ‘All this I readily admit.
What I mean to say is, that, by a strict and fair construction of the instruments above alluded to, non-resistance is more explicitly enjoined upon abolitionists than the duty of using the elective franchise.’1
Still, Mr. Garrison expected to see abolitionists at the ballot-box, renovating the political action of the country, though the reformation must come, ‘not by attempting to prove that it is the duty of every abolitionist to be a voter, but that it is the duty of every voter to be an abolitionist.’
He expected, further, to see political action purified and renovated ‘in exact proportion to the prevalence of the great conservative doctrines of nonresistance’; for, since the greater includes the less, no person could be a non-resistant without being a wholehearted abolitionist.
Already the ‘no-government’ doctrine had set the clergy to preaching the duty of politics; and where it had struck its roots deepest, in Massachusetts, there was found the most devoted, the leading
1 So thought and wrote David Lee Child, in a masterly letter designed to be read at the American anniversary: ‘For myself, I have never been able to conceive of any principle on which slaves can be discountenanced in resorting to physical force, except that of total abstinence from all violence. . . . I submit whether here are not materials for showing that nonresistance is incorporated in our Society, more ample than have been or can be found to prove that it was intended for political electioneering’ (Lib. 9: 86). Considering the attempt to deduce a particular form of ‘political influence’ from the general profession on that head, Mr. Child asked, Would any one prescribe the way in which to encourage the ‘religious improvement of the people of color,’ also enjoined by the Constitution? Joshua Leavitt's candid view in opposition to Birney may be read in Lib. 9: 63; and see Mr. Garrison's rejoinder to Luther Lee's review of his reply to Birney (Lib. 9 141, 143).
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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