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

The scheme for the financial control of the Liberator had on the whole worked well. At the close of May, immediately after the New England anniversary, a second meeting of the friends of the paper was held in ¹ ChardonStreet Chapel, with Samuel Fessenden in the chair. Its qualities were once more rehearsed in flattering but truthful terms, the charges against it refuted, and subscriptions made for its support. Henry C. Wright spoke to its alleged ‘infidelity’: ‘If to quote the Bible almost every other sentence—if to fashion a man's style of writing after the Bible—if to refer to the Bible perpetually, constitutes infidelity, then is Wm. Lloyd Garrison an infidel, and the Liberator an infidel paper. He [the speaker] had often challenged the opponents of the Liberator to show him a religious paper in the land in which there was so much of the Bible as in the Liberator.’ N. P. Rogers declared it the organ of the cause, untrammelled by any society limitations. ‘As Wm. Lloyd Garrison is an historical fact in the annals of Antislavery, he will be considered by enemies of the cause as the representative of abolition principles; and this without any effort or wish on his part to be a leader, or any disposition in abolitionists to be led by him.’ Wendell Phillips said, they might talk as they would,—if Mr. Garrison were sustained, ‘all the distinctive principles of the anti-slavery cause would be sustained also.’