Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[344] were placed in his hands. To all this intelligence he paid no heed. He did not avoid the slaveholding confederacy. He landed in New York on December 5, 1851, and his first words showed that he meant to be ‘neutral’ on the subject of slavery, and would in fact take sides against the abolitionists.

“The soil of freedom, your happy home. Freedom and home!” Lib. 21.198. ‘Asylum to the oppressed.’ ‘This prodigious view of greatness, freedom, and happiness.’ These¹ inexcusable phrases of his reception speech-making were followed by an explicit announcement of his attitude towards the ‘peculiar institution.’

I take it to be the duty of honor and principle not to meddle with whatever party question of your own domestic affairs. . . . May others delight in the part of knight-errant for theories. It is not my case. I am the man of the great principle of the sovereignty of every people to dispose of its own domestic concerns; and I most solemnly deny to every foreigner, as to every foreign power, the right to oppose the sovereign faculty. Lib. 21.201.

Honor and principle were already lost when these words were uttered. They showed the refugee to have taken out naturalization papers in a slaveholding republic, and to have turned canter in the most approved American fashion.

On December 12, 1851, Kossuth issued a formal² manifesto, touching his purpose in coming over, in which (in vague terms, patterned after the euphemism of the U. S. Constitution in reference to slavery³) he reiterated his resolve to hold aloof from the burning question not more of the hour than of the age. ‘I expect it,’ he said, ‘from ’