This text is part of:
[80]
not identical with Garrisonian abolitionism.1 The Society, nevertheless, held its fourth annual meeting, and had2 already, in September, 1841, at Mr. Garrison's instance,3 authorized Henry C. Wright to go abroad as a sort of general missionary for the causes of peace, abolition, temperance, chastity, and a pure and equal Christianity.
The suspension of its organ, however, beyond hope of4 recovery, showed that the limit of organized growth had been reached, and that the millennial expectations of the Declaration of Sentiments must be fulfilled in some other5 form.
‘It does not follow,’ wrote Mr. Garrison in review of Judge Jay's “War and peace,” “that the Almighty will crown with success all means and measures alike, for the furtherance of the cause of peace. . . . It is not enough that we have a good cause; this will avail us little or nothing unless the principles which we advance and the measures which we adopt to carry it forward are just and appropriate.”
Lib. 12.83. The most appropriate peace6 measure in America was clearly the abolition of slavery.
1 The absence of H. C. Wright in England was one of the causes of the lapse of the Non-Resistant; but chief was the fact that ‘our time, our means, our labors are so absorbed in seeking the emancipation of our enslaved countrymen, that we cannot do as much specifically and directly for non-resistance as it would otherwise be in our power to perform’ (Ms. Mar. 1, 1843, W. L. G. to H. C. Wright). ‘The A. S. cause misses you much—even more than the N. R. cause (as far as they are separable). But I never could separate N. R. from my idea of reform generally. It is the temper of mind in which all enterprises for humanity should be undertaken, rather than a distinct enterprise of itself’ (Ms. Mar. 31, 1843, M. W. Chapman to H. C. Wright). ‘The [Non-Resistance] Society, I regret to say, has had only a nominal existence during the past year—and, indeed, ever since your departure. It is without an organ, without funds, without agents, without publications’ (Ms. Oct. 1, 1844, W. L. G. to H. C. Wright).
3 Lib. 12.47, 143, 155; Herald of Freedom, 8.129.
4 Ms. Mar, 26, 1843, E. Quincy to R. D. Webb.
5 Ante, 2.233, 234; also, 229.
6 Cf. Lib. 14:[180].
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.