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

William A. White was joined by Richard Hildreth in¹ renewing his protest against the resolutions so triumphantly adopted. The general tenor of it was, that the² proposed policy, besides being narrow and proscriptive, would make ‘no government’ men of the abolitionists as a body, and would, in all consistency, preclude them from any use of the existing State and Federal machinery against slavery, as by petitions and the like. Practically, disunion would end either in forcible emancipation initiated by the free States, or in a servile insurrection having their countenance. George Bradburn, with some qualification, but also with a peculiar bitterness to be more fully³ revealed ere long, assented to these objections—his first step towards joining the Liberty Party outright. Among the nays we remark further Maria, the sister of William⁴ A. White, and her affianced, James Russell Lowell, though the latter had been moved at the Convention to compose verses of a stiffer tone on the main question, as thus:

Whate'er we deem Oppression's prop,⁵
     Time-honored though it be,
We break, nor fear the heavens will drop
     Because the earth is free.⁶

The conclusion of the struggle for the acceptance of the disunion policy was marked by a bit of scenic effect. On the evening of the last day of the Convention, C. C. Burleigh presented in its behalf to Mr. Garrison, as President of the American Anti-Slavery Society, a silken banner (still preserved), bearing on one side a satirical symbol of American oppression,—the national eagle with one foot⁷ on the Constitution and the other on a prostrate slave, with accessories,—and on the reverse this inscription: