John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[175] else, can never turn aside and adopt any institution, without doing violence to his own principles. To disparage all government because it is “the letter that killeth,” and thereafter to swear fealty to some party, or adopt a symbol, or advise a friend to vote with the Whigs is inconsistent. One who believes in standing for absolute principle can never indorse some political scheme on the ground that “this time it doesn't count.” One who believes it wrong to meet force with force cannot retain the privilege of approving some particular war or some particular act of self-defense, which seems to him to be useful. Garrison had not the mental training to perceive this, and to do so would have involved his retirement from the camp to the closet: it would have involved his being someone else. Suffice it to say that from time to time his nature drew a veil over his theories, and so obscured them that he was able to support the Constitution of the United States, to rejoice in bloodshed, to take active part in political contests,--both in the great occasional National elections (as when he came out for Lincoln or Fremont), and in the continuous petty politics of the Anti-slavery cause.

After having supported one of these human