Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[354] political organization, devoted to uncompromising opposition to the farther extension of slavery. The sectionalism of slavery was at last met by the sectionalism of freedom. From that moment the old Union, with its slave compromises, was doomed. In the conflict then impending its dissolution was merely a matter of time, unless indeed the North should prove strong enough to preserve it by the might of its arms, seeing that the North still clung passionately to the idea of national unity.

Not so, however, was it with Garrison. Sharper and sterner rose his voice against any union with slaveholders. On the Fourth of July following the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the reformer at Framingham, Mass., gave a fresh and startling sign of his hatred of the Union by burning publicly the Constitution of the United States. Before doing so however, he consigned to the flames a copy of the Fugitive-Slave Law, next the decision of Judge Loring remanding Anthony Burns to slavery, also the charge of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis to the Grand Jury touching the assault upon the court-house for the rescue of Burns. Then holding up the United States Constitution, he branded it as the source and parent of all the other atrocities — a covenant with death and an agreement with hell-and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming, “So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say, Amen!” This dramatic act and the “tremendous shout” which “went up to heaven in ratification of the deed” from the assembled multitude, what were they but the prophecy of a fiercer fire already burning in the land, soon to blaze about the pillars of the