Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[368] somehow his face seemed to turn warward too, with the rest of the nation, in the following passage taken from his address at that John Brown meeting:

Nevertheless, I am a non-resistant,

said he, speaking to that solitary confession of non-resistance principles, “and I not only desire, but have labored unremittingly to effect the peaceful abolition of slavery, by an appeal to the reason and conscience of the slaveholder; yet, as a peace man, an ultra peace man, I am prepared to say: Success to every slave insurrection at the South, and in every slave country. And I do not see how I compromise or stain my peace profession in making that declaration. Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the oppressor, the weapons being equal between the parties, God knows that my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor. Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave insurrections. . . . Rather than see men wearing their chains, in a cowardly and servile spirit, I would as an advocate of peace, much rather see them breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains. Give me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Concord, rather than the cowardice and servility of a Southern slave plantation.”

The unmistakable signs of disintegration, the swift action of the national tragedy, the Charleston Convention, the disruption of the Democratic party, the last bond between the North and the South, filled the heart of the pioneer with solemn joy. “Only think of it!” he exulted at the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, May 8,

1860; “only think of it! the party which has for so ”