Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

Peleg Sprague, a native of Massachusetts, a graduate² of Harvard College, a distinguished lawyer, a member of the lower House of Congress for four years, just retired³ from a six years term in the Senate, where he ⁴ represented the State of Maine, and now come to Boston to resume the practice of his profession, was an ideal mouthpiece of Northern respectability. If his discourse was heated and malevolent towards the abolitionists, the feelings of the populace could safely be inferred by the South. He did, in fact, assert that their language and⁵ measures clearly tended to insurrection and violence; that if their sentiments prevailed, it would be all over with the Union, which would give place to two hostile confederacies, with forts and standing armies. As to their doctrine that there was a higher law than the Constitution, and something above the Union,—that no law sanctioning slavery could have any moral obligation, and that slaveholders were detestable and abhorrent and the North should have no communion with them—‘Time was,’ he exclaimed,

when such sentiments and such language would not have been breathed in this community; and here, on this hallowed spot, of all the places on earth, should they be met and rebuked.

Time was, when . . . the generous and gallant ⁶ Southrons came to our aid, and our fathers refused not to hold communion with slaveholders.⁷. . . . When he, that slaveholder