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

Where are you, sir? In amicable companionship and ¹ popular repute with thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slave-dealers, and slave-destroyers; with those who call the beings whom God created but a little lower than the angels, things and chattels; with the proscribers of the great chart of eternal life; with the rancorous enemies of the friends of universal emancipation; with the disturbers of the public peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute and lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and liberties of New England citizens. These facts are undeniable. Talk not of more honorable associates, for no men deserve that epithet who throw the weight of their influence into the scale of oppression. Peradventure, you will ask, in due time, for the suffrages of Bostonians. Sir, we will remember you at the polls! . . .

Sir, the Faneuil Hall meeting, though intended to strengthen the feeble hands and comfort the desponding hearts of Southern taskmasters, will in the sequel prove of more benefit to our cause than forty anti-slavery lectures and twice that number of tracts, prodigious as is their moral effect. It has already multiplied our converts, animated our zeal, and emboldened our spirit. . . .

I mean to make your harangue, and the speeches of your associates, of signal use in the anti-slavery struggle. They are crowded with evidence of our national guilt, and clearly prove every allegation that has fallen from the lips of abolitionists— as shall be shown in the progress of this review. Upon your authority, henceforth, will I arraign the people of the free States—of New England—of Massachusetts—as the abettors, upholders and guardians of as tyrannous a system as the sun has looked down upon since his creation. Upon your authority I will prove that there is not a drop of blood extracted from the bodies, nor a tear which falls from the eyes, nor a groan which bursts from the bosoms of the heart-broken slaves, for which the North is not directly responsible. Sir, the more searchingly I investigate this great subject, the stronger is my conviction that hitherto I have erred—nay, that I have been alike unwise and partial—in declaiming so much against Southern, and so little against Northern criminality. I am not sure—especially since reading the speeches above alluded to—