Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[498] so that if they determine not to incorporate it into their State organizations, their wishes shall be consulted—which is to leave no issue in Congress at all; for we see no intimation in this speech of any purpose or wish, by the Republican Party, to resist the admission of any new slave State into the Union. And, indeed, how can that party make any such resistance, on conscientious grounds, as a matter of principle, seeing it gives its sanction and support to fifteen slave States already in the Union? In fact, that party has virtually yielded to the atrocious dogma of “popular sovereignty,” as inculcated by Senator Douglas; being willing, like himself, that the people of every Territory should decide in favor of slavery, or against it, for themselves, and only asking that they may be allowed entire freedom of choice.

At the most interesting and exciting epoch of his thirty years warfare, Mr. Garrison was disabled by a complicated bronchial disorder from undertaking his customary share of public speaking. At the close of 1859, he was put under medical prohibition, and a journey abroad¹ seemed desirable, and was even planned for the coming spring. When that season arrived, an appointment for the summer had been made, but also some relief had come² of abstinence, and the trip was finally abandoned; a recreation with his family among the White Mountains in August being substituted. But throat and lungs and a³ slow fever confined him still, for the remainder of the year, to home and Boston. He wrote but little for the Liberator, for this reason and because he had, since 1857, had a very active editorial assistant in Charles K. Whipple; but above all because the mighty movement begun by him now swept irresistibly along without the need of any man. ‘Though the end is not yet,’ he said in his salutatory to the thirtieth volume of the Liberator, “surely it cannot be far distant—for the ‘battle waxes to the gate,’ and all the signs of the times are indicating that a great revolution is at hand.” Lib. 30.2. He pressed forward the renewal of the petitions to the Legislature for a law to make⁴ slavecatching impossible in Massachusetts, and addressed the⁵ Committee to whom they were referred, and who again