Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/302

264 that he was ahead of his age, but, in fact, he was more than thirty years behind the spirit of an age when a true leader sustained by the States which first abolished slavery would have secured an influential following in nearly every slave-holding State. His doctrine of the immediate and uncompromising abolition of slavery in the precise period of its agitation by the anti-slavery societies, was declared impracticable by the vast majority of his own people in New England, and he suffered no modification of his plan. He had left the South where he should have remained, and made the vain attempt to revolutionize Northern action by the force of moral suasion. His peaceable moral policy and his submission to the authority of a Constitution which he despised, and to a Union which he derided, are creditable to his conscientious feeling, but his blindness to the powerful hold which slavery had on the New England money power and the general Northern politician is apparent. For about six years, from 1833 to 1839, he was able to hold his followers together compactly organized, although few in numbers, but divisions began to take place, fomented by men who saw no practical result in moral suasion, and whose ambition moved them to take the slavery question into the arena of politics. The Liberty party was accordingly formed by seceders from the Garrison following, and the inflammable question now threw its political shadow before the coming events of American history. His own society retained existence as the center of moral agitation. From 1843 to 1865 he was its earnest and honest president, constantly opposing slavery at every turn, and finally going fully into the bloody war against the South.

In the new turn now given to the agitation of slavery, a class of politicians secured seats in Congress who used their privileges in order to transfer the agitation from the platform, the pulpit and the press, to the great legislative body created by the Constitution. The beginning