It is only when we come to the dividing line between the Free States and the Slave States that shoals, breakers and whirlpools beset the ship of State, and threaten to engulf or strand it.
William Lloyd Garrison
The Public Record
William Lloyd Garrison was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. His widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator was a driving force that fueled the abolitionist era, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. He supported the rights of women, and during the 1870s became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement.
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It is, and it always has been, the absolute supremacy of the Slave Power over the whole country--nothing more.
The present American Union, therefore, is only one in form, not in reality.
How can they receive the same baptism, be admitted to the same communion-table, believe in the same Gospel, and obtain the same heavenly inheritance?
How can they administer the same Government, or legislate for the same interests?
In manners, in morals, in philosophy, in religion, in ideas of justice, in notions of law, in theories of government, in valuations or men, they are totally dissimilar.
They can never be reconciled--never walk together--never consent to a truce--never deal in honeyed phrases--never worship at the same altar--never acknowledge the same God.
No alliance with Abolitionists, either in Church or State!" The issue is clear, explicit, determinate.
I will not try to make as good a bargain for the Lord as the Devil will let me, and plead the necessity of a compromise, and regret that I cannot do any better, and be thankful that I can do so much.
Not a single slave will I leave in his chains, on any conditions, or under any circumstances.
Not a solitary slaveholder will I allow to enjoy repose on any other condition than instantly ceasing to be one.
If you will no longer agitate the subject, we will not." There is no sense, no principle, no force in such an issue.