William Lloyd Garrison: “Has an everlasting divorce been effected between cause and effect, and is it an absurd doctrine that, as a nation sows…”

The more the South reflected, the more clearly she must see that she has a deep and vital interest in maintaining the Union.

Yet I know that God reigns, and that the slave system contains within itself the elements of destruction.

It is frightful to think of the capacity of a nation like this to commit sin, before the measure of its iniquities be filled, and the exterminating judgments of God overtake it.

With the North, the preservation of the Union is placed above all other things--above honour, justice, freedom, integrity of soul, the Decalogue and the Golden Rule--the Infinite God himself.