SOURCE: Schouler, James. History of the United States of America Under the Constitution, vol. 4, pp. 210-21. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1892.

In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1889, Schouler characterizes Garrison as a fanatical agitator whose radical methods demonstrated a complete lack of regard for constitutional law.

This new abolition movement at the North did not, like the Quaker one of former days, respect constitutional bounds and seek mild persuasion of the white master who held the local law in his hands. It boldly proclaimed that the laws of nature were paramount to a human institution; it preached freedom as of divine right and in defiance, if need be, of the enslaver. But in law-respecting communities like ours all such agitation bruised itself like a bird against the solid wall of the federal constitution, which, wisely or unwisely, surrounded the institution and sanctioned its existence...