The announcement of this new radicalism caused a sensation.  Many genuine Garrisonian Abolitionists recoiled from a policy of disunion.  Lydia Maria Child and James S. Gibbon of the Executive Committee of the National Society hastened to disavow for the society all responsibility for the disunion sentiment of the editor of the Liberator.  His new departure seemed to them “foreign to the purpose for which it was organized.”  Like all new ideas, it was a sword-bearer, and proved a decided disturber of the peace.  The Union-loving portion of the free States had never taken to the Abolition movement, for the reason that it tended to disturb the stability of their idol.  But now the popular hatred of Abolitionism was intensified by the avowal of a distinct purpose on the part of its leader to labor for the separation of the sections.  The press of the North made the most of this design to render altogether odious the small band of moral reformers, to reduce to a nullity their influence upon public opinion.

Notwithstanding its rejection by James Gibbons and Lydia Maria Child the new idea of the dissolution of the Union, as an anti-slavery object, found instant favor with many of the leading Abolitionists, like Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Parker Pillsbury, Stephen S. Foster and Abby Kelley.  At the anniversary meeting of the American Society in 1842, the subject was mooted, and, although there was no official action taken, yet it was apparent that a majority of the delegates were favorable to its adoption as the sentiment of the society.

The ultimate object of Garrison was the abolition of slavery.  Disunion led directly to this goal, therefore he planted his feet in that way.  But while he shot the agitation at a distant mark, he did not mean to miss less remote results.  There was remarkable method in his madness.  He agitated the question of the dissolution of the Union “in order that the people of the North might be induced to reflect upon their debasement, guilt, and danger in continuing in partnership with heaven-daring oppressors, and thus be led to repentance.”

The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting in January, 1843 “dissolved the Union,” wrote Quincy to R.D.  Webb, “by a handsome vote, after a warm debate.  The question was afterward reconsidered and passed in another shape, being wrapped up by Garrison in some of his favorite Old Testament Hebraisms by way of vehicle, as the apothecaries say.”  This is the final shape which Garrison’s “favorite Old Testament Hebraisms” gave to the action of the society: 

“Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell—­involving both parties in atrocious criminality—­and should be immediately annulled.”