At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American Society resolved likewise that there should be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of the same year the New England Society voted by a large majority to dissolve the ‘covenant with death, and the agreement with hell.’  Almost the whole number of the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time placed upon their banner of immediate emancipation the revolutionary legend “No Union with slaveholders.” Cathago est delenda were now ever on the lips of the pioneer.  ‘The Union it must and shall be destroyed’ became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his utterances on the slavery question.

The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the Government which they were seeking to overthrow was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in a letter returning to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission as a justice of the peace.  Says he, “To me it appears that the vices of slavery, introduced into the constitution of our body politic by a few slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of our National Government that literally there is no health in it.  The only remedy that I can see for the disease is to be found in the dissolution of the patient....  Henceforth it (the Constitution) is dead to me, and I to it.  I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it, and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it.  The burdens that it lays upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly declaring that, while I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no compact which helps to rob any other man of his.”

The Abolition agitation for the dissolution of the Union was assisted not a little by sundry occurrences of national importance.  The increasing arrogance and violence of the South in Congress on all matters relating to the subject of slavery was one of these occurrences.  Freedom of debate and the right of petition, Southern intolerance had rendered well nigh worthless in the National Legislature.  In this way the North, during several months in every year, was forced to look at the reverse and the obverse faces, of the Union.  These object-lessons taught many minds, no doubt, to count the cost which the preservation of the Union entailed upon the free States—­“to reflect upon their debasement, guilt, and danger” in their partnership with slaveholders.  Another circumstance which induced to this kind of reflection was the case of George Latimer, who was seized as a fugitive slave in Boston in the autumn of 1842.  From beginning to end the Latimer case revealed how completely had Massachusetts tied her own hands as a party to the original compact with slavery whose will was the supreme law of the land.  In obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused to the captive the writ of habeas corpus, and Judge Story granted the owner possession of the fugitive,