The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an unwonted defiance of consequences, a fierce contempt of ancient political bugaboos marked the utterances of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions relating to slavery.  In the anti-Texas convention held in Faneuil Hall January 29, 1845, all this timidity disappeared in the presence of the new peril.  It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison was a member, but of politicians, mostly of the Whig party.  “The anti-slavery spirit of the convention,” wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D.  Webb, “was surprising.  The address and the speeches of the gentlemen, not Abolitionists, were such as caused Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago, and such as we thought thorough three or four years ago.  There were no qualifications, or excuses, or twaddle.”

Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement with all his customary force and fire.  Elected a delegate to the Faneuil Hall Convention by the influence of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part in its proceedings, “created the most stir in the whole matter,” Wendell Phillips thought.  Charles Sumner, who heard him speak for the first time, was struck with his “natural eloquence,” and described his words as falling “in fiery rain.”  Again at a mass meeting for Middlesex County, held at Concord, to consider the aggressions of the slave-power, did the words of the pioneer fall “in fiery rain.”  Apprehensive that the performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency arose, would fall far short of her protestations, he exclaimed, “I have nothing to say, sir, nothing.  I am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things said, where there is no heart to carry them out.  When we are prepared to state the whole truth, and die for it, if necessary—­when, like our fathers, we are prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it, counting not our lives dear unto us—­when we are prepared to let all earthly hopes go back to the board—­then let us say so; till then, the less we say the better, in such an emergency as this.  ’But who are we, will men ask.’ that talk of such things?  ‘Are we enough to make a revolution?’ No, sir; but we are enough to begin one, and, once begun, it never can be turned back.  I am for revolution were I utterly alone.  I am there because I must be there.  I must cleave to the right.  I cannot choose but obey the voice of God.

" ...  Do not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have been one.  We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on the floor of Congress!  The moment we say no to this, the Union ceases—­the Government falls.”