conspirators against the liberty, peace, happiness, and safety of the republic” were; and, though his moral indignation “against their treasonable course” burned like fire, he, nevertheless, wished them no harm.  He shrank from the idea of the physical collision of man with a brother man, and with him all mankind were brothers.  No one is able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member of the human family, “in a Christian state of mind.”  He held to Jesus, who condemned violence, forbade the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory feelings and the use of retaliatory weapons.  When Jesus said “Love your enemies,” he did not mean, “Kill them if they go too far.”

Garrison’s moral radicalism and political sagacity were never exhibited to better advantage than during these tremendous years of the crisis.  He saw the sudden rise of a great political organization opposed to the farther extension of slavery to national territory.  It was by no means a party after his heart, and for total and immediate emancipation, and the dissolution of the Union, yet he perceived that while this was true, it was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose, battling against the slave-power, fighting the slave system, and to this extent was worthy of the commendation of Abolitionists.  “It helps to disseminate no small amount of light and knowledge,” the reformer acutely observed, “in regard to the nature and workings of the slave system, being necessitated to do this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right direction, though with no purpose to aid us in the specific work we are striving to accomplish, namely, the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of slavery throughout the land.”  While bating no jot of his anti-slavery principles, he all the same put in practice the apostolic injunction to give credit to whom credit is due, by cordially commending what he found worthy of commendation in the purpose and policy of the Republican party, and by urging a like conduct upon his followers.  In the Presidential canvass of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with Fremont as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although his Abolition principles precluded him from voting for the Republican candidate or from urging his disciples to vote for him.  But, barring this moral barrier, had he “a million votes to bestow” he “would cast them all for Fremont ... not because he is an Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is for the non-extension of slavery, in common with the great body of the people of the North, whose attachment to the Union amounts to idolatry.”