d I shall find
an echo in the breast of every human being. (Cheers.)"[14]

But while Garrison's method of agitation was not original, it was new
to this country. He spoke as one having authority, and his fiery
earnestness warmed the frozen feeling of the Northern people, and
startled the entire South. One year from the formation of the society
above alluded to (December 4, 5, and 6, 1833), a _National
Anti-Slavery Convention_ was held in Philadelphia, with sixty
delegates from ten States! In 1836 there were 250 auxiliary
anti-slavery societies in thirteen States; and eighteen months later
they had increased to 1,006. Money came to these societies from every
direction, and the good work had been fairly started.

William Lloyd Garrison created a party, and it will be known in
history as the _Garrisonian Party_.

While Mr. Garrison had taken the position that slavery was
constitutional, there were those who held the other view, that slavery
was unconstitutional, and, therefore, upon constitutional grounds
should be abolished.

The Whig party was the nearest to the anti-slavery society of any of
the political organizations of the time. It had promised, in
convention assembled, "to promote all constitutional measures for the
overthrow of slavery, and to oppose at all times, with uncompromising
zeal and firmness, any further addition of slave-holding States to
this Union, out of whatever territory formed.[15] But the party never
got beyond this. Charles Sumner was a member of the Whig party, but
was greatly disturbed about its indifference on the question of
slavery. In 1846 he delivered a speech before the Whig convention of
Massachusetts on "_The Anti-Slavery Duties of the Whig Party_." He
declared his positive opposition to slavery; said that he intended to
attack the institution on constitutional grounds; that slavery was not
a "covenant with death or an agreement with hell"; that he intended to
do his work for the slave inside of the Constitution. He said:--

"There is in the Constitution no compromise on the subject of
slavery of a character not to be reached legally and
constitutionally, which is the only way in which I propose to
reach it. Wherever power and jurisdiction are secured to
Congress, they may unquestionably be exercised in conformity with
the Constitution. And even in matters beyond existing powers and
jurisdiction there is a constitutional mode of action. The