ame to this country
and acted as Garrison's ally, winning some converts by his eloquence,
but heightening the unpopularity of the movement through the general
hostility to foreign interference. The early societies had been largely
in the border States, and their efforts had an immediate object in the
political action of their own communities. Now, the resentment and fear
of the slave-holding interest soon drove them out of those communities.
They spread faster than ever,--in a few years it was said that they were
1300,--but were confined to the free States. What immediate and
practical aim could they pursue? It was the question of practical action
that brought Garrison's views to a sharp test, and soon divided him from
the great body of anti-slavery people.

In Garrison's mind there was room for only one idea at a time. Slavery
was a crime, a sin, an abomination,--that to him was the first, the
last, the whole truth of the matter. He had little education, and he had
not in the least a judicial or an open mind. It was to him clear and
certain that the blacks were in every way the equal of the whites. Of
the complexity of human society; of the vital necessity of a political
bond uniting communities, and of the inevitable imperfections and
compromises which are the price of an established social order; of the
process of evolution by which humanity slowly grows from one stage into
another; of the fact that the negro was in some ways better as a slave
in America than as a savage in Africa, and that there must be other
intermediate stages in his development; of the consideration due to
honest differences of opinion and to deeply-rooted habits--of all this
Garrison was as ignorant as a six-years-old child. When facts came in
his way, he denied them; when institutions stood across his path, he
denounced them; when men differed from him, he assailed them.

As to a practical course of action by Northern people, he was absolutely
without resource. How were they to free the slaves? Not by force--force
was to Garrison as wicked as slavery itself. By their votes? That was
only possible under the government as ordained by the Constitution; and
the Constitution allowed no action against slavery except by each State
for itself. The worse then for the Constitution! Ere many years Garrison
declared, and put as a standing heading to the _Liberator_: "The United
States Constitution Is a Covenant with Death and an Agreement with
Hell." He w