ansported with grief and indignation at the monstrous wrong which
slavery did the slaves and the nation. He had not thought out for
himself any means to rid both of the curse. The white heat of the
address destroyed for the instant all capacity for such thinking. "Who
can be amazed, temperate, and furious--in a moment? No man. The
expedition of his violent love outran the pauser reason" He had accepted
the colonization scheme as an instrument for removing the evil, and
called on all good citizens "to assist in establishing auxiliary
colonization societies in every State, county, and town"; and implored
"their direct and liberal patronage to the parent society." He had not
apparently, so much as dreamed of any other than gradual emancipation.
"The emancipation of all the slaves of this generation is most assuredly
out of the question," he said; "the fabric which now towers above the
Alps, must be taken away brick by brick, and foot by foot, till it is
reduced so low that it may be overturned without burying the nation in
its ruins. Years may elapse before the completion of the achievement;
generations of blacks may go down to the grave, manacled and lacerated,
without a hope for their children." He was on the Fourth of July a firm
and earnest believer in the equity and efficacy of gradualism. But after
that day, and some time before his departure for Baltimore, he began to
think on this subject. The more he thought the less did gradualism seem
defensible on moral grounds. John Wesley had said that slavery was the
"sum of all villainies"; it was indeed the sin of sins, and as such
ought to be abandoned not gradually but immediately. Slave-holding was
sin and slaveholders were sinners. The sin and sinner should both be
denounced as such and the latter called to instant repentance, and the
duty of making immediate restitution of the stolen liberties of their
slaves. This was the tone ministers of religion held every where toward
sin and sinners, and this should be the tone held by the preachers of
Abolition toward slavery, and slaveholders. To admit the principle of
gradualism was for Abolition to emasculate itself of its most virile
quality. Garrison, consequently rejected gradualism as a weapon, and
took up instead the great and quickening doctrine of immediatism. Lundy
did not know of this change in the convictions of his coadjutor until
his arrival in Baltimore. Then Garrison frankly unburdened himself and
declared his de