ng away and burning up every shred of false covering
from the doctrines, principles, and purposes of the society, revealing
it to mankind in its base and monstrous character.

The society's one motive "to get rid of the free people of color," was
outrageous enough, but this was not its only sin. There was another
phase to the mischief it was working, which lifted it to the rank of a
great sinner. It was not only harmful in its principles and purposes.
"It imperatively and effectually seals up the lips," so Garrison accused
it, "of a vast number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of
giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they associate, and
thereby leading to a dissolution of the compact, dare not expose the
flagrant enormities of the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of
holding human beings in bondage. They dare not lead to the onset against
the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall
the victory be won? I do not mean to aver that in their sermons, or
addresses, or private conversations, they never allude to the subject of
slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July.
But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing
slavery as an evil--a misfortune--a calamity which has been entailed
upon us by former generations,--_and not as an individual_ CRIME,
embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. _They
do not identify the criminal_; they make no direct, pungent, earnest
appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but
it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced
to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable.

Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright described the baleful
influence of the society upon the humanity and philanthropy of the
nation. "The humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could not
otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced into an African
Colonization Society, whereby all slaves who had grown seditious and
troublesome to their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous
African coast. That this wretched and seemingly transparent humbug could
have deluded anybody, must now seem past belief; but I must with shame
confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it. And that fact would
put me in doubt of my own sanity at the time if I did not know that high
statesmen, presidents of colleges, able editors, and that m