d to resist at all hazards. The free States
should declare that the very act of admitting Texas will be construed as
a dissolution of the Union."

The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an unwonted defiance of
consequences, a fierce contempt of ancient political bugaboos marked the
utterances of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions relating
to slavery. In the anti-Texas convention held in Faneuil Hall January
29, 1845, all this timidity disappeared in the presence of the new
peril. It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison was a
member, but of politicians, mostly of the Whig party. "The anti-slavery
spirit of the convention," wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D. Webb, "was
surprising. The address and the speeches of the gentlemen, not
Abolitionists, were such as caused Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago,
and such as we thought thorough three or four years ago. There were no
qualifications, or excuses, or _twaddle_."

Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement with all his
customary force and fire. Elected a delegate to the Faneuil Hall
Convention by the influence of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part
in its proceedings, "created the most stir in the whole matter," Wendell
Phillips thought. Charles Sumner, who heard him speak for the first
time, was struck with his "natural eloquence," and described his words
as falling "in fiery rain." Again at a mass meeting for Middlesex
County, held at Concord, to consider the aggressions of the slave-power,
did the words of the pioneer fall "in fiery rain." Apprehensive that the
performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency arose, would fall far
short of her protestations, he exclaimed, "I have nothing to say, sir,
nothing. I am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things said, where
there is no heart to carry them out. When we are prepared to state the
whole truth, and die for it, if necessary--when, like our fathers, we
are prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it, counting not
our lives dear unto us--when we are prepared to let all earthly hopes go
back to the board--_then_ let us say so; _till_ then, the less we say
the better, in such an emergency as this. 'But who are we, will men
ask.' that talk of such things? 'Are we enough to make a revolution?'
No, sir; but we are enough to _begin_ one, and, once begun, it never can
be turned back. I am for revolution were I utterly alone. I am there
because I _must_ be there. I _mu