movement, an era in which
non-resistance had no place, an era in which a resort to physical force
in settlement of sectional differences, the whole trend of things were
making inevitable. Fighting, the Anglo-Saxon method, as Theodore Parker
characterized it, of making a final settlement of just such
controversies as was the slavery question, was in the air, had become
without any general consciousness of it at the time appearing in the
popular mind, a foregone conclusion, from the moment that the South
wrested from the National Government the right to defy and override the
moral sentiment of free State communities. With this advance of the
anti-slavery agitation a stage nearer the end, when fighting would
supersede all other methods, the fighters gravitated naturally to the
front of the conflict, and the apostle of non-resistance fell somewhat
into the background of the great movement started by him.

Garrison had begun, indeed, to recognize that there were other ways
besides his way of abolishing slavery--had begun to see that these with
his led to Rome, to the ultimate extinction of the evil, to which
anti-slavery unionists and disunionists were alike devoted. His innate
sagacity and strong sense of justice lifted the reformer to larger
toleration of mind. At a dinner given in Boston in May, 1853, by the
Free Democracy to John P. Hale, he was not only present to testify his
appreciation of the courage and services of Mr. Hale to the common
cause, but while there was able to speak thus tolerantly--tolerantly for
him certainly--of a Union dear to the company about the table yet
hateful beyond measure to himself: "Sir, you will pardon me," spoke the
arch anti-slavery disunionist, "for the reference. I have heard
something here about our Union, about the value of the Union, and the
importance of preserving the Union, Gentlemen, if you have been so
fortunate as to find a Union worth preserving, I heartily congratulate
you. Cling to it with all your souls!" For himself, he has not been so
fortunate. With a price set on his head in one of the Southern States,
and outlawed in all of them, he begs to be pardoned if found lacking in
loyalty to the existing Union, which to him, alas: "is but another name
for the iron reign of the slave-power. We have no common country as yet.
God grant we may have. We shall have it when the jubilee comes--and not
till then," he declared, mindful of the convictions of others, yet
bravely true to