sonable course" burned like fire, he, nevertheless, wished
them no harm. He shrank from the idea of the physical collision of man
with a brother man, and with him all mankind were brothers. No one is
able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member of the human family,
"in a Christian state of mind." He held to Jesus, who condemned
violence, forbade the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory
feelings and the use of retaliatory weapons. When Jesus said "Love your
enemies," he did not mean, "Kill them if they go too far."

Garrison's moral radicalism and political sagacity were never exhibited
to better advantage than during these tremendous years of the crisis. He
saw the sudden rise of a great political organization opposed to the
farther extension of slavery to national territory. It was by no means a
party after his heart, and for total and immediate emancipation, and the
dissolution of the Union, yet he perceived that while this was true, it
was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose, battling against the
slave-power, fighting the slave system, and to this extent was worthy of
the commendation of Abolitionists. "It helps to disseminate no small
amount of light and knowledge," the reformer acutely observed, "in
regard to the nature and workings of the slave system, being
necessitated to do this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time
being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right direction, though
with no purpose to aid us in the specific work we are striving to
accomplish, namely, the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of
slavery throughout the land." While bating no jot of his anti-slavery
principles, he all the same put in practice the apostolic injunction to
give credit to whom credit is due, by cordially commending what he found
worthy of commendation in the purpose and policy of the Republican
party, and by urging a like conduct upon his followers. In the
Presidential canvass of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with Fremont
as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although his Abolition principles
precluded him from voting for the Republican candidate or from urging
his disciples to vote for him. But, barring this moral barrier, had he
"a million votes to bestow" he "would cast them all for Fremont ... not
because he is an Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is for
the non-extension of slavery, in common with the great body of the
people of the North, whose attachment to the