powerful link in the chain of events by which the slave system has
been abolished, the slave emancipated, and the country saved from
dismemberment." In 1851 Douglass announced that his sympathies were
with the voting abolitionists, and thenceforth he supported by voice
and pen Hale, Fremont, and Lincoln, the successive candidates of the
new party.

Douglass's political defection very much intensified the feeling
against him among his former coadjutors. The Garrisonians, with their
usual plain speaking, did not hesitate to say what they thought of
Douglass. Their three papers, the _Liberator_, the _Standard_, and the
_Freeman_, assailed Douglass fiercely, and charged him with treachery,
inconsistency, ingratitude, and all the other crimes so easily imputed
to one who changes his opinions. Garrison and Phillips and others of
his former associates denounced him as a deserter, and attributed his
change of heart to mercenary motives. Douglass seems to have borne
himself with rare dignity and moderation in this trying period. He
realized perfectly well that he was on the defensive, and that the
burden devolved upon him to justify his change of front. This he seems
to have attempted vigorously, but by argument rather than invective.
Even during the height of the indignation against him Douglass
disclaimed any desire to antagonize his former associates. He simply
realized that there was more than one way to fight slavery,--which
knew a dozen ways to maintain itself,--and had concluded to select the
one that seemed most practical. He was quite willing that his former
friends should go their own way. "No personal assaults," he wrote to
George Thompson, the English abolitionist, who wrote to him for an
explanation of the charges made against him, "shall ever lead me to
forget that some, who in America have often made me the subject
of personal abuse, are in their own way earnestly working for the
abolition of slavery."

In later years, when political action had resulted in abolition, some
of these harsh judgments were modified, and Douglass and his earlier
friends met in peace and harmony. The debt he owed to William Lloyd
Garrison he ever delighted to acknowledge. His speech on the death of
Garrison breathes in every word the love and honor in which he held
him. In one of the last chapters of his _Life and Times_ he makes a
sweeping acknowledgment of his obligations to the men and women who
rendered his career possible.

"It