ars great moral power
accompanied our cause wherever presented. Alas! in the course of
the fearful developments of the Slave Power, and its continued
aggressions on the rights of the people of the North, in my
judgment a sad change has come over the spirit of anti-slavery men,
generally speaking. We are growing more and more warlike, more and
more disposed to repudiate the principles of peace.... Just in
proportion as this spirit prevails, I feel that our moral power is
departing and will depart.... I will not trust the war-spirit
anywhere in the universe of God, because the experience of six
thousand years proves it not to be at all reliable in such a
struggle as ours....

"I pray you, abolitionists, still to adhere to that truth. Do not
get impatient; do not become exasperated; do not attempt any new
political organization; do not make yourselves familiar with the
idea that blood must flow. Perhaps blood will flow--God knows, I do
not; but it shall not flow through any counsel of mine. Much as I
detest the oppression exercised by the Southern slaveholder, he is
a man, sacred before me. He is a man, not to be harmed by my hand
nor with my consent.... While I will not cease reprobating his
horrible injustice, I will let him see that in my heart there is no
desire to do him harm,--that I wish to bless him here, and bless
him everlastingly,--and that I have no other weapon to wield
against him but the simple truth of God, which is the great
instrument for the overthrow of all iniquity, and the salvation of
the world."[90]

Yet Garrison's fervor for the emancipation of the slaves was so great
that when the Civil War came, he said of Lincoln and the Republicans:

"They are instruments in the hand of God to carry forward and help
achieve the great object of emancipation for which we have so long
been striving.... All our sympathies and wishes must be with the
Government, as against the Southern desperadoes and buccaneers; yet
of course without any compromise of principle on our part."[91]

Although Lincoln insisted that the purpose of the North was the
preservation of the Union rather than emancipation, eventually he did
free the slaves. It would seem that Garrison, for all his non-resistance
declarations, bore some of the responsibility for the great conflict.

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