previous next
[35] of the fugitive slave law-so far had political compromise allured them from the principle of immediate emancipation. It was fortunate that they never got the upper hand in the American Anti-Slavery Society. The question of woman's rights was also a burning one among the Abolitionists, and the cause of divisions. Should they or should they not take an equal part with men in conventions and committee work? Garrison stoutly upheld their right on all occasions; and when at the world's anti-slavery convention in London in 1840 they were excluded from the floor, he declined to present his credentials as a delegate and took his seat among the spectators in the gallery.

Garrison's policy against slavery was chiefly directed toward the creation of sentiment, but he had several minor measures at heart which he strove to forward with his customary persistence. He was active in petitioning Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. For years, as is well known, the Southern members tried to deny the right of petition in this regard, and John Quincy Adams bravely withstood them. The course of the South in opposing this clear Constitutional right disgusted all fairminded people in the North and helped to spread and consolidate anti-slavery opinion. Another aim of Garrison's was to persuade

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
William Lloyd Garrison (3)
John Quincy Adams (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1840 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: