[
376]
said he, “as against
Jefferson Davis and his piratical associates.
There is not a drop of blood in my veins, both as an Abolitionist and a peace man, that does not flow with the
Northern tide of sentiment; for I see, in this grand uprising of the manhood of the
North, which has been so long groveling in the dust, a growing appreciation of the value of liberty and free institutions, and a willingness to make any sacrifice in their defence against the barbaric and tyrannical power which avows its purpose, if it can, to crush them entirely out of existence.
When the
Government shall succeed (if it shall succeed) in conquering a peace, in subjugating the
South, and shall undertake to carry out the
Constitution as of old, with all its pro-slavery compromises, then will be my time to criticise, reprove, and condemn; then will be the time for me to open all the guns that I can bring to bear upon it. But blessed be God that ‘covenant with death’ has been annulled, and that ‘agreement with hell’ no longer stands.
I joyfully accept the fact, and leave all verbal criticism until a more suitable opportunity.”
But it must be confessed that at times during the struggle, Lincoln's timidity and apparent indifference as to the fate of slavery, in his anxiety to save the Union, weakened Garrison's confidence in him, and excited his keenest apprehensions “at the possibility of the war terminating without the utter extinction of slavery, by a new and more atrocious compromise on the part of the North than any that has yet been made.”
The pioneer therefore adjudged it prudent to get his battery into position and to visit upon the President for particular acts, such as the revocation
