The leader
and his disciples could not always see alike. My friend, the author of
this book, I think, generally found himself in full accord with him,
while I often decidedly dissented. I felt it my duty to use my right of
citizenship at the ballot-box in the cause of liberty, while Garrison,
with equal sincerity, judged and counselled otherwise. Each acted under
a sense of individual duty and responsibility, and our personal relations
were undisturbed. If, at times, the great anti-slavery leader failed to
do justice to the motives of those who, while in hearty sympathy with his
hatred of slavery, did not agree with some of his opinions and methods,
it was but the pardonable and not unnatural result of his intensity of
purpose, and his self-identification with the cause he advocated; and,
while compelled to dissent, in some particulars, from his judgment of men
and measures, the great mass of the antislavcry people recognized his
moral leadership. The controversies of old and new organization,
nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties
to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows
the subsidence of prejudice and passion.
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