ing," appeared to have been from New England, mostly from Massachusetts; many were females from particular localities where the peculiar views of Mr. Garrison were known to be prevalent. Arrangements had been made for the cheap conveyance of the company by steamboat. The Liberator said:

"On making an enumeration, it appeared that there were about four hundred and fifty anti-slavery men and women in our company, of whom about four hundred were from Massachusetts. Probably one hundred went by other routes."

This would make 550 in all. The proceedings afterwards showed only 1008 recorded votes, from all in attendance, from all the States. Of these, Mr. Garrison's rally of 550 would, if unanimous, secure a majority of 92 without any votes from any of the other States. Yet the business to be transacted was that of a Society scattered in all the free States, and numbering, perhaps, one or two hundred thousand, the majority of whom anticipated nothing of what was going forward; and, if they had known, could have had no opportunity of attending.

On the motion to insert the name of Abby Kelly on a committee, 557 votes were given in favor, and 451 against the appointment, a majority of 106. The women who came in company with Mr. Garrison, and voted with him, were more than enough to secure a majority.

Resolutions were adopted disapproving the Liberty Party Nominating Convention at Albany, the April previous, disapproving of anti-slavery nominations in general, and deprecating, in the same sentence, and without distinction, the support of Harrison, Van Buren, and Birney;-the latter being an abolitionist who had emancipated his slaves, and the two former opposers of the anti-slavery movement. The consistency of this must be found, perhaps, in the principle that all voting, under a compulsory civil government, is alike sinful. The pro-slavery character of the Constitution-not yet discovered-was not alluded to, in the proceedings.*

*The division gave rise to new contentions. Mr. Garrison and his friends com. plained that the "Emancipator" newspaper (originally established at great expense

The historical evidence seems not quite clear that the abo litionists who did not hold themselves bound by these proceedings were therefore untrue to the cause of the slave.

While these divisions produced a strong sensation in New England, and in the sea-board cities, the sound of them going across the Atlantic, and awakening kindred responses, pro and con, from among the abolitionists of Great Britain, the blast died away, like a Massachusetts North-Easter, as it traveled westward, spending its strength by the time it had reached the valley of the Mohawk, and was scarcely felt beyond the waters of Lake Erie.

There were reasons for this. The contention about women's acting in the Societies was, at the West, considered a frivolous one. There were differences of opinion, but the question would not have been pressed, on the one hand, nor have been made a ground of withdrawal, on the other. The voice of women, in conference and prayer-meetings, in those days and previously, in the wide west, had been too familiar to the ears of the most fastidious, to admit of their being greatly alarmed.

As to the new policy of not voting, and the theories upon which it was based, the march of political anti-slavery was

and labor by Mr. Tappan and others, and afterwards transferred by them without compensation to the Society) was gratuitously transferred again by the Society to the N. Y. City Anti-Slavery Society, a short time before the division, and thus prevented from passing into the hands of the newly elected committee. The answer to this complaint was, that as the paper did not support itself, as the treasury was empty, and individual members of the committee had already assumed heavy liabilities, there was no means of paying the printer, and the publication must have been suspended but for the acceptance of the offer. To this it might have been added (if it was not), that if the paper had passed into the hands of the new committee, it would have been used to oppose the sentiments and measures of those who had originally established it, who had mainly supported it, and whose subscriptions, after the division, could not, to any great extent, have been retained by the publishers.

Another complaint was, that a member of the old committee had taken possession of the Anti-Slavery depository of books, pamphlets, &c., and refused to deliver them over to the newly elected committee. The justification was that members of the old committee had become individually responsible for the payment of debts contracted for the Society, which liabilities the new committee and its members had refused to assume; and the proceeds of the depository would repay only a part of the amount due them from the Society. Their final loss was above $3,400.

too steadily and too resistlessly on the advance, in the interior of the country and at the far west, to be arrested by the rumor of what had been said and done in the cities of New-York and Boston.

Apart from all this, the abolitionists of the interior, including those of the far west, were too busily at work in their own localities and in their own way, to think it necessary that they should affiliate with either of the rival National Societies, or be under the supervision of either of them. The bonds of national organization had, indeed, set lightly upon them from the beginning. And with the progress of the cause and the consequent increase of local activity and effort, those bonds had grown looser and looser. There was a mistake in supposing that any one great central Committee could transact any great proportion of the anti-slavery business to be transacted in the country. A central committee in London, with a few others in some of the chief cities, might suffice for Great Britain. The wider territory of the American States, with our more democratic methods of procedure and agitation, could not be thus managed. Not only state, but county, village, and township organizations were needed. The Committee of the New-York State Society, at the central point of Utica could not effectively reach the more western parts of the State. A Western Committee had to be organized. Not only so, County Societies were encouraged by the two State Committees to do up their own work in their own way. In other States, the same manifestations were witnessed, In short, the previous tendencies to centralization were subsiding. Abolitionists, having felt the evils of too much centralized power in the other National Societies, were beginning to guard against similar evils, among themselves. Aside from any unpleasant rupture in the National Society, and before it was foreseen, it was becoming evident that the functions of such a Society must decrease, instead of expanding, with the progress and expansion of the enterprise itself, which was, everywhere, cutting its own local channels.

Thus, while in Boston, New-York, and their vicinities, the

great pending question seemed to be, which of the two National Societies should superintend the activities and absorb the contributions of American abolitionists, the great majority of them, in the interior, found themselves in a convenient position to withdraw from the control and from the support of either. Within a year from the division in New-York, most of the State Anti-Slavery Societies out of New England, declined sustaining the position of auxiliaries to either of the National Societies, a measure which, it was believed, would greatly tend to discountenance divisions. In the States of New-York and Ohio, however, (perhaps in other States,) the friends of Mr. Garrison succeeded in forming State Societies, sometime afterwards.

The neutrality we have described may have been wise or it may have been unwise. It was assumed at a time when the controversy was little understood in the interior, and when the changes in progress had been but imperfectly developed.

The fact of so extensive a neutrality respecting the "New" and the "Old organizations" belongs to the record, and throws light on the true origin of the Liberty Party; which could have had no important or general connection with this controversy, as has been represented and supposed, on both sides of the Atlantic. It is claimed that the large class of abolitionists who wished to escape that contention, have not been, as a class, behind others, in their uncompromising fidel ity to the enslaved.

* We mean to say that the Liberty party, which originated in Western New York, did not arise from a wish to oppose the "old organization" or Mr. Garrison-nor from a wish to support the "new organization." Some individuals in Massachusetts, who had encountered Mr. Garrison's theory of non-voting, may have been the more ready to fall in with an organized party. A letter of E. Wright, Jr., published in the Liberator, shows this. It is equally possible that Mr. Garrison's antipathy to voting, and his desire to have other abolitionists come into his views of voting, might have made him adverse to the organization of such a party, though he may not have been distinctly conscious of such a motive himself. We have never doubted that if Mr. Garrison had not become a "Non-Resistant," he would have been an early and zealous leader of the Liberty party.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

ORGANIZED POLITICAL ACTION-LIBERTY PARTY-LIBERTY LEAGUE-FREE SOIL PARTY.

Necessity of distinct organization-Early anticipations of this-Garrison, Follen, Stewart-Convention at Albany, July, 1839-Nominations in Monroe Co., N. Y.— Myron Holley-Rochester "Freeman"-Convention at Arcade-Liberty Party organized at Albany, April 1, 1840, and James G. Birney nominated for President -Second Nomination, in 1844-Number of votes-Course of other voting abolitionists-What was accomplished?-Occasions of instability-Tendencies to re-absorption-Different views of its true policy-Nomination of Gerrit Smith by "the Liberty League," and why?-Position taken by the "League"-Unconstitutionality of Slavery-Other features-Nomination (by the Liberty Party) of John P. Hale Rise of the Free Soil Party-Nomination of Mr. Van Buren-Buffalo Platform-Position of Mr. Van Buren-Various views of that movement and of its results-Hints for the future-Remnant of the Liberty Party.

THE Liberty party arose from the fact, that, after a protracted experiment, the candidates of the old parties could not, to any extent, if at all,-however "questioned" and "pledged "be depended upon, to do the work which abolitionists demanded of them. When they really intended to do it, their party associates would not suffer them. It would be easy to prove this, if we had room for the details.

Another fact, lying behind this, must not, as we value the impartiality of history, be withheld. Abolitionists themselves, connected with the political parties, and who "questioned the candidates," could not generally be weaned from an undue bias in favor of their political leaders. They too readily persuaded themselves that the candidate of their own party, though but slightly or ambiguously pledged, or even if not pledged at all, would probably do more for the slave, if elected, than the candidate of the opposite party, whatever his