Their new interpretations
of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the facts of history, and a
gross insult to the intelligence of the age, and certainly never can be
carried into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a civil
war." All the same, the pioneer to the contrary notwithstanding, many of
these very Liberty party leaders were men of the most undoubted candor
and honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.
Garrison was never able to see the Liberty party, and for that matter
Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, and others of the old organization
leaders could not either, except through the darkened glass of personal
antagonisms growing out of the schism of 1840. It was always, under all
circumstances, to borrow a phrase of Phillips, "Our old enemy, Liberty
party." And, as Quincy naively confesses in an article in the
_Liberator_ pointing out the reasons why Abolitionists should give to
the Free-soil party incidental aid and comfort, which were forbidden to
their "old enemy, Liberty party," the significant and amusing fact that
the latter was "officered by deserters." Ay, there was indeed the rub!
The military principle of the great leader forbade him to recognize
deserters as allies. Discipline must be maintained, and so he proceeded
to maintain the anti-slavery discipline of his army by keeping up a
constant fusillade into the ranks of the deserter band, who, in turn,
were every whit as blinded by the old quarrel and separation, and who
slyly cherished the modest conviction that, when they seceded, the salt
of old organization lost its savor, and was thenceforth fit only to be
trampled under the Liberty party's feet.
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