Even the patriotic enthusiasm of Longfellow in his "Ode to the Union," aroused Garrison's ire, who denounced it as "a eulogy dripping with the blood of imbruted humanity," and for the poet's conception of the "Ship of State" he substituted:
... "'Perfidious bark!
Built i' th' eclipse and rigged with curses dark.'...
Destined to go down full many a fathom deep, to the joy and exultation of all who are yearning for the deliverance of a groaning world."[[320]](a)
(a): Note: The author has not cited any examples of the terms employed by the leaders of the Abolitionists in referring to the Southern people. If Webster were denounced as a "monster" and Lincoln as a "slave-hound" because, in their devotion to the Union and their respect for law, they would protect the constitutional rights of slaveholders, the reader may readily imagine the denunciations poured upon the citizens of the slaveholding states. For twenty-five years the people of the South, their civilization and morality were arraigned by orators and editors, preachers and poets, dramatists and novelists, in terms without parallel in polemic literature.
ABOLITIONISTS APPLAUDED JOHN BROWN
But the Abolitionists did not confine their efforts to denunciations of the constitution and its defenders, or in devising schemes for the overthrow of the Union. They actually secured the enactment by many Northern Legislatures of so-called Personal Liberty Laws, designed to nullify the Fugitive Slave Law passed by Congress. In like manner many of them were the apologists, if not the instigators, of servile insurrections, of which John Brown's venture was at once the fell offspring, and the dread sign of more to follow. William Lloyd Garrison declared that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable remembrance, to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the deeds of a Wallace or a Tell, a Washington or a Warren."[[321]] Theodore Parker said: "No American has died in this century whose chance of earthly immortality is worth half so much as John Brown's."[[322]] Wendell Phillips speaking in Plymouth Church declared: "John Brown violated the law. Yes. On yonder desk lie the inspired words of men who died violent deaths for breaking the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to them so reverently? Huss and Wycliffe violated laws. Why honor them? George Washington, had he been caught before 1783, would have died on the gibbet for breaking the laws of his sovereign."[[323]]
William Lloyd Garrison, while insisting that he himself was a "peace man" and opposed to the use of "carnal weapons," proclaimed: "I am prepared to say, success to every slave insurrection at the South and in every slave country,"[[324]] and Theodore Parker re-affirmed the sentiment in the declaration: "I should like, of all things, to see an insurrection of slaves. It must be tried many times before it succeeds, as at last it must."[[325]]
ABOLITIONISTS AIDED JOHN BROWN
Wendell Phillips speaking at the grave of John Brown said: "Insurrection was a harsh, horrid word to millions a month ago. John Brown went a whole generation beyond it, claiming the right for white men to help the slave to freedom by arms. And now men run up and down not disputing his principles."[[326]]