The faithful, undismayed by treachery, undeterred by obloquy and persecution, unshaken by abuse, strengthened by experience, relying neither on a pro-slavery church, government, or ministry, but on GOD, and themselves as his ready instruments, have bound themselves more firmly to the cause and to each other, and are laboring with increased ardor in the promulgation of the truth which alone can save this slaveholding people.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The following resolution, submitted to the business Committee in the hand-writing of Mr. Stanton, will explain the use which was to have been made of Mr. Garrison’s answer, had the plot succeeded. “We shall thus,” said one, “get rid of the Non-Resistants and the women.”
“Resolved, That every minister of the gospel is bound to preach against slavery; that every member of a Christian Church is bound to have no fellowship with this unfruitful work of darkness; that every ecclesiastical body is bound to purify itself of these abominations; and that every person entitled to the elective franchise, is bound not only to refrain from voting for persons as national and state officers, who are unwilling to use all their authority for the immediate abolition of slavery, but is BOUND AT EVERY ELECTION, TO REPAIR TO THE POLLS, and cast his vote for such men as will go to the verge of their official authority, for its instant annihilation; and that every member of an Anti-Slavery Society, who refuses, UNDER ANY PRETEXT, thus to act morally or politically, or counsels others to such a course, is guilty of gross inconsistency, and widely departs from the original and fundamental principles of the Anti-Slavery enterprize.”
[6] Those women of the Boston Female Society who had long seen a tendency in the conduct of the New York Committee to injure the Massachusetts Society, had taken pains to have their customary annual appropriation to the cause pledged through the Massachusetts treasury, in anticipation of this very contingency. Their surprise was proportionately great at the ingenuity with which their contribution was made discreditable to the Massachusetts Society and to themselves, by the incorrect assertion that it had been made in consequence of Mr. Stanton’s labors.
[7] Most of the business of this Society had, from the beginning, been transacted in Special Meeting, and almost the only power granted to the Board of this Society by its Constitution, is this, of calling meetings. The Constitution expressly states that “the President and other officers ARE AUTHORIZED to call special meetings,” while there is not a syllable which authorizes them to refuse.
[8] Speech of Samuel Reed, of Abington.