Although Lincoln insisted that the purpose of the North was the preservation of the Union rather than emancipation, eventually he did free the slaves. It would seem that Garrison, for all his non-resistance declarations, bore some of the responsibility for the great conflict.
In this case, as in the case of Satyagraha, the demand for reform by non-violent means was translated into violence by followers who were more devoted to the cause of reform than they were to the non-violent methods which their leaders proclaimed.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1930), II, 352.
[86] The "Declaration" is reprinted in Allen, Fight for Peace, 694-697.
[87] Quoted in Avery Craven, The Coming of the Civil War (New York: Scribners, 1942), 161.
[88] Jesse Macy, The Anti-Slavery Crusade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), 69-70.
[89] For the many elements in the abolition movement, see Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1933).
[90] Wendell Phillips Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (New York: Century, 1889), III, 473-474.
[91] Letter to Oliver Johnson, quoted in Allen, Fight for Peace, 449-450.