Note 2 — Chapter VII · THE ANARCHICAL PRINCIPLES OF ABOLITIONISM.

Of Abolitionism in its modern garb of a violent reform—a totally, radically, and essentially, different thing from Emancipation in the sense attached to it before this agitation commenced. Abolitionism is now identified with an unconstitutional, and as we have proved, seditious interference of a combination of people in the free States, with the domestic condition of the slave States. It is shorn of the honors, both of a humane and patriotic enterprise, and merged in the responsibility of a political misdemeanor. This is the sense in which we use the term throughout this work; and we have supposed there was some foundation for ascribing the authorship of this movement to the gentleman above alluded to. Certainly, he was the most conspicuous actor, when it began to attract public attention. And behold! he is at the head, and we suppose at the bottom—(for we take for granted he must be the leader wherever he is)—of an Association set up professedly and without disguise, to overthrow all Government. This last stage—for we see not how it can go any further—is, in our esteem, an open and fair denoument of the principles of Abolitionism. Not, indeed, that the Abolitionists, as a body, have any such designs—for we charitably suppose, and fully believe, they have not—but the action of their fundamental principle of immediatism, to gain, by a coup de main, a visionary state of perfectionism, cannot stop short of this.