that day, and some time before his departure for Baltimore, he began to
think on this subject. The more he thought the less did gradualism seem
defensible on moral grounds. John Wesley had said that slavery was the
"sum of all villainies"; it was indeed the sin of sins, and as such
ought to be abandoned not gradually but immediately. Slave-holding was
sin and slaveholders were sinners. The sin and sinner should both be
denounced as such and the latter called to instant repentance, and the
duty of making immediate restitution of the stolen liberties of their
slaves. This was the tone ministers of religion held every where toward
sin and sinners, and this should be the tone held by the preachers of
Abolition toward slavery, and slaveholders. To admit the principle of
gradualism was for Abolition to emasculate itself of its most virile
quality. Garrison, consequently rejected gradualism as a weapon, and
took up instead the great and quickening doctrine of immediatism. Lundy
did not know of this change in the convictions of his coadjutor until
his arrival in Baltimore. Then Garrison frankly unburdened himself and
declared his decision to conduct his campaign against the national
iniquity along the lines of immediate and unconditional emancipation.
The two on this new radicalism did not see eye to eye. But Lundy with
sententious shrewdness and liberality suggested to the young radical:
"Thee may put thy initials to thy articles and I will put my initials to
mine, and each will bear his own burden." And the arrangement pleased
the young radical, for it enabled him to free his soul of the necessity
which was then sitting heavily upon it. The precise state of his mind in
respect of the question at this juncture in its history and in his own
is made plain enough in his salutatory address in _The Genius of
Universal Emancipation_. The vow made in Bennington ten months before to
devote his life to philanthrophy, and the dedication of himself made six
months afterward to the extirpation of American slavery, he solemnly
renews and reseals in Baltimore. He does not hate intemperance and war