this hour, was providential. His coming was in the fulness of time. A
rapid review of events anterior to the advent of Garrison will serve to
place this matter more clearly before the general reader. To begin,
then, at the beginning we have two ships off the American coast, the one
casting anchor in Plymouth harbor, the other discharging its cargo at
Jamestown. They were both freighted with human souls. But how different!
Despotism landed at Jamestown, democracy at Plymouth. Here in the germ
was the Southern idea, slave labor, slave institutions; and here also
was the Northern idea, free labor, free institutions. Once planted they
grew, each seed idea multiplying after its kind. In course of time there
arose on one side an industrial system in which the plantation
principle, race-rule and race-slavery, were organic centers; and, on the
other, a social system in which the principle of popular power and
government, the town meeting, and the common school were the ganglia of
social expansion. Contrary ideas beget naturally enough contrary
interests and institutions. So it is no matter for surprise that the
local interests and institutions of the thirteen revolted colonies
lacked homogeneity and identity. What was calculated to promote the
general welfare of the Northern one, it was quite possible might work a
totally opposite result in the Southern. For, indeed, while there were
slaves in them all, the slave system had taken root in Southern soil
only; and while on the other hand the spirit of freedom was existent in
each, free labor had rooted itself in Northern ground solely.

As the war of the Revolution was an uprising against arbitrary power,
and for the establishment of political liberty, it pushed easily into
the foreground the larger subject of human rights. Most of the leading
actors felt the inconsistency of keeping some men in bondage, when they
were fighting to rid themselves of a tyranny which, in comparison to the
other, was a state of honorable freedom. Their humanity condemned