In the North the violent statements of the abolitionists aroused a physically violent response. Mobs attacked abolition meetings in many places, and on one occasion Garrison himself was rescued from an angry Boston mob. This violence in turn aroused many men like Salmon P. Chase and Wendell Phillips to espouse the anti-slavery cause because they could not condone the actions of the anti-abolitionists.[88] Garrison himself proceeded serenely through the storms that his vigorous writings precipitated. Feelings rose on both sides, and many who heard and accepted the Garrisonian indictment of slavery knew nothing of his non-resistance principles.[89] Others, who did, came reluctantly to the conclusion that a civil war to rid the country of the evil would be preferable to its continuance. In time the struggle was transferred to the political arena, where men acted sometimes on the basis of interest and not always on the basis of moral principles. The gulf between the sections widened, and civil war approached. As abolitionists themselves began to express the belief that the slavery issue could not be settled without bloodshed, Garrison disclaimed all responsibility for the growing propensity to espouse violence. In the _Liberator_ in 1858 he said: "When the anti-slavery cause was launched, it was baptized in the spirit of peace. We proclaimed to the country and to the world that the weapons of our warfare were not carnal but spiritual, and we believed them to be mighty through God to the pulling down even of the stronghold of slavery; and for several years great moral power accompanied our cause wherever presented. Alas! in the course of the fearful developments of the Slave Power, and its continued aggressions on the rights of the people of the North, in my judgment a sad change has come over the spirit of anti-slavery men, generally speaking. We are growing more and more warlike, more and more disposed to repudiate the principles of peace.... Just in proportion as this spirit prevails, I feel that our moral power is departing and will depart.... I will not trust the war-spirit anywhere in the universe of God, because the experience of six thousand years proves it not to be at all reliable in such a struggle as ours....