IX. His worst mistake was the demand, which he published in the _Liberator_, in May, 1842, for "a repeal of the Union between Northern Liberty and Southern Slavery." This he called "essential" for emancipation. In January, 1843, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society passed the resolution which was afterwards published regularly in the _Liberator_ as the Garrisonist creed. It declared the Union "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" which "should be immediately annulled." This position was held by Garrison, Phillips, and their adherents until 1861. It was largely due, like their refusal to vote, to indignation at the support given to slavery by the national Constitution, the Fugitive Slave Act, and some recent legislation at Washington. Garrison was also confident, as he said at a Disunion convention in 1857, that if the South were to secede, she would not "be able to hold a single slave one hour after the deed is done." Phillips, too, declared that "All the slave asks of us is to stand out of his way." "Let no cement of the Union bind the slave, and he will right himself." It is true that secession brought on emancipation; but it would not have done so if Phillips and Garrison had succeeded in quenching love of the Union in the North. That patriotic feeling burst out in a fierce flame; and it was the restoration of the Union which abolished slavery. Another important fact is that the chief guilt of slavery rested on the South. The national Government was only an accessory at worst. No Northerner was responsible for any clause in the Constitution which he had not sanctioned, or for any action of Congress which he had done his best to prevent. The best work against slavery which could be done in 1843 and 1844 was to defeat a new attempt to annex Texas. This scheme was avowedly for the extension of slavery over a great region where it had been prohibited by Mexico. There would probably be war with that country; and success would increase the power of the slave-holders in the Senate. One half of its members were from the slave States in 1844; but annexation was rejected in June by a vote of two to one; and the House of Representatives was plainly on the same side, though otherwise controlled by the Democrats.