their assent to the "compact." The attempt to violate, or weaken, or even to cast doubt upon, these guarantees appeared to them to be an attack upon the fundamental covenants of the Union. The Constitution might, indeed, be so amended as to withdraw these powers and guarantees from the Commonwealths, by the regular procedure provided in the Constitution itself; and the general Government was vested by the Constitution with the general powers of exclusive government in the Territories, the District of Columbia, and the places owned by the United States within Commonwealths and used by the general Government for {248} governmental purposes. But so long as the Constitution remained what it was, there was no constitutional power in the general Government to attack slavery in the Commonwealths; and the slaveholders could certainly claim that, in the exercise of its powers in the Territories, the District, and other places where those powers were exclusive, the general Government should act fairly toward all the members of the Union. [Sidenote: Points at which slavery could be legally attacked.] [Sidenote: Garrison's methods.] Nevertheless, here were legal points of attack for the Abolitionists. They might memorialize Congress for the abolition of slavery in the Territories and in the District, and for the initiation of an amendment which would abolish slavery in the Commonwealths or would give Congress the power to do so, and they might appeal to the legislatures of the Commonwealths to demand of Congress the calling of a constitutional convention of the United States to initiate such an amendment. But Garrison would have nothing to do with the Constitution, or with existing legal methods. He denounced the Constitution, "as a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and declared that he wanted "no union with slaveholders." His violent language, his repudiation of vested rights and constitutional agreements, and his fanatical disregard of other men's opinions and feelings, led the people both of the North and the South to believe that his methods were incendiary and his morals loose; that he and his co-workers were planning and plotting slave insurrection, and thereby the wholesale massacre of slaveholders; and that he and they were endeavoring to attain, through violence and anarchy, a leadership which they could not otherwise reach. [Sidenote: The Southampton massacre.]