It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under the circumstances, was for speeding the South rather than obstructing her way out of the Union. For hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater peril than that which hung over it during the months which elapsed between Lincoln's election and the attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions to which the free States fell a prey in view of the then impending disruption of their glorious Union. Indeed no sacrifice of anti-slavery accomplishments, policy, and purpose of those States were esteemed too important or sacred to make, if thereby the dissolution of the Union might be averted. Many, Republicans as well as Democrats, were for repealing the Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of New Mexico as a State, with or without slavery, for the enforcement of the Fugitive State Law, for suppressing the right of free speech and the freedom of the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering the Northern position in opposition to the extension of slavery to national Territories, in order to placate the South and keep it in the Union. Nothing could have possibly been more disastrous to the anti-slavery movement in America than a Union saved on the terms proposed by such Republican leaders as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Thomas Corwin, and Andrew G. Curtin. The Union, under the circumstances, was sure death to the slave, in disunion lay his great life-giving hope. Therefore his tried and sagacious friend was for sacrificing the Union to win for him freedom. As the friends of the Union were disposed to haggle at no price to preserve it, so was Garrison disposed to barter the Union itself in exchange for the abolition of slavery. "Now, then, let there be a CONVENTION OF THE FREE STATES," he suggested, "called to organize an independent government on free and just principles; and let them say to the slave States: Though you are without excuse for your treasonable conduct, depart in peace! Though you have laid piratical hands on property not your own, we surrender it all in the spirit of magnanimity! And if nothing but the possession of the Capitol will appease you, take even that without a struggle! Let the line be drawn between us where free institutions end and slave institutions begin!"