Of this Lundy was well informed. He had not lost sight of his young coadjutor, but had watched his course with great hope and growing confidence. In him he found what he had discovered in no one else, anti-slavery activity and perseverance. He had often found men who protested loudly their benevolence for the negro, but who made not the slightest exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes. "They will pen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or so--and then--_the subject is exhausted!_" It was not so with his young friend, the Bennington editor. He saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject of African emancipation can never be exhausted until the system of slavery itself be totally annihilated." He was faithful among the faithless found by Lundy. To reassure his doubting leader, Garrison took upon himself publicly a vow of perpetual consecration to the slave. "Before God and our country," he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation of the enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost in our pursuits. The people of New England are interested in this matter, and they must be aroused from their lethargy as by a trumpet-call. They shall not quietly slumber while we have the management of a press, or strength to hold a pen." The question of slavery had at length obtained the ascendency over all other questions in his regard. And when Lundy perceived this he set out from Baltimore to Bennington to invite Garrison to join hands with him in his emancipation movement at Baltimore. He performed the long journey on foot, with staff in hand in true apostolic fashion. The two men of God met among the mountains of Vermont, and when the elder returned from the heights the younger had resolved to follow him to the vales where men needed his help, the utmost which he could give them. He agreed to join his friend in Baltimore and there edit with him his little paper with the grand name (_The Genius of Universal Emancipation_), devoted to preaching the gospel of the gradual abolishment of American slavery. Garrison was to take the position of managing editor, and Lundy to look after the subscription list. The younger to be resident, the elder itinerant partner in the publication of the paper. Garrison closed his relations with the _Journal of the Times_, March 27, 1829, and delivered his valedictory to its readers. This valedictory strikes with stern hammer-stroke the subject of his thoughts. "Hereafter," it reads, "the editorial charge of this paper will devolve on another person. I am invited to occupy a broader field, and to engage in a higher enterprise; that field embraces the whole country--that enterprise is in behalf of the slave population."