It was fortunate for the anti-slavery cause that Sarah and Angelina were warned in time by their New York friends of the fatally dangerous character of the heresies they were inclined to accept.  They went no further in that direction.  In all their subsequent letters, journals, and papers there is not a word to show that either of them ever entertained no-government notions, or identified herself with persons who did.  During the remaining months of their stay in Massachusetts, they devoted themselves to their true mission of anti-slavery work, accepting the co-operation and friendship of all friends of the slave, but avoiding compromising relations with those known as “no human government” non-resistants.  This course was continued in after years, and drew upon them the disapprobation and strictures of the non-voting, non-fighting faction.  In a letter from Sarah to Augustus Wattles, dated May 11, 1854, about the time of the Kansas war, she says:—­

“We were fully aware of the severe criticisms passed upon us by many of those who showed their unfitness to be in the judgment seat, by the unmerciful censure they have pronounced against us when we were doing what to us seemed positive duty.  They wanted us to live out Wm. Lloyd Garrison, not the convictions of our own souls, entirely unaware that they were exhibiting, in the high places of moral reform, the genuine spirit of slave-holding by wishing to curtail the sacred privilege of conscience.  But we have not allowed their unreasonableness to sever us from them; they have many noble traits, have acted grandly for humanity, and it was perhaps a part of their business to abuse us.  I do not think I love Garrison any the less for what he has said.  His spirit of intolerance towards those who did not draw in his traces, and his adulation of those who surrendered themselves to his guidance, have always been exceedingly repulsive to me, weaknesses which marred the beauty and symmetry of his character, and prevented its symmetrical development, but nevertheless I know the stern principle which is the basis of his action.  He is Garrison and nobody else, and all I ask is that he would let others be themselves.”

The feeling thus expressed was probably never changed until after the sisters had taken up their residence in the neighborhood of Boston, when visits were interchanged with Mr. Garrison, and friendly relations established, which ended only with death.  It is certain, however, that Sarah and Angelina sympathized with the stalwart freemen who used Sharp’s rifles in the defence of free Kansas, who voted the Liberty, Free Soil, and Republican ticket, who elected Abraham Lincoln President, and who shouldered muskets against the rebels.

CHAPTER XV.