when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked no indignation, provoked instead unbounded charity for the willing victims of ancestral transgressions.  Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of circumstances, these people expended all their sympathy while upon the Southern slave, who were to their view the circumstances, they looked with increasing disapprobation.  Garrison’s harsh language greatly shocked this class—­excited their unbounded indignation against the reformer.

Besides this class there was another, composed of friends, whom Garrison’s denunciatory style offended.  To Charles Pollen and Charles Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the great agitator was a sore trial.  To them and to others, too, his language seemed grossly intemperate and vituperative, and was deemed productive of harm to the movement.  But Garrison defended his harsh language by pointing to the state of the country on the subject of slavery before he began to use it, and to the state of the country afterward.  How utterly and morally dead the nation was before, how keenly and marvelously alive it became afterward.  The blast which he had blown had jarred upon the senses of his slumbering countrymen he admitted, but he should not be blamed for that.  What to his critics sounded harsh and abusive, was to him the trump of God.  For, at the thunder-peal which the Almighty blew from the mouth of his servant, how, as by a miracle, the dead soul of the nation awoke to righteousness.  He does not arrogate to himself infallibility, indeed he is sure that his language is not always happily chosen.  Such errors, however, appear to him trivial, in view of indisputable and extraordinary results produced by the Liberator.  He believes in marrying masculine truths to masculine words.  He protests against his condemnation by comparison.  “Every writer’s style is his own—­it may be smooth or rough, plain or obscure, simple or grand, feeble or strong,” he contends, “but principles are immutable.”  By his principles, therefore he would, be judged.  “Whittier, for instance,” he continues, “is highly poetical, exuberant, and beautiful.  Stuart is solemn, pungent, and severe.  Wright is a thorough logician, dextrous, transparent, straightforward.  Beriah Green is manly, eloquent, vigorous, devotional.  May is persuasive, zealous, overflowing with the milk of human kindness.  Cox is diffusive, sanguine, magnificent, grand.  Bourne thunders and lightens.  Phelps is one great, clear, infallible argument—­demonstration itself.  Jocelyn is full of heavenly-mindedness, and feels and speaks and acts with a zeal according to knowledge.  Follen is chaste, profound, and elaborately polished.  Goodell is perceptive, analytical, expert, and solid.  Child (David L.) is generously indignant, courageous, and demonstrative;