God will bring down the nation
Nov. 6, 1837
Writing to his English friend, Elizabeth Pease, Garrison comments on the “present state of anti-slavery” in the United States. “Upon the slaveholding States, we make no perceptible impression. No opponent of slavery can tread upon their soil, as an abolitionist, without the risk of martyrdom. I have relinquished the expectation, that they will ever, by mere moral suasion, consent to emancipate their victims. I believe that nothing but the exterminating judgments of heaven can shatter the chain of the slave, and destroy the power of the oppressor. … Repentance, if it come at all, will come too late. Our sins have gone up over our heads, and our iniquities unto the clouds, and a just God means to dash us in pieces as a potter’s vessel is broken… my hope of the peaceful and voluntary overthrow of slavery in the southern states of this nation is very feeble, my faith in the promises of God, that he will maintain the cause of the afflicted and the right of the poor, and he will deliver the oppressed out of the hand of the spoiler, is unfaltering, invincible. ” 1