Thus at Framingham, Mass., on the fourth of July, 1854, at the
open-air celebration of the day by the Abolitionists, William Lloyd
Garrison burned copies of the constitution, the Fugitive Slave Law,
and the opinions of several Judges of the Federal Courts in
Massachusetts. _The Liberator_ records that Mr. Garrison, "holding up
the United States constitution branded it as the source and parent of
all the other atrocities—a covenant with Death and an agreement with
Hell—and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming, 'So perish all
compromises with Tyranny,' and 'Let all the people say Amen,' and a
tremendous shout of 'Amen' went up to Heaven in ratification of the
deed."[315]
No eminence of public station nor personal worth availed to shield
from the assaults of these Abolition leaders. William Lloyd Garrison
alluding to Webster's eulogies upon the constitution declared, "Let
Daniel Webster, the greatest and meanest of his countrymen, exhaust
his powers of eulogy upon it if he will; the effort will but render
his character base and contemptible with posterity."[316]
Wendell Phillips, referring to the "Defender of the Constitution,"
said: "God gives us great scoundrels for texts to anti-slavery
sermons. See to it, when nature has provided you a monster like
Webster, that you exhibit him—himself a whole menagerie—throughout
the country."[317] Subsequently in an article in _The Liberator_ on
Mr. Lincoln—then but recently nominated for the Presidency, headed
"Abraham Lincoln, the Slave Hound of Illinois," Wendell Phillips
wrote: "We gibbet a Northern hound to-day side by side with the
infamous Mason of Virginia."[318]