But the Abolitionists did not confine their efforts to denunciations of
the constitution and its defenders, or in devising schemes for the
overthrow of the Union. They actually secured the enactment by many
Northern Legislatures of so-called Personal Liberty Laws, designed to
nullify the Fugitive Slave Law passed by Congress. In like manner many
of them were the apologists, if not the instigators, of servile
insurrections, of which John Brown's venture was at once the fell
offspring, and the dread sign of more to follow. William Lloyd Garrison
declared that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable
remembrance, to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the
deeds of a Wallace or a Tell, a Washington or a Warren."[321] Theodore
Parker said: "No American has died in this century whose chance of
earthly immortality is worth half so much as John Brown's."[322] Wendell
Phillips speaking in Plymouth Church declared: "John Brown violated the
law. Yes. On yonder desk lie the inspired words of men who died violent
deaths for breaking the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to them so
reverently? Huss and Wycliffe violated laws. Why honor them? George
Washington, had he been caught before 1783, would have died on the
gibbet for breaking the laws of his sovereign."[323]
William Lloyd Garrison, while insisting that he himself was a "peace
man" and opposed to the use of "carnal weapons," proclaimed: "I am
prepared to say, success to every slave insurrection at the South and in
every slave country,"[324] and Theodore Parker re-affirmed the sentiment
in the declaration: "I should like, of all things, to see an
insurrection of slaves. It must be tried many times before it succeeds,
as at last it must."[325]