The society and the periodical did not exist long: the majority of Garrison’s collaborators in matters of freeing the slaves, fearing lest the too radical demands, as expressed in The Non-Resistant , might repel people from the practical work of the liberation of the negroes, refused to profess the principle of nonresistance, as it had been expressed in the “Declaration,” and the society and the periodical ceased to exist.
This “Declaration” by Garrison, which so powerfully and so beautifully expressed such an important profession of faith, ought, it seems, to have startled men and to have become universally known and a subject of wide discussion. But nothing of the kind happened. It is not only unknown in Europe, but even among the Americans, who so highly esteem Garrison’s memory, this declaration is almost unknown.
The same ingloriousness has fallen to the share of another champion of nonresistance to evil, the American Adin Ballou, who lately died, and who preached this doctrine for fifty years. How little is known of what refers to the question of nonresistance may be seen from the fact that Garrison’s son, who has written an excellent biography of his father in four volumes, this son of Garrison, in reply to my question whether the society of nonresistance was still in existence, and whether there were any followers of it, answered me that so far as he knew the society had fallen to pieces, and there existed no followers of this doctrine, whereas at the time of his writing, there lived in Hopedale, Massachusetts, Adin Ballou, who had taken part in Garrison’s labors and had devoted fifty years of his life to the oral and printed propaganda of the doctrine of nonresistance. Later on I received a letter from Wilson, a disciple and assistant of Ballou, and entered into direct communication with Ballou himself. I wrote to Ballou, and he answered me and sent me his writings. Here are a few extracts from them: