One passage reads: "Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the oppressor--the weapons being equal between the parties--God knows that my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor.
Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave insurrections." Again: "Rather than see men wearing their chains in a cowardly and servile spirit, I would, as an advocate of peace, much rather see them breaking the heads of the tyrant with their chains." * Garrison himself denied any direct connection with the Nat Turner insurrection.

See "William Lloyd Garrison, the Story of His Life told by His Children," vol.I, p.

251.
George Thompson, an English co-laborer with Garrison, is quoted as saying in a public address in 1835 that "Southern slaves ought, or at least had a right, to cut the throats of their masters." * Such utterances are rare, and they express a passing mood not in the least characteristic of the general spirit of the abolition movement; yet the fact that such statements did emanate from such a source made it comparatively easy for extremists of the opposition to cast odium upon all abolitionists.

The only type of abolition known in South Carolina was that of the extreme Garrisonian agitators, and it furnished at least a shadow of excuse for mob violence in the North and for complete suppression of discussion in the South.

To encourage slaves to cut the throats of their masters was far from being a rhetorical figure of speech in communities where slaves were in the majority.