William Lloyd Garrison—"Henceforth, the watchword of every uncompromising abolitionist, of every friend of God and liberty, must be, both in a religious and political sense — 'NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS'"[47]
It is not often remembered today, as it was the South that actually attempted to secede. However, there was a movement to have the North secede, thereby escaping the Slave Power that dominated the Federal government.
Tensions began to rise between North and South by the late 1830s over slavery and related issues. Many Northerners, especially New Englanders, saw themselves as political victims of conspiracies between slave owners and western expansionists. They viewed the movements to annex Texas and to make war on Mexico as fomented by slaveholders bent on dominating western expansion and thereby the national destiny. New England abolitionist Benjamin Lundy argued that the annexation of Texas was "a long-premeditated crusade—set on foot by slaveholders, land speculators, etc., with the view of reestablishing, extending, and perpetuating the system of slavery and the slave trade".[48]
Newspaper editors began demanding separation from the South. William Lloyd Garrison called for secession in The Liberator of May 1844 with his "Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States". The Constitution was created, he wrote, "at the expense of the colored population of the country", and Southerners were dominating the nation because of the Three-Fifths Compromise; now it was time "to set the captive free by the potency of truth" and to "secede from the government".[49] Coincidentally, the New England Anti-Slavery Convention endorsed the principles of disunion by a vote of 250–24.[50]
Support of secession began to shift to Southern states from 1846, after introduction of the Wilmot Proviso into the public debate. Southern leaders increasingly felt helpless against a powerful political group that was attacking their interests, reminiscent of Federalist alarms at the beginning of the century.