But the feelings and the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that terrible reality, the American slave.

The indignation of such people exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked no indignation, provoked instead unbounded charity for the willing victims of ancestral transgressions.

Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of circumstances, these people expended all their sympathy while upon the Southern slave, who were to their view _the circumstances_, they looked with increasing disapprobation.

Garrison's harsh language greatly shocked this class--excited their unbounded indignation against the reformer.
Besides this class there was another, composed of friends, whom Garrison's denunciatory style offended.

To Charles Pollen and Charles Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the great agitator was a sore trial.