This occurrence was what is known in anti-slavery annals as the "Clerical Appeal." Five clergymen, who were obviously unfriendly to Garrison, and distrustful of the religious and social heresies which they either saw or fancied that they saw in the _Liberator_, and withal jealous lest the severities of the paper against particular pro-slavery ministers should diminish the influence and sacred character of their order, published, in August of 1837, in the _New England Spectator_ an acrid arraignment of editor and paper, upon five several charges, designed to bring Garrisonism to the block and speedy death.

This document was followed by two other appeals by way of supplement and rejoinder from the same source, an "Andover Appeal" from kindred spirits and a bitter, personal letter from one of the "seventy agents," all of them having a common motive and purpose, viz., sectarian distrust and dislike of Garrison, and desire to reduce his anti-slavery influence to a nullity.
In his diseased and suffering bodily condition, Garrison naturally enough fell into the error of exaggerating the gravity of these attacks upon himself.

Insignificant in an historical sense, they really were an episode, an unpleasant one to be sure for the time being, but no more.
To Garrison, however, they appeared in a wholly different light.

It seemed a rebellion on a pretty grand scale, which called for all his strength, all the batteries of the friends of freedom, all his terrible and unsparing severities of speech to quell it.

All his artillery he posted promptly in positions commanding the camp of the mutineers, and began to pour, as only he could, broadside after broadside into the works of the wretched little camp of rebels.