"The lack of precision used in equating the war, slavery, and secession, serves an important purpose for modern anti-secessionists. Their knee-jerk opposition to any form of decentralization or locally-based democracy impels them to equate secession itself with slavery, even though secession can be motivated by any number of reasons. After all, secession was the preferred strategy of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who as early as 1844 began preaching the slogan "
No union with slaveholders!" In Garrison's mind, the North ought to secede in order to free northerners from the burdens of the fugitive slave acts, and to offer safe haven to escaping slaves."