Let Southern oppressors tremble—let their secret abettors tremble—let their Northern apologists tremble—let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

In this line Garrison adopts the prophetic, denunciatory cadence common to abolitionist oratory, using repetition (“let … tremble”) to widen the circle of culpability. The target is not only enslavers in the South but also those who enable slavery indirectly: “secret abettors” who profit from or quietly sustain the system, and “Northern apologists” who defend it politically, economically, or theologically. The rhetoric aims to strip away moral distance and insist that complicity is itself a form of oppression. The call for enemies to “tremble” signals an impending moral reckoning—whether through public exposure, political upheaval, or divine judgment—framing abolition as an urgent, righteous struggle rather than a matter for gradual reform.