How Disruptive Acts Work in Tandem With Electoral Politics

By RICHARD BYRNE

PEOPLE POWER: Rarely has the Fourth of July seen fireworks such as those that occurred at a public meeting in Framingham, Mass., in 1854.

The abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison finished his address that day by burning documents he saw as foundations of American slavery, including the Fugitive Slave Act, passed by Congress four years earlier, and the U.S. Constitution. (The latter document was "the source and parent of all the other atrocities," he declared, and, quoting from