M A R T Y R A G E 
 
 UNI TED STATE S, 
 
 BY HARRIET MARTINEAU, 
 
University of California Berkeley 
 
 REINHARD S. SPECK COLLECTION 
 
 of 
 
 HARRIET MARTINEAU 
 
THE 
 
 MARTYR AGE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 '' 
 J 
 
 BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WEEKS, JORDAN & CO. OTIS, BROADERS & CO. 
 NEW YORK :-JOHN S. TAYLOR. 
 
 1839. 
 
[In consequence of the repeated demands for the No. of the London 
 and Westminster Review containing Miss Martineau's Martyr Age in 
 the United States, the Publishers have been induced to issue the article 
 in a separate form, without any alteration. ] 
 
THE MARTYR AGE. 
 
 1. Right and Wrong in Boston in 1835. Boston, U. S. : 
 
 Isaac Knapp. 
 
 2. Right and Wrong in Boston in 1836. Boston, U. S. : 
 
 Isaac Knapp. 
 
 3. Right and Wrong in Boston in 1837. Boston, U. S. : 
 
 Isaac Knapp. 
 
 THERE is a remarkable set of people now living 
 and vigorously acting in the world, with a consonance 
 of will and understanding which has perhaps never 
 been witnessed among so large a number of individ- 
 uals of such diversified powers, habits, opinions, 
 tastes and circumstances. The body comprehends 
 men and women of every shade of color, of every de- 
 gree of education, of every variety of religious opin- 
 ion, of every gradation of rank, bound together by no 
 vow, no pledge, no stipulation but of each preserving 
 his individual liberty ; and yet they act as if they 
 were of one heart and of one soul. Such union 
 could be secured by no principle of worldly interest ; 
 nor, for a terms of years, by the most stringent fana- 
 ticism. A well-grounded faith, directed towards a 
 noble object, is the only principle which can account 
 for such a spectacle as the world is now waking up to 
 contemplate in the abolitionists of the United States. 
 
 Before we fix our attention on the history of the 
 body, it may be remarked that it is a totally different 
 thing to be an abolitionist on a soil actually trodden 
 
4 
 
 4 AMERICAN ABOLITIONISTS. 
 
 by slaves, and in a far-off country, where opinion is 
 already on the side of emancipation, or ready to be 
 converted ; where only a fraction of society, instead 
 of the whole, has to be convicted of guilt ; and where 
 no interests are put in jeopardy but pecuniary ones, 
 and those limited and remote. Great honor is due 
 to the first movers in the anti-slavery cause in every 
 land : but those of European countries may take rank 
 with the philanthropists of America who may espouse 
 the cause of the aborigines : while the primary aboli- 
 tionists of the United States have encountered, with 
 steady purpose, such opposition as might here await 
 assailants of the whole set of aristocratic institutions 
 at once, from the throne to pauper apprenticeship. 
 .Slavery is as thoroughly interwoven with American 
 institutions ramifies as extensively through American 
 society, as the aristocratic spirit pervades Great Bri- 
 tain. The fate of Reformers whose lives are devoted 
 to making war upon either the one or the other must 
 be remarkable. We are about to exhibit a brief 
 sketch of the struggle of the American abolitionists 
 from the dawn of their day to the present hour, avoid- 
 ing to dwell on the institution with which they are at 
 war, both because the question of slavery is doubtless 
 settled in the minds of all our readers, and because 
 our contemplation is of a body of persons who are 
 living by faith, and not of a party of Reformers con- 
 tending against a particular social abuse. Our sketch 
 must be faint, partial^ and imperfect. The short life 
 of American abolitionism is so crowded with events 
 and achievements, that the selection of a few is all 
 that can be attempted. Many names deserving of 
 honor will be omitted ; and many will receive less 
 than their due : and in the case of persons who are so 
 devoted to others as to have no thoughts to bestow on 
 themselves, no information to proffer regarding their 
 own lives, it is scarcely possible for their describers 
 
COLONIZATION SOCIETY. O 
 
 to avoid errors about their history. Though an extra- 
 ordinary light is shed from their deeds upon their lives, 
 it scarcely penetrates far enough into the obscurity of 
 the past to obviate mistake on the part of a foreign 
 observer. 
 
 Ten years ago there was external quiet on the sub- 
 ject of slavery in the United States. Jefferson and 
 other great men had prophesied national peril from it ; 
 a few legislators had talked of doing something to me- 
 liorate the " condition of society" in their respective 
 States ; the institution had been abolished in some of 
 the northern States, where the number of negroes was 
 small, and the work of emancipation easy and obvious- 
 ly desirable : an insurrection broke out occasionally, 
 in one place or another ; and certain sections of so- 
 ciety were in a state of perplexity or alarm at the tal- 
 ents, or the demeanor, or the increase of numbers of 
 the free blacks. But no such thing had been heard 
 of as a comprehensive and strenuously active objec- 
 tion to the whole system, wherever established. The 
 surface of society was heaving ; but no one surge had 
 broken into voice, prophetic of that chorus of many 
 waters in which the doom of the institution may now 
 be heard. Yet clear sighted persons saw that some 
 great change must take place ere long ; for a scheme 
 was under trial for removing the obnoxious part of the 
 negro population to Africa. Those of the dusky race 
 who were too clever, and those who were too stupid, 
 to be safe or useful at home, were to be exported ; 
 and slave-owners who had scruples about holding man 
 as property might, by sending their slaves away over 
 the sea, relieve their consciences without annoying 
 their neighbors. Such was the state of affairs pre- 
 vious to 1829. 
 
 The Colonization Society originated abolitionism. 
 It acted in two ways. It exasperated the free blacks 
 
 by the prospect of exile, and it engaged the attention 
 !* 
 
COLONIZATION SOCIETF, 
 
 of those who hated slavery, though the excitement it 
 afforded to their hopes was illusory. Its action in 
 both ways became manifest in the year 1829. In the 
 spring of this year the stir began at Cincinnati, where 
 a strenuous effort was made to induce the white inhabi- 
 tants to drive away the free colored people, by putting 
 in force against them the atrocious state laws, which 
 placed them in a condition of civil disability, and pro- 
 viding at the same time the means of transportation to 
 Africa. The colored people held a meeting, peti- 
 tioned the authorities for leave to remain in their pre- 
 sent condition for sixty days, and despatched a com- 
 mittee to Canada, to see whether provision could be 
 made for their residence there. The sixty days ex- 
 pired before the committee returned : the populace of 
 Cincinnati rose upon the colored people, and compel- 
 led them to barricade themselves in their houses, in 
 assailing which, during three days and nights, several 
 lives were lost. Sir James Colebrook, Governor of 
 Upper Canada, charged the Committee with the fol- 
 lowing message : " Tell the Republicans on your 
 side of the line that we do not know men by their 
 color. If you come to us, you will be entitled to all 
 the privileges of the rest of his Majesty's subjects. " 
 In consequence of this welcome message, the greater 
 part of the proscribed citizens removed to Canada, 
 and formed the Wilberforce settlement. The few 
 who remained behind were oppressed to the utmost 
 degree that the iniquitous laws against them could be 
 made to sanction. This was not a transaction which 
 could be kept a secret. Meetings were held by the 
 free blacks of all the principal towns north of the 
 Carolinas, and resolutions passed expressive of their 
 abhorrence of the Colonization Society. The reso- 
 lutions passed at the Philadelphia meeting are a fair 
 sample of the opinions of the class : 
 
WILLIAM L. GARRISON. 7 
 
 " Resolved, That we view with deep abhorrence the unmerited 
 stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people 
 of color by the promoters of this measure, 'that they are a danger- 
 ous and useless part of the community,' when, in the state of dis- 
 franchisement in which they live, in the hour of danger they 
 ceased to remember their wrongs, and rallied round the standard of 
 their country. 
 
 " Resolved, That we never will separate ourselves voluntarily 
 from the slave population in this country : they are our brethren by 
 the ties of consanguinity, of suffering, and of wrong : and we feel 
 that there is more virtue in suffering privations with them than in 
 fancied advantages for a season." 
 
 Such was one mode of operation of the Coloniza- 
 tion Society. The other was upon the minds of in- 
 dividuals of the privileged color who had the spirit of 
 abolitionism in them, without having yet learned how 
 to direct it. Of these the chief, the heroic printer's 
 lad, the master-mind of this great revolution, was then 
 lying in prison, undergoing his baptism into the 
 cause. 
 
 William Lloyd Garrison is one of God's nobility 
 the head of the moral aristocracy whose prerogatives 
 we are contemplating. It is not only that he is invul- 
 nerable to injury that he early got the world under 
 his feet in a way which it would have made Zeno 
 stroke his beard in complacency to witness, but that 
 in his meekness, his sympathies, his self-forgetfulness, 
 he appears u covered all over with the stars and or- 
 ders " of the spiritual realm whence he derives his 
 dignities and powers. At present he is a marked man 
 wherever he turns. The faces of his friends brighten 
 when his step is heard : the people of color almost 
 kneel to him ; and the rest of society jeer, pelt, 
 and execrate him. Amidst all this, his gladsome 
 life rolls on, " too busy to be anxious, and too 
 loving to be sad." He springs from his bed singing 
 at sunrise ; and if, during the day, tears should cloud 
 his serenity, they are never shed for himself. His 
 countenance of steady compassion gives hope to the 
 
8 WILLIAM L, GARRISON. 
 
 oppressed, who look to him as the Jews looked to 
 Moses. It was this serene countenance, saint-like in 
 its earnestness and purity, that a man bought at a 
 print-shop, where it was exposed without a name, and 
 hung up as the most apostolic face he ever saw. It 
 does not alter the case that the man took it out of the 
 frame and hid it when he found that it was Garrison 
 who had been adorning his parlour. As for his own 
 persecutors, Garrison sees in them the creatures of 
 of unfavorable circumstances. He early satisfied 
 himself that a "rotten egg cannot hit truth ;" 
 and then the whole matter was settled. Such is his 
 case now. In 1829 it was very different. He was an 
 obscure lad, gaining some superficial improvement in 
 a country college, when tidings of the Colonization 
 scheme reached him, and filled him with hope for the 
 colored race. He resolved to devote himself to the 
 cause, and went down to Baltimore to learn such facts 
 as would enable him to lecture on the subject. The 
 fallacies of the plan melted before his gaze, while the 
 true principle became so apparent as to decide his 
 mission. While this process was going on, he got 
 into his first trouble. A Mr Todd, a New England 
 merchant, freighted a vessel with slaves for the New 
 Orleans market, in the interval of his annual thanks- 
 givings to God that the soil of his State was untrod- 
 den by the foot of a slave. Garrison said what he 
 thought of the transaction in a newspaper ; was tried 
 for libel, and committed to prison till he could pay the 
 imposed fine of a thousand dollars a sum which' 
 might as well have been a million for any ability he 
 had to pay it. Some record of what was his state of 
 mind at this time was left on his prison wall : 
 
WILLIAM L. GARRISON. V 
 
 " I boast no courage on the battle-field, 
 
 Where hostile troops immix in horrid fray ; 
 For love or fame I can no weapon wield, 
 
 With burning lust an enemy to slay. 
 But test my spirit at the blazing stake, 
 
 For advocacy of the Rights of Man 
 And Truth or on the wheel my body break ; 
 
 Let Persecution place me 'neath its ban ; 
 Insult, defame, proscribe my humble name ; 
 
 Yea, put the dagger at my naked breast ; 
 If I recoil in terror from the flame 
 
 Or recreant prove when peril rears its crest, 
 To save a limb or shun the public scorn 
 Then write me down for aye weakest of woman torn." 
 
 W. L G. 
 
 The imprisonment of an honest man for such a 
 cause was an occasion for the outbreak of discontent 
 with slavery on all hands. u I was in danger," says 
 Garrison, " of being lifted up beyond measure, even 
 in prison, by excessive panegyric and extraordinary 
 sympathy." He was freed by the generosity of an 
 entire stranger, Mr Arthur Tappan, a wealthy mer- 
 chant of New York, whose entire conduct on the 
 question has been in accordance with the act of pay- 
 ing Garrison's fine. 
 
 Garrison's lectures were now upon abolition, not 
 colonization. He was listened to with much interest 
 in New York ; but at Boston he could obtain no place 
 to lecture in ; and it was not till it was clear that he 
 intended to collect an audience on the Common, in 
 the midst of the city, that a door was opened to him. 
 He obtained a few coadjutors, for one, a simple- 
 minded clergyman, Mr May, who on the next Sunday 
 prayed for slaves, among other distressed persons, and 
 was asked, on coming down from the pulpit, whether 
 he was mad ? Another of these coadjutors, William 
 Goodell, said, in 1836, " My mind runs back to 
 nearly seven years ago, when I used to walk with 
 Garrison across yonder Common, and to converse 
 on the great enterprise for which we are now met. 
 
10 WILLIAM L. GARRISON. 
 
 The work then was all future. It existed only in the 
 ardent prayer and the fixed resolves." It was wrought 
 out by prompt and strenuous action. Garrison and 
 his friend Knapp, a printer, were ere ere long living 
 in a garret on bread and water, expending all their 
 spare earnings and time on the publication of the 
 " Liberator," now a handsome and flourishing news- 
 paper ; then a small, shabby sheet, printed with old 
 types. " When it sold particularly well," says 
 Knapp, " we treated ourselves with a bowl of milk." 
 The venerable first number, dated January 1st, 1831, 
 lies before us in its primitive shabbiness ; and on its 
 first page, in Garrison's " Address to the Public," we 
 see proof that the vehemence of language, which has 
 often been ascribed to personal resentment (but by 
 none who knew him), has been from the beginning a 
 matter of conscience with him. "I am aware," he 
 says, " that many object to the severity of my lan- 
 guage, but is there not cause for severity ! I will be 
 as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. 
 I am in earnest I will not equivocate I will not 
 excuse I will not retreat a single inch AND I WILL 
 BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to 
 make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten 
 the resurrection of the dead. It is pretended that I 
 am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarse- 
 ness of my invective, and the precipitancy of rny 
 measures. The charge is not true. On this question 
 my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to 
 a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years 
 not perniciously, but beneficially ; not as a curse, 
 but as a blessing ; and posterity will bear testimony 
 that I was right. I desire to thank God that he ena- 
 bles me to disregard the fear of man, and to speak his 
 truth in its simplicity and power." 
 
 The time was ripe for Garrison's exertions. A 
 pamphlet appeared in the autumn of 1829, at Boston, 
 
WILLIAM L. GARRISON. 11 
 
 from the pen of a man of color, named Walker, which 
 alarmed society not a little. It was an appeal to his 
 colored brethren, to drown their injuries in the blood 
 of their oppressors. Its language is perfectly appal- 
 ling. It ran through several editions, though no book- 
 seller would publish it. Not long after, the author 
 was found murdered near his own door ; but whether 
 he had been assassinated for his book, or had been 
 fatally wounded in a fray, is not known. If the slave- 
 owners could but have seen it, Garrison was this 
 man's antagonist, not his coadjutor. Garrison is as 
 strenuous a "peace-man" as any broad-brimmed 
 Friend in Philadelphia ; and this fact, in conjunction 
 with his unlimited influence over the Negro popula- 
 tion, is the chief reason why no blood has been shed, 
 why no insurrectionary movement has taken place 
 in the United States, from the time when his voice 
 began to be heard over the broad land till now. Ev- 
 ery evil, however, which happened, every shiver of 
 the master, every growl of the slave was henceforth to 
 !/e char;,- d upon Garrison. Some of the Southern 
 States oifered rewards for the apprehension of any 
 person who might be detected in circulating the " Li- 
 berator," or " Walker's Appeal ;" and one Legisla- 
 ture demanded of the Governor of Massachusetts that 
 Garrison should be delivered up to them. The fate 
 of Walker was before his eyes ; and it came to his 
 ears, that gentlemen in stage coaches said that it was 
 everywhere thought that " he would not be permitted 
 to live long ;" that he "would be taken away, and no 
 one be the wiser for it." His answer, on this and many 
 subsequent occasions, was the same in spirit. " Will 
 you aim at no higher victims than Arthur Tappan, 
 Geo. Thompson, and W. L. Garrison ? And who 
 and what are they ? Three drops from a boundless 
 ocean three rays from a noon day sun three parti- 
 cles of dust floating in a limitless atmosphere nothing, 
 
12 WILLIAM L. GARRISON. 
 
 subtracted from infinite fulness. Should you succeed 
 in destroying them, the mighty difficulty still remains." 
 As- a noble woman has since said, in defence of the 
 individuality of action of the leaders of the cause, " It 
 is idle to talk of ' leaders.' In the contest of morals 
 with abuses, men are but types of principles. Does 
 any one seriously believe that if Mr Garrison should 
 take an appealing, protesting, backward step, aboli- 
 tionists would fall back with him ?" The " mighty 
 difficulty" would still remain, and remain as surely 
 doomed as ever, were Garrison to turn recreant or 
 die. 
 
 One more dreadful event was to happen before the 
 tk peace-man" could make his reprobation of violence 
 heard over the Union. The insurrection of slaves in 
 Southampton county, Virginia, in which eighty persons 
 were slain parents with their five, seven or ten child- 
 ren, being massacred in the night happened in 1832. 
 The affair is wrapped in mystery, as are most slave in- 
 surrections, both from policy on tlic pun of ihr. mas- 
 ters, and from the whites being too impatient to wait 
 the regular course of justice, and sacrificing their foes 
 as they could catch them. In the present case many 
 Negroes were slaughtered, with every refinement of 
 cruelty, on the roads, or in their masters' yards, with- 
 out appeal to judge, jury, or evidence. This kind of 
 management precludes any clear knowledge of the 
 causes of the insurrection ; but it is now supposed 
 near the spot to have been occasioned by the fanati- 
 cism of a madman, a Negro, who assured the blacks 
 who came to him for religious sympathy that they were 
 to run the course of the ancient Jews slaying and 
 sparing not. We mention this rising because it is the 
 last on the part of the people of color. Free or enslav- 
 ed, they have since been peaceable ; while all the suc- 
 ceeding violences have been perpetrated by "gentlemen 
 of property and standing." It was natural that those 
 
PRUDENCE CRANDALL. 13 
 
 who had suffered by this slaughter or its consequences, 
 those who mourned large families of relations thus cut 
 off, those who for the sake of their crops feared the 
 amendment of the system as a result of this exhibition 
 of its tendencies, those who for the sake of their 
 children nightly trembled in their beds, should cast 
 about for an object on whom to vent their painful feel- 
 ings ; and Garrison was that object. The imputation 
 of the insurrection to him was too absurd to be long 
 sustained ; but those who could not urge this against 
 him still remonstrated against his " disturbing the har- 
 mony and peace of society." " Disturbing the slave- 
 holders !" replied he. <c I am sorry to disturb any- 
 body. But the slave-holders have so many friends ; 
 I must be the friend of the slaves." 
 
 On the 22d of March, 1833, there appeared in the 
 " Liberator" the following advertisement: 
 
 PRUDENCE CRANDALL. 
 
 " Principal of the Canterbury (Connecticut) Female 
 Boarding School, returns her most sincere thanks to those 
 who have patronized her School, and would give informa- 
 tion that, on the first Monday of April next, her School will 
 be opened for the reception of young Ladies and little Misses 
 of color. The branches taught are as follows ; Reading, 
 Writing, Arithmetic, English Grammar, &c." 
 
 The advertisement closed with a long list of referen- 
 ces to gentlemen of the highest character. 
 
 The reason of this announcement was, that Miss 
 Crandall, a young lady of established reputation in 
 her profession, had been urgently requested to under- 
 take the tuition of a child of light color, had admitted 
 her among the white pupils, had subsequently admitted 
 a second, thereby offending the parents of her former 
 pupils ; ^nd, on being threatened on the one hand with 
 the loss of all her scholars, and urged on the other to 
 take more of a dark complexion, Tiad nobly resolved 
 2 
 
14 PRUDENCE CRANDALL. 
 
 to continue to take young ladies of color, letting the 
 whites depart, if they so pleased. We relate the con- 
 sequences, because this is, as far as we know, the first 
 instance in the struggle of a protracted persecution of 
 a peaceable individual by the whole of the society of 
 the district. 
 
 A town-meeting was called on the appearance of 
 the advertisement, and the school was denounced in 
 violent terms. Miss Crandall silently prosecuted her 
 plan. The legislature was petitioned, through the ex- 
 ertion of a leading citizen of Canterbury, Mr Judson, 
 and a law was obtained in the course of the month of 
 May, making it a penal offence to establish any school 
 for the instruction of colored persons, not inhabitants 
 of the State, or to instruct, board, or harbor persons 
 entering the State for educational purposes. This law 
 was clearly unconstitutional, as it violated that clause 
 in the constitution which gives to the citizens of each 
 State all the privileges and immunities of the citizens 
 of the several States.* Perceiving this, Miss Cran- 
 dall took no notice, but went on with her school. She 
 was accordingly arrested, and carried before a justice 
 of the peace ; and the next spectacle that the inhabi- 
 tants of Canterbury saw was Miss Crandall going to 
 jail. She was bailed out the next day, and her trial 
 issued in nothing, as the jury could not agree. She 
 was again prosecuted, and again ; and at length con- 
 victed. She appealed to a higher Court, and struggled 
 on throught a long persecution till compelled to yield 
 from the lives of her pupils being in danger. Her 
 neighbors pulled down her fences, and filled up her 
 well. All the traders in the place refused to deal with 
 her, and she was obliged to purchase provisions and 
 clothing from a great distance. She and her pupils 
 
 *Laws which are infringements of the constitution are not binding 
 upon the Court of Judicature iu the last resort, the Supreme Court of 
 the United States. 
 
MR AND MRS CHILD. 15 
 
 were refused admission to the churches ; her windows 
 were repeatedly broken during the night ; and at length 
 the attacks upon her house became so alarming, and 
 the menaces to her pupils on their way to school so 
 violent, that their parents were compelled to hide the 
 children in their own houses, and Mis Crandall retired 
 from the place. Her conduct was to the last degree 
 meek and quiet ; nothing need be said about its cour- 
 age. 
 
 By this time the abolition cause was supported by 
 twentysix periodicals, circulating from Maine to Vir- 
 ginia and Indiana. Some excellent individuals had 
 done the brave deed of publishing books in aid of the 
 same cause. Among these was Mrs Child, a lady of 
 whom society was exceedingly proud before she pub- 
 lished her Appeal,' and to whom society has been 
 extremely contemptuous since. Her works were 
 bought with avidity before, but fell into sudden obliv- 
 ion as soon as she had done a greater deed than writing 
 any os- : !1 of them. Her noble-minded husband lost 
 his legcii practice, sound and respected as were his tal- 
 ents, from affording his counsel to citizens of color ; 
 and he was maliciously arrested on the quays of New- 
 York, for a fictitious or extremely trifling old debt, 
 when he was just putting his foot on board a vessel for 
 England. The incident affected him deeply ; and his 
 brave wife was, for once, seen to sit down and weep : 
 but she shook off her trouble, packed up a bundle of 
 clothes for him, and went to cheer him in his prison, 
 whence, it is needless to say, he was presently released, 
 crowned in the eyes of his friends with fresh honors. 
 A circumstance which we happen to know respecting 
 this gentleman and lady illustrates well the states of 
 feeling on the great question in the different classes of 
 minds at the time. Mr Child was professionally con- 
 sulted by a gentleman of color. The client and his 
 lady visited Mr Child at his residence at Boston, one 
 
16 MR AND MRS CHILD. 
 
 afternoon, and staid beyond the family tea-hour. Mrs 
 Child at length ordered up tea ; but before it could be 
 poured out, the visitors took their leave, not choosing 
 to subject Mr and Mrs Child to the imputation of sit- 
 ting at table with people of color. Boston soon rang 
 with the report that Mr and Mrs Child had given an 
 entertainment to colored people. Some aristocratic 
 ladies, seated in one of the handsomest drawing-rooms 
 in Boston, were one day canvassing this and other ab- 
 olition affairs, while Dr Channing appeared absorbed 
 in a newspaper by the fireside. The ladies repeated 
 tale after tale, each about as true as the one they be- 
 gan with, and greeted with loud laughter every attempt 
 of one of the party to correct their mistakes about 
 the ladies who were then under persecution, and in 
 peril for the cause. At length, Dr Channing turned 
 his head, and produced a dead silence by observing, 
 in the sternest tones of his thrilling voice, "The time 
 will come when those ladies will find their proper 
 places : and the time will come when the laughers will 
 find their proper 'place." This happened, however, 
 not in 1833, but when the persecution of the women 
 had risen to iis height. 
 
 By this time the degraded free blacks began to hold 
 up their heads ; and they entered upon a new course 
 of action, setting out upon a principle of hope in- 
 stead of despair. As they found the doors of schools 
 shut against them, they formed associations for mutual 
 improvement. The best minds among them sent forth 
 urgent entreaties to the rest to labor at the work of 
 education, pleading that the nearer the prospect of an 
 improved social condition, the more pressing became 
 the necessity of strengthening and enriching their 
 minds for their new responsibilities. It was a glad day 
 for them when they saw the assemblage in Convention 
 at Philadelphia of anti-slavery delegates from ten 
 States out of the twentyfour of which the Union was 
 
DECLARATION. 17 
 
 at that time constituted. These ten States were the 
 six which compose New England, and New York, 
 New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Some State 
 Associations were already organized : the National 
 one organized by this Convention bears date Decem- 
 ber 1833. There might be seen Garrison, just re- 
 turned from England, refreshed by sympathy and ex- 
 hilarated by hope. There was May, the mild gentle- 
 man, the liberal clergyman, who unconsciously secures 
 courtesy from the most contemptuous of the foe, 
 when nothing but insult was designed. There was 
 Lewis Tappan, the grave Presbyterian, against whom 
 violence was even then brewing, and who was soon 
 to be despoiled of his property by the firebrands of a 
 rnob. These, and many others, put their signatures 
 to a Declaration, of which we subjoin the concluding 
 passage : 
 
 " Submitting this DECLARATION to the candid considera- 
 tion of the people of this country ; and of the friends of lib- 
 erty throughout the world, we hereby affix our signatures to 
 it ; pledging ourselves that, under the guidance and by the 
 help of Almighty God, we will do all that in us lies, con- 
 sistently with this Declaration of our principles, to over- 
 throw the most execrable system of slavery that iias ever 
 been witnessed upon earth to deliver our land from its 
 deadliest curse to wipe out the foulest stain which rests 
 upon our national escutcheon and to secure to the colored 
 population of the United States all the rights and privileges 
 which belong to them as men, and as Americans, come 
 what may to our persons, our interests, or our reputation 
 whether we live to witness the triumph of Liberty, Justice, 
 and Humanity, or perish untimely as martyrs in this great, 
 benevolent, and holy cause." 
 
 This was the first General Convention of Men 
 held for this object. Of another First Convention 
 we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. 
 
 The next year (1834) was a stirring year. The 
 u Young Men " of the large cities began to associate 
 themselves for the cause. Those of New York 
 2* 
 
18 YOUNG MEN. 
 
 pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
 honor, (in the language and spirit of the Declaration 
 of Independence,) to overthrow slavery by moral as- 
 sault, or to die in the attempt. The most remarkable 
 accession of young men to the cause was from Lane 
 Seminary, Cincinnati, a presbyterian college of high 
 reputation, with the eminent Dr Beecher to preside 
 over it. The students, most of whom were above 
 one-and-twenty, and fifty of whom were above five-and 
 twenty years of age, discussed the abolition and colo- 
 nization questions for eighteen evenings, and decided 
 unanimously in favor of the former. The alarmed 
 Faculty forbade discussion and association on the ques- 
 tion, and conferred an irresponsible power of expul- 
 sion on the Executive Committee. The students re- 
 fused to be tongue-tied, and preferred expulsion. 
 Those who were not formally expelled, withdrew ; 
 so that of forty theological students, only two returned 
 the next term ; and of classical students, only five out 
 of sixty. It is strange that the Faculty did not fore- 
 see the consequences. Almost every one of these 
 dispersed young men became the nucleus of an aboli- 
 tion society. Some distributed themselves among 
 other colleges : and some set about establishing a sem- 
 inary where freedom of thought and speech might be 
 secured, and whose doors should be open to students 
 of all complexions. Ere long, President Beecher's 
 two sons were active abolitionists ; several colleges 
 had invited students of color to enter ; and five estab- 
 lishments belonging to the noble Oberlin Institute were 
 overflowing with students of both sexes, and any color 
 that might please Heaven. Out of the forlornness of 
 Lane Seminary arose the prosperity of the Oberlin 
 Institute. 
 
 While these things were doing in the West, a strange 
 thing was happening in the South. In the midst of 
 the hot fields of Alabama, where the negro drinks the 
 
MR BIRNEIT. ID 
 
 last dregs of his cup of bitterness, and sees his family 
 "killed off," before his eyes, in securing for one 
 whom he hates, the full abundance of a virgin soil ; 
 from among the raw settlements where white men car- 
 ry secret arms, and black men secret curses, a great 
 man rose up before the public eye, and declared him- 
 self an abolitionist. Mr Birney was a great man in a 
 worldly as well as a moral sense, not only " a gen- 
 tleman of property and standing," but Solicitor-Gen- 
 eral of the State, and in the way to be Judge of its 
 Supreme Court. But he was also an honest and a 
 moderate man. It was he who, being asked about in- 
 vestment for capital in the West, smiled, and said, ct I 
 am the worst person you could ask. My family and 
 I are happy with what we have : we do not know that 
 we should be happier with more ; and therefore we 
 inquire nothing about investments." None can be 
 fully aware of the singularity of this answer who have 
 not witnessed the prevalence and force of the spirit of 
 speculation in the Western States. Mr Birney re- 
 moved from Alabama, emancipated and settled all his 
 slaves, giving them education in defiance of the laws 
 01 Kentucky, and himself setting up a newspaper in 
 Cincinnati, standing his ground there against many and 
 awful attempts upon his life, and at length gaining a 
 complete victory, and establishing freedom of speech 
 and the press. This is the gentleman to whom Mr 
 Channing wrote his splendid letter (on liberty of speech 
 and the press :) and to that letter Mr Birney acknowl- 
 edges himself under great obligations Dr Channing's 
 name effecting in some minds changes which angelic 
 truth could not achieve. Mr Birney is he to whom 
 Southern Menabers of Congress now address them- 
 selves now that they are compelled to stoop to ad- 
 dress abolitionists at all : he is addressed as the gen- 
 tleman of the party a distinction at which he would 
 be the first to smile. The whole South felt the shock 
 
20 MR BIRNEY. 
 
 of such a man coming forth against its " peculiar do- 
 mestic institutions :" and all the more from Mr Bir- 
 ney's having been an active colonizationist a bounti- 
 ful and influential friend to that society even a collec- 
 tor of funds for it till experience convinced him, 
 first of its inefficiency, and then of its wickedness. 
 There was much sensation about Mr Birney in many 
 a house. His name was carefully avoided before 
 strangers, as it was well that they should not hear the 
 story (" strangers could not understand it : ") but here 
 were men gnashing tb ^eth at him for " loosening 
 the bonds of society . re women horror-struck 
 
 lest he should introduce u insubordination " (meaning 
 midnight massacre ;) and children 1 * agreeing that he 
 could be no gentleman to think of putting notions into 
 the heads of "people," and turning them adrift to 
 take care of themselves. Silence brooded over the 
 cotton-fields where slaves were within earshot ; but 
 within the dwellings, multitudes of whites were whis- 
 pering about Mr Birney. 
 
 The cities of the North were at the same time in 
 commotion. From disturbing meetings and inflicting 
 petty social wounds, the enemies of the colored race 
 proceeded to gross outrage. The fear for the purses 
 
 * While children in the South were naturally adopting and exaggera- 
 ting their parents' views on the great question, calling Mr Adams a 
 " horrid creature " for vindicating the right of petition, and Mr Van 
 Bureu a " dear soul " for giving his casting vote in favor of the third 
 reading of the Gag Bill, there was sympathy in the North between chil- 
 dren and their parents who took the opposite side of the question. 
 One little girl of seven years old, an only child, happened to hear some- 
 body say to her father, that those who consumed slave products, during 
 the present crisis, were partly answerable for the sufferings of the ne- 
 groes. This sank into her mind. Some time after, her mother saw the 
 tears stealing down her face. On being spoken to, she threw her arms 
 round her mother's neck, and whispered, that she meajit never again to 
 eat cake, or sweetmeats, or sugar in any form. She was left entirely 
 to her own feelings on the matter, her parents only taking care to pro- 
 vide her with what they can get of free-labor sugar. Under every con- 
 ceivable circumstance of temptation, away from home, and among her 
 little companions, this young creature has remained faithful to her spon- 
 taneous resolution. 
 
REIGN OF TERROR. 21 
 
 of the merchants and ship-owners of the North was 
 becoming exasperated into panic. The panic was 
 generously shared by those who had no ships, and con- 
 ducted no commerce. The lawyers and clergy, 
 u gentlemen of property and standing" of every sort, 
 and the press, gave their sympathy to the merchants, 
 and the result was presently visible in the reflection of 
 flames upon the midnight sky. The American reign 
 of terror now began. In Philadelphia fortyfour 
 houses and two churches were besieged : some few 
 greatly damaged, and the rest sacked and destroyed. 
 The fortyfour houses belonged to the^people of col- 
 or. In New York the mob hunted higher game. On 
 the fourth of July, (the anniversary of the day when 
 liberty was guaranteed to all American citizens by the 
 declaration of Independence,) the house of Mr Lewis 
 Tappan was sacked, and the furniture burned in the 
 street. A certain bureau, in which his children kept 
 their little keepsakes and other treasures, was thrown 
 upon the heap, and was soon crackling in the flames ; 
 an early taste of persecution for the young creatures, 
 and a circumstance exceedingly well adapted to per- 
 petuate their father's spirit in them. The house of 
 Dr Cox was seriously damaged, and the African 
 school-house in Orange street, with twelve adjacent 
 houses, chiefly belonging to people of color, was de- 
 stroyed. St. Philip's church was sacked, and several 
 others much damaged. The abolitionists not only 
 suffered the destruction of their property and the peril 
 of their lives, but the revilings of the press were pour- 
 ed out upon them. They were upbraided as the 
 cause of the riots, and were told that, though they 
 were served rightly enough, they had no business to 
 scare the city with the sight of their burning property 
 and demolished churches. 
 
 Next followed the virtual accession of a great north- 
 ern man to the cause ; for though Dr Channing con- 
 
22 DR CHANNING. 
 
 tinued to censure the abolitionists for two years after 
 this, it was in the autumn of 1834 that his mind's eye 
 was fixed upon the question on which he has since 
 acted a brave part. It was at the close of this sum- 
 mer, in the parlor of his Rhode Island retreat, that 
 the memorable conversation with Mr Abdy took place 
 by which Dr Cbanning's attention was aroused to the 
 wrongs of the colored race. Scarcely any other man 
 of his heart and his principles could have remained so 
 long unaware of the actual state of the case : but there 
 are circumstances of health, habit, and environment 
 which account for the fact to those who know Dr 
 Channing. As soon as Mr Adby had quitted him, he 
 applied himself to learn the truth of the case, and in 
 the month of October preached a thorough-going abo- 
 lition sermon, as to its principles at least, though many 
 months elapsed before he learned fully to recognize the 
 merits of the men who were teaching and practising 
 them at the hazard of all that ordinary men most value. 
 But the ray of doubt which was thus carried into that 
 country retreat has now brightened into the sunshine 
 of perfect conviction ; it did so in time to dispel the 
 dark clouds which had gathered above the morals of 
 the Texas question. It is owing to Dr Channing, 
 finally and chiefly (though in the first instance to Mr 
 Child,) that the United States have been saved the 
 crime and the shame of annexing Texas to the Union, 
 for the purpose of the protraction of slavery. 
 
 At the close of this busy year it was found that the 
 Auxiliary anti- Slavery Societies had increased from 
 sixty to about two hundred. The great Executive 
 Committee proposed to their constituents to " thank 
 God and take courage." 
 
 The case of the abolitionists will not, however, be 
 truly regarded, if they are contemplated as herding to- 
 gether, supporting each other by sympathy and mutual 
 aid. They met, in smaller or larger numbers, from 
 
AMOS DRESSER. * 23 
 
 time to time ; they met for refreshment and for mutual 
 strength : but it was in the intervals of these meetings, 
 the weary, lonely intervals, that their trials befellhem. 
 It was when the husband was abroad about his daily 
 business that he met with his crosses: his brother mer- 
 chants deprived him of his trade ; his servants insulted 
 him ; the magistrates refused him redress of grievan- 
 ces ; among his letters he found one enclosing the ear 
 of a negro ; or a printed hand-bill offering large re- 
 wards for his own ears or his head ; or a lithographed 
 representation of himself hanging from a gallows, or 
 burning in a tar-barrel. It was when the wife was ply- 
 ing her needle by the fireside that messages were 
 brought in from her tradesmen that they could supply 
 her no longer, or that letters dropped in with such con- 
 tents as the following : 
 
 "MADAM, I write to inform you that personal violence 
 is intended on you and your husband this evening. 
 " Yours in haste, 
 
 " AN ABOLITIONIST. 
 " Beware of nine o'clock." 
 
 It was in the course of ordinary life that their child- 
 ren came crying from school, tormented by their 
 school-fellows for their parents' principles ; that youths 
 had the doors of colleges slammed in their faces, and 
 that young men were turned back from the pulpit and 
 the bar. This was a course of life which required a 
 better support than the temporary enthusiasm of an 
 occasional meeting, be the emotions of the hour as 
 lofty and holy as they might. Such a support these 
 men and women had ; and never was it more wanted 
 than at this crisis in their history. 
 
 In the month of July, L835, one of the dismissed 
 students of the Lane Seminary, Amos Dresser by 
 name, travelled southward from Cincinnati, for the 
 purpose of selling bibles and a few other books, as a 
 means of raising funds for the completion of his edu- 
 
24 AMOS DRESSER. 
 
 cation ; a very common practice in the west, and high- 
 ly useful to the residents of new settlements. At 
 Nashville, Tennessee, he was arrested on suspicion of 
 being an abolition agent ; which was not the fact, and 
 in support of which there was positively no evidence 
 whatever. He had not spoken with slaves, or distrib- 
 uted books among free persons of color. He was 
 brought before a Committee of Vigilance, consisting 
 of sixtytwo of the principal citizens, among whom 
 were seven elders of the Presbyterian church. His 
 examination lasted from between four and five in the 
 afternoon till eleven at night. His trunk was brought 
 before the Committee and emptied. In it were found 
 three volumes, written by abolitionists, put in by 
 Dresser for his private reading ; and some old news- 
 papers of the same character, used as stuffing to pre- 
 vent the books from rubbing. His private journal was 
 examined ; but as it was in pencil, consisting only of 
 memoranda, and those put in abbreviation, little could 
 be made out of it. The Mayor gave up the attempt 
 to read it aloud, observing, as he laid it down, that it 
 was u evidently very hostile to slavery." Private let- 
 ters from friends were then read aloud, and wise looks 
 were exchanged among the judges at every expression 
 which could be laid hold of as indicating a different 
 way of thinking from theirs. At eleven o'clock the 
 young man was sent into an adjoining room to await the 
 judgment of the Committee. He had not conceived 
 the idea of any very serious issue of the examination ; 
 and it was, therefore, with horror that he heard from 
 the principal city officer that the Committee were de- 
 bating whether his punishment should be thirtynine 
 lashes, or a hundred (a number considered fatal, in the 
 way in which abolitionists are flogged,) or death by 
 hanging. The Committee acknowledged, through the 
 whole proceeding, that Dresser had broken no law ; 
 but pleaded that if the law did not sufficiently protect 
 
AMOS DRESSER. 25 
 
 slavery against the assaults of opinion, an association of 
 gentlemen must make law for the occasion. Dresser 
 was found guilty of three things : of being a member 
 of an anti-Slavery Society in another State of hav- 
 ing books of an anti-Slavery tendency in his posses- 
 sion, and of being believed to have circulated such in 
 his travels. He was condemned to receive twenty 
 lashes on his bare back in the market place. To the 
 market place he was marched, amidst the acclamation 
 of the mob ; and there by torchlight, and just as the 
 chimes were about to usher in the Sunday, he was 
 stripped and flogged with a heavy cow-hide. At the 
 close, an involuntary exclamation of thanksgiving es- 
 caped his lips that it was over, and that he had been 
 able to bear it. u God d n him. stop his praying !" 
 was shouted on all hands. Twentyfour hours were 
 allowed him to leave the city ; but it was thought un- 
 safe for him to remain a moment longer than was abso- 
 lutely necessary, or to return to his lodgings. Some 
 kind person or persons, entire strangers to him, drew 
 him into a house, bathed his wounds, gave him food, 
 and furnished him with a disguise, with which he left 
 the place on foot, early in the morning. Neither 
 clothes, books, nor papers were ever returned to him, 
 though he made every necessary application. There 
 is little in the excitement of annual or quarterly meet- 
 ings which can sustain a young man under an ignomin- 
 ious public whipping, in a strange city, where there 
 was not one familiar face to look upon. Dresser has 
 some other support, which has prevented his shrinking 
 from the consequences of his opinions then and ever 
 since. When he visited Boston, some time after, he 
 spoke at an abolition meeting. We have before us, in 
 the form of an animadversion upon this, a specimen of 
 the newspaper comments of the time upon such trans- 
 actions as Dresser was the subject of. We quote from 
 the Boston Courier : 
 3 
 
26 AMOS DRESSER. 
 
 "Hearing yesterday, as I passed Congress Hall, the 
 screams of one who appeared to be in distress, I went up to 
 see what could be the matter, when I found several hun- 
 dred females, of all occupations and colors, gazing and 
 quivering at a spectacle of the most writhing agony. A 
 miserable young man, expelled not long since for disor- 
 derly conduct from Lane Seminary, was endeavoring to 
 avenge himself on slave-holders. * * 
 
 If the women, such as composed this motley assembly, 
 cannot find sufficient to do in taking care of their ragged 
 children, then let some employment be given them, in which 
 they may at least be saved from disgracing their sex : or, if 
 they must have a spectacle, let them put the halter at once 
 around the neck of this martyr to revenge, witness his 
 swinging fidgets, and then go home." 
 
 It was about this time that the Attorney General of 
 Massachusetts, Austin by name, gave advice to the 
 Governor in Council that any abolitionists demanded 
 by the South should be delivered up for trial under 
 Southern laws, (the sure result of which is known to 
 be death.) A pamphlet by a leading lawyer of Bos- 
 ton, named Sullivan, followed on the same side, offer- 
 ing a legal opinion that those who discussed the sub- 
 ject of slavery (an act injurious to the peace of socie- 
 ty) might be brought under the penal laws of Massa- 
 chusetts ; ex post facto laws, if no others could be 
 found A friend of Dr Channing's wrote to him that 
 it was now time for him to come forward : and he obey- 
 ed the suggestion. During the Autumn he wrote his 
 tract on Slavery, and published it at Christmas. Dur- 
 ing the interval some remarkable events had taken place. 
 
 Our historical review has now brought us up to the 
 date of the first of the works whose titles we have 
 prefixed to this article, and which a^e, substantially, 
 annual Reports of the proceedings of the Massachu 
 setts Female Anti-Slavery Society. We have arrived 
 at the most remarkable period of the great struggle, 
 when an equal share of its responsibility and suffering 
 came to press upon women. We have seen how 
 
FEMALE ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. 27 
 
 men first engaged in it, and how young men after- 
 wards, as a separate element, were brought in. Many 
 women had joined from the first, and their numbers 
 had continually increased : but their exertions had 
 hitherto consisted in raising funds, and in testifying 
 sympathy for the colored race and their advocates. 
 Their course of political action, which has never 
 since been checked, began in the autumn of 1835. 
 
 The Female Anti-Slavery Society in Boston is 
 composed of women of every rank, and every reli- 
 gious sect, as well as of all complexions. The pres- 
 ident is a Presbyterian ; the chief secretary is a Uni- 
 tarian ; and among the other officers and members 
 may be found Quakers, Episcopalians, Methodists, 
 and Swedenborgians. All sectarian jealousy is lost 
 in the great cause ; and these women have, from the 
 first day of their association, preserved, not only har- 
 mony, but strong mutual affection, while differing on 
 matters of opinion as freely and almost as widely as if 
 they had kept within the bosom of their respective 
 ,- c ts. I, on such a set of women was the responsi- 
 bility thrown of vindicating the liberty of meeting and 
 of free discussion in Boston ; and nobly they sustain- 
 ed it. 
 
 Before we proceed, it is necessary to say a few 
 words upon the most remarkable of these women, 
 the understood author of the books whose titles stand 
 at the head of our article. Maria Weston was educa- 
 ted in England, and might have remained here in the 
 enjoyment of wealth, luxury, and fashion : but with 
 these she could not obtain sufficient freedom of 
 thought and action to satisfy her noble nature ; and, 
 no natural ties detaining her, she returned to New En- 
 gland, to earn her bread there by teaching, and breathe 
 as freely as she desired. She has paid a heavy tax of 
 persecution for her freedom ; but she has it. Sho is 
 a woman of rare intellectual accomplishment, full ef 
 
28 MARIA CHAPMAN. 
 
 reading, and with strong and well exercised powers of 
 thought. She is beautiful as the day, tall in her per- 
 son, and noble in her carriage, with a voice as sweet 
 as a silver bell, and speech as clear and sparkling as a 
 running brook. Her accomplishments have expanded 
 in a happy hame. She has been for some years the 
 wife of Mr Henry Chapman, a merchant of Boston, 
 an excellent man, whose spirit of self-denial is equal 
 to his wife's, and is shown no less nobly in the same 
 cause. A woman of genius like her's cannot but take 
 the lead wherever she acts at all ; and shs is the life 
 and soul of the enterprise in Boston. The foes of 
 the cause have nicknamed her " Captain Chapman ;" 
 and the name passes from mouth to mouth as she 
 walks up Washington street, not less admired, per- 
 haps, all the while than if she were only the most 
 beautiful woman in the city. The lady, with all her 
 sisters, took her ground early, and has always had so- 
 ber reason to plead for every one of her many exten- 
 sions of effort. She is understood to have drawn up 
 the petition which follows, a fair specimen of ihe 
 
 multitudes of petitions from women which have been 
 piloH ,, ~-^~ r *u~ -i-i~ ~r n ,:u ,u~ ,, onprn _ 
 
 ~ i' " O " " -/ 
 
 ble John Quincy Adams has been roused to the re- 
 markable conflict which we shall presently have to re- 
 late : 
 
 " PETITION 
 
 " To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives in 
 Congress assembled, 
 
 " The undersigned, women of Massachusetts, deeply con- 
 vinced of the sinfulness of slavery, and keenly aggrieved by 
 its existence in a part of our country over which Congress 
 possess exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever, do 
 most earnestly petition your honorable body immediately to 
 abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and to declare 
 every human being free who sets foot upon its soil. 
 
 " We also respectfully announce our intention to present 
 the same petition yearly before your honorable body, that it 
 
MARIA CHAPMAN. 29 
 
 may at least be a, "memorial of us,' that in the holy cause 
 of Human Freedom * we have done what we could.' " 
 
 In answer to objections against such petitioning, the 
 author of ' Right and Wrong in Boston' says 
 
 " If we are not enough grieved at the existence of slavery 
 to ask that it may be abolished in the ten miles square over 
 which Congress possess exclusive jurisdiction, we may rest 
 assured that we are slave-holders in heart, and indeed under 
 the endurance of the penalty which selfishness inflicts, the 
 slow but certain death of the soul. We sometimes, but not 
 often, hear it said ' It is such an odd, unladylike thing to 
 do!' We concede that the human soul, in the full exercise 
 of its most god-like power of self-denial and exertion for 
 the good of others, is, emphatically, a very unladylike thing. 
 We have never heard this objection but from that sort of 
 woman who is dead while she lives, or to be pitied as the 
 victim of domestic tyranny. The woman who makes it is 
 generally one who has struggled from childhood up to wo- 
 manhood through a process of spiritual suffocation. Her 
 infancy was passed in serving as a convenience for fc lic dis- 
 play of elegant baby-linen. Her youth, in training for a 
 more public display of braiding the hair, and wearing of 
 gold, and putting on of apparel; while the ornament of a 
 meek and quiet spirit, the hidden man of the heart, is not 
 deemed worthy the attainment. Her summers fly away in 
 changes of air and water ; her winters in changes of flimsy 
 garments, in inhaling-lamp-smoke, and drinking champagne 
 at midnight with the most dissipated men in the community. 
 This is the woman who tells us it is unladylike to ask that 
 children may no longer be sold away from their parents, or 
 wives from their husbands, in the District of Columbia, and 
 adds, ' They ought to be mobbed who ask it.' . . . O 
 how painful is the contemplation of the ruins of a nature a 
 little lower than the angels!' 3 Right and Wrong in Boston 
 in 1886, p. 27. 
 
 " We feel," she elsewhere declares, "that we may con- 
 fidently affirm that no woman of Massachusetts will cease 
 to exercise for the slaves the right of petition (her only 
 means of manifesting her civil existence) for which Mr 
 Adams has so nobly contended. Massachusetts women will 
 not forget in their petitions to Heaven the name of him 
 who upheld their prayer for the enslaved of the earth, in the 
 midst of sneers and wrath, bidding oppressors remember 
 that they, too, were women-born, and declaring that he con- 
 
 3* 
 
30 MARIA CHAPMAN. 
 
 sidered the wives, and mothers, and daughters of his elec- 
 tors, as his constituents. . . . What immediate effect would 
 be produced on men's hearts, and how much they might be 
 moved to wrath before they were touched with repentance, 
 we have never been careful to inquire. We leave such 
 cares with God ; we do so with confidence in his paternal 
 providence ; for what we have done is right and woman- 
 Jy. Right and Wrong in Boston in 1837, p. 84. 
 
 To consult on their labors of this and other kinds, 
 the ladies of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society intend- 
 ed to meet at their own office, Washington street, on 
 the 21st of October. Handbills had been circulated 
 and posted up in different parts of the city the day 
 before, offering a reward to any persons who would 
 commit certain acts of violence, such as "bringing 
 Thompson to the tar-kettle before dark." The ladies 
 were informed that they would be killed ; and when 
 they applied at the Mayor's office for protection to 
 their lawful meeting, the City Marshal replied u You 
 give us a great deal of trouble." This trouble, how- 
 ever, their consciences compelled them to give. 
 They could not decline the duty of asserting their 
 liberty of meeting and free discussion. But Mrs 
 Chapman felt that every member should have notice 
 of what might await her ; and she herself carried the 
 warning from house to house, with all discretion and 
 quietness. Among those whom she visited was an 
 artizan's wife, who was sweeping out one of her two 
 rooms as Mrs Chapman entered. On hearing that 
 there was every probability of violence, and that the 
 warning was given in order that she might stay away 
 if she thought proper, she leaned upon her broom and 
 considered for awhile. Her answer was " I have 
 often wished and asked that I might be able to do 
 something for the slaves ; and it seems to me that 
 this is the very time and the very way. You will see 
 me at the meeting and I will keep a prayerful mind, 
 as I am about my work, till then." 
 
MARIA CHAPMAN. 31 
 
 Twentyfive reached the place of meeting by pre- 
 senting themselves three-quarters of an hour before 
 the time. Five more struggled up the stairs, and a 
 hundred were turned back by the mob. It is well 
 known how these ladies were mobbed by some hun- 
 dreds of gentlemen in fine broad-cloth " (Boston 
 broad-cloth has become celebrated since that day.) 
 It is well known how those gentlemen hurraed, broke 
 down the partition, and threw orange-peel at the ladies 
 while they were at prayer ; but Mrs Chapman's part 
 in the lessons of that hour has not been made public. 
 
 She is the Foreign Corresponding Secretary of the 
 society ; and she was in the midst of reading her Report, 
 in a noise too great to allow of her being heard, when 
 the mayor of Boston, Mr Lyman, entered the room 
 in great trepidation 
 
 " Ladies," said he, " I request you to dissolve this 
 meeting." 
 
 "Mr Mayor," said Mrs Chapman, " we desire you 
 to disperse this mob." 
 
 "Ladies, "the mayor continued, "you must dis- 
 solve this meeting ; I cannot preserve the peace. 7 ' 
 
 "Mr Mayor," replied Mrs Chapman, "we are 
 disturbed in our lawful business by this unlawful mob, 
 and it is your business to relive us of it." 
 
 " I know it, Mrs Chapman, 1 know it ; but I can- 
 not : I cannot protect you ; and I entreat you to go." 
 
 " If that be the case," answered she, " as we have 
 accomplished our object, and vindicated our right of 
 meeting, we will, if the meeting pleases, adjourn." 
 She looked round upon her companions, and proposed 
 that, to accommodate the authorities, they should ad- 
 journ the meeting. This was agreed to, and the 
 women passed down the stairs, and through the mob, 
 and, as the business of the day was finished, each to 
 her own home. Certain of the fine broad-cloth men 
 observed afterwards that Mrs Chapman, in the high 
 
32 MARIA CHAPMAN. 
 
 excitement of the hour, looked more like an angel 
 than a woman who is visible every day. She was not 
 aware that her friend Garrison was in the hands of the 
 mob, and she therefore went home, as she had advised 
 her companions to do, and sat down to her needle. 
 Presently several gentlemen entered without asking 
 admission. She recognized among them some mem- 
 bers of Dr Channing's church whom she was accus- 
 tomed to meet at worship Sunday by Sunday. They 
 demanded Mr Thompson, saying that they had reason 
 to believe he was in that house. They wanted Mr 
 Thompson. 
 
 " I know it," said she; "and I know what you 
 want with Mr Thompson ; you want his blood." 
 
 They declared they would not shed his blood ; but 
 she held off till they had pledged themselves that 
 under no circumstances should Mr Thompson receive 
 bodily harm. 
 
 "This pledge is what I wanted," said she ; u and 
 now I will tell you that Mr Thompson is not here, 
 and I am sure I don't know where he is." 
 
 She then told the gentlemen that she had something 
 to say to them, and they must hear her. On a day 
 like this, when the laws were broken, and the peace 
 of society violated by those who ought best to know 
 their value, it was no time for ceremony ; she should 
 speak with the plainness which the times demanded. 
 And she proceeded with a remonstrance so powerful 
 that, after some argument, her adversaries fairly suc- 
 cumbed : one wept, and another asked as a favor that 
 she would shake hands with him. But at this crisis 
 her husband came in. The sight of him revived the 
 bad passions of these gentry. They said that they 
 had to inform him that they had obtained the 
 names of his commercial correspondents in the 
 South, and were about to deprive him of his trade, by 
 informing his southern connections that the merchants 
 
MARIA CHAPMAN. 33 
 
 of Boston disowned him for a fellow-citizen, and had 
 proscribed him from their society. Mr Chapman 
 quietly replied that by their thus coming to see him he 
 was enahled to save them the trouble of writing to the 
 South ; and he proceeded to explain that, finding his 
 southern commerce implicated with slave labor, he 
 had surrendered more and more of it, and had this 
 very week declined to execute orders to the amount 
 of three thousand dollars. There was nothing left 
 for these magnanimous gentlemen but to sneak away. 
 The women who were at the meeting of this mem- 
 orable day were worthy of the occasion, not from 
 being strong enough to follow the lead of such a woman 
 as Maria Chapman, but from having a strength inde- 
 pendent of her. The reason of Garrison being there 
 was, that he went to escort his young wife, who was 
 near her confinement. She was one of the last to 
 depart, and it could not be concealed from her that 
 her husband was in the hands of the mob. She step- 
 ped out of the window upon a shed, in the fearful ex- 
 citement of the momeni. He was in the extremest 
 danger. His hat was lost, and brickbats were rained 
 upon his head, while he was hustled along in the di- 
 rection of the tar-kettlo, TTT hich was heating in the 
 next street. The only words which escaped from the 
 white lips of the young wife were " I think my hus- 
 band will not deny his principles : I am sure my hus- 
 band will never deny his principles." Garrison was 
 rescued by a stout truck-man, and safely lodged in 
 jail (the only place in which he could be secure.) 
 without having in the least flinched from the conse- 
 quences of his principles. The differences in the 
 minds of these women, and the view which they all 
 agree to take of the persecution to which they are 
 subjected, may be best shown in the eloquent words 
 of the author of " Right and Wrong: " 
 
34 RIGHT AND WRONG. 
 
 " Our common cause appears in a different vesture as pre- 
 sented by different minds. One is striving to unbind a slave's 
 manacles another to secure to all human souls their ina- 
 lienable rights ; one to secure the temporal well-being, and 
 another the spiritual benefit of the enslaved of our land. 
 Some labor that the benefits which they feel that they have 
 derived from their own system of theology may be shared by 
 the bondman ; others, that the bondman may have light and 
 liberty to form a system for himself. Some, that he may be 
 enabled to hallow the Sabbath-day by rest and religious ob- 
 servances ; some, that he may receive wages for the other 
 six. Some are forcibly urged to the work of emancipation 
 by the sight of scourged and insulted manhood ; aud others 
 by the spectacle of outraged womanhood and weeping in- 
 fancy. Some labor to preserve from torture the slave's 
 body, and some for the salvation of his soul. Here are dif- 
 ferences ; nevertheless, our hopes and our hearts are one. 1 ' 
 Right and Wrong, vol. ii. p. 80. 
 
 " There is an exceeding great reward in faithful obedi- 
 ence ; the clearer and deeper views of duty it gives ; the 
 greater love of God and man the deliverance from fear and 
 constraint the less apprehension of suffering c the more 
 freedom to die.' Enjoying these, may we never look for 
 any reward less spiritual and enduring. We pray, for the 
 sake of the oppressed, that Gc>;l will aid us to banish from 
 our hearts every vestige of seli; -hness ; for, in proportion to 
 our disinterestedness will be our moral power for their deli- 
 verance. Not until our mount of sacrifice overtops the 
 mountain of southern trangrcssiou should we date to ask the 
 ^lave-holder to give up the bondsman. We should not dare 
 to bid him relinquish what he (however erroneously) thinks 
 his living, till we have first cast into the treasury our own. 
 How dare we expect him to incur the displeasure of his 
 friends and neighbors, till we have exhausted every form of 
 representation and entreaty with ours till we have finally 
 said, in the plainness of Christian reproof, to the steady op- 
 ponent of righteousness at the North, " the slave-holder goes 
 up to his house justified rather than thou ?" The experi- 
 ence of the past shows, not only that emancipation must 
 come, but also the manner of its coming. Our national 
 confederacy is but just beginning to unite, on the only true 
 principle of union to give and not to receive. If we of the 
 North persevere, at every sacrifice to ourselves, in giving 
 the truth, which alone can save the country from the alter- 
 nations of anarchy, insurrection, and despotism, doubt not 
 that there are multitudes at the South who will receive it 
 
ANGELINA E. GRIMKE. 35 
 
 gladly, at a far nobler sacrifice. The sublime example of 
 such as Birney, and Thome, and Nelson, and Allen, and 
 Angelina E. Grimke, will not be given in vain. A few more 
 years of danger and intense exertion, and the South and 
 the North will unite in reading the Constitution by the light 
 from above, thrown on it by the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, and not by the horrible glare of the slave code. The 
 cause of freedom will ere long become the popular one ; 
 and a voice of regret will be hoard throughout the land from 
 those who will have forgotten these days of misrepresenta- 
 tion and danger " Why was not I among the early aboli- 
 tionists !" Let us be deeply grateful that we are among the 
 early called. Let us pray God, to forgive the men who 
 would deface every feature of a Christian community by 
 making it personally dangerous to fulfil a Christian woman's 
 duty ; to forgive the man who sneers at the sympathy for 
 the oppressed implanted by the Spirit of God in the heart 
 of the mother that bore and cherished his infancy of the 
 wife, the helpmate of his manhood, and of the daughter 
 whom that same quality of womanly devotedness would lead 
 to shield his grey head with her own bosom. Let us never 
 forget through these unquiet years, whereunto we are called, 
 
 ' The first in shame and agony, 
 The meanest, in the lowest task ; 
 This must we be !' 
 
 the stepping-stone by which the wealthy, the gifted, and the 
 influential, are to pass unharmed, through the roar of waters, 
 to the RIGHT side." Right and Wrong, vol. ii. pp. 81 83. 
 
 ;: Angelina E. Grimke." Who is she ? She and 
 her sister Sarah are Quaker ladies of South Carolina. 
 Our author says of their visit to Boston, to act and 
 speak in this cause " It might have been anticipated 
 that they would have met with a friendly reception 
 from those calling themselves the better sort, for they 
 were highly connected. Unfortunately they were 
 but women, though the misfortune of that fact was 
 greatly abated by their being sisters of the Hon. Thos. 
 S. Grimke." This gentlemen was, in point of scho- 
 larship, the greatest ornament of the United States, 
 and his character was honored by the whole commu- 
 nity. After his death his sisters strove by all the 
 

 36 ANGELINA E. GRIMKE. 
 
 means which could be devised by powerful intellects 
 and kind hearts to meliorate the condition of the slaves 
 they had inherited. In defiance of the laws, they 
 taught them, and introduced upon their estates as ma- 
 ny as possible of the usages of free society. But it 
 would not do. There is no infusing into slavery the 
 benefits of freedom. When these ladies had become 
 satisfied of this fact, they surrendered their worldly 
 interests instead of their consciences. They freed 
 their slaves, and put them in the way of providing for 
 themselves in a free region, and then retired to Phi- 
 ladelphia, to live on the small remains of their former 
 opulence. It does not appear that they had any in- 
 tention of coming forward publicly, as they have since 
 done ; but the circumstance of their possessing the 
 knowledge, which other abolitionists want, of the mi- 
 nute details and less obvious workings of the slavery 
 system, was the occasion of their being applied to, 
 more and more frequently and extensively, for infor- 
 mation, till they publicly placed their knowledge at 
 the service of all who needed it, and at length began 
 to lecture wherever there was an audience who re- 
 quested to hear them. Their Quaker habits of speak- 
 ing in public rendered this easy to them ; and the ex- 
 ertion of their great talents in this direction has been 
 of most essential service to the cause. It was before 
 they adopted this mode of action that the public first 
 became interested in these ladies, through a private 
 letter written by Angelina to her friend Garrison a 
 letter which he did his race the kindness to publish, 
 and which strengthened even the great man's strong 
 heart. We give the greater part of it : 
 
 " I can hardly express to thee the deep and solemn inter- 
 est with which 1 have viewed the violent proceedings of the 
 last few weeks. Although I expected opposition, yet I was 
 not prepared for it so soon it took me by surprise, and 1 
 greatly feared the abolitionists would be driven back in the 
 first onset, and thrown into confusion. So fearful was I, 
 
ANGELINA E. GRIMKE. 3t 
 
 that though I clung with unflinching firmness to our princi- 
 ples, yet I was afraid of even opening one of thy papers, lest 
 I should see some indications of a compromise, some surren- 
 der, some palliation. Under these feelings I was induced to 
 read thy appeal to the citizens of Boston. Judge, then, what 
 were my feelings, on finding that my fears were utterly 
 groundless, and that thou stoodest firm in the midst of the 
 storm, determined to suffer and to die, rather than yield 
 one inch. 
 
 "Religious persecution always begins with mobs; it is 
 always unprecedented in any age or country in which it 
 commences, and therefore there are no laws by which re- 
 formers can be punished : consequently, a lawless band of 
 unprincipled men determine to take the matter into their 
 hands, and act out in mobs, what they know are the princi- 
 ples of a large majority of those who are too high in church 
 and state to condescend to mingle with them, though they 
 secretly approve and rejoice over their violent measures. 
 The first martyr who ever died was stoned by a lawless 
 mob; and if we look at the rise of various sects methodists, 
 Friends, &c., we shall find that mobs began the persecu- 
 tion against them, and that it was not until after the people 
 had thus spoken out their wishes, that laws were framed to 
 fine, imprison, or destroy them. Let us, then, be prepared 
 for the enactment of laws even in our free States against 
 abolitionists. And how ardently has the prayer been 
 breathed, that God would prepare us for all he is preparing 
 for us ! 
 
 " My mind has been especially turned towards those who 
 are standing in the forefront of the battle ; and the prayer 
 has gone up for their preservation not the preservation of 
 their lives, but the preservation of their minds in humility 
 and patience, faith, hope, and charity that charity which is 
 the bond of perfectness. If persecution is the means which 
 God has ordained for the accomplishment of this great end, 
 Emancipation, then, in dependence upon him for strength 
 to bear it, 1 feel as if I should say, let it come ; for it is my 
 deep, solemn, deliberate conviction, that this is a cause 
 worth dying for. 
 
 " At one time I thought this system would be overthrown 
 in blood, with the confused noise of the warrior ; but a hope 
 gleams across my mind that our blood will be spilt, instead 
 of the slaveholders' ; our lives will be taken, and theirs 
 spared : I say a hope, for of all things I desire to be spared 
 the anguish of seeing our beloved country desolated with 
 the horrors of a servile war. A. E. GRIMKE." 
 
38 ANGELINA E. GRIMKE. 
 
 In answer to an overwhelming pressure of invita- 
 tions, these ladies have lectured in upwards of sixty 
 towns of the United States to overflowing audiences. 
 Boston itself has listened to them with reverence. 
 Some of the consequences of their exertions will be 
 noticed as we proceed : meantime we must give our 
 author's report of this novelty in the method of pro- 
 ceeding : 
 
 " The idea of a woman's teaching was a startling novelty, 
 even to abolitionists; km their principled and, habitual rev- 
 erence for the freedom of individual action induced them to 
 a course unusual among men to examine before they con- 
 demned. Only a short examination was needed to convince 
 thenj that the main constituents in the relation of teacher and 
 taught are ignorance on one side and knowledge on the other. 
 They had been too long accustomed to hear the Bible quoted 
 in defence of slavery, to be astonished that its authority should 
 be claimed for the subjugation of woman the moment she 
 should act for the enslaved. The example and teaching of 
 the Grimkes wrought conviction as to the rights and conse- 
 quent duties of women in the minds of multitudes. Preju- 
 dices and ridiculous associations of ideas vanished. False 
 interpretations of scripture disappeared. Probably our chil- 
 dren's children, our sons no less than our daughters, will 
 dwell on the memory of these women, as the descendants of 
 the bondman of to-day will cherish the name of Garrison." 
 Right and Wrong, vol. iii. p. 61. 
 
 Angelina E. Grimke was married, last spring, to 
 Theodore D. Weld, a man worthy of her, and one 
 of the bravest of the abolition confessors. There 
 were some remarkable circumstances attending the 
 wedding. It took place at Philadelphia, and, the laws 
 of Pennsylvania constituting any marriage legal which 
 (the parties being of age,) is contracted in the 
 presence of twelve persons, was attended neither 
 by clergyman nor magistrate. Mr Weld, in prom- 
 ising to be just and affectionate to his wife, and to 
 protect and cherish her, expressly abjured all use 
 of the power which an unjust law put into his hands 
 over her property, her person, and her will. Angeli- 
 
MR M'DUFFIE. 39 
 
 na having promised to devote herself to her husband's 
 happiness, they proceeded to hallow their agreement by 
 prayer from the lips of two of the party. Among 
 those assembled, besides the near connections of the 
 bride and bridegroom, there was Garrison who took 
 charge of the certifying part of the business, and two 
 persons of color, friends of the Grimkes, and who 
 had been their slaves. 
 
 A gentleman of the class from which the Grimkes 
 have emerged, Mr M'Duffie, Governor of South 
 Carplina, wrote a remarkable message to the legisla- 
 ture of his State the same year, 1835. He declared 
 therein that freedom can be .preserved only in socie- 
 ties where work is disreputable, or where there is a 
 hereditary aristocracy, or a military despotism, and 
 that he preferred the first, as being the most republi- 
 can. He further declared 
 
 " No human institution, in my opinion, is more manifestly 
 ronsi?Ti'i" with the will of God than domestic slavery ; and 
 ; o one ul' !;is ordinances is written in more legible characters 
 than that \vhich consigns the African race to this condition, 
 as more conducive to their own happiness than any other of 
 of which they are suseentjhle." .... " Domestic nla- 
 very, therefore, instead of being a political evil, is the corner- 
 stone of our republican edifice. No patriot who justly esti- 
 mates our privileges will tolerate the idea of emancipation, 
 at any period, however remote, or on any conditions of pecu- 
 niary advantage, however favorable. I would as soon think 
 of opening a negotiation for selling the liberty of the State 
 at once, as of making any stipulations for the ultimate eman- 
 cipation of our slaves. So deep is my conviction on this 
 subject, that if I were doomed to die immediately after re- 
 cording these sentiments, I would say, in all sincerity, and 
 under all the sanctions of Christianity and patriotism, * God 
 forbid that my descendants, in the remotest generations, 
 should live in any other than a community having the insti- 
 tution of domestic slavery, as it existed among the patriarchs 
 of the primitive Church, and in all the states of antiquity !' 
 Governor M'Duffie's Message, 18.S5. 
 
 When this message, endorsed by a committee of the 
 
40 RESCUE OF A SLAVE. 
 
 South Carolina Legislature, with General Hamilton 
 for its chairman, arrived in New England, Dr Chan- 
 ning observed in conversation that, but for the obliga- 
 tion to preserve peace and good humor, he should 
 have liked to ask the yeomanry of his State (that 
 body of whom Washington exclaimed in a paroxysm 
 of admiration and gratitude, tc God bless the yeoman- 
 ry of Massachusetts ! ") what they thought of the 
 doctrine that freedom can be preserved only where 
 the efficient classes of society are slaves, where work 
 is disreputable, and where slavery is cherished as u the 
 corner-stone of the republican edifice/' 
 
 The other events which attracted the most attention 
 during this year were two. The first was a desperate 
 and cruel massacre of upwards of twenty persons 
 on the gibbet at Vicksburg on the Mississippi, on a 
 vague and unfounded suspicion of an intended rising 
 among the slaves. The other remarkable event was 
 the u disinterring of the law of Massachusetts," in 
 defence of two women who had been kidnapped, in 
 order to be carried into southern slavery. 
 
 A ong was oustuv^u iu iv^^L ~^ ^f ilic Boston 
 wharfs, and put off again suddenly, in consequence of 
 a few words being spoken to the captain by some one 
 on shore. This awakened curiosity, and some men 
 of color rowed round the brig in a boat, but were 
 warned off not, however, before they had seen that 
 two women were making signals of distress from the 
 cabin window. The ever-vigilant abolitionists obtain- 
 ed a writ of habeas corpus, and got these women out 
 of the custody of the captain, and safely provided for 
 in jail. The ladies were aware of the difficulty of 
 rescuing kidnapped persons, as in case of acquittal on 
 charge of being a slave, the claimant is commonly able 
 to lay hands on his victim again instantly on some 
 charge of theft. They therefore resolved to be at 
 the Court-house during the trial of the claim now 
 
RESCUE OF A SLAVE. 41 
 
 tinder notice, that they might not only comfort the 
 poor women by their presence, but aid their instant 
 escape in case of their discharge being pronounced. 
 Unusual as was the spectacle of the presence of ladies 
 in the Court-house (except in cases of murder, or 
 others of like " thrilling interest,") five of the La- 
 dies' Society appeared in Court at nine in the morning, 
 and surrounded the prisoners. The claimant endeav- 
 ored to set up a clause of the Constitution against the 
 Massachusetts Bill of Rights ; but the bill of Rights 
 carried the day, on the plea of an abolitionist lawyer, 
 Mr Sewall ; and Judge Shaw arrived, amidst the dead 
 silence of the Court, at his closing clause, tc whence 
 it appears that the prisoners must be discharged. " At 
 the word every one rose the counsel on both sides, 
 the men of color who thronged the Court, and the 
 women who surrounded the prisoners. The claimant 
 darted forth his arm ; but a lane had been made, and 
 the poor women were gone. The next minute the 
 place was empty. One of the women, fainted in 
 the lobby, but her safety was cared for. 
 
 Among the attendant ladies was a Quaker, "im- 
 pressed with a sense of the duty of rebuke." She 
 observed to the claimant 
 
 "Lidy. Thy prey hath escaped thee. 
 
 "Claimant. Madam, you are very rude to a stranger. 
 
 "Lady. What, then, art thou, who cornest here to kidnap 
 women ? 
 
 "Claimant. I am a member of the Methodist Church, and 
 presume 1 give much more to the Colonization Society 
 than all of you together. 
 
 "Lady. Why art thou here, then, hunting for those who 
 have colonized themselves? I despise thy conduct and thy 
 Colonization Society alike." 
 
 In Massachusetts alone there was an accession of 
 twenty societies during this year. The report says 
 
 " Five of them are of females. Our opposers affect to 
 
 4* 
 
42 MOBS. 
 
 sneer at their co-operation ; but we welcome, and are grate- 
 ful for it. The influence of woman never was, never will be, 
 insignificant : it is dreaded by those who would be thought 
 to contemn it. Men have always been eager to secure their 
 co-operation. We hail it as most auspicious of our success 
 that so many faithful and zealous women have espoused the 
 anti-slavery cause in this republic. Events of the past year 
 have proved that those who have associated themselves with 
 us will be helpmates indeed ; for they are animated by a spirit 
 that can brave danger, endure hardship, and face a frowning 
 world. 
 
 It is impossible, in a sketch like the present, to enu- 
 merate the acts of violence, or to describe the mobs 
 with which the abolitionists have had to contend. At 
 Canaan, in New Hampshire, there was an academy, 
 to which some benevolent persons had procured ad- 
 mission for about twelve young men of color. All 
 seemed to be going on well, when a town meeting was 
 called, and it was resolved to put a stop to the instruc- 
 tion of people of color. Three hundred citizens as- 
 sembled one morning, provided with ropes and rollers, 
 and fairly rolled away the Noyes Academy over the 
 boundary of the State. At Cincinnati the gentry dis- 
 graced themselves by a persecution of Mr. Birney, 
 which caused the destruction of his office, press, and 
 types, but which terminated in the triumph of his mor- 
 al power over their brute force. At St Louis, in 
 Missouri, a mulatto, named M'Intosh, was burned 
 alive under circumstances of deep atrocity ; and be- 
 cause he was heard to pray as his limbs were slowly 
 consuming, he was pronounced by the magistrates to 
 be in league with the abolitionists. The gentlemen of 
 Charleston broke open the post-office, and burned the 
 mails in the street, on the charge of their containing 
 anti-slavery papers. Such were a few of the events 
 of the year 1836. 
 
 The Governors of some of the Southern States de- 
 manded of the Governor and Legislature of Massa- 
 
MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE. 43 
 
 chusetts the enactment of penal laws against the abo- 
 litionists, or that they should be given up to southern 
 justice. The Massachusetts abolitionists, as is well 
 known, requested to be heard against the passing of 
 such laws ; were favored with an apparent audience 
 before a committee of the Legislature ; were insulted 
 by the committee, broke off the conference, and de- 
 manded a full hearing as a matter of right ; establish- 
 ed all their positions, and justified themselves with the 
 best part of the community, so that the demands of 
 the south were thrown under the table, and a Legisla- 
 ture was returned, after the next election, whose first 
 act was to pass a set of resolutions strongly denounc- 
 ing slavery, and asserting liberty of speech and the 
 press. The particulars of this triumph are well 
 known ; how the mild and brave Dr Follen fought his 
 ground, inch by inch, in the midst of insult and cap- 
 tious opposition, till every heart and every voice was 
 w T ith him : how the accomplished lawyer, Ellis Gray 
 Loring, commanded the respect of the commute by 
 his readiness, and the power of his moderation : how 
 Mr May tamed his foes (for the committee took no 
 pains to conceal that they were foes) into a gentleness 
 almost equal to his own : and how the brutality of the 
 chairman of the first committee, Mr Lunt, was so atro- 
 cious that he was politically defunct from that day. A 
 slight circumstance or two may illustrate the state and 
 temper of the times. While the committee were, 
 with ostentatious negligence, keeping the abolitionists 
 waiting, the Senate Chamber presented an interesting 
 spectacle. The contemptuous committee, dawdling 
 about some immaterial business, were lolling over a 
 table, one twirling a pen, another squirting tobacco- 
 juice, and a third giggling. The abolitionists, to whom 
 this business was a prelude to life or death, were earn- 
 estly consulting in groups at the further end of the 
 chamber Garrison and another, standing head to head ; 
 
44 MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE. 
 
 somewhat nearer, Dr Follen, looking German all over, 
 and a deeper earnestness than usual overspreading his 
 serene and meditative countenance ; and, in consulta- 
 tion with him, Mr Loring, looking only too frail in 
 form, but with a face radiant with inward light. There 
 was May, and Goodell, and Sewall, and several more, 
 and many an anxious wife, or sister, or friend, looking 
 down from the gallery. During the suspense the door 
 opened, and Dr Charming entered one of the last 
 people that could on that wintry afternoon have been 
 expected. He stood lor a few moments, muffled in 
 cloak and shawl-handkerchief, and then walked the 
 whole length of the room, and was immediately seen 
 shaking hands with Garrison.* A murmur ran through 
 the gallery, and a smile went round the chamber. Mrs 
 Chapman whispered to her next neighbor, " Right- 
 eousness and peace have kissed each other." Garri- 
 son, the dauntless Garrison, turned pale as ashes, and 
 sank down on a seat. Dr Channing had censured the 
 abolitionists in his pamphlet on slavery, Garrison had 
 in the ' Liberator,' rejected the censure ; and here 
 they were shaking; hands in the Senate Chamber. It 
 was presently found that a pressure of numbers com- 
 pelled an adjournment to the larger House of Repre- 
 sentatives. There Dr Channing sat behind the speak- 
 ers, handing them notes, and most obviously affording 
 them his countenance, so as to be from that day con- 
 sidered by the world as an accession to their princi- 
 ples, though not to their organized body. Another 
 circumstance worthy of note is that a somewhat so- 
 phisticated well-wisher to the cause suggested that at 
 the second meeting the gentlemen of the party alone 
 should speak such as Follen, Loring, and Sewall ; 
 and that the more homely and more openly reviled 
 members, Garrison and Goodell and others, should 
 
 * He afterwards explained that he was not at the moment cer- 
 tain that it was Mr Garrison, but that lie was not the less happy 
 to have shaken hands with him. 
 
MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE. 45 
 
 keep in the back ground. This was mentioned to 
 Mrs. Chapman. Her righteous spirit rejected the 
 counsel at once, on the ground of its falseness of prin- 
 ciple. "Besides," said she, u we owe it to Garri- 
 son to protect him ; and his only protection is being 
 placed in the midst of the gentlemen, where his foes 
 dare not touch him. If we do not vigilantly keep 
 him there." she continued, with swimming eyes and 
 quivering lips, u he will be murdered next riot-sea- 
 son he will be torn to pieces next autumn." As it 
 turned out, it was the eloquence of Garrison and Good- 
 ell that carried the day, and the inexperienced ad- 
 viser owned himself mistaken. Such are the small 
 facts which indicate the temper of the times. 
 
 The day was now passed when the insignificance of 
 the abolition movement could be a subject for taunts. 
 The tone of contempt had been kept up till the last 
 possible moment ; but that moment was gone by. A 
 few legislatures had declared themselves like that of 
 Massachusetts ; the Governor of Pennsylvania (" ho- 
 nest Joe Ritner," the wagoner's boy,) had publicly 
 reprobated the disposition of Northern Members of 
 Congress " to uuv to uie dark spirit of slavery ;" all 
 the candidates for state offices in Vermont, both of 
 the federal and democratic party were abolitionists ; 
 and it might be said, as a general fact, that in New 
 England the yeomanry were the abolitionists, while the 
 large commercial and manufacturing towns were as 
 strenuous in their opposition as ever. The number of 
 societies, though multiplying from day to day, had 
 ceased to become an indication of abolitionists in the 
 community. There were now thousands, more or 
 less animated by the cause, who, for various reasons 
 (some of which reasons were very good), did not join 
 societies. Dr Channing entertains strong objections 
 to associations for moral objects. Certain State legis- 
 latures found they could effect more in the Chamber 
 
46 THE GAG BILL. 
 
 for being unpledged, and being known to speak from 
 independent conviction. Many women, and Mrs Fol- 
 len at the head of such, held themselves ready to join 
 at any moment, but felt that more aid might be given 
 to the cause by fighting the baitles of the abolitionists 
 out of the circle of partizanship than within it. Such 
 have been among the most powerful defenders of the 
 right for the last few years, while an inferior order of 
 persons has been crowding into the abolition ranks. 
 With the good of an accession of numbers must come 
 the evil of a deterioration of quality ; and it is best 
 that there should be a distribution of the noblest ori- 
 ginal spirits, some continuing to lead societies, and 
 others maintaining an independent position. But, un- 
 der this arrangement, the multiplication of societies 
 ceases to be a test of the increase of numbers. 
 
 The President had now taken the matter in hand. 
 General Jackson, the people's man, who talked of li- 
 berty daily, with energetic oaths and flourishes of the 
 hand, inquired of Congress whether they could not 
 pass a law prohibiting, under severe penalties, the 
 transmission through the mails of anti-slavery publica- 
 tions, or, as he worded it, of publications "intended 
 to excite the slaves to insurrection." Mr Calhoun, 
 the great bulwark of slavery, declared in Congress that 
 such a measure would be unconstitutional ; but that a 
 bill which he had prepared would answer the purpose. 
 This was the celebrated Gag Bill. We insert it as 
 amended for the third reading, as we could not expect 
 of our readers that they should credit our report of its 
 contents ! Here stands the Bill which in 1836 was 
 read a third time in the Senate of a Republican Con- 
 gress 
 
 " A BILL 
 
 "For prohibiting deputy postmasters from receiving- or 
 transmitting through the mail to any State, Territory,. 
 
THE GAG BILL. 47 
 
 or District, certain papers therein mentioned, the cir- 
 culation of which, by the laws of said State, Territory, 
 or District, may be prohibited, and for other purposes. 
 " Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- 
 tives of the United States of America in Congress assem- 
 bled, That it shall not be lawful for any deputy postmaster 
 in any State, Territory or District of the United States, 
 knowingly to deliver to any person whatsoever, any pam- 
 phlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper or pic- 
 torial representation touching the subject of slavery, 
 where, by the laws of the said State, Territory, or Dis- 
 trict, their circulation is prohibited ; and any deputy post- 
 master who shall be guilty thereof, shall be forthwith 
 removed from office. 
 
 " SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That nothing in 
 the acts of Congress to establish and regulate the Post 
 Office Department shall be construed to protect any de- 
 puty postmaster, mail-carrier, or other officer or agent of 
 said Department, who shall knowingly circulate, in any 
 State, Territory, or District, as aforesaid, any such pam- 
 phlet, newspaper, handbill, or other printed paper or pic- 
 torial representation, forbidden by the laws of such State, 
 Territory, or District. 
 
 " SEC. 3. And be it further enacted by the authority 
 aforesaid, That the deputy postmasters of the offices 
 where the pamphlets, newspapers, handbills, or other 
 printed papers or pictorial representations aforesaid, may 
 arrive for delivery, shall, under the instructions of the 
 Postmaster General, from time to time give notice of the 
 same, so that they may be withdrawn by the person who 
 deposited them originally to be mailed, and if the same 
 shall not be withdrawn in one month thereafter, shall be 
 burnt or otherwise destroyed." 
 
 Mr Van Bnren, now President of the United 
 States, was then Vice President and held the casting 
 vote in the Senate. Every one knows his terror of 
 committing himself. What must have been his 
 feelings when his casting vote was called for as to 
 the Ihird reading of this bill? He was standing 
 
TEXAS. 
 
 behind a pillar, talking, when the votes were de- 
 clared to be eighteen to eighteen. " Where's the 
 Vice President?" shouted Mr Calhoun's mighty 
 voice. Mr Van Buren carne forward, and voted 
 for the third reading. -" The Northern States are 
 sold !" groaned the New England senators with 
 one voice. By their strenuous efforts the bill was 
 thrown out on the third reading. If it had passed 
 it wjuld have remained to be seen, as the abolition- 
 ists remarked, c ' whether seven millions of freemen 
 should become slaves, or two and a half millions of 
 slaves should become free ?" 
 
 For men and women engaged in a moral enter- 
 prise so stupendous as that under notice, there is 
 no rest. It is well for them that the perspec ive of 
 their toils is shrouded from them when they set 
 forth : for there is perhaps no human soul that 
 could sustain the whole certainty. Not a day's re- 
 pose can these people snatch. If they were to close 
 their eyes upon their mission for even the shortest 
 interval, they would find that new dangers had 
 gathered, and that their work was in arrear. To- 
 wards the end of 1836 the abolitionists felt their 
 prospects were darker than ever. The annexation 
 of Texas to the Union seemed an evil scarcely pos- 
 sible to be averted : and, if it were not averted, their 
 enterprise was thrown back centuries. Instead of 
 sinking in despair at seeing the success of their foes 
 in flattery, not only the worldly interests of the 
 sordid and ambitious part of society, but the best 
 feelings of the superficial and thoughtless, they 
 made a tremendous effort. Mr Child began with 
 an admirable exposure of the Texas scheme in the 
 ' Anti-Slavery Quarterly Magazine,' andDr Chan- 
 ning finished the business (for the present) by his 
 noble tract. As for the rest they sounded a tocsin 
 of alarm that aroused the land to a sense of its dan- 
 ger ; they sent their appeals, warnings, arid remon- 
 
TEXAS. 49 
 
 strances into every part of the republic ; they held 
 meetings by day and by night, with reference sole- 
 ly to this momentous question ; they covered the 
 entire surface of the nation with tracts, circulars, 
 arid papers, revealing the design of the southern 
 planters ; in short, they put into motion all that has 
 been done for the perpetual exclusion of Texas from 
 the American confederacy. At the extra session of 
 Congress in September, through their instrumental- 
 ity, in the course of a few weeks, many thousand 
 petitions, signed by hundreds of thousands of men 
 and women, were received by that body, remonstra- 
 ting against the annexation in strong and emphatic 
 language. Never before had the people made such a 
 demonstration of their will in the form of petition." 
 It was a no"ble spectacle the bulk of a nation pro- 
 testing against an acquisition of territory, on the 
 ground of its being wrong. 
 
 In August of this year it became known to the 
 abolitionists in Boston that a child was in the city, 
 brought as a slave from New Orleans, and to be 
 carried back thither as a slave. They determined 
 to attempt, the rescue of this child by law. If they 
 failed, she was only as she was before if they 
 succeeded, the case would be a parallel one with 
 that of Sommersett in England, under Lord Mans- 
 field's famous decision. The laws of Massachu- 
 setts were appealed to, as had been proposed, with- 
 out good result, in similar cases before. This time 
 the case was in the hands of sound lawyers, and 
 tried before a courageous judge, Chief Justice Shaw. 
 The child was declared free ; and her happy fate 
 decides that of all slaves (except fugitives) who 
 shall henceforth touch the soil of Massachusetts. 
 The newspapers opened out in full cry against her 
 protectors, for having separated her from her moth- 
 er. They overlooked the fact that parental claims 
 merge in those of the master ; that a slave child is 
 5 
 
50 ELLIS GRAY LORING. 
 
 not pretended to belong to its parents ; and that if 
 the owner of this particular child views the relation 
 in the right light, he has nothing to do but to eman- 
 cipate the mother. The newspapers, however, de- 
 clared of the counsel and others concerned, " they 
 can never fully expiate their crimes, until offences 
 such as theirs are punished by imprisonment at hard 
 labor for life." Mr Ellis Gray Loring, by whom the 
 cause was gained, is one of the last people in the 
 world on whom the charge of fanaticism could be 
 fixed. He is a lover of ease of intellectual refin- 
 ed ease but still of ease. He is in frail health, 
 and his temper is somewhat indolent, and very do- 
 mestic and retiring ; his intellect is contemplative, 
 and his tastes somewhat unsocial. It must be 
 something very unlike fanaticism that can bring 
 such a man out of his retirement into the storm 
 which has for some years been pelting around him, 
 and from which he might have shrouded himself, 
 if any man might. But he was one of the very earli- 
 est of the abolitionists ; and he has poured out his 
 money and husbanded his intellect and his heart for 
 the cause, as if he had been the opposite of an invalid 
 and a speculative philosopher. He has his appro- 
 priate office, like the rest. He is the balance wheel 
 of the abolition movement in the society in which 
 he lives. One of his most effective speeches was 
 one in which he gave his reasons, as a cautious 
 and moderate man, for joining the abolitionists. 
 An eminent lady in Boston was heard to account 
 to some strangers for the conduct of the abolition- 
 ists, by saying, that they liked to be persecuted. 
 This could never be said of Mr Loring, in such an 
 opposite direction do his tastes lie, (as his and eve- 
 ry one's ought), and it it is equally inconceivable 
 of this kind of man, that he should be flinging his 
 sacrifices into the lap of Providence as the heavy 
 purchase-money of spiritual safety and luxury in a 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 51 
 
 future life a species of calculation only one degree 
 hss sordid than that of the selfish, who siezewhat 
 indulgences lie close round about them. Such sup- 
 positions fail in the case of a man like Ellis Gray 
 Loring ; and none will serve but that of the irre- 
 sistibleness of truth to a pure and high toned mind. 
 The decision of Judge Shaw in the case of this 
 slave-child was presently followed in Connecticut ; 
 and, within a very short time, the abolitionists ob- 
 tained right of jury trial for persons arrested as fu- 
 gitive slaves in the states of Massachusetts, New 
 Jersey and Vermont. 
 
 At the beginning of the remarkable year 1837, 
 great confusion was excited in Congress by Mr 
 Adams's management of a low jest aimed at him 
 by the Southern members. A petition was sent to 
 him signed by nine slaves, requesting of the House 
 of Representatives to expel him, on the ground of 
 the countenance he afforded to the petitions of per- 
 sons who would put an end to the blessed institu- 
 tion of t-'i.ivery. Mr Adams presented this docu- 
 ment as if it was a bona fide petition. The uproar 
 in the House was tremendous ; but the attention of 
 the members was fairly fixed upon the right of pe- 
 tition as held by slaves, and the venerable ex-Pres- 
 ident has since been acting a more heroic part than 
 any of his predecessors on that floor have ever been 
 called to go through. The name of John Quincy 
 Adams will stand out bright from the page of 
 American history for ever, as the vindicator of the 
 right of petition in the perilous times of the repub- 
 lic. We pass over, as well known, the conflict on 
 Mr Pinckney's resolutions, the speeches of the 
 Southern members, (after their late complacent as- 
 surances that the subject of slavery would never 
 he breathed in Congress) and the new President's 
 somewhat fool-hardy declaration against any relax- 
 ation of the present state of things in regard to sla- 
 
52 CONVENTION OF WOMEN. 
 
 very, in his inaugural address, on the 4th of March. 
 Our space is only too narrow for the two other 
 great events of the year, which are less widely un- 
 derstood. 
 
 During the second week of May was held the 
 first General Convention of Women that was ever 
 assembled. Modest as were its pretensions, and 
 quietly as it was conducted, it will stand as a great 
 event in history from the nature of the fact itself, 
 and probably from the importance of its consequen- 
 ces. "This," says the Report, reasonably enough, 
 " was the beginning of an examination of the claims 
 and character of their clergy, which will end only 
 with a reformation, hardly less startling or less 
 needed than that of Luther." 
 
 The Convention met at New York, and consist- 
 ed of one hundred and seventyfotir delegates, from 
 all parts of the Union. Lucretia Mott, an eminent 
 Quaker preacher of Philadelphia a woman of an 
 intellect as sound and comprehensive as her heart 
 is noble presided. The (joiivbulicu sat for three 
 successive days ; and, by means of wise prepara- 
 tion, and the appointment of sub-committees, trans- 
 acted a great deal of business. Some fine address- 
 es, to different classes interested in the question, 
 were prepared by the sub-committees, and a plan 
 of political action and other operations fixed on for 
 the year. One resolution was passed to the effect 
 that it was immoral to separate persons of color 
 from the rest of society, and especially in churches; 
 and that the members of the Convention pledged 
 themselves to procure for the colored people, if pos- 
 sible, an equal choice with themselves of sittings 
 in churches ; and, where this was not possible, to 
 take their seats with the despised class. Another 
 resolution was to this effect, " that whereas our 
 fathers, husbands, and brothers have devoted them- 
 selves to the rescue of the enslaved, at the risk of 
 
ORTHODOX CLERGY. 53 
 
 ease, reputation, and life, we^ their daughters, 
 wives, and sisters, honoring their conduct, hereby 
 pledge ourselves to uphold them by our sympathy, 
 to share their sacrifices, and vindicate their char- 
 acters." After having discharged their function, 
 and gained some strength of heart and enlighten- 
 ment of mind by their agreement in feeling and 
 differences of opinion, these women went home, to 
 meet again the next year at Philadelphia. 
 
 On the 27th of June the orthodox clergy took up 
 their position against the abolitionists. The occa- 
 sion was the General Association of Massachusetts 
 Clergymen. They had long shown themselves to 
 be uneasy at the improvements in certain of their 
 flocks in self-reliance; and their anger and fear 
 blazed out at the meeting of this association. Their 
 causes of complaint were two fold : that there was 
 a decay of deference to the pastoral office, and that 
 an alteration was taking place in the female char- 
 acter. On the first point they alleged that discus- 
 sion of moral questions was promoted among their 
 people independently of the pastors, and that " top- 
 ics of reform were presented within the parochial 
 limits of settled pastors without their consent. If 
 there are certain topics upon which the pastor does 
 not preach with the frequency, or in the manner 
 which would please his people, it is a violation of 
 sacred and important rights to encourage a stran- 
 ger to present them. Deference and subordination 
 are essential to the happiness of society, and pecu- 
 liarly so in the relation of a people to their pastor." 
 The complaint regarding the women of the age 
 urged that female influence should be employed in 
 bringing minds to the pastor for instruction, instead 
 of presuming to give it through any other medium. 
 The movement begun by these Resolutions, worthy 
 of the dark ages, was kept up by a set of sermons, 
 in which this magnanimous clergy came out to war 
 
54 DR FOLLEN. 
 
 against women the Misses Grimke in particular. 
 It is wonderful how many of these sermons ended 
 with a simile about a vine, a trellis and an elm. 
 
 It does not appear that the parties most interest- 
 ed would have thought of mixing up the question 
 of the Rights of Woman with that of the Rights of 
 Man in Slavery : but the clergy thus compelled the 
 agitation of it. The women themselves merely 
 looked into their own case, and went on doing what 
 they found to be their duty. But men had more 
 to do regarding it ; more to learn upon it ; and the 
 result of the examination to which they have been 
 driven is, that many newspapers,* and a large pro- 
 portion of the Anti- Slavery body, have come out 
 boldly and without reservation for the political 
 rights of women : the venerable Adams has perti- 
 naciously vindicated their right of petition on the 
 floor of Congress, and the clergy are completely 
 foiled. Long before all this took place, there was 
 a clergyman who advocated the agency of woman 
 in social questions, in words which are worthy of 
 preservation. At a public meeting in 1835, Dr 
 Follen spoke as follows. He is not, like his cleri- 
 cal brethren, of the same mind with Rabbi Eliezurj 
 who said, " Perish the Book of the Law rather than 
 it should be expounded by a woman !" 
 
 " And now, Mr President, I come to the last topic of my 
 resolution. I maintain that, with regard to the Anti-Slavery 
 cause, men and women have the same duties and the same 
 rights. The ground I take on this point is very plain, I wish 
 to spare you, I wish to spare myself the worthless and disgust- 
 ing task of replying, in detail, to all the coarse attacks and 
 flattering sophisms, by which men have endeavored to entice 
 or to drive women from this, and from many other spheres 
 
 * The prospectus of the 'Liberator,' January 1838, has the following 
 paragraph: "As our object is Universal Emancipation to redeem 
 woman as well as man from a servile to an equal condition we shall 
 go for the Rights of Woman to their fullest extent." 
 
 " W. L. GARRISON, Editor. 
 " I. KNAPP, Publisher. 
 
55 
 
 of moral action. Go home and spin F is the well-meaning 
 advice of the domestic tyrant of the old school. ' Conquer by 
 personal charms and fashionable attractions !' is the brilliant 
 career marked out for her by the idols and the idolaters of 
 fashion. ' Never step out of the bounds of decorum and the 
 customary ways of doing good,' is the sage advice of mater- 
 nal caution. * Rule by obedience, and by submission sway I' 
 is the saying of the moralist poet, sanctioning female servi- 
 tude, and pointing out a resort and compensation in female 
 cunning. What with the fear of the insolent remarks about 
 women, in which those of the dominant sex, whose bravery 
 is the generous offspring of conscious impunity, are particu- 
 larly apt to indulge ; and with the still stronger fear of being 
 thought unfeminine it is, indeed, a proof of uncommon 
 moral courage, or of an overpowering sense of religious duty 
 and sympathy with the oppressed, that a woman is induced 
 to embrace the unpopular, unfashionable, obnoxious princi- 
 ples of the abolitionists. Popular opinion, the habits of soci- 
 ety, are all calculated to lead women to consider the place, the 
 privileges and the duties which etiquette has assigned to them, 
 as their peculiar portion, as more important than those which 
 nature has given them in common with men. Men have at 
 all times been inclined to allow to women peculiar privileges, 
 while withholding from them essential rights. In the pro- 
 gress of civilization and Christianity, one right after another 
 has been conceded, one occupation after another has been 
 placed within the reach of women. Still are we far from a 
 practical acknowledgment of the simple truth, that the ration- 
 al and moral nature of man is the foundation of all rights and 
 duties, and that women as well as men are rational and moral 
 beings. It is on this account that I look upon the formation 
 of Ladies' Anti-Slavery Societies as an event of the highest 
 interest, not only for its direct beneficial bearing on the cause 
 of emancipation, but still more as an indication of the moral 
 growth of society. Women begin to feel that the place which 
 men have marked out for them, is but a small part of what 
 society owes to them, and what they themselves owe to soci- 
 ety, to the whole human family, and to that Power to whom 
 each and all are indebted and accountable, for the use of the 
 powers entrusted to them. It is indeed, a consoling thought, 
 that such is the providential adaptation of all things, that the 
 toil and the sufferings of the slave, however unprofitable to 
 himself, and however hopeless, are not wholly thrown away 
 and vain that the master who has deprived him of the fruits 
 of his industry, of every motive and opportunity for exercis- 
 ing his highest faculties, has not been able to prevent his ex- 
 
56 
 
 ercising, unconsciously, a moral and spiritual influence all 
 over the world, breaking down every unnatural restraint, and 
 calling forth the simplest and deepest of all human emotions 7 
 the feeling of man for his fellow man, and bringing out the 
 strongest intellectual and moral powers to his rescue. It is, 
 indeed, natural that the ery of misery, the call for help, that 
 is now spreading far and wide, and penetrating the inmost re- 
 cesses of society, should thrill, with peculiar power, through 
 the heart of woman. For it is woman, injured, insulted wo- 
 man, that exhibits the most baneful and hateful influences of 
 slavery. But I cannot speak of what the free woman ought 
 and must feel for her enslaved sister because I am over- 
 whelmed by the thought of what we men, we y who have moth- 
 ers, and wives, and daughters, should not only feel, but do, 
 and dare, and sacrifice, to drain the marshes whose exhala- 
 tions infect the moral atmosphere of society." 
 
 As no degree of violence directed to break up the 
 meetings of the Ladies' Society, was too strong for 
 the consciences of certain of the gentlemen of Bos- 
 ton, so no device was clearly too low for their pur- 
 pose of hindering utterance. When they found 
 they could not stop the women's tongues by vio- 
 lence they privily sprinkled cayenne-pepper on the 
 stove of their place of meeting, thus compelling 
 them to cough down their own speakers. 
 
 The next attempt of such of the orthodox clergy 
 as had professed abolitionism, was to break up the 
 Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, in which more 
 freedom of thought was allowed than they consid- 
 ered suitable to the dignity of their body. They 
 declared the society to be composed of materials so 
 heretical and anti-christian, that they proposed to 
 withdraw from it, and form a new association with 
 a uniform profession of faith. The attempt failed. 
 The laity of all denominations protested with abso- 
 lute unanimity against any new organization upon 
 sectarian grounds, and the harmony of the body at 
 large is more assured than ever. The clergy have 
 for the present succumbed. If they adduce any 
 further clerical claims, it is highly probable that the 
 stir will indeed, "end only with a reformation hard- 
 
ORTHODOX CLERGY. 57 
 
 ly less startling or less needed than that of Luther." 
 It is evident to those who remember the conference 
 between George Thompson and Mr Breckinridge at 
 Glasgow, that it would be unwise in the American 
 clergy to provoke an inquiry into the conduct of 
 their body during the great moral struggle of the 
 age. See the effect already : 
 
 " As there is no royal road to mathematics, so there is no cle- 
 rical road to abolition. The principles are too pure to admit 
 of caste, even though it were the high Braminical. A gene- 
 ral may not file the abolitionists to the right and left, and 
 enter at literal beat of drum ; nor may a clergyman claim to 
 be speaker, as in a church meeting, by virtue of his office; 
 nor may a woman plead her sex's pernicious privileges, or 
 pretended disabilities. Women of New England ! We are 
 told of our powerful indirect influence ; our claim on man's 
 gallantry and chivalry. We would not free all the slaves in 
 Christendom by indirection such indirection. We trust to 
 be strengthened for any sacrifices in their cause ; but we may 
 not endanger our own souls for their redemption. Let our 
 influence be open and direct : such as our husbands and 
 brethren will not blush to see us exercise." When clergy- 
 men plead usage and immemorial custom in favor of unutter- 
 able wrong, and bid us keep silence for courtesy, and },ul the 
 enginery of church organization in play as a hindrance to our 
 cause, and not as a help, our situation calls for far more stren- 
 uous exertion than when, in 1835, the freedom of the wo- 
 men of Boston was vilely bartered away in the merchant- 
 thronged street. Our situation is as much more perilous 
 now, as spiritual is more dreadful than temporal outrage. 
 We have no means to strengthen and nourish our spirits but 
 by entertaining and obeying the free Spirit of God." " As 
 yet our judgment is unimpaired by hopes of the favor, and 
 our resolution undamped by the fear ot the host who oppose 
 us. As yet our hearts are not darkened by the shadow of 
 unkindness. We listen to clerical appeals, and religious ma- 
 gazines, and the voices of an associated clergy, as though we 
 heard them not, so full on the ear of every daughter among 
 us falls the cry of the fatherless and those who have none to 
 help them so full in every motherly heart and eye rises the 
 image of one pining in captivity, who cannot be comforted 
 because her children are not." Right and Wrong in Boston, 
 iii. pp. 73, 75, 86, 
 
58 ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 
 
 If the orthodox clergy are wise, they will let mat- 
 ters rest where they are.* 
 
 The other great event of the year concerned the 
 freedom of the press, and was as remarkable in its 
 consequences as it was interesting in itself. Never 
 was there a case of martyrdom more holy than that 
 which we are about to relate. Never was there more 
 complete evidence that a man in the prime of life, at- 
 tached to the world by the tenderest ties, and of a 
 calm, rational mind, was able long to sustain the ap- 
 prehension of violent death, and to meet it at last, 
 rather than yield up a principle which he knew to be 
 true. Fie could not give up truth for safety and life 
 no not even for wife and child. Elijah P. Love- 
 joy was a native of Maine, a graduate of Waterville 
 College. He settled at St. Louis, Missouri, and at- 
 tained a high reputation as editor of a newspaper 
 there. He became a clergyman, and at length an ab- 
 olitionist. After the burning of M'Intosh, at St. 
 Louis, he spoke out in his newspaper about the atroci- 
 ty of the deed, and exposed the iniquities of tho dis- 
 trict judge, and of the mob which overawed Marion 
 College and brought two of the students before a 
 Lynch Court. For this, his press and types were de- 
 stroyed, and he established himself on the opposite 
 side of the river, in the free State of Illinois. But 
 the town of Alton, in which he set up his press, was 
 as dangerous to him as if it had stood in a slave State. 
 It was the resort of slave-traders and river-traders, 
 
 * A resident of Boston was expressing to a European traveller one 
 day, in the year 1836, his regret that strangers should be present in the 
 country when its usual quiet and sobriety were disturbed. " I am 
 glad," observed ihe traveller, "to have been m the country in its martyr 
 age." "Martyr age ! martyr age !" cried a clergyman, remarkable for 
 the assiduity" of his parochial visiting. " What do you mean ? We 
 don't burn people in Smithfield here." "No ; " replied the stranger, 
 " because ' Boston refinement ' will not bear the roasting of the bodies 
 of men and women ; but you come as near to this pass as you dare. 
 You rack their consciences and wring their souls-" " Our martyr 
 age ! our martvr age t" the clergyman went on muttering to himself, ia 
 all the excitement of a new idea. 
 
ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 59 
 
 who believed their interests to depend on the preser- 
 vation of slavery. For some time after his settlement 
 at Alton, he did not think it necessary to enter into 
 express discussion of the slavery question. At length 
 he saw it to be his duty to do so : he called together 
 the supporters of the paper, and laid his views before 
 them. They consented to let his conscience have 
 free course : he did his duty, and his press was again 
 destroyed by a mob. Twice more was his property 
 annihilated in the same manner, without the slightest 
 alteration of conduct on his part. His paper contin- 
 ued to be the steady, dispassionate advocate of free- 
 dom and reprover of violence. In October 1837, he 
 wrote to a friend in New York, to unburden his full 
 head and heart. After having described the fury 
 and murderous spirit of his assailants, and the man- 
 ner in which for weeks his footsteps had been tracked 
 by assassins, he proceeded 
 
 " And now, my dear brother, if you ask what are 
 my own feelings at a time like this, I answer, perfect- 
 ly calm, perfectly resigned. Though in the midst of 
 danger, I have a constant sense of security that keeps 
 me alike from fear and anxiety. I read the Bible, 
 and especially the Psalms, with a delight, a refreshing 
 of soul I never knew before. God has said, ' As 
 thy day is, so shall thy strength be ;' and he has made 
 his promise good. Pray for me. We have a few 
 excellent brethren here, in Alton. They are sincere- 
 ly desirous to know their duty at this crisis, and to do 
 it : but as yet they cannot see that duty requires them 
 to maintain their cause here, at all hazards. Of this 
 be assured, the cause of truth still lives in Illinois, 
 and will not want defenders. Whether our paper 
 starts again will depend on our friends, East, West, 
 North, and South. So far as it depends on me, it 
 shall go forward. By the blessing of God, I will not 
 abandon the enterprise so long as I live, and until 
 
60 ELIJAH P. 1,OVEJOY. 
 
 success has crowned it. And there are those in Illi- 
 nois who join me in this resolution. And if I am to 
 die, it cannot be in a better cause. 
 
 Your's, till death or victory, 
 E. P. LOVEJOY." 
 
 Death and victory were now both at hand. Two 
 or three weeks after this letter was written, he was 
 called before a large meeting of the townsmen on a 
 singular affair. A committee of gentlemen was ap- 
 pointed to mediate between the editor of the ' Alton 
 Observer ' and the mob. They drew up a set of 
 11 Compromise Resolutions," so called, which yielded 
 everything to the mob, and required of Lovejoy to 
 leave the place. One member of the committee, Mr 
 Gilman, remonstrated : but he was overborne. Love- 
 joy was summoned, and required to leave the place. 
 He listened till the chairman had said what he had to 
 say, and then stepped forward to the bar. There, 
 with grisly Murder peeping over his shoulder, he bore 
 his last verbal testimony in the following unpremedi- 
 tated address, reported by a person present. 
 
 " I feel, Mr Chairman, that this is the most solemn 
 moment of my life. I feel, I trust, in some measure, 
 the responsibilities which at this hour I sustain to these 
 my fellow-citizens, to the church of which I am a 
 minister, to my country and to God. And let me beg 
 of you, before I proceed further, to construe nothing 
 I shall say as being disrespectful to this assembly ; I 
 have no such feeling ; far from it. And if I do not 
 act or speak according to their wishes at all times, it 
 is because I cannot conscientiously do it. It is pro- 
 per I should state the whole matter, as I understand 
 it, before this audience. I do not stand here to argue 
 the question as presented by the honorable gentle- 
 man,* the chairman of that committee, for whose 
 
 * Hon. Cyrus Edwards, Senator from Madison County, and Whig 
 Candidate for Governor. 
 
ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 61 
 
 character I entertain great respect, though I have not 
 the pleasure of his personal acquaintance : my only 
 wonder is how that gentleman could have brought 
 himself to submit such a Report. 
 
 " Mr Chairman, I do not admit that it is the busi- 
 ness of this assembly to decide whether I shall or shall 
 not publish a newspaper in this city. The gentlemen 
 have, as the lawyers say, made a wrong issue. I have 
 the right to do it. 1 know that I have the right to 
 speak and publish my sentiments, subject only to the 
 laws of the land for the abuse of that right. This 
 right was given me by my Maker, and is solemnly 
 guaranteed to me by the constitution of these United 
 States, and of this State. What I wish to know of 
 you is whether you will protect me in the exercise of 
 this right, or whether, as heretofore, I am to be sub- 
 jected to personal indignity and outrage. These res- 
 olutions, and the measures proposed by them, are 
 spoken of as a compromise ; a compromise between 
 two parties. Mr Chairman, this is not so ; there is 
 but one party here. It is simply a question whether 
 the law shall be enforced, or whether the mob shall 
 be allowed, as they now do, to continue to trample it 
 under their feet, by violating with impunity the rights 
 of an innocent individual. Mr Chairman, what have 
 I to compromise ? If freely to forgive those who 
 have so greatly injured me ; if to pray for their tem- 
 poral and eternal happiness ; if still to wish for the 
 prosperity of your city and State, notwithstanding all 
 the indignities I have suffered in it ; if this be the 
 compromise intended, then do I willingly make it. 
 My rights have been shamefully and wickedly outrag- 
 ed ; this I know and feel, and can never forget ; but 
 I can and do freely forgive those who have done it. 
 
 11 But if by a compromise is meant, that I should 
 cease doing that which duty requires of me, I cannot 
 make it. And the reason is, that I fear God more 
 6 
 
62 ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 
 
 than I fear man. Think not that I would lightly go 
 contrary to public sentiment around me. The good 
 opinion of my fellow men is dear to me, and I would 
 sacrifice any thing but principle to obtain their good 
 wishes , but when they ask me to surrender this, they 
 ask for more than I can than I dare give. Ref- 
 erence is made to the fact, that T offered, a few days 
 since, to yield up the editorship of the * Observer' into 
 other hands. This is true, I did so ; because it was 
 thought, or said by some, that perhaps the paper would 
 be better patronised in other hands. They declined 
 accepting my offer, however, and since then we have 
 heard from the friends and supporters of the paper in 
 all parts of the State. There was but one sentiment 
 among them, and this was that the paper should be 
 sustained in no other hands but mine. It is also a. 
 very different question, whether I shall voluntarily, or 
 at the request of friends, yield up my post, or whether 
 I shall forsake it at the demand of a mob. The form- 
 er I am at all times ready to do, when circumstances 
 seem to require it, as I will never put my personal 
 wishes or interests in competition with the cause of 
 that Master whose minister I am ; but the latter, be 
 assured, I NEVER WILL DO. God in his providence 
 so say all my brethren, and so I think has devolved 
 me the responsibility of maintaining my ground here ; 
 and, Mr Chairman, I am determined to do it. A voice 
 comes to me from Maine, from Massachusetts, from 
 Connecticut, from New York, from Pennsylvania ; 
 yea from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Missouri, 
 calling upon me in the name of all that is dear to 
 heaven or earth, to stand fast ; and by the help of 
 God, I WILL STAND. I know I am but one, and you 
 are many. My strength would avail but little against 
 you all : you can crush me if you will, but I shall die 
 at my post, for I cannot and will not forsake it. Why 
 should I flee from Alton ? Is not this a free State ? 
 
ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 63 
 
 When assailed by a mob in St Louis, I came here as 
 to the home of freedom and of the laws. The mob 
 have pursued me here, and why should I retreat again ? 
 Where can I be safe, if not here? Have I not a right 
 to claim the protection of the laws? and what more 
 can I have in any other place? Sir, the very act of 
 retreating will embolden the mob to follow me wher- 
 ever I go. No, sir, there is no way to escape the mob 
 but to abandon the path of duty ; and that, God help- 
 ing me, I never will do. 
 
 " It has been said here that my hand is against 
 every man, and every man's hand against me. The 
 last part of the declaration is too painfully true. I do 
 indeed find almost every hand lifted against me, but 
 against whom in this place has my hand been raised ? 
 I appeal to every individual present ; whom of you 
 have I injured? whose character have I traduced? 
 whose family have I molested? whose business have I 
 meddled with? If any, let him rise here and testify 
 against mo. No one answers. 
 
 11 And Jo not your resolutions say that you find 
 nothing against my private or personal character? 
 And does any one believe that if there was anything 
 to be found, it would not be found and brought forth? 
 If in anything I have offended against the law, am I 
 so popular in this community as that it would be dif- 
 ficult to convict me ? You have courts and judges 
 and juries ; they find nothing against me, and now 
 you have come together for the purpose of driving 
 out a confessedly innocent man, for no cause but that 
 he dares to think and speak as his conscience and his 
 God dictate. Will conduct like this stand the scru- 
 tiny of your country, of posterity, above all, of the 
 judgment day ? For, remember, the Judge of that 
 day is no respecter of persons. 
 
 " Pause, I beseech you, and reflect. The present 
 excitement will soon be over ; the voice of conscience 
 
64 ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 
 
 will at last be heard : and in some season of honest 
 thought, even in this world, as you review the scenes 
 of this hour, you will be compelled to say, ' he was 
 right he was right.' 
 
 " But you have been exhorted to be lenient and 
 compassionate, and in driving me away to affix no 
 unnecessary disgrace upon me. Sir, I reject all such 
 compassion. You cannot disgrace me. Scandal, 
 falsehood, and calumny have done their worst. My 
 shoulders have borne the burden till it sits easy upon 
 them. You may hang me up as the mob hung up 
 the individuals at Vicksburg ; you may burn me at 
 the stake as they did M'Intosh at St Louis ; you may 
 tar and feather me, or throw me into the Mississippi, 
 as you have often threatened to do. I, and I alone, 
 can disgrace myself; and the deepest of all disgrace 
 would be, at a time like this, to deny my Master by 
 forsaking his cause. He died for me, and I were 
 most unworthy to bear his name, should I refuse, if 
 need be, to cue iui mm. 
 
 " Again, you have been told that I have a family 
 who are dependent upon me, and this has been given 
 as a reason why I should be driven off as gently as 
 possible. It is true, Mr Chairman, I am a husband 
 and n father, and this it is that adds the bitterest in- 
 gredient to the cup of sorrow I am called to drink. 
 I am made to feel the wisdom of the Apostle's ad- 
 vice, ' It is better not to marry.' I know, sir, that 
 in this contest, I stake not my life only, but that of 
 others also. I do not expect my wife will ever recov- 
 er from the shock received at the awful scenes through 
 which she was called to pass at St. Charles. And 
 how was it the other night on my return to my home ? 
 I found her driven into the garret through fear of the 
 mob, who were prowling round my house. And 
 scarcely had I entered the house ere my windows 
 were broken by the brickbats of the mob, and she 
 
ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 65 
 
 so alarmed as rendered it impossible for her to sleep 
 or rest that night. I am hunted as a partridge on 
 the mountain. I am pursued as a felon through 
 your streets ; to the guardian power of the law I look 
 in vain for that protection against violence, which 
 even the vilest criminal may enjoy. Yet think not 
 that I am unhappy. Think not that I regret the 
 choice I have made ; while all around me is violence 
 and tumult, all is peace within. An approving con- 
 science and the rewarding smile of God are a full 
 recompense for all that I forego, and all that I en- 
 dure. Yes sir, I enjoy a peace which nothing can 
 destroy. I sleep sweetly and undisturbed, except 
 when awakened by the brickbats of the mob. 
 
 " No sir, I am not unhappy ; I have counted the 
 cost, and stand prepared freely to offer up my all in 
 the service of God. Yes sir, I am fully aware of all 
 the sacrifice I make, in here pledging myself to con- 
 tinue the contest until the last. (Forgive these tears. 
 I had not intended to shed them, and they flow not 
 for myself, but for others. )- But I am commanded to 
 forsake father and mother, and wife and children for 
 Jesus' sake; and as his professed disciple I stand 
 pledged to do it. The time for fulfilling this pledge 
 in my case, it seems to me has come. Sir, I dare 
 not flee away from Alton ; should I attempt it, I 
 should feel that the angel of the Lord with his fla- 
 ming sword was pursuing me wherever I went. It 
 is because I fear God, that I am not afraid of all who 
 oppose me in this city. No sir, the contest has com- 
 menced here, and here it must be finished. Before 
 God and you all, I here pledge myself to continue it, 
 if need be, till death ; and if I fall, my grave shall be 
 made in Alton." 
 
 A few days after this he was murdered. His of- 
 fice was surrounded by an armed mob, and defend- 
 ed from within by a guard furnished by the Mayor 
 6* 
 
66 ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 
 
 of Alton. When the attack was supposed to be 
 over, Lovejoy looked out to reconnoitre. He re- 
 ceived five bullets in his body, was able to reach a 
 room on the first floor, declared himself fatally 
 wounded, and fell on his face dead. His age was 
 thirtytwo. 
 
 A letter from a Boston abolitionist to a friend 
 bears on one page the following. '' E. P. Lovejoy, 
 at Alton, is fairly suffering the persecution of St. 
 Paul. Alton is anxious for the trade of Missouri 
 and the lower Mississippi, and is willing to sacri- 
 fice a few Abolitionists to conciliate its slave-hold- 
 ing customers. Lovejoy has been three times mob- 
 bed," &c. &c, &c. "The Attorney General of Illi- 
 nois said, at a meeting of gentlemen ' of property 
 and standing,' that the community ought not to re- 
 sort to violence ' until it became absolutely neces- 
 sary,' Thank heaven, it is now beginning to be Il- 
 linois versus Alton. The spirit is rising among the 
 farmers, and Lovejoy will yet conquer the State." 
 The next page begins, " I have just heard of the 
 murder of Lovejoy at Alton. He was shot by an 
 armed mob. Now he will indeed conquer the 
 State, and, I trust, the nation. I meant to have 
 given you my budget of gossip ; but my heart is 
 very full, and I cannot write more now." 
 
 In a note to this tract on Slavery, Dr Channing 
 had said, a year before this, "One kidnapped, mur- 
 dered abolitionist would do more for the violent de- 
 struction of slavery than a thousand societies. His 
 name would be sainted. The day of his death 
 would be set apart for solemn, heart stirring com- 
 memoration. His blood would cry through the 
 land with a thrilling voice, would pierce every 
 dwelling, and find a response in every heart," 
 These latter clauses have come true. The anniver- 
 sary of Lovejoy's death will be a sacrament day 
 to his comrades till slavery shall be no more : and 
 
ELIJAH P. LOVEJOF. 67 
 
 as for the community, the multitudes who were 
 too busy eating and drinking, planting, trading, 
 or amusing themselves, to know the pangs that 
 were rending the very heart of their society, those 
 who considered abolitionism too " low" a subject 
 for their ears, and the abolitionists too " odd" a set 
 of people for their notice. the shock of murder has 
 roused even these from their apathy, and carried 
 into their minds some notion that they are living 
 in remarkable times, and that they have some ex- 
 traordinary neighbors. We believe that no steps 
 have been taken to punish the murderers ; but such 
 punishment was urged by the newspapers even in 
 the slave States ; and the cry of reprobation of the 
 deed was vehement from all the more enlightened 
 parts of the Union. Dr Channing did his duty 
 well. The rioters at Alton were heard encour- 
 aging one another by reference to old Boston. The 
 time was at hand for them to learn that there was 
 a right as well as wrong in the time honored city. 
 
 It was proposed to hold a meeting in Boston, 
 where there should be no distinction of sect or par- 
 ty, and no reference to any anti-slavery organiza- 
 tion, to express the alarm and horror of the citizens 
 at the view of the prostration of civil liberty, and 
 at the murder of a Christian minister for daring 
 to maintain his inalienable and constitutional rights. 
 Application was made to the authorities for the use 
 of Faneuil Hall for the occasion, Dr Channing's 
 name being placed at the head of the requisition. 
 The authorities were intimidated by a counter-pe- 
 tition, and refused the use of the Hall, on the 
 ground of the request not being in accordance with 
 public sentiment ! Dr Channing published in the 
 newspapers a letter, of which we give some passa- 
 ges : 
 
 " To intimate that such resolutions would not express the 
 public opinion of Boston, and would even create a mob, is to 
 
68 ELIJAH P. LOVEJOY. 
 
 pronounce the severest libel on this city. It is to assert lhat 
 peaceful citizens cannot meet here in safety to strengthen and 
 pledge themselves against violence, and in defence of the 
 dearest and most sacred rights. And has it come to this ? 
 Has Boston fallen so low ? May not its citizens be trusted 
 to come together to express the great principles of liberty, 
 for which their fathers died ? Are our fellow citizens to be 
 murdered in the act of defending their property and of assert- 
 ing the right of free discussion ; and is it unsafe in this me- 
 tropolis, once the refuge of liberty, to express abhorrence of 
 the deed ? If such be our degradation, we ought to know 
 the awful truth ; and those among us who retain a portion of 
 the spirit of our ancestors, should set themselves to work to 
 recover their degenerate posterity. But I do not believe in 
 this degeneracy. The people of Boston may be trusted. 
 There is a moral soundness in this community on the great 
 points involved in the petition which has been rejected. 
 There is among us a deep abhorrence of the spirit of violence 
 which is spreading through our land ; and from this city 
 ought to go forth a voice to awaken the whole country to its 
 danger, to the growing peril of the substitution of lawless 
 force for the authority of the laws. This, in truth, was the 
 great object of those who proposed the meeting, to bring out 
 a loud, general expression of opinion and feeling, which 
 would awe the spirit of mobs, and would especially secure 
 the press from violence. Instead of this, what is Boston now 
 doing? Into what scale is this city now thrown ? Boston 
 now says to Alton, go on ; destroy the press ; put down the 
 liberty of speech ; and still more, murder the citizen who as- 
 serts it ; and no united voice shall here be lifted up against you, 
 lest a like violence should break forth among ourselves. * ^ 
 
 " A government which announces its expectation of a mob, 
 does virtually, though unintentionally, summon a mob, and 
 would then cast all the blame of it on the * rash men' who 
 might become its victims." * 
 
 " But is there no part of our country where a voice of 
 power shall be lifted up in defence of rights incomparably 
 more precious than the temporary interests which have often 
 crowded Faneuil Hall to suffocation ? Is the whole country 
 to sleep? An event has occurred which ought to thrill the 
 hearts of this people as the heart of one man. A martyr has 
 fallen among us to the freedom of the press. A citizen has 
 been murdered in defence of the right of free discussion. I 
 do not ask whether he was Christian or unbeliever, whether 
 he was abolitionist or colonizationist. He has been murdered 
 in exercising what I hold to be the dearest right of the citi- 
 
FREE DISCUSSION. 6 
 
 zen. Nor is this a solitary act of violence. It is the con- 
 summation of a long series of assaults on public order, on 
 freedom, on the majesty of the laws." 
 
 A spontaneous meeting of citizens was held to 
 discuss the refusal of the authorities, and Dr Chan- 
 ning's strictures on it. The consequence was that 
 the very same requisition was again tendered to 
 the authorities, with such a mass of signatures to 
 it that its prayer was granted with an obseqious- 
 ness as remarkable as the previous insult. Fan- 
 euil Hall was thrown open on the 8th of December, 
 and crowded. The chair was taken by a respect- 
 ed citizen, who was allied with no party, Mr Jon- 
 athan Phillips. The resolutions were prepared by 
 Dr Channing. Neither ho, nor the chairman, nor 
 any one but the organized abolitionists (who have 
 good reason to know their townsmen) was fully 
 aware of the crisis to which this meeting brought 
 the fate of the abolitionists throughout the commu- 
 nity. It hung at last for the space of three minutes 
 upon tb lips of one vory young speaker, who was 
 heard only because of his rank. It came to the 
 turn of a hair whether the atrocious mob-speech 
 of the Attorney General should be acted upon, or 
 whether lie should be overwhelmned with the rep- 
 robation of society ; whether the abolitionists 
 should have the alternative of being murdered at 
 home, and being driven into the wilderness, or 
 whether liberty of speech and the press should pre- 
 vail. Happily, the eloquence of young Wendell 
 Phillips secured the victory. Among other discov- 
 eries, the Attorney General announced that Love- 
 joy died " as a fool dieth," and that his murder- 
 ers were patriots of the same order as the Tea- 
 Party of the Revolution. An extract from a pri- 
 vate letter will best describe this critical meeting. 
 
 " You will have heard of Dr Channing's recent exploit. 
 The massacre of one of our beloved friends in the West for 
 
70 FREE DISCUSSION. 
 
 being an abolitionist and acting up to his principles, induced 
 Dr C. to sign a call for a public indignation meeting in Fa- 
 neuil Hall. It was a noble sight, that ball on that day. 
 The morning sunlight never streamed in over such a throng. 
 By night it has been closer packed ; but never, they tell me, 
 by day. I went (for the Woman Question), with fifteen 
 others. The indignation at us was great. People said it 
 gave the meeting the air of an abolition gathering to have 
 women there ; it hung out false colors. Shame ! when it 
 was a free discussion meeting, and nothing more, that wo- 
 men should have 4 given color to the idea that it was for 
 abolition purposes.' Good, is it not, that sixteen women 
 can give a character to a meeting of twentyfive hundred 
 men ? O that you had been there ! A hundred women or 
 so in a drawing room, gathered together by a new application 
 of religious and democratic, viz : Christian principles, was all 
 that Boston had to show you when you were here. But this 
 Faneuil Hall gathering, to protect the minority in the appli- 
 cation of their principles was an imposing spectacle. The 
 meeting began with prayer; no sound but that sublime one 
 in stirring times the sound of many feet on a puhlic floor. 
 You know that Dr Channing's voice is low, and Faneuil Hall 
 is empty of seats. The crowd surged up closer round 
 the platform ; and ever as they made room the space 
 behind filled iii. ij counting-houses disgorged for the oc- 
 casion, and I think Dr Chaiitiing must have seen his mistake 
 as to the good state of heart of his neighbors and townsmen. 
 One third of the meeting, 1 think, were abolitionists and free 
 discussionists (small proportion of the former) ; one third of 
 bitter opjwnents ; and one third swayed to and fro by every 
 speaker. The name of Dr Channing prohahly kept this 
 floating third up to the pitch of an affirmative note on certain 
 resolutions be had prepared. James T. Austin (Attorney- 
 General) was there, and made a diabolical speech. It was 
 loudly cheered. I gave up all hopes of a favorable termina- 
 tiod of the meeting then. He tried to raise a storm of indig- 
 nation, but failed, baffled by the effort of a very dear young 
 friend and connexion of ours, who, from being of a good fa- 
 mily (Republicanism !) was enabled to get a hearing^ though 
 an abolitionist, and an agent of the abolition society. Wm. 
 Sturgis and George Bond, when he was almost overpowered 
 by the clamor, threw in their weight on the right side, and 
 free discussion of the subject of free discussion prevailed. 
 So much lor the local aspect of the cause at present. Stout 
 men my husband for one came home that day, and ' lifted 
 up their voices and wept.' Dr Channing did not know how 
 

 SECOND CONVENTION OF WOMEN. 71 
 
 dangerous an experiment (as people count danger) he adven- 
 tured. We knew that we must send the children out of town, 
 and sleep in our day-garments that night, unless free discus- 
 sion prevailed. Lovejoy stood upon the defensive, as the Bill 
 of Rights and New England Divinity bear him out in having 
 done. His death lies, in a double sense, at the door of the 
 church ; for she trained him to self-defence, and then attacked 
 him. This new aspect of the cause, orthodox church opposi- 
 tion to it as a heresy, has presented itself since you were here, 
 and a most perilous crisis it has been. I think the ship has 
 righted ; but she was on her beam-ends so long, that I thought 
 all was over for ' this 200 years,' as Dr Beecher says. I have 
 just sent off 55,000 women's signatures for the abolition in 
 the District of Columbia a weary labor. My brain turns 
 with the counting and indorsing. I wrote well on them for 
 liio iioiior of Massachusetts, which is the reason I write so 
 badly to you now. I am thoroughly tired. God be with 
 you evermore !" 
 
 The second General Convention of Women was 
 held, as appointed, at Philadelphia, in the spring of 
 the present year. Once, again, has the intrepidity 
 of these noble Christian women been put to the 
 proof; the outrages in this "city of brotherly love" 
 having been the most fearful to which they have 
 yet been exposed. The cause of the extraordinary 
 violence of this year is to be found in the old max- 
 im that men hate those whom they have injured. 
 The State Convention, which had been employed 
 for many previous months in preparing a new con- 
 stitution for Pennsylvania, had deprived the citi- 
 zens of color of the political rights which they had 
 held (but rarely dared to exercise) under the old 
 constitution. Having done this injury, the perpe- 
 trators, and those who assented to their act, were 
 naturally on the watch against those whom they 
 had oppressed, and were jealous of every move- 
 ment, 'When the abolitionists began to gather to 
 their Convention, when the liberal part of the Qua- 
 ker population came abroad, and were seen greet- 
 ing their fellow-emancipators in the city of Penn 
 
72 MARIA CHAPMAN. 
 
 when the doors of the fine new building, Pennsyl- 
 vania Hall, were thrown open, and the people of 
 color were seen flocking thither, with hope in their 
 faces, and with heads erect, in spite of the tyranny 
 of the new laws, the hatred of their oppressors 
 grew too violent for restraint. It was impossible 
 to find reasonable and true causes of complaint 
 against any of the parties concerned in the Con- 
 vention, and falsehoods were therefore framed and 
 circulated. Even these falsehoods were of a na- 
 ture which makes it difficult for people on this side 
 of the Atlantic to understand how they should be 
 used as a pretext for such an excess of violence as 
 succeeded. The charge against the abolitionists 
 was, that thay ostentatiously walked the streets 
 arm-in-arm with people of color. They did not do 
 this, because the act was not necessary to the as- 
 sertion of any principle, and would have been of- 
 fensive ; but if they had, it might have been asked 
 what excuse this was for firing Pennsylvania Hall? 
 The delegates met and transacted their business, 
 as in the preceding year, but this time with a yell- 
 ing mob around the doors. The mild voice of An- 
 gelina Weld was heard above the hoarse roar ; but 
 it is said that the transient appearance of Maria 
 Chapman was the most striking circumstance of 
 the day. She was ill, and the heat of the weather 
 was tremendous ; but, scarcely able to sustain her- 
 self under an access of fever, she felt it her duty to 
 appear on the platform, showing once more that 
 where shame and peril are, there is she. Com- 
 menting upon the circumstances of the moment, the 
 strain of her exhortation accorded well with the 
 angelic beauty of her countenance, and with the 
 melting tones of her voice, and with the summary 
 of duty which she had elsewhere presented : "Our 
 principles teach us how to avoid that spurious char- 
 ity which would efface moral distinctions, and that 
 
PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 73 
 
 our duty to the sinner is, not to palliate, but to par- 
 don ; not to excuse, but to forgive, freely, fully, as 
 we hope to be forgiven." To these principles she 
 has ever been faithful, whether she gathers her 
 children about her knees at home, or bends over 
 the pillow of a dying friend, or stands erect amidst 
 the insults and outrages of a mob, to strengthen the 
 souls of her fellow-sufferers. Her strain is ever 
 the same no compromise, but unbounded forgive- 
 ness, 
 
 If the authorities had done their duty, no worse 
 mischief than threat and insult would have hap- 
 pened but nothing effectual was done in answer 
 to a demonstration on the part c f the mob, repeated 
 for three or four nights; so at last they broke into 
 Pennsylvania Hall, heaped together the furniture 
 and books in the middle of the floor, -and burned 
 them and the building together. The circumstance 
 which most clearly indicates the source of the rage 
 of the mob, was their setting fire to the Orphan 
 Asylum for colored children ; a charity wholly un- 
 connected with abolitionism, and in no respect, but 
 the complexion of its inmates, on a different footing 
 from any other charitable institution in the Quaker 
 city. The Recorder interposed vigorously ; and, 
 after the burning of the Hall, the city firemen un- 
 dertook the protection of all the buildings in the 
 place, public and private. The morning after the 
 fire the abolitionists were asked what they intend- 
 ed to do next. Their answer was clear and ready. 
 They had already raised funds and engaged work- 
 men to restore their Hall, and had issued their no- 
 tices of the meeting of the third General Convention 
 in the spring of 1839. They have since applied 
 for damages, which we believe the city agreed, 
 without demur, to pay. It is astonishing that the 
 absurdity of persecuting such people as these has 
 not long been apparent to all eyes. Their foes 
 7 
 
74 THE SOUTH. 
 
 might as well wage a pop-gun war against the con- 
 stellations of the sky. 
 
 It appears as if each State had to pass through 
 riot to rectitude on this mighty question. Every 
 .State which has now an abolition legislature, and 
 is officered by abolitionists, has. we believe, gone 
 through this process. The course of events seems 
 to be this : the abolitionists are first ridiculed, as a 
 handful of insignificant fanatics ; then the mer- 
 chants begin to be alarmed for their purses, and the 
 aristocracy for their prerogatives ; the clergy and 
 professional men act arid speak for the merchant- 
 interest, and engage the authorities to discounte- 
 nance the movement, which they do by threatening 
 penal laws, or uttering warnings of mobs. A mob 
 ensues, of course ; the apprehensions of the magis- 
 tracy furnishing the broadest hint. The business 
 is brought home to the bosom of every citizen. All, 
 especially the young men, look into the matter, ral- 
 ly in defence of the law, elect a good legislature, 
 look carefully to their magistracy, and the right 
 prevails. Such seems to have been the process in 
 every State disgraced by an anti-abolition riot. We 
 trust it may be so in Pennsylvania. Mrs Child said 
 long ago that this evil spirit having so long inti- 
 mately possessed the nation, we cannot expect that 
 it should be cast out without much rending and 
 tearing. 
 
 The abolitionists, as a body, are now fairly rec- 
 ognized by the South. Mr Birney has been applied 
 to by Mr Elmore, a southern member of Congress, 
 under the sanction of Mr Calhoun himself, for a 
 fulfilment of his offer to lay open all the affairs of 
 the anti-slavery body. The affairs of the abolition- 
 ists have from the beginning been open to all the 
 world; the evil has been that the world would not 
 attend to them. Now, however, "the South de- 
 sires to learn the depth, height and breadth of the 
 
MR BIRNEY. 75 
 
 storm which impends over her." She has learned 
 what she wants, for Mr Birney has forwarded ex- 
 ceedingly full replies to the fourteen queries pro- 
 posed by the southern representatives and senators. 
 This may be regarded as an extremely fortunate 
 event. It is a most cheering testimony to the pro- 
 gress of the cause ; and it affords some hope that 
 the South will take warning in time, and present 
 an honorable exception to the conduct and catas- 
 trophe of a struggle for and relinquishment of irre- 
 sponsible power. The hope is faint ; for instances 
 are rare, if not unknown, of privileged bodies sur- 
 rendering their social privileges on a merely moral 
 summons. But again, instances aro rare, if not un- 
 known, of a privileged class appealing to a mag- 
 nanimous foe for an exposure of his forces, his de- 
 signs, and his expectations. Whatever irritability 
 may display itself in the conduct of the appeal, the 
 fact is highly honorable to both parties. To our 
 minds, it is one of the most striking circumstances 
 of this inn jostic story. Mr Birney's reply is far too 
 long to be given here, even in the briefest abstract. 
 It is extremely interesting, from the honorable ac- 
 curacy and candor of its statements, and its absti- 
 nence from all manifestation of the triumph which 
 its facts might well justify. These important pa- 
 pers go by'the name of the ' Elmore Correspon- 
 dence.' 
 
 The most melancholy feature of the struggle more 
 so than even the conduct of the clergy (which has 
 been far more extraordinary than we have had space 
 to- relate) is the degeneracy of Congress. The right 
 of petition has been virtually annihilated for these 
 three years past ; and the nation has been left un- 
 represented on the most important question which 
 has been occupying the nation's mind. The peo- 
 ple hold their remedy in the ballot box. The elec- 
 tions are now going forward ; and we doubt not 
 
76 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 the electors will take care that such a suspen- 
 sion of their rights does not happen again. We un- 
 derstand, indeed, that the usual federal and de- 
 mocratic questions are in many cases laid aside at 
 the present elections for the all-important one of 
 the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
 and the prohibition of the inter-state slave trade. 
 Happen what may, it will not be forgotten in fu- 
 ture times that there was one man who did his du- 
 ty. Several others tried, bat. found circumstances too 
 strong for them. John Quincy Adams has con- 
 quered circumstances. Speculation has for some 
 years been busy on the fact of this gentleman being 
 a Massachusetts representative after having been 
 President of the United States. While some hon- 
 ored the succession of offices as a proof of the 
 highest patriotism, others magnanimously interpre- 
 ted it is an indication of vain, restless ambition. 
 His late conduct must convince all fair-minded ob- 
 servers of the intrepidity and purity of his patriot- 
 ism. At his years it is impossible that he can look 
 to the anti-slavery party for any rewards adequate 
 to what he has risked and undergone in defence of 
 their rights. Inch by inch has he maintained 
 alone the ground of constitutional rights ; month 
 after month has he painfully struggled for speech, 
 and been gagged by unconstitutional resolutions 
 and ex-post facto rules. We will not enter upon the 
 grievous tale of the insults that have been heaped 
 upon his revered head, and the moral inflictions by 
 which his noble heart has been wrung. This man 
 was (by universal acknowledgment) the purest of 
 the American Presidents, except Washington ; 
 and he has lived to see the nation he governed 
 virtually deprived (however temporarily) of their 
 rights of petition and free discussion ; and 
 when he protested against this privation, one 
 member started up to say that he considered Mr 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 77 
 
 Adams to be in the wane of his intellect, and an- 
 other to call him a sort of stormy petrel, delighting 
 in commotion. (This is of a piece with the assur- 
 ance that the abolitionists like to be persecuted.) 
 The more pertinaciously his mouth was stopped, 
 the more vigilantly did Mr Adams watch for an 
 opportunity to speak. At last he found it. Under 
 cover of remarks on the Report of the Committee 
 of Foreign Affairs in relation to Texas, he deliver- 
 ed himself of all his protests and all his opinions on 
 the vicious legislation of the last two sessions on 
 slavery, Texas, and the reception of petitions. For 
 an hour a day during twelve days he spoke, under 
 perpetual calls to order, but with power to proceed 
 till he chose to stop. We subjoin an extract from 
 that hour-long oratory, which will not be forgotten 
 by any of the hundreds who heard it, or by any of 
 the millions who owe to him the patient and intrep- 
 id assertion of their constitutional rights in the 
 martyr-age of the republic. 
 
 " Thursday, June 28, 1838. 
 
 " Mr Adams resumed the floor in support of his resolu- 
 tion respecting the admission of Texas to the Union. 
 
 " When I last addressed the House I was engaged in dis- 
 cussing the principle asserted by the Chairman of the Com- 
 mittee on Foreign Affairs ; the practical effect of which 
 must be to deprive one half of the population of these Uni- 
 ted States of the right to petition before this House. I say 
 it goes to deprive the entire female sex of all right of pe- 
 tition here. The principle is not an abstract principle. It 
 is stated abstractedly, in the report of his remarks, which I 
 have once read to the House. 1 will read it again ; it is 
 highly important, and well deserving of the attention of 
 this House, and its solemn decision. It referred to all peti- 
 tions on the subject of the annexation of Texas to this 
 Union which come from women : 
 
 " c Many of these petitions were signed by women. He 
 always felt regret when petitions thus~signed were present- 
 ed to the House relating to political matters. He thought 
 these females could have a sufficient field for the exercise 
 of their influence in the discharge of their duties to their 
 
78 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 fathers, their husbands, or their children, cheering the do- 
 mestic circle, and shedding over it the mild radiance of the 
 social virtues, instead of rushing into the fierce struggles of 
 political life. He felt sorrow at this departure from their 
 proper sphere, in which there was abundant room for the 
 practice of the most extensive benevolence and philanthro- 
 py, because he considered it discreditable, not only to their 
 own particular section of the country, but also to the na- 
 tional character, and thus giving him a right to express this 
 opinion.' 
 
 " Now, I say, in the first place, that this principle is er- 
 roneous, vicious. Asa moral principle it is vicious ; and in 
 its application the chairman of the committee made it the 
 ground of a reproach to the females of my district ; thous- 
 ands of whom, besides those 238 who signed the first peti- 
 tion I presented here, have signed similar petitions. That 
 is his application. And what is the consequence intended 
 to follow? Why, that petitions of that sort deserve no 
 consideration, and that the committee are, therefore, fully 
 justified in never looking into one of them. And this, be- 
 cause they conae from women; and women, departing from 
 their own proper sphere, in the domestic circle, do what is 
 discreditable, not only to their own particular district of 
 country, but to the national character. There is the broad 
 principle, and there is its application. This has compelled 
 me to probe it to the bottom, and to show that it is funda- 
 mentally wrong, that it is vicious, and the very reverse of 
 that which should prevail. 
 
 " Why does it follow that women are fitted for nothing 
 but the cares of domestic life ? for bearing children, and 
 cooking the food of a family ? devoting all their time to 
 the domestic circle to promoting the immediate personal 
 comfort of their husbands, brothers, and sons ? Observe,, 
 sir, the point of departure between the chairman of the 
 committee and myself. I admit that it is their duty to at- 
 tend to these things. I subscribe fully to the elegant com- 
 pliment passed by him upon those members of the female 
 sex who devote their time to these duties. But I say that 
 the correct principle is, that women are not only justified, 
 but exhibit the most exalted virtue when they do depart 
 from the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their 
 country, of humanity, and of their God. The mere depar- 
 ture of women from the duties of the domestic circle, far 
 from being a reproach to her, is a virtue of the highest or- 
 der, when it is done from purity of motive, by appropriate 
 means, and towards a virtuous purpose. There is the true 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 79 
 
 distinction. The motive must be pure, the means appro- 
 priate, and the purpose good. And I say that woman, by 
 the discharge of such duties, has manifested a virtue which 
 is even above the virtues of mankind, and approaches to a 
 superior nature. That is the principle I maintain, and 
 which the chairman of the committee has to refute, if he 
 applies the position he has taken to the mothers, the sisters, 
 and the daughters of the men of my district who voted to 
 send me here. Now I aver, further, that in the instance to 
 which his observation refers, viz. in the act of petitioning 
 against the annexation of Texas to this Union, the motive 
 was pure, the means appropriate, and the purpose virtuous, 
 in the highest degree. As an evident proof of this, I recur to 
 the particular petition from which this debate took its rise, 
 viz. to the first petition I presented here against the annexa- 
 tion a petition consisting of three lines, and signed by 238 
 women of Plymouth, a principal town in my own district. 
 Their words are 
 
 " ( The undersigned, women of Plymouth (Mass-), thor- 
 oughly aware of the sinfulness of slavery, and the conse- 
 quent impolicy and disastrous tendency of its extension in 
 our country, do most respectfully remonstrate, with all our 
 souls, against the annexation of Texas to the United States, 
 as a slave-holding territory.' 
 
 " Those are the words of their memorial. And I say 
 that, in presenting it here, their motive was pure, and of 
 the highest order of purity. They petitioned under a con- 
 viction that the consequence of the annexation would be 
 the advancement of that which is sin in the sight of God, 
 viz. slavery. I say, further, that the means were appro- 
 priate, because it is Congress who must decide on the ques- 
 tion ; and, therefore, it is proper that they should petition 
 Congress if they wish to prevent the annexation. And I 
 say, in the third place, that the end was virtuous, pure, and 
 of the most exalted character, viz. to prevent the perpetua- 
 tion and spread of slavery through America. I say, more- 
 over, that I subscribe, in my own person, to every word the 
 petition contains. I do believe slavery to be a sin before 
 God, and that is the reason, and the only insurmountable 
 reason, why we should refuse to annex Texas to this Union. 
 For, although the amendment I have moved declares that 
 neither Congress nor any other portion of this Government 
 is of itself competent to make this annexation, yet I hold it 
 not impossible, with the consent of the people of the Uni- 
 ted States and of the people of Texas, that a Union might 
 properly be accomplished. It might be effected by an a- 
 
80 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 mendment of the Constitution, submitted to the approval of 
 the people of the United States, as all other amendments 
 are to he submitted, and by afterwards submitting the ques- 
 tion to the decision of the people of both States. I admit 
 that in that way such a union might be, and may be, form- 
 ed. But not with a State tolerating slavery ; not with a 
 people who have converted freemen into slaves ; not so 
 long as slavery exists in Texas. So long as that continues, 
 I do not hold it practicable, in any form, that the two nations 
 should ever be united. Thus far I go. I concur in every 
 word of the petition I had the honor to present ; and I hold 
 it to be proof of pure patriotism, of sincere piety, and of 
 every virtue that can adorn the female character. 
 
 " With regard to this principle I am willing it shall be 
 discussed. I hope it will be discussed, not only in this 
 House, but throughout this nation. 
 
 " I should not have detained the House so long in estab- 
 lishing this position, had I not felt it a duty I owed to my 
 constituents to vindicate the characters of their wives and 
 sisters and daughters, who were assailed by the sentiment 
 I have opposed. 
 
 " And now, to close with a little anecdote, which I hope 
 will put the House into a good humour. In consequence of 
 the stand I have taken here, on the subject of the right of 
 petition, a great number of petitions and memorials have 
 been sent to me, many of which I did not present ; some 
 were sent with a sinister purpose to make me ridiculous, 
 or the right of petition ridiculous. Others were of a more 
 atrocious character, and the language in which they were 
 expressed would have, of itself, precluded their reception 
 here. But there is one from a man whom I take to be a 
 profound humorist, and a keen and deep satirist. His peti- 
 tion is, that Congress would enter into negociations with 
 the Queen of Great Britain to prevail on her to abdicate the 
 throne of that nation. And why? Because affairs of state 
 do not belong to women. Now, if this petition had been 
 sent to the honorable chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
 Relations, I really do not see, with his notions, how he 
 could have refused to present it. (A laugh.) But I de- 
 clined the presentation of it because I feared that there 
 might be a portion of the House who would not perceive 
 in such a petition the satire which [ thought was intended 
 as a serious proposition. 1 do not intend to put the House 
 to the trial of that matter, or myself in an attitude of com- 
 ing under the censure of this House for treason, in offering 
 such advice to the President ; or at least as becoming the 
 
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 81 
 
 cause of a war with England. For when the Government 
 of one country addresses the Sovereign of another with a 
 request to abdicate the throne, it is a pretty serious affair. 
 In that point of view it was impossible for me to present 
 the paper ; but, in the other, I think I might have done so 
 with great propriety and effect. And even now, as the 
 chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs appears to 
 sympathise in feeling and sentiment with the petitioner, if 
 bethinks it might be serviceable to present the paper, I will 
 cheerfully communicate it to him." (A laugh.) 
 
 During the last year, several Halls of State 
 Legislatures have been granted to the abolitionists 
 for their meetings, while the churches have remained 
 closed against them. The aspect of these assem- 
 blages has been very remarkable, from the union 
 of religious and political action witnessed there. But 
 the most extraordinary spectacle of all a spectacle 
 perhaps unrivalled in the history of the world 
 was the address of Angelina Grimke before a Com- 
 mittee of the Legislature of Massachusetts. Some 
 have likened it to the appeal of Hortensia to the 
 Roman Senate; but others have truly observed 
 that the address of Angelina Grimke was far the 
 nobler of the two. as she complained not as the 
 voice of a party remonstrating against injuries done 
 to itself, but as the advocate of a class too degraded 
 and helpless to move or speak on its own behalf. 
 The gentle dignity of the speaker's manner, and 
 the power of statement and argument shown in her 
 address, together with the righteousness of her 
 cause, won the sympathies of as large an audience 
 as the State House would contain, and bore down 
 all ridicule, prejudice, and passion. Two emotions 
 divided the vast assemblage of hearers : sympathy 
 in her cause, and veneration for herself. The only 
 fear now entertained by the abolitionists with regard 
 to the cause in the leading State of Massachusetts, 
 is lest it should become too flourishing, arid lose 
 something of its rectitude in its prosperity. 
 
82 PROSPECTS OF THE ABOLITIONISTS. 
 
 The history of this struggle seems to yield a few 
 inferences which must, we think, be evident to all 
 impartial minds ; and which are as important as 
 they are clear. One is, that this is a struggle which 
 cannot subside till it has prevailed. If this be 
 true, the consequence of yielding to it would be 
 the saving of a world of guilt and woe. Another 
 is, that other sorts of freedom, besides emancipa- 
 tion from slavery, will come in with it , that the 
 aristocratic spirit in all its manifestations is Toeing 
 purged out of the community ; that with every 
 black slave a white will be also freed. Another is. 
 that republicanism is in no degree answerable for 
 the want of freedom and of peace under which the 
 American nation is now suffering ; that, on the 
 contrary, the turbulence and tyranny are the im- 
 mediate offspring of the old-world, feudal, European 
 spirit which still lives in the institution assailed, 
 and in the bosoms of the aristocracy of the coun- 
 try, while the bulwarks of the Constitution, the 
 true republicans, are the puctcemen," the suffer- 
 ers, the moral soldiers, who have gone out armed 
 only with faith, hope, and charity. Another is, 
 that the colored people have a promising morale on 
 which to ground their civilization. Their whole 
 conduct affords evidences of generosity, patience, 
 and hopefulness, from which fine results of char- 
 acter may be anticipated, whenever this unfortu- 
 nate race shall have leave to exert their unfettered 
 energies under circumstances of average fairness. 
 
 It is a wide world that we live in, as wonderful 
 in the diversity of its moral as of its natural feat- 
 ures. A just survey of the whole can leave little 
 doubt that the abolitionists of the United States are 
 the greatest people now living and moving in it. 
 There is beauty in the devotedness of the domestic 
 life of every land ; there is beauty in the liberality 
 of the philosophers of the earth, in the laborious- 
 
PROSPECTS. OF THE ABOLITIONISTS. 83 
 
 ness of statesmen, in the beneficence of the wealthy, 
 in the faith and charity of the poor. All these 
 graces flourish among this 'martyr company, and 
 others with them, which it is melting to the very 
 soul to contemplate. To appreciate them fully, 
 one must be among them. One must hear their 
 diversity of tongue from the quaint Scripture 
 Phraseology of the Pilgrims to the classical lan- 
 guage of the scholar to estimate their liberality. 
 One must witness the eagerness with which each 
 strives to bring down the storm upon his own head 
 to save his neighbor, and to direct any transient 
 sunshine into his friend's house rather than his 
 own, to understand their generosity. One must see 
 the manly father weeping over his son's blighted 
 prospects, and the son vindicating his mother's in- 
 sulted name, to appreciate their disinterestedness. 
 One must experience something of the soul-sick- 
 ness and misgiving caused by popular hatred, and 
 of the awful pangs of an apprehended violent death, 
 to enter fully into their heroism. Those who are 
 living in peace afar off can form but a faint con- 
 ception of what it is to have no respite, no pros- 
 pect of rest, of security, of success, within any 
 calculable time. The grave, whether it yawns 
 beneath his feet, or lies on the far horizon, is, as 
 they well know, their only resting-place ; adversity 
 is all around them, like the whirlwind of the 
 desert. But, if all this can be scarcely conceived 
 of at a distance, neither can their bright faces be 
 seen there. Nowhere but among such, can an 
 array of countenances be beheld so little lower than 
 the angels.' Ordinary social life is spoiled to them ; 
 but another which is far better has grown up among 
 them. They had more life than others to begin 
 with, as the very fact of their enterprise shows ; 
 and to them that have much shall more be given. 
 They are living fast and loftily. The weakest of 
 
1SIM37 
 
 /63J 
 
 81 PROSPECTS OP THE ABOLITIONISTS. 
 
 m} 
 
 them who drops into the grave worn out, and the 
 youngest that lies murdered on his native republi- 
 can soil, has enjoyed a richer harvest of time, a 
 larger gift out of eternity, than the octogenarian 
 self-seeker, however he may have attained his 
 ends. These things, as branches of general 
 truths, may be understood at the distance of half 
 the globe. Let us not, therefore, wait, as it 
 has been the .world's custom to wait, for another 
 century to greet the confessors and martyrs who 
 stretch out their strong arms to bring down Heaven 
 upon our earth ; but even now, before they have 
 stripped off care and sorrow with their mortal 
 frame. even now, while sympathy may cheer and 
 thanks may animate, let us make our reverent con- 
 gratulations heard over the ocean which divides us 
 from the spiritual potentates of our age. 
 
 H. M.