same cause, and willing to follow him to Baltimore. Soon after Garrison's arrival, however, an article which he wrote exposed him to arrest and fine, and being unable to pay the fine, he was imprisoned until set free by a friend at a distance. He made his way back to Boston, and to its better opportunities of writing freely, and at the beginning of 1831 established the Liberator, a paper of more outspoken and unshaken hostility to slavery than any which went before or followed after. "A greater revolution in public sentiment," it declared, "is to be effected in the free states, particularly in New England, than at the south. Let southern oppressors trem

On this

ble; let their northern apologists tremble. subject I do not wish," said the determined editor, "to speak or write with moderation."

Anti

The new school of abolitionists was neither nu

American merous nor influential at the beginning. A few Slavery local societies were formed, and their meetings and Society. publications increased the volume rather than the power of the movement. It gathered fresh strength from the abolition of British colonial slavery by Parliament in the summer of 1833, and early in the following winter the leading abolitionists met at Philadelphia and organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. The declaration of this body, compared by its members to the Declaration of Independence adopted in the same city fifty-seven years before, was drawn by Garrison. It recognized the right of states to legislate exclusively on slavery within their own limits, but asserted the right of the general government to suppress the slave trade from state to state, and to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories. It insisted upon the duty of the government and the people, particularly in the free states, "to remove slavery by moral and political action, as prescribed in the

Constitution of the United States." In every respect the declaration was imperative; and as not only expressing, but inspiring, the strongest anti-slavery convictions of the time, it must be forever memorable in our history. The poet Whittier said, thirty years afterwards, "I set a higher value on my name as appended to the anti-slavery declaration of 1833 than on the title page of any book."

Reaction

among the

people.

The abolitionists were soon beset. Men pointed at them as if they were mad or wicked. Mobs broke into their meetings and laid violent hands upon their leaders, who were sometimes rescued only by being taken to prison. The legislature of Georgia offered five thousand dollars for the arrest and conviction of the editor or publisher of the Liberator. Not Georgia alone, but Alabama, North and South Carolina, and Virginia, called upon the free states to make antislavery publications penal offences, and to suppress antislavery societies. These demands were supported by those in office and those out of office throughout the north. At Charleston, S. C., the United States post-office was attacked, and papers brought by mail from the north were seized and burned, (1835.) Instead of defending his charge, the postmaster ordered similar mail matter to be stopped thereafter, and the postmaster general of the United States, though confessing that he had no authority to ratify such an act, refused to condemn it.

In the

""

The government followed the lead of the people. govern- President Jackson's message of December, 1835, ment. suggested the passage of a law to prohibit the circulation of incendiary publications" through the mails. Two months later, Calhoun, chairman of a Senate committee, reported a bill providing that when a state declared publications to be incendiary, Congress must prohibit their circulation; but this fell through, (April, 1836.) Its fail

Murder

ure was more than made up, however, by the adoption, in the House of Representatives, of a rule which was maintained for several years, that "all petitions relating in any way to slavery be laid on the table without being printed or referred," (May 11.) These first concessions to slavery were ominous not to the slave alone, but to the free. Among the few who stood firm on the other side of was Elijah P. Lovejoy, a young New England minLovejoy. ister, who had become the editor of the Observer, at St. Louis. He was a man of broader nature and better education than any who had become conspicuous in the anti-slavery cause. He did not profess to be an abolitionist, or to devote himself exclusively to a crusade against slavery; but his sympathies were all on the side of freedom, and he never hesitated to express them. If he was a champion of any one principle, it was of free speech, which, as we have seen, had fallen into great peril since the government and the people united against it. “So long as I am an American citizen," said Lovejoy, "so long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject, being amenable to the laws of my country for the same." He removed his paper from St. Louis to Alton, Illinois, that he might be in a free state; but the state was not free to him, or to brave men like him. Repeatedly assailed by mobs, his house stoned, his printing presses destroyed, he was in arms with a few friends to defend a new press from threatened violence, when he was shot about midnight, (November 7, 1837.) Such was the spirit of the country, that a meeting to express some natural sentiment at this murder was held with great difficulty in Faneuil Hall, and, when held, was obliged to listen to a defence of the murderers from the attorney general of Massachu

setts.

Violence

All this drove the abolitionists to a new and of aboli- extreme position. "The grand rallying point," tionists. according to Garrison and his associates, was the repeal of the Union, (1842.) Other repeals were proposed

that of the pulpit, which had not thundered as it ought against slavery, that of the churches, which had not forced their pulpits to thunder. These passionate demands threw back abolitionism, instead of advancing it. Men willing to act against slavery were not willing to act against their country or their church, and instead of becoming abolitionists they became anti-abolitionists. Another party would have to be formed to take the lead, and this could not be done in a day.

Massa

William

For twenty years and more, colored sailors arriving chusetts in a port of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, missions. and Louisiana, had been subject to imprisonment during the stay of the vessel in which they came. Wirt, Attorney General of the United States, gave the opinion that the act of South Carolina, where this practice originated, was unconstitutional, and incompatible with the rights of other nations, (1824.) But though South Carolina yielded as far as British seamen were concerned, she refused to yield with regard to Americans; and in this she, with her sister states, was upheld by Congress when that body refused, by a large majority, to interfere, (1842.) In 1844 the Massachusetts legislature authorized the governor to appoint agents to inquire into the imprisonment of Massachusetts seamen in Charleston and New Orleans, the two great ports of the Southern States. The governor sent Samuel Hoar to Charleston, and Henry Hubbard to New Orleans, but both were driven off. South Carolina asserted her right to exclude "seditious persons or others whose presence may be dangerous," and on this ground the Massachusetts agent was expelled. The state had previous

ly contented itself with shutting out colored citizens; it now shut out white. "Has the Constitution of the United States," asked the expelled agent in his report to the State of Massachusetts, "the least practical validity or binding force in South Carolina, except where she thinks its operation favorable to her?”

Necessity

Our narrative has not been too brief to show of anti- how great a necessity the anti-slavery movement slavery. had become, and how certain, therefore, it was to grow and spread, notwithstanding all the weakness of its friends and all the strength of its foes.