Ernest Crosby, Garrison the non-resistant

[25] roof of a shed and sought refuge in a carpenter shop on the street behind; but his retreat was already cut off. The workmen in the shop did what they could for him, shutting the front door and keeping the crowd back until Garrison could hide himself upstairs, but in a few minutes the ruffians broke in and had no difficulty in finding his place of concealment. They seized him and dragged him to the window, intending to throw him out, but someone below in the street shouted, “Don't kill him outright,” and, changing their minds, they tied a rope round him and let him down by a ladder. Fortunately he was received at the bottom by two strong men who were determined that the fame of Boston should not be stained by a lynching. They succeeded, with superhuman efforts, in guiding him through the crowd, in which it was evident now that Garrison had some sympathizers, to the door of the neighboring city hall, over the very ground where the first martyrs of the Revolution were slain in the Boston massacre of 1770, and where their degenerate descendants were now taking the part of the oppressors. The mayor had already reached the building. “On my way from the Liberator office to the city hall,” he says, “several people said to me, ‘They are going to hang him! For God's sake, save him!’ ” Garrison was conducted with much difficulty