Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[211] excitement of the free States. New York had had its great meeting, and had put the Abolitionists down with pro-slavery resolutions and torrents of proslavery eloquence. Boston, too, had to have her great meeting and her cataracts of pro-slavery oratory to reassure the South of the sympathy and support of “the great body of the people of the Northern States.” The toils seemed everywhere closing around the Abolitionists. The huge head of the asp of public opinion, the press of the land was everywhere busy, day and night, smearing with a thick and virulent saliva of lies the brave little band and its leader. Anti-slavery publications, calculated to inflame the minds of the slaves against their masters, and intended to instigate the slaves to servile insurrections, had been distributed broadcast through the South by the emissaries of anti-slavery societies. The Abolitionists advocated the emancipation of the slaves in the South by Congress, intermarriages between the two races, the dissolution of the Union, etc. All of which outrageous misrepresentations were designed to render the movement utterly odious to the public, and the public so much the more furious for its suppression.

It was in the midst of such intense and widespread excitement that Boston called its meeting to abolish the Abolitionists. It was the month of August, and the heat of men's passions was as great as the heat of the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the city was so charged with inflammable gases that the slightest spark would have sufficed to produce an explosion. The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves the while with unusual circumspection. They