his own life. The slaves, if emancipated, would take revenge for past wrongs by cutting the throats of the masters, burning their houses and ravaging the land. They could not take care of themselves in a state of freedom, and in fact did not desire to be free. In this sort of sophistry and falsehood the common-sense and the conscience of the whole community were enmeshed. Emancipation in any shape, however gradual, was held to be an impossibility; the very thought of immediate emancipation the wildest fanatical dream; and even the discussion of the subject was dreaded as a knell of doom to the Republic itself. We need not wonder, therefore, if "The Genius of Universal Emancipation," which as a small monthly under Mr. Lundy's mild management had been barely tolerated, was now, in its enlarged form and issued every week, absolutely intolerable to the people of Baltimore and the surrounding region. The slave power, entrenched in church and state, began to growl like a wild beast at bay. The air was thick with fierce denunciation of "that madcap Garrison," and men in places of power and influence began to look each other in the face and ask whereunto this new crusade against slavery would grow if some means of crushing it out were not speedily found. The slaveholders hardly dared then to make open war upon the freedom of the press, lest in doing so they should arouse an enemy too strong to be successfully resisted. They contented themselves, therefore, with exciting a popular clamor against the obnoxious paper, under which the more timid of its subscribers fell away. Mr. Garrison himself says: "My doctrine of immediate emancipation so alarmed and excited the people everywhere, that where friend Lundy would get one new subscriber I would knock a dozen off. It was the old experiment of the frog in the well, that went up two feet and fell back three at every jump." Men who could see only half-truths and lacked courage to maintain even those with firmness, said: "How foolish to throw away all chance of doing any good by such ultraism." But Wisdom then, as always, was justified of her children. The excitement by which the slaveholders hoped to extinguish the rising tide of anti-slavery sentiment only served to fan it to an intense flame, and more was done in a single month to prepare the way for the new crusade than could have been accomplished by years of timid, half-way effort. It was no confused or uncertain sound that the new tocsin rang out upon the air. It proclaimed slavery a sin and shame, and demanded that every yoke should be broken, every fetter sundered, every captive set free. It startled and aroused thousands who would have been deaf to any more equivocal message, and kindled in the hearts of a noble few a fixed determination to cry aloud and spare not until slavery should be utterly abolished. It was not long, however, before the slaveholders of Baltimore found what they thought was an opportunity to crush out the new movement and the paper that represented it. Mr. Garrison, of course, did not fail to denounce the domestic slave-trade, of which Balti› more was one of the principal marts. There came to that port a vessel owned by Mr. Francis Todd of Newburyport, Mr. Garrison's native place, and commanded by one of her citizens, named Brown. The vessel took from Baltimore to New Orleans a cargo of eighty slaves. Here was a case of Northern complicity with the infamous traffic which stirred Mr. Garrison's deepest indignation, and he denounced the transaction as in no respect different in principle from taking a cargo of human flesh on the coast of Africa and carrying it across the ocean to a market. The law denounced the foreign slave-trade as piracy; the domestic slavetrade, in the sight of God and according to every principle of justice, was no whit better, nor in any respect different in quality. Mr. Todd, stung to the quick by Mr. Garrison's denunciations, brought suit against him for libel. A trial in a slaveholding court and before a slaveholding jury could have but one result. Mr. Garrison was found guilty and fined in the sum of fifty dollars and costs of court. If he had been a rich man he probably would not have consented to pay a single cent of the sum demanded of him. But he was tou poor to pay, and so of necessity went to jail. 1 There was no effort on the part of the patrons of "The Genius" to avert his fate. The excitement in Baltimore was almost as intense as that in Jerusalem when Jesus was led away to be crucified. "And they all forsook him and fled” was hardly more true in the one case than in the other of those who before had professed to be friendly to the cause and its champion. But the young Abolitionist was neither cast down nor dismayed, nor did he for a moment waver in his adherence to the principles he had avowed. He would make no apology, nor retract a single word. He knew that the ultimate effect of his imprisonment would be to arouse popular hostility to slavery, and promote the cause of emancipation. His undaunted spirit found utterance in two sonnets, which he inscribed with a pencil on the walls. of his cell, as follows: THE GUILTLESS PRISONER. Prisoner! within these gloomy walls close pent, And in thy innocence be great and strong! Or wouldst not bear the implements of war:- FREEDOM OF THE MIND. High walls and huge the BODY may confine, And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways: Yet scorns th' immortal MIND this base control! No chains can bind it and no cell inclose: Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole, And, in a flash, from earth to heaven it goes! It leaps from mount to mount-from vale to vale It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers; It visits home, to hear the fireside tale, Or in sweet converse pass the joyous hours: "Tis up before the sun, roaming afar, And, in its watches, wearies every star! II. Garrison's Imprisonment, and Its Effects at the North-The Release -Whittier, Clay, Tappan-Partnership of Lundy and Garrison Dissolved-Tribute of the Latter to the Former-Founding of "The Liberator" in Boston rather than in Washington-Garrison on a Lecturing Tour-Boston and the Cotton Traffic-Garrison Appeals in Vain to the Clergy--Dr. Lyman Beecher and Jeremiah Evarts-"The Liberator" Born in a Dark Time-Purposes and Hopes of its Founder-Responsibility of the Church. THE news of Mr. Garrison's imprisonment was received with fierce exultation at the South, while many Northern people openly said: "It is just what he deserves; a man so reckless of the public welfare as to attempt to stir up an excitement on the slavery question ought to be brought up with a round turn." The expressions of mild indignation and sympathy that found utterance here and there were qualified by regrets that a man engaged in so good a cause should be so wild and fanatical as to demand the instant emancipation of the slaves. "The Boston Courier," edited by that famous journalist, Joseph T. Buckingham, a man of singular independence of spirit, while not approving Mr. Garrison's views and methods, did yet appreciate his unselfish devotion to liberty and his willingness to suffer in a good cause. It published the sonnets which he inscribed on the walls of his cell, and, if my recollection is not at fault, printed one or two letters from him, written during his imprisonment. I was then in Boston, and full of a boy's enthusiasm for my hero, whom I had never seen, but had admired. from the time of his connection with "The National Philanthropist." I was often a visitor at a Cornhill book-store, which was a place of resort for the ortho |