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ests and sympathies. His experiences in New York were hardly more favorable. Here, however, he met for the first time his benefactor, the man who had opened his prison-door, Mr. Arthur Tappan, who from that hour became his warm friend and supporter. The colored people of the city welcomed him as a hero, but the white people for the most part were hostile or apathetic. From New York he went on to New England-to New Haven, Hartford, Providence, Boston-where his reception was hardly more encouraging than it had been in places further south. view of such a state of public sentiment in the free States, he soon became convinced that Boston rather.. than Washington was the place where "The Liberator" should be established, and he changed his plans accordingly. To fight slavery at the South while the North was hostile would be like going into battle in an enemy's country with no base for re-enforcements or supplies. It would be in vain to appeal against slavery to Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans, while Boston, New York and Philadelphia were apologizing for the system; in vain to seek the support of Southern statesmen while those of the North were hostile; in vain to look for sympathy to the Southern churches while those of the North were either apathetic or lending an open support to the evil. Writing on this subject, he said:

"During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free States-and particularly in New England-than at the South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn and apathy more frozen than among slaveowners themselves. Of course there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did

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not dishearten me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birth-place of Liberty."

The resolution thus formed was an illustration of the hard common-sense for which he was ever afterwards distinguished. He saw that Washington was too near the fulcrum to afford the requisite purchase he must throw his weight upon the end of the lever. A battle must first be fought to establish the right to discuss the subject of slavery, and this contest, in the then inflammable condition of the Southern mind, could not be successfully waged upon slave soil. The slaveholders would be certain to take alarm from the establishment of an uncompromising anti-slavery journal at the National Capital, and to suppress it with a strong hand; while the people of the North, in their indifference and blindness, would be almost sure to say, "Served him right; if he had not been a mad-cap, he would no more have established his incendiary sheet on slave soil than he would have walked into a powder magazine with a lighted torch." And yet the very people who would have said this, when they saw the first number of "The Liberator" with a Boston imprint, exclaimed: "Coward! Why does he not go to the South, instead of assailing slavery at this safe distance? The people of New England are not slaveholders, and this fanatic has no right to pester us with this perplexing question." But Mr. Garrison's clearsightedness enabled him to discern, even at that early day, that the influences which chiefly sustained slavery were supplied by the people of the North. He clearly'saw that all efforts to redeem the South would be vain so long as the Northern people, through ecclesiastical, political, commercial and social channels, supplied the moral power by which the slave system was upheld.

Boston was then the heart of New England, and

spoke for it far more emphatically than she does now. The cotton traffic had grown to gigantic proportions there, and by it men gained vast wealth. Cotton factories were springing up on every side, giving profitable employment to large numbers of men, women and children, and by opening extensive markets for agricultural produce, enabling the farmers to pay off their mortgages and redeem themselves from the slavery of debt. The cotton traffic, in short, was regarded as the chief source of New England's prosperity, and the people were impatient of everything that seemed likely to disturb it. It was almost universally believed that cotton could be raised only by the labor of slaves, as no freeman would submit to the hardships necessarily involved in its culture. The appearance of "The Liberator" consequently set the whole cotton interest into a fever of excitement. Southern planters, filled with rage, wrote to their Northern customers protesting against such a paper, as calculated to excite the slaves to insurrection and deluge the South in blood. Northern merchants, yielding readily to such appeals to their cupidity and their fears, cried out against the anti-slavery movement as a wicked and inexcusable. conspiracy. The press was their willing servant, and so to a great extent was the pulpit, especially in the cities and larger towns. These merchants occupied the most prominent pews in the churches, and contributed largely and liberally for the support of the ministry and for those missionary and other benevolent organizations that enjoyed the favor of the churches. The pulpit was thus sorely tempted to swerve from the laws of humanity and rectitude and become the apologist if not the defender of slavery. When I say that it often yielded to this temptation, or, where it did not fully yield, was seduced into a scarcely less guilty silence, I set down naught in malice, but only record the truth of history for the instruction and warning of

other generations. If this truth were hidden, it would be impossible to estimate aright the courage, foresight and self-sacrificing spirit of Mr. Garrison and his associates.

Dr. Lyman Beecher was then at the head of the Orthodox pulpit in Boston. The great controversy between Orthodoxy and Unitarianism was drawing nigh to its culmination in the complete divorcement of the two parties. Dr. Channing, the leader on the Unitarian side, was a man of a gentle and humane spirit, not liking controversy, while Dr. Beecher was a born belligerent. Mr. Garrison was conscientiously and strictly Orthodox, and therefore naturally inclined to seek support in the first instance from the Orthodox pulpit and church. When he was in Boston in 1828, editing "The National Philanthropist," he became a warm admirer of Dr. Beecher, partly on account of his attitude on the Temperance question, but still more because of his great powers as a preacher, and, naturally enough, he was the first minister to whom Mr. Garrison appealed for support. He was bitterly disappointed in finding him indifferent to the appeal. "I have too many irons in the fire already," said the Doctor. Then," said Mr. Garrison, solemnly, "you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your duty to the slave." The Doctor, like almost all the clergymen of that day, was a colonizationist, believing that freedom to the slaves with liberty to remain in the United States would be a curse; they must be sent to Africa, whence their fathers had been stolen, and carry to that country the Christianity of their masters. To him, therefore, Mr. Garrison's doctrine of immediate emancipation upon American soil was repulsive, and he told him so. Your zeal," he said, "is commendable; but you are misguided. If you will give up your fanatical notions and be guided by us (the clergy) we will make you the Wilberforce of America."

Mr. Garrison had learned the doctrine of immediatism from Dr. Beecher himself. The very keynote of the revivals of that day, in which the Doctor took so prominent a part, was the duty of every sinner to repent instantly and give his heart to Christ; but the men who were most eloquent in urging this doctrine in its application to the sin of unbelief were prompt to deny it in its application to the sin of slavery. Sin in general was something for which there could be no apology or excuse, but the particular sin of treating men as chattels and compelling them to work without wages could only be put away, if at all, by a process requiring whole generations for its consummation! Such was the moral blindness of the time-a blindness not of the multitude alone, but of the professed expounders of the will of God.

Mr. Garrison left Dr. Beecher with a disappointed and saddened heart, for he had counted with confidence upon his sympathy and support. He had sat under his preaching with profit and delight, and he longed to hear his eloquent voice pleading the cause of the imbruted slave. Disappointed in this, to whom should he next turn? He resolved to visit other clergymen of the city and vicinity and seek their co-operation. But, with hardly an exception, he found them unsympathetic. Dr. Beecher, in speaking for himself, had unconsciously spoken for the rest. Truth had indeed fallen in the street, and Equity could not enter. resolved to go and see Jeremiah Evarts, Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who had been writing eloquently in behalf of the Indians. Surely, he said to himself, I shall find a helper in him. But no; Mr. Evarts, with all his sympathy for the outraged Indians, would not speak or write a word in behalf of the slave, or countenance any effort for his emancipation; and Mr. Garrison learned, to his unspeakable disgust, that not a

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