The Abolitionists / Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights, 1830-1864

ne. The writer when a boy attended the trial of a cause between two neighbors in a court of low grade. It was what was called a "cow case," and involved property worth

ity, and that would affect his credibility, the question was admissible. It is not, perhaps, so very strange that in those days, in view of the disreputableness of those whose c

as the world's best specimen of a "fanatic," he would ordinarily be set down as a very Solomon beside the man who would undertake single-handed to overthrow such an institution as American slavery

rves the high honor of ranking as the pioneer of

t, and unassuming in manner. He had, it is said,

, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh. Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he contin

hment. He married and settled down to the prosecution of his trade, and had he been like other people generally he would ha

Anti-Slavery society in the village in which he was then living in Oh

people of this country was through the press. He started a very small paper with a very large name. It was ambitiously nominated The Genius of Universal Emancipation. He began with only six subscribers and without a press or other publishing m

he only exclusively Anti-Slavery journal in the country, and its editor and pr

without a dollar of funds, trusting to the sacredness of the cause." Another saying of his

int. In some instances he carried the head-rules, column-rules, and subscription-book of his journal with him, and when he came to a town where he found a printing-press he would stop long enough

nt to Tennessee, making the journey of eight hundred miles, one half by wa

Once two bullies locked him in a room and, with revolvers in hand, tried to frigh

he decided to move his establishment to Baltimore, going most of the w

n the street. The consolation he got from the court that tried the ruffian, who was "honorably discharged," was that he (L

of saddlery and harness mending. In his journal he tells us that he often slept in the open air, the country traversed being mostly new and unsettled. He was in constant danger from panthers

arkness of that period emitted but a feeble ray, but he kept it burning, and it possessed the almost invaluable property of being able to transmit

or half shadows between them." He was a natural orator. I never heard him talk, either on or off the platform, but I have heard those who had listened to him, speak of the singular gift he possessed in stating or combating a proposition. One person who had heard him, often compared him, when dealing with an adversa

subject of slavery, and Garrison's proved to be receptive soil. They decided to join forces, and we have the singular spectacle of two p

ted and fined fifty dollars. The amount, so far as his ability to pay was involved, might as well have been a million. He went to prison, being incarcerated in a cell just vacated by a man who had been hanged

esolved to establish a journal of his own in that city, which was to be devoted

iber nor a dollar of money. Being a printer, he set up t

in these words: "I will be as harsh as truth; as uncompromising as justice. I am in

erefore, a failure, but its continuance involved a terrible strain. Garrison and one co-worker occupied one room for work-shop, dining

amber, friendl

ypes one poor unl

dark, unfurnit

freedom of a

iction of any white person who might be detected in distributing or circulating the Liberator. Georgia went farther than that. Less than a year after Garrison had established his paper, the Legislature of that State passed an act offerin

rison, after having been stripped of nearly all his clothing, was dragged, bareheaded, by a rope roun

o manage them. It was the little fellows like the editor of the Liberator that gave them trouble. These men had no money, but they could not be bought. They had no fear of mobs. Th

y nor social position. That, however, cannot be said of another early Abolitionist,

the moral, and other aspects of slaveholding, he decided that it was wrong and he would wash his hands of it. He could not in Alabama legally manumit his slaves. Moreover, his neighbors had risen up against him and threatened his forcible expulsion. He removed to Kentucky, where he thought a more liberal sentiment prevailed. There he freed his slaves and made liberal provision for their comfortable sustenance. But the slave power was on his track. He was warned to betake

ly destroyed his press and other property, and it was with difficulty that he escaped with his life. More sagacious, although not more zealous, than Lundy and Garrison and a good many of their follow

were pioneers in the truest sense. The writer would gladly make a record of their services, and pay a tribute, especially, to t