olitionists,"
"Covenanters" and "Infidels." But nothing daunted, they demanded the
unconditional surrender of the slave power.

During one of the annual conventions held at the Hicksite Friends'
church in Salem and in the midst of a violent speech that was being
delivered against the encroachments of slavery on Northern soil under
the fugitive slave law, an excited man entered with a telegram in his
hand and announced breathlessly that the four o'clock train, due in
thirty minutes, had aboard of it a southern man and his wife and a
colored slave girl as a nurse. It was at once proposed that they proceed
to the depot in a body and meet the train on arrival. The meeting was
hastily adjourned. Intense enthusiasm prevailed. They marched to the
depot cheering as they went and when the train pulled in they boarded
it, took the slave girl without protest from her master and mistress and
marched back to the hall with her in triumph. The liberated girl was
christened Abby Kelly Salem, in honor of Abby Kelly Foster, one of the
speakers at the convention, and the city of Salem. The girl grew up to
splendid womanhood and was highly esteemed by all who knew her.

The old town hall, still standing, is where many an anti-slavery meeting
was held in that day. The most stirring and eloquent appeals were made
in this old meeting house by such noted abolitionists as William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, Horace
Mann, John Pierpont, Gerrit Smith, Fred Douglas, Lucretia Mott,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Owen Lovejoy, Abby Kelly Foster, George Thompson
of England, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Collyer, John P. Hale and many
others.

The walls of the old town hall resounded daily and nightly with the
patriotism and love of freedom of Quaker Salem.

It was in this atmosphere and under the influence of these impassioned
teachings that the Coppock brothers, sons of a nearby Quaker farmer,
grew up to young manhood. It had been ingrained into their very nature
that all men were created equal and that slavery was a crime against God
and man, and with this conviction they resolved to shoulder their
muskets and go out and fight to liberate the slaves.

The family moved to Iowa in the meantime and it was here that these
young Quaker enthusiasts first met John Brown, who was then waging his
warfare against slavery in the free soil conflict in that state. From
now on their die was cast. They would follow the grim ol