imprisonment he was set free. Wendell Phillips said of him, "He was
imprisoned for his opinion when he was twenty-four. He had confronted
a nation in the bloom of his youth."

In Boston, with no money, friends, or influence, in a little upstairs
room, Garrison started the "Liberator." Read the declaration of this
poor young man with "no chance," in the very first issue: "I will be as
harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest. I will
not equivocate, I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch,
and I will be heard." What audacity for a young man, with the world
against him!

Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, wrote to Otis, mayor of
Boston, that some one had sent him a copy of the "Liberator," and asked
him to ascertain the name of the publisher. Otis replied that he had
found a poor young man printing "this insignificant sheet in an obscure
hole, his only auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a few persons of
all colors and little influence."

But this poor young man, eating, sleeping, and printing in this
"obscure hole," had set the world to thinking, and must be suppressed.
The Vigilance Association of South Carolina offered a reward of fifteen
hundred dollars for the arrest and prosecution of any one detected
circulating the "Liberator." The Governors of one or two States set a
price on the editor's head. The legislature of Georgia offered a
reward of five thousand dollars for his arrest and conviction.

Garrison and his coadjutors were denounced everywhere. A clergyman
named Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Illinois for espousing the cause,
while defending his printing-press, and in the old "Cradle of American
Liberty" the wealth, power, and culture of Massachusetts arrayed itself
against the "Abolitionists" so outrageously, that a mere spectator, a
young lawyer of great promise, asked to be lifted upon the high
platform, and replied in such a speech as was never before heard in
Faneuil Hall. "When I heard the gentleman lay down the principles
which place the murderers of Lovejoy at Alton side by side with Otis
and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams," said Wendell Phillips, pointing to
their portraits on the walls. "I thought those pictured lips would
have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, the slanderer
of the dead. For the sentiments that he has uttered, on soil
consecrated by the prayers of the Puritans and the blood of patriots.
the earth should have y