hilanthropist,"
which was followed in 1821 by the publication of Benjamin Lundy's
"Genius of Universal Emancipation." In 1831 the uprising of slaves
in Southampton County, Virginia, under the lead of Nat. Turner,
had startled the country and invited attention to the question of
slavery. In the same year Garrison had established "The Liberator,"
and in 1835 was mobbed in Boston, and dragged through its streets
with a rope about his neck. In 1837 Lovejoy had been murdered in
Alton, Illinois, and his assassins compared by the Mayor of Boston
to the patriots of the Revolution. In 1838 a pro-slavery mob had
set fire to Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, and defied the city
authorities in this service of slavery. President Jackson and Amos
Kendall, his Postmaster General, had openly set the Constitution
at defiance by justifying the rifling of the mails and the suppression
of the circulation of anti-slavery newspapers in the South. The
"gag" resolutions had been introduced in the House of Representatives
in 1836, which provoked the splendid fights of Adams, Giddings and
Slade for the right of petition and the freedom of speech. Dr.
Channing had published his prophetic letter to Henry Clay, on the
annexation of Texas, in 1837, and awakened a profound interest in
the slavery question on both sides of the Atlantic. We had been
disgraced by two Florida wars, caused by the unconstitutional
espousal of slavery by the General Government. President Van Buren
had dishonored his administration and defied the moral sense of
the civilized world by his efforts to prostitute our foreign policy
to the service of slavery and the slave trade. In February, 1839,
Henry Clay had made his famous speech on "Abolitionism," and thus
recognized the bearing of the slavery question upon the presidential
election of the following year. The Abolitionists had laid siege
to the conscience and humanity of the people, and their moral
appeals were to be a well-spring of life to the nation in its final
struggle for self-preservation; but as yet they had agreed upon no
organized plan of action against the aggressions of an institution
which threatened the overthrow of the Union and the end of Republican
government. But now they were divided into two camps, the larger
of which favored political action, organized as a party, and
nominated, as its candidate for President, James G. Birney, who
received nearly seven thousand votes.

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