he society, and in this
way was added to its other weapons that of the press. This was a capital
arrangement, for by it both the paper and the society were placed under
the direction of the same masterly guidance. There was still one arrow
left in the moral quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of
the people, and that was the appointment of an agent to spread the
doctrines of the new propaganda of freedom. In August the board of
managers, metaphorically speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison
the agent of the society to lecture on the subject of slavery "for a
period not exceeding three months." This was the first drop from a cloud
then no bigger than a hand, but which was to grow and spread until,
covering the North, was, at the end of a few short years, to flood the
land with anti-slavery agents and lecturers.

Our anti-slavery agent visited portions of Massachusetts, Maine, and
Rhode Island, preaching the Abolition gospel in divers places, and to
many people--notably at such centers of population as Worcester,
Providence, Bangor, and Portland, making at the latter city a signal
conversion to his cause in the person of General Samuel Fessenden,
distinguished then as a lawyer, and later as the father of William Pitt
Fessenden. The anti-slavery schoolmaster was abroad, and was beginning
to turn New England and the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where
he sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the forms.

So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the society during the
first year of its existence that it was no empty declaration or boast of
the _Abolitionist_, the new monthly periodical of the society, that
"probably, through its instrumentality, more public addresses on the
subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people
of color, have been made in New England, during the past year (1832)
than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization."

The introduction of the principle of association into the slavery
agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an
achievement of the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any man,
or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense
initiative. He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged
the method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling of the
anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a
common cause, was a master stroke of moral g