d to make our
country the arena of blood and murder," roared the _Herald_, "and render
our city an object of horror to the whole South?... Public opinion
should be regulated. These Abolitionists should not be allowed to
misrepresent New York." In order to suppress the Abolitionists that
paper did not blink at any means, however extreme or revolutionary, but
declared boldly in favor of throttling free discussion. "When free
discussion does not promote the public good," argued the editor, "it has
no more right to exist than a bad government that is dangerous and
oppressive to the common weal. It should be overthrown." The mob thus
invoked came forward on the opening of the convention to overthrow free
discussion.

The storm which the New York press was at so much labor to brew,
Garrison did not doubt would break over the convention. He went to it in
a truly apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. "Not knowing the things that
shall befall me there, saving that bonds and afflictions abide with me
in every city," he wrote his wife an hour before the commencement of the
convention. His prevision of violence was quickly fulfilled. He had
called Francis Jackson to the chair during the delivery of the opening
speech which fell to the pioneer to make as the president of the
society. His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which he was
paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian fashion. Belief in Jesus in
the United States had no vital influence on conduct or character. The
chief religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery, they had
uttered no protest against the national sin. There was the Roman
Catholic Church whose "priests and members held slaves without incurring
the rebuke of the Church." At this point the orator was interrupted by
one of those monstrous products of the slums of the American metropolis,
compounded of the bully, the blackleg, and the demagogue in about equal
proportions. It was the notorious Captain Isaiah Rynders, perched with
his band of blackguards in the organ loft of the tabernacle and ready to
do the will of the metropolitan journals by over-throwing the right of
free discussion. He was not disposed to permit Mr. Garrison's censure of
the Roman Catholic Church to pass unchallenged, so he begged to ask
"whether there are no other churches as well as the Catholic Church,
whose clergy and lay members hold slaves?" To which the anti-slavery
leader replied with the utmost composure, not inclined