d inwards to re-examine his status upon the Anti-slavery question.
He happened to be visiting his old college-friend, Salmon P. Chase, at
Cincinnati, and, fortunately for the spiritual life of both men, it was
at the time of the terrible riots that broke up the press of John G.
Birney. Both being known as already favoring the cause of the slave,
they stood in much peril for several days; but when the dark time was
passed, the clearness that defined their sentiments was seen to be worth
all the personal danger that had bought it. Self-delusion on the subject
was no longer possible. The deductions from the facts were as plain as
the facts themselves. The two friends took counsel together, and adopted
the policy from which thenceforward neither ever swerved. A great cloud
was rolled from their eyes. In all this turmoil of riot, they saw on the
one side, indeed, a love of man great in its devotion; but on the other,
a moral deadness in the North so profound and determined that it
threatened thus brutally any voice that would disturb it. Their duty,
then, was evident: to fling all the forces of their lives, and by all
social and political means, right against this inertness, and shatter it
if they could. To Mr. Chase, the course of things gave the larger
political work; to my father, the larger social. His diary records how
amazed he was, when he returned to Philadelphia, at his former
blindness, and how thankful to the spirit of love that had touched and
cleansed his eyes that he might see God's image erect. He knew now that
his lot had been cast in the very stronghold of apathy, the home of a
lukewarm spirit, which, not containing anything positive to keep it
close to the right, let its sullen negativeness gravitate towards the
wrong. It will be difficult to make coming generations understand, not
the flaming antagonism to humanity, but the more brutal avoidance of it
that ruled the political tone in this latitude, from 1836 to 1861. I
have thought of the word _bitterness_, as expressing it; but though that
might convey somewhat of its recoil when disturbed, it pictures nothing
of its inhuman solicitude against all disturbance. Conservatism, it was
called; and certainly it did conserve the devil admirably. At the South,
one race of men were so basely wielding a greater physical power over
another race of men, as to crush from them the attributes of
self-responsible creatures; Philadelphia, the city of the North nearest
the w