be illegally
detained, and was set at liberty.[A] It is generally allowed that so
bold and uncompromising an advocate of the negroes' right as Elisha
Tyson does not now remain in the slave States.

[Footnote A: See Appendix D for a brief account of this ancient
philanthropist.]

As the old school of abolitionists has been mentioned, and will
occasionally be referred to hereafter, the following historical
statement of its rise and decline, and of the commencement of the
present abolition movement, will probably be interesting to the
anti-slavery reader on this side of the Atlantic. It is from the pen of
my valued coadjutor John G. Whittier.

"The old Anti-Slavery Societies, established about the period of
the American Revolution, and of which the late Judge Jay,
Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Rush, and other distinguished statesmen
were members, were composed mainly of the Religious Society of
Friends. These societies were for many years active and
energetic in their labors for the slave, and the free people of
color; and little, if any, serious opposition was made to their
exertions, which indeed seem to have been confined to the
particular states in which they were located. They rendered
essential service in promoting the gradual abolition of slavery
in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

"In 1819 commenced the discussion of what is now known as the
'Missouri Question.' The Anti-Slavery Societies took ground
against the admission into the Union of the territory of
Missouri as a slave state. They succeeded in arousing the public
attention; and for two sessions the subject was warmly debated
in Congress; the slave-holders finally carrying their point by
working upon the fears of a few Northern members, by means of
that old threat of dissolving the Union, which in the very
outset of the Government had extorted from the Convention which
framed the Constitution, a clause legalizing the Foreign Slave
Trade for twenty years. The admission of Missouri as a slave
State was a fatal concession to the South: the abolitionists
became disheartened: their societies lingered on a few years
longer, and nearly all were extinct previous to 1830. The
colonization scheme had in the mean time, in despite of the
earnest and almost unanimous rejection of it by the colored
people, obtained a strong hold on the public mind, and h