te which had been shipped to him in coffee barrels
from St. Domingo, on the eve of the revolution in that Island, and whose
owners are supposed to have subsequently perished, as they never
appeared, with one solitary exception, to claim their property.

It will be necessary, in order to make certain passages of the
succeeding narrative intelligible to my readers in this country, that
some account should be given of the schism which has recently taken
place in the once united and compact organizations of the abolitionists.

The American Anti-Slavery Society, whose origin has been already
described, acted with great unity and efficiency for several years;
auxiliaries were formed in all the free States; it scattered its
publications over the land like the leaves of autumn, and at times had
thirty or forty lecturers in the field. It kept a steady and vigilant
eye upon the movements of the pro-slavery party, and wherever a
vulnerable point was discovered, it directed its attacks. In its
executive committee were such men as Judge Jay, Arthur and Lewis Tappan,
La Roy Sunderland, Simeon S. Jocelyn, (the early laborer on behalf of
the free colored people,) Joshua Leavitt, Henry B. Stanton, and the late
Dr. Follen, a German political refugee, equally distinguished for his
literary attainments and his love of liberty.

Until the last three or four years, entire union of purpose and concert
of action existed among the American abolitionists. This harmony was
first disturbed by the course pursued in the Boston Liberator. The
editor of that paper, William Lloyd Garrison, whose early anti-slavery
career has already been alluded to, and who was deservedly honored by
the great body of the abolitionists, for his sufferings in their cause,
and for his triumphant exposure of the oppressive tendencies of the
colonization scheme, had always refused to share with any society or
committee, the editorial responsibility of his journal. About the time
referred to, several pieces were inserted in the _Liberator_,
questioning the generally received opinions on the first day of the
week. These were followed by others on other subjects, and he continued
to keep his readers apprised of the new views of ethics and theology,
which from time to time were presented to his own mind. His paper was
not the special organ of any anti-slavery society, yet it was regarded,
by general consent of the friends and enemies of the cause, as the organ
of the anti-sla