oldness of
this movement on the part of William Leggett. To be an Abolitionist then
was to abandon all hope of political preferment or party favor; to be
marked and branded as a social outlaw, under good society's interdict of
food and fire; to hold property, liberty, and life itself at the mercy of
lawless mobs. All this William Leggett clearly saw. He knew how rugged
and thorny was the path upon which, impelled by his love of truth and the
obligations of humanity, he was entering. From hunted and proscribed
Abolitionists and oppressed and spirit-broken colored men, the Pariahs of
American democracy, he could alone expect sympathy. The Whig journals,
with a few honorable exceptions, exulted over what they regarded as the
fall of a formidable opponent; and after painting his abolitionism in the
most hideous colors, held him up to their Southern allies as a specimen
of the radical disorganizers and democratic levellers of the North. His
own party, in consequence, made haste to proscribe him. Government
advertising was promptly withdrawn from his paper. The official journals
of Washington and Albany read him out of the pale of democracy. Father
Ritchie scolded and threatened. The democratic committee issued its bull
against him from Tammany Hall. The resolutions of that committee were
laid before him when he was sinking under a severe illness. Rallying his
energies, he dictated from his sick-bed an answer marked by all his
accustomed vigor and boldness. Its tone was calm, manly, self-relying;
the language of one who, having planted his feet hard down on the rock of
principle, stood there like Luther at Worms, because he "could not
otherwise." Exhausted nature sunk under the effort. A weary sickness of
nearly a year's duration followed. In this sore affliction, deserted as
he was by most of his old political friends, we have reason to know that
he was cheered by the gratitude of those in whose behalf he had well-nigh
made a martyr's sacrifice; and that from the humble hearths of his poor
colored fellow-citizens fervent prayers went up for his restoration.

His work was not yet done. Purified by trial, he was to stand forth once
more in vindication of the truths of freedom. As soon as his health was
sufficiently reestablished, he commenced the publication of an
independent political and literary journal, under the expressive title of
The Plaindealer. In his first number he stated, that, claiming the right