one
great political question in America, upon which men were compelled to
take one side or the other. From the first, there existed in the north a
band of abolitionists--of men, in other words, who believed that the
only solution of the slavery question was to put an end to that
institution at once and forever. Of the persecutions which were visited
on the abolitionists we have spoken when telling the story of Lucretia
Mott. Social ostracism was the least of them.

Perhaps no one person in America did more to crystalize public sentiment
against slavery than Lydia Maria Child. An author at the age of
seventeen, and writing continuously until her death, coming early under
the influence of William Lloyd Garrison, that great leader of the
abolitionists, it was inevitable that she should employ her pen to
assist the cause. In 1833 appeared her "Appeal for that class of
Americans called Africans," the first anti-slavery work printed in
America in book form, antedating Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by
nineteen years. It attracted wide attention, enlisting the interest of
such men as Dr. Channing, who walked from Boston to Roxbury to thank the
author. But it was not without its penalties, for society closed its
doors to Mrs. Child, many of her friends deserted her, and she was made
the subject of much cruel comment. However, she became more and more
interested in the anti-slavery crusade, edited the "National
Anti-Slavery Standard," and wrote pamphlet after pamphlet. When John
Brown was taken prisoner, she wrote him a letter of sympathy, which drew
forth a courteous rebuke from Governor Wise, of Virginia, and a letter
from the wife of Senator Mason, the author of the fugitive slave law,
threatening her with future damnation. These letters were published and
had a circulation of three hundred thousand copies. Wendell Phillips
paid an eloquent tribute to her character and influence, at her funeral:
"She was the kind of woman," he said, "one would choose to represent
woman's entrance into broader life. Modest, womanly, sincere, solid,
real, loyal, to be trusted, equal to affairs, and yet above them; a
companion with the password of every science and all literature."

But however valuable the services of women like Lucretia Mott and Lydia
Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe were in the fight against slavery,
the leader and high priest of the movement was William Lloyd Garrison.
Born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1805, hi