when a different course on his part could not have failed to secure him
the favor and patronage of his party. In the great struggle with the
Bank of the United States, his services had not been unappreciated by the
President and his friends. Without directly approving the course of the
administration on the question of the rights of the Abolitionists, by
remaining silent in respect to it, he might have avoided all suspicion of
mental and moral independence incompatible with party allegiance. The
impracticable honesty of Leggett, never bending from the erectness of
truth for the sake of that "thrift which follows fawning," dictated a
most severe and scorching review of the letter of the Postmaster-General.
"More monstrous, more detestable doctrines we have never heard
promulgated," he exclaimed in one of his leading editorials. "With what
face, after this, can the Postmaster-General punish a postmaster for any
exercise of the fearfully dangerous power of stopping and destroying any
portion of the mails?" "The Abolitionists do not deserve to be placed on
the same footing with a foreign enemy, nor their publications as the
secret despatches of a spy. They are American citizens, in the exercise
of their undoubted right of citizenship; and however erroneous their
views, however fanatic their conduct, while they act within the limits of
the law, what official functionary, be he merely a subordinate or the
head of the post-office department, shall dare to abridge them of their
rights as citizens, and deny them those facilities of intercourse which
were instituted for the equal accommodation of all? If the American
people will submit to this, let us expunge all written codes, and resolve
society into its original elements, where the might of the strong is
better than the right of the weak."

A few days after the publication of this manly rebuke, he wrote an
indignantly sarcastic article upon the mobs which were at this time
everywhere summoned to "put down the Abolitionists." The next day, the
4th of the ninth month, 1835, he received a copy of the Address of the
American Anti-Slavery Society to the public, containing a full and
explicit avowal of all the principles and designs of the association. He
gave it a candid perusal, weighed its arguments, compared its doctrines
with those at the foundation of his own political faith, and rose up from
its examination an Abolitionist. He saw that he himself, misled by the
popul