CHAPTER XLVIII.
THE ABOLITIONISTS.
A little more than forty years ago, William Lloyd
Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate and unconditional
emancipation, as the right of the slave, and
the duty of the master. The men and women who
gradually rallied around him, fully comprehended the
solemn responsibility they were then taking, and seemed
prepared to consecrate the best years of their lives to
the cause of human freedom. Amid the moral and
political darkness which then overshadowed the land,
the voice of humanity was at length faintly heard, and
soon aroused opposition; for slavery was rooted and
engrafted in every fibre of American society. The
imprisonment of Mr. Garrison at Baltimore, at once
directed public attention to the heinous sin which he
was attacking, and called around him some of the
purest and best men of the country.
The Boston mob of 1835 gave now impulse to the agitation, and brought fresh aid to the pioneer of the movement. Then came the great battle for freedom of speech and the press; a battle in which the heroism of this small body of proscribed men and women had
