Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/406

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

ample room to show their genius and abilities. The bold and seeming audacity with which they attacked slavery in every corner where the monster had taken refuge, even in the face of lynchings, riots, and murders, carried with it a charm which wrung applause from the sympathizing heart throughout the world, and showed that the American Abolitionists possessed a persistency and a courage which had never found a parallel in the annals of progress and reform.

In the spring of 1859, we attended a meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-slavery Society, as it was then organized, and we shall write of the members as they appeared at that time. The committee was composed of twelve persons besides the chairman, and were seated around a long table. At the head of the table sat William Lloyd Garrison, the Chairman of the Board, and the acknowledged leader of the movement. His high and prominent forehead, piercing eye, pleasant, yet anxious countenance, long nose, and smile upon his lips, point him out at once as a man born to guide and direct.

The deference with which he is treated by his associates shows their appreciation of his abilities and his moral worth. Tender and blameless in his family affections, devoted to his friends, simple and studious, upright, guileless, distinguished, and worthy, like the great men of antiquity, to be immortalized by another Plutarch. As a speaker, he is forcible, clear, and logical; as a writer, he has always been regarded as one of the ablest in our country. How many services, never to be forgotten, has he not rendered to the cause of the slave and the welfare of mankind.

Many of those who started out with him in young