would be: to organize anti-slavery societies everywhere, to hold meetings unceasingly, to circulate literature, to spare no efforts whatever to bring the nation, as he expressed it, "to a speedy repentance."
Now began what has been called "the martyr age" in America, and the most active period of Garrison's life. He and his followers held meetings night and day, and mobs of rough and brutal men were sent by their opponents to break them up. Anti-slavery people were in danger of their lives; they were mobbed wherever they were known, and their houses burnt or ruined. Halls where meetings were to be held were destroyed. A young divinity student was flogged publicly for having anti-slavery literature in his bag. Another lost his life defending a friend against the ruffians who attacked him. In the South, men even suspected of favoring the abolition of slaves were lynched, and judges were all in favor of slavery, and treated the anti-slavery people as vagabonds. Garrison on one occasion had his clothes torn off him and was dragged through the streets with a rope round his body. He was rescued from a raging crowd by the mayor of the town, who saw no way of protecting him but by putting him in prison. On the wall of his cell Garrison wrote: "William L. Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a respectable and influential mob who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men are
