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gave rise to them." (Cries of "question," "hear him," "go on," no gagging etc.) "I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the Colonies; and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! (Great applause.) Fellow-citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine?" ("No, no.") After giving a clear exposition of the difference between the riot at Alton and the Boston Tea Party, Phillips continued: "Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips (pointing to the portraits in the Hall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American,— the slanderer of the dead. (Great applause and counter applause.) The gentleman said that he should

sink into insignificance if he dared not gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans, and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up." (Applause and hisses, with cries of "Take that back!") The uproar became so great that for a time no one could be heard. At length the Hon. William Sturgis came to Mr. Phillips's side at the front of the platform. He was met with cries of "Phillips or nobody," "Make him take back recreant; he shan't go on till he takes it back." When it was understood that Mr. Sturgis meant to sustain, not to interrupt Mr. Phillips, he was listened to and said, "I did not come here to take part in this discussion, nor do I intend to; but I do entreat you, fellow-citizens, by everything you hold sacred, I conjure you by every association connected with this Hall, consecrated by our Fathers to freedom of discussion,that you listen to every man who addresses you in a decorous manner." Phillips resumed his speech and made in this, his début, one of the best remembered triumphs in a life of oratory. His speech, though imperfectly reported, is one of those historic speeches which carry their eloquence to the

reader, even through the disguise of print. When Phillips was asked afterwards what his thoughts were during the delivery of it, he said he was thinking of nothing except the carrying of resolutions. This he accomplished and the vote of the meeting was cast for freedom: the murderers of Lovejoy were denounced.

The practical importance of this outcome to the Abolitionists is brought home to us in a letter written by one of them, a woman, to a friend in England. "Stout men, my husband for instance, came home that day and lifted up their voices and wept. Dr. Channing did not know how dangerous an experiment, as people count danger, he adventured. We knew that we must send our children out of town and sleep in our day garments that night, unless free discussion prevailed."

The burning of Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, in May, 1838, was among the last of the outrages committed during this epoch of persecution. There seems after this to have been a simmering down of the antagonism of the public to the Abolitionists, and it was not until 1850 that another great attempt, the last attempt, was made by the united South to control the destinies of the North.

VI

RETROSPECT AND

PROSPECT

It seems to be always the case in human affairs that conditions grow better and worse at the same time. An evil reaches its climax at the very moment that the corrective reform is making a hidden march upon it from an unexpected quarter. And so this epoch of crisis in mob violence against Abolition must be recorded as the epoch during which Abolition passed from the stage of moral agitation into the arena of practical politics. The Anti-slavery men had begun by heckling the clergy; they divided up the country into districts and sent their dreaded emissaries with lists of questions which the parsons had to answer. This process rent the churches, or rather it revealed the fact that the churches were Pro-slavery. In like manner the questioning of all candidates for office was taken up by the Abolitionists. In the year 1840 there were two thousand 'Anti-slavery Societies with a membership of

two hundred thousand. It is apparent that the political parties at the North were about to feel the same disruptive power run through their vitals that the churches had felt.

If you take up a history of the United States, or the biography of a statesman of this time, you will find that the author only begins to deal with Abolition in about the year 1840, that is, after it has reached the political stage. He writes perhaps a few pages, as Mr. Rhodes does, about the rise of the movement, taking for granted that the reader knows how Abolition got started, and why it was able so soon to overshadow all other questions. The same thing occurs in the history of the rise of Christianity; with this difference,- that the early stages of Christianity are involved in obscurity; whereas the activities of the early years of Abolition are recorded in accessible and thrilling books. The historian, as a general rule, gives us only the history of politics. He seems not to be interested in the beginnings of things. And yet, those beginnings are the seed. The beginnings of any movement, the epoch when it is in the stage of idea, of agitation, of moral impulse, and before it has assumed a shape