Garrison had gotten himself thoroughly disliked in Boston. The Mayor once replied to a letter inquiring about him, "He is a nobody and lives in a rat-hole."
But Garrison managed to print his paper—rather irregularly, to be sure, but he printed it. From one room he moved into two, and a straggling company, calling themselves "The Anti-Slavery Society," used his office for a meeting-place.
And now, behold the office mobbed, the type pitched into the street, the Society driven out, and the fanatical editor, bruised and battered, safely lodged in jail—writing editorials with a calm resolution and a will that never faltered.
And Wendell Phillips? He was pacing the streets, wondering whether it was worth while to be respectable and prosperous in a city where violence took the place of law when logic failed.
To him, Garrison had won—Garrison had not been answered: only beaten, bullied, abused and thrust behind prison-bars.
Wendell Phillips' cheeks burned with shame.
Garrison was held a prisoner for several days.
The Mayor would have punished the man, Pilate-like, to appease public opinion, but there was no law to cover the case—no illegal offense had been committed. Garrison demanded a trial, but the officials said that they had locked him up merely to protect him, and that he was a base ingrate. Official Boston now looked at the whole matter as a good thing to forget. The prisoner's cell-door was left open, in the hope that he would escape, just as, later, George Francis Train enjoyed the distinction of being the only man who was literally kicked down the stone steps of the Tombs.
Garrison was thrust out of limbo, with a warning, and a hint that Boston-town was a good place for him to emigrate from.