The first number of the Liberator brought fifty dollars from James Forten, a colored man of Philadelphia, and the names of twenty-five subscribers; and before long an obscure room was rented as an office, where Garrison and his partner made their bed on the floor, boarded themselves, and printed their paper.

A Southern magistrate, trembling for the institutions of his country, wrote a somewhat dictatorial appeal to the mayor of Boston, Harrison Gray Otis, to suppress that paper. Mr. Otis wrote in reply, that having ferreted out the paper and the editor, he found that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a few insignificant persons of all colors—from which he argued that there was no occasion for alarm, even though the obscure paper should prove irrepressible. Very differently, however, thought the South. Every mail brought to Garrison threats of assassination, and letters whose mingled profanity and obscenity can only be described as John Bunyan describes the discourse of Apollyon, "He spake as a dragon." The Governors of one or two States set a price upon his head. The Governor of Georgia, in terms somewhat more decent, offered five thousand dollars to any one who should arrest and bring to trial under the laws of that State, the editor or publisher of the Liberator. Many of Mr. Garrison's friends, deeming his life in danger, besought him to wear arms. He was, however, from religious conviction, a non-resistant of evil, interpreting with literal strictness the Saviour's directions on that subject; and so committed his life simply to the good providence of God.

On January 1, 1832, he secured the co-operation of eleven others, who, with himself, organized the American Anti-Slavery Society upon the principle of immediate emancipation. Affiliated associations sprang up all over the country—books, tracts, lectures, all the machinery of moral agitation, began active movement. He went to England as agent for the Emancipation Society, to hold counsel with the men who had pioneered the same work successfully in England. He was warmly received by Wilberforce, Brougham, Clarkson, and their associates, and succeeded in opening their eyes to the entire inefficiency of the Colonization Society as a substitute for the great duty of immediate emancipation, so that Wilberforce, with eleven of his coadjutors, issued a protest against it, not as in itself considered, but as it had been made a shield to the consciences of those who deferred their immediate duty to the slave on the ground of this distant and precarious remedy.

While in England this time, Mr. Garrison was invited to Stafford House, and treated with marked attention by the Duchess of Sutherland, then in the zenith of that magnificent beauty which, in union with a generous nature and winning manners, made her one of the most distinguished leaders among the nobility of the times. With a heart to feel every grand and heroic impulse, she had entered with enthusiasm into the anti-slavery movement of her own country, and was prepared to welcome the obscure, unknown apostle of the same faith from American shores. At her request, Garrison sat for his portrait to one of the most distinguished artists of the time, and the copy was retained among the memorabilia of Stafford House. Garrison humorously remarked that many had desired to have his head before now, but the solicitation had never come in so flattering a form. The noble woman has lived to enjoy the triumph of that cause in which her large heart gave her that right of personal possession which belongs to the very highest natures.

On his return from England he assisted in organizing the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, the declaration of whose principles was prepared by him. From this time the anti-slavery agitation was intensified, and the era of mob violence swept over the country. The holding of an anti-slavery society in any place was the appointed signal for scenes of riotous violence. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hall was burned, the negroes abused and maltreated. In Cincinnati, Birney's printing-press and types were thrown into the Ohio, and the negroes for days were hunted like beasts. In Alton, Lovejoy was shot while defending his printing-press, and Boston, notwithstanding the sepulchres of the fathers, and the shadow of Bunker Hill spire, had her hour of the powers of darkness. Leading presses abused the abolitionists in terms which aroused every vindictive passion of the mob, and in October, 1835, a meeting of the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Boston was riotously broken up by a collection of persons, described in the journals of the day as "gentlemen of property and standing."

The heroines of that memorable day and time, were ladies from the very first Massachusetts families; sprung from the old heroic stock of her historic fame. For vigor of mind, for education, for beauty, accomplishments and genius, some of them might be cited who would scarce find superiors in any land. Their meeting was in every way feminine and proper, and in strict accordance with the spirit and customs of New England, which recognize female organizations for various benevolent purposes, as one of the most approved means for carrying on society.

There was no more reason why a female Anti-Slavery Society should not meet quietly, transact its own business and listen to speeches of its own chosen orators, than the Female Foreign Missionary Society or the Female Home Missionary Society, or the Female Temperance Union.

But certain newspapers of Boston called attention to the fact that this meeting was so to be held, in articles written in that well known style which stirs up and invites that very mobocratic spirit which it pretends to deprecate.

These papers proceeded to say that those ladies were about to hold a dangerous kind of meeting, which would be sure to end in a mob, that they were about to be addressed by George Thompson, who was declared to be nothing more nor less than a British agitator, sent over to make dissension and trouble in America, and kept here for that purpose by British funds.

It was now stated in the public prints that several store keepers in the immediate vicinity of the Hall, had petitioned the Mayor to suppress the meeting, as in case of a riot in the neighborhood their property might be in danger. A placard was posted and circulated through the city to the following purport, that