| Page | |
| Rise of Abolitionism | [1] |
| Rev. John Rankin and Rev. John D. Paxton | [10] |
| Benjamin Lundy | [11] |
| William Lloyd Garrison | [15] |
| Miss Prudence Crandall and the Canterbury School | [39] |
| The Black Law of Connecticut | [52] |
| Arthur Tappan | [57] |
| Charles C. Burleigh | [62] |
| Miss Crandall’s Trial | [66] |
| House set on Fire | [70] |
| Mr. Garrison’s Mission to England.—New York Mobs | [72] |
| The Convention at Philadelphia | [79] |
| Lucretia Mott | [91] |
| Mrs. L. Maria Child | [97] |
| Eruption of Lane Seminary | [102] |
| George Thompson, M. P., LL. D. | [108] |
| His First Year in America | [115] |
| Antislavery Conflict | [126] |
| Reign of Terror | [131] |
| Walker’s Appeal | [133] |
| The Clergy and the Quakers | [144] |
| The Quakers | [147] |
| The Reign of Terror continued | [150] |
| Francis Jackson | [157] |
| Riot at Utica, N. Y.—Gerrit Smith | [162] |
| Dr. Channing | [170] |
| His Address on Slavery | [177] |
| The Gag-Law | [185] |
| The Gag-Law.—Second Interview | [194] |
| Hon. James G. Birney | [203] |
| John Quincy Adams | [211] |
| The Alton Tragedy | [221] |
| Woman Question.—Misses Grimké | [230] |
| “The Pastoral Letter” and “The Clerical Appeal” | [238] |
| Dr. Charles Follen | [248] |
| John G. Whittier and the Antislavery Poets | [259] |
| Prejudice against Color | [266] |
| A Negro’s Love of Liberty | [278] |
| Distinguished Colored Men | [285] |
| David Ruggles, Lewis Hayden, and William C. Nell | [285] |
| James Forten | [286] |
| Robert Purvis | [288] |
| William Wells Brown | [289] |
| Charles Lenox Remond | [289] |
| Rev. J. W. Loguen | [290] |
| Frederick Douglass | [292] |
| The Underground Railroad | [296] |
| George Latimer | [305] |
| The Annexation of Texas | [313] |
| Abolitionists in Central New York.—Gerrit Smith | [321] |
| Conduct of the Clergy and Churches | [329] |
| Unitarian and Universalist Ministers and Churches | [333] |
| Unitarians | [335] |
| The Fugitive Slave Law | [345] |
| Daniel Webster | [348] |
| The Unitarians and their Ministers | [366] |
| The Rescue of Jerry | [373] |
| New Persecutions | [389] |
| Riot in Syracuse | [391] |
| Appendix | [397] |
RISE OF ABOLITIONISM.
Ever and anon in the world’s history there has been some one who has broken out as a living fountain of the free spirit of humanity, has given bold utterance to the pent-up thought of wrongs, too long endured, and has made the demand for some God-given right, until then withheld,—a demand so obviously just, that the tyrants of earth have trembled as if called to judgment, and the oppressed have rejoiced as at the voice of their deliverer. “It is thus the spirit of a single mind makes that of multitudes take one direction.”
Such, as the subsequent history of our country has shown, such was the spirit of the mind of that man who will be honored through all coming time, as the leader of the most glorious movement ever made in humanity’s behalf,—the movement for perfect, impartial liberty, which for the last thirty-nine years has rocked our Republic from centre to circumference, and will continue to agitate it until every vestige of slavery is shaken out of our civil fabric.
“When the tourist of Europe has descended from the Black Forest into Suabia, his guide asks him if he does not wish to see the source of the Danube. Only one answer can be given to such a question. So he is conducted into the garden of an obscure nobleman of Baden; and there, within a small stone enclosure, he is shown the highest spring of that river, which has worn its channel deeper and wider for sixteen hundred miles, and, receiving on its way the contributions of thirty navigable streams, enters the Black Sea by five mouths, thus opening a communication between the interior of Europe and the Mediterranean, bearing on its bosom the commerce of fifty millions of people, and bringing them into the community of nations.”
Soon after Mr. Garrison’s assault upon the institution of American slavery began to be felt, (and that was almost as soon as it began,) a Southern governor wrote to the mayor of Boston, demanding to know what was to be expected, what to be feared, from this attack upon “the peculiar institution of the South.” In due time the gentleman who was then the high official addressed replied to his Southern excellency, that there was no occasion for uneasiness. “He had made diligent search for the would-be ‘Liberator.’ The city officers had ferreted out the paper and its editor. His office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors.”
Undoubtedly to that dainty gentleman the rise of the antislavery enterprise in our country did seem insignificant,—quite as insignificant as the little spring of water in the garden at Baden. He may never have learnt among his nursery rhymes, that
“Large streams from little fountains flow,
Tall oaks from little acorns grow,”