VIII.
FREE SPEECH.
ADDRESS DELIVERED AT TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON,
ON THE 11TH OF DECEMBER, 1860.
This address was delivered in the regular course of the Fraternity Lectures. A few days before its delivery a meeting of Abolitionists was broken up in Boston by an excited crowd, among whom, as the papers stated, several of the “respectable conservative citizens and business men of Boston” were conspicuous. The secession movement in the Southern States had assumed formidable proportions, and great apprehensions were entertained by commercial men and manufacturers, who had large pecuniary interests at stake in the insurgent States. Their fears and excitement were increased by every demonstration in the North which might have a tendency to “irritate the South.” The same cause produced similar disturbances in other Northern cities, until at last the great national uprising after the attack on Fort Sumter put an end to such proceedings.
Ladies and Gentlemen:—
A few days ago, when on my travels in the State
of New York, I was reading newspapers in a railroad car,
my eyes lighted upon a column headed in large letters:
“The mouth of Abolitionism shut! The Blacks smoked
out!” &c., and then followed a glowing account of the
ardor and enthusiasm displayed by the intelligent and
conservative citizens of Boston in breaking up a meeting
of Abolitionists. At first I thought there must be some
mistake; it must be an old paper, or an article copied
from an old paper; or it must be a typographical error,
substituting Boston for Baltimore, or Louisville, or some
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