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Slave States. In Boston, Garrison, pleading for the Slave, was dragged through the strects with a halter about his neck; and in Ilinois Lovejoy, also pleading for the Slave, was ferociously murdered. The former yet lives to speak for himself, while the latter lives in his eloquent brother, the Representative from Illinois in the other House. Thus does Slavery show its natural influence even at a distance.
Nor in the Slave States is this spirit confined to the outbreaks of mere lawlessness. Too strong for restraint, it finds no limitations except in its own barbarous will. The Government becomes its tool, and in official acts does its bidding. Here again the instances are numerous. I might dwell on the degradation of the Post-Office, when its official head consented that, for the sake of Slavery, the mails themselves should be rifled. I might dwell also on the cruel persecution of Free Persons of color who in the Slave States generally, and even here in the District of Columbia, are not allowed to testify where a white man is in question, and who now in several States are menaced by legislative act with the alternative of expulsion from their homes or of reduction to Slavery. But I pass at once to two illustrative transactions, which, as a son of Massachusetts, I can not forget.
1. The first relates to a citizen of purest life and perfect integrity, whose name is destined to fill a conspicuous place in the history of Freedom, William Lloyd Garrison. Born in Massachusetts, bred to the same profession with Benjamin Franklin, and like his great predecessor becoming an editor, he saw with instinctive clearness the wrong of Slavery, and at a period when the ardors of the Missouri Question had given way to indifference throughout the North, he stepped forward to denounce it. The jail at Baltimore, where he then resided, was his earliest reward. Afterward, January 1st, 1831, he published the first number of the Liberator, inscribing for his motto an utterance of Christian philanthropy, “My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind," and declaring in the face of surrounding apathy: “I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and J will be heard." In this sublime spirit he commenced his labors for the Slave, proposing no intervention by Congress in the States, and on well-considered principle avoiding all appeals to, the bondmen themselves. Such was his simple and thoroughly constitutional position,
