and the hall in
which it met was burned to the ground.

Finally came the National Anti-Slavery Society, which, in view of its
limited financial resources, certainly did a wonderful work. Its
publications, in spite of careful watching of the mails and other
precautions adopted by the slaveholders, reached all parts of the
country, and its preachers, sent out and commissioned to proclaim the
new evangel of equal manhood, were absolutely ubiquitous.

Those early Anti-Slavery lecturers were a peculiar set. Since the days
of the Apostles there have been no more earnest propagandists. They
were both male and female. That they were, as a rule, financially
poor, it is unnecessary to state. They lived largely on the country
traversed. Sympathizers with their views, having received and
entertained them--sometimes clandestinely--after a public talk or two,
would carry them on to the next stations on their routes, occasionally
contributing a few dollars to their purses. It made no particular
difference to them whether they spoke in halls, in churches, or in
the open air. Before beginning their addresses their usual course was
to challenge their opponents to debate, and to taunt them with lack of
courage or principle if they failed to respond. Of course, they were
in constant danger from mobs. They were stoned, clubbed, shot at, and
rotten-egged, and in a few extreme cases tarred and feathered; but
they were never frightened from their work.

They were by no means policy-wise. That was one of their
peculiarities. Their idea seemed to be that they could drive people
easier than they could lead them. They used no buttered phrases. They
told the plainest truths in the plainest way. They gave their
audiences hard words, and often received hard knocks in return. They
called the slaveholders robbers and man-stealers. They branded
Northern politicians with Southern principles as "dough-faces." But
their hardest and sharpest expletives were reserved for those Northern
clergymen who were either pro-slavery or non-committal. They blistered
them all over with their lashings. In speaking of one of the most
noted among them, Lowell describes him as

"A kind of maddened John the Baptist
To whom the hardest word came aptest."

The lecturer of whom I saw the most in those early trying days was
Professor Hudson, of Oberlin College. While in that part of the field
he made headquarters at my father's house, radiating out and filling
ap