ies--the Whigs and the Democrats--had so nearly an
equal representation in the State Legislature that Townsend, who was a
State Senator, and two co-operating members, held a balance of power.
Both parties were exceedingly anxious to control the Legislature, as
that body, under the State constitution then in force, had the
distribution of a great deal of patronage. The consideration for the
deciding vote demanded by Townsend and his associates was the election
of Chase to the Senate. They and the Democrats made the deal.
Naturally enough, the Whigs expressed great indignation until it was
shown that they had offered to enter into very much the same
arrangement.

Some years before the events just spoken of, Townsend had been a
medical student in Cincinnati. One day he stepped into the courthouse,
where a fugitive-slave case was being tried. There he listened to an
argument from Salmon P. Chase, the negro's defender, that made an
Abolitionist of him. The senatorial incident naturally followed.

There was another Ohioan--not an individual this time, but an
institution--that will always hold a high place in the annals of
Abolitionism. Oberlin College was a power in the land. It had a corps
of very able professors who were, without exception, active
Anti-Slavery workers. They regarded themselves as public instructors
as well as private teachers. There was scarcely a township in Ohio
that they did not visit, either personally or through their disciples.
They were as ready to talk in country schoolhouses as in their own
college halls. Of course, they were violently opposed. Mobs broke up
their meetings very frequently, but that only made them more
persistent. Their teachings were viciously misrepresented. They were
accused of favoring the intermarriage of the races, and parents were
warned, if they sent their children to Oberlin, to look out for
colored sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. For such slanders, however,
the men and women of Oberlin--for both sexes were admitted to faculty
and classes--seemed to care no more than they did for pro-slavery
mobs.

There is another name which, although it belongs exclusively neither
to the East nor to the West, to the North nor to the South, should not
be omitted from a record like this. Doctor Gamaliel Bailey resided in
the District of Columbia, and issued the _National Era_ from
Washington city.

Although a journal of small folio measurement and issued but once a
week, it was for