bring to trial, and prosecute its publisher to conviction. The
_Liberator_ was excluded from the United States mails in all the slave
States, illegal as such a proceeding was.

There was, however, opposition nearer home. The _Liberator_
establishment was wrecked by a mob, and Garrison, after having been
stripped of nearly all his clothing, was dragged, bareheaded, by a
rope round his body through the streets of Boston until, to save his
life, the authorities thrust him into jail.

No man in this country was so cordially hated by the slaveholders as
Garrison. Of the big men up North--the leaders of politics and
society--they had no apprehension. They knew how to manage them. It
was the little fellows like the editor of the _Liberator_ that gave
them trouble. These men had no money, but they could not be bought.
They had no fear of mobs. They cared nothing for the scoldings of the
church and the press. An adverse public sentiment never disturbed
their equanimity or caused them to turn a hair's breadth in their
course.

It is true that Lundy and Garrison had very little to lose. They had
neither property nor social position. That, however, cannot be said of
another early Abolitionist, who, in some respects, is entitled to more
consideration than any of his co-workers.

James Gillespie Birney was a Southerner by birth. He belonged to a
family of financial and social prominence. He was a gentleman of
education and culture, having graduated from a leading college and
being a lawyer of recognized ability. He was a slave-owner. For a time
he conducted a plantation with slave labor. He lived in Alabama, where
he filled several important official positions, and was talked of for
the governorship of the State. But having been led to think about the
moral, and other aspects of slaveholding, he decided that it was wrong
and he would wash his hands of it. He could not in Alabama legally
manumit his slaves. Moreover, his neighbors had risen up against him
and threatened his forcible expulsion. He removed to Kentucky, where
he thought a more liberal sentiment prevailed. There he freed his
slaves and made liberal provision for their comfortable sustenance.
But the slave power was on his track. He was warned to betake himself
out of the State. The infliction of personal violence was meditated,
and a party of his opposers came together for that purpose. They were
engaged in discussing ways and means when a young man of commanding
pr