n the
_Liberator_, "All Union-saving efforts are simply idiotic. At last
'the covenant with death' is annulled, 'the agreement with Hell'
broken--at least by the action of South Carolina and ere long by all
the slave-holding states, for their doom is one."[126]

Compromise, however, was in the air. The people were appalled and
confused by the breaking up of the Union and the possibility of civil
war, and the government fumbled. Powerful Republicans, among them
Thurlow Weed, speaking for eastern financial interests, favored the
Crittenden Compromise which would re-establish the Mason-Dixon line,
protect slavery in the states where it was now legal, sanction the
domestic slave trade, guarantee payment by the United States for
escaped slaves, and forbid Congress to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia without the consent of Virginia and Maryland.
Even Seward suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing
noninterference with slavery in the slave states for all time. In such
an atmosphere as this, Susan gloried in Wendell Phillips's impetuous
declarations against compromise.

While the whole country marked time, waiting for the inauguration of
President Lincoln, abolitionists sent out their speakers, Susan
heading a group in western New York which included Samuel J. May,
Stephen S. Foster, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. "All are united," she
wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "that good faith and honor demand us to
go forward and leave the responsibility of free speech or its
suppression with the people of the places we visit." Then showing that
she well understood the temper of the times, she added, "I trust ...
no personal harm may come to you or Phillips or any of the little band
of the true and faithful who shall defend the right...."[127]

Feeling was running high in Buffalo when Susan arrived with her
antislavery contingent in January 1861, expecting disturbances but
unprepared for the animosity of audiences which hissed, yelled, and
stamped so that not a speaker could be heard. The police made no
effort to keep order and finally the mob surged over the platform and
the lights went out. Nevertheless, Susan who was presiding held her
ground until lights were brought in and she could dimly see the
milling crowd.

In small towns they were listened to with only occasional catcalls and
boos of disapproval, but in every city from Buffalo to Albany the mobs
broke up their meetings. Even in Rochester, which had never b