ties--the news reached Boston. It
produced the most profound sensation. Many of the leading citizens felt
straightway that if the rights assailed in the person of Lovejoy were to
be preserved to themselves and their section, immediate action was
required. A great meeting was proposed, and Faneuil Hall applied for.
The application was denied by the municipal authorities on the plea that
its use for such a purpose might provoke a mob. The city was, however,
dealing now not with the despised Abolitionists, but with men of
property and standing in the community and was soon brought to its
senses by the indignant eloquence of Dr. Channing, appealing to the
better self of Boston in this strain: "Has it come to this? Has Boston
fallen so low? May not its citizens be trusted to come together to
express the great principles of liberty for which their forefathers
died? Are our fellow-citizens to be murdered in the act of defending
their property and of assuming the right of free discussion? And is it
unsafe in this metropolis to express abhorrence of the deed?"

A second application for the hall was granted, and a meeting, which is
an historical event in the annals of the old town, was held December 8,
1837--a meeting memorable as an uprising, not of the Abolitionists, but
of the conservatism and respectability of the city in behalf of the
outraged liberties of white men. Ever memorable, too, for that marvelous
speech of Wendell Phillips, which placed him instantly in the front rank
of minds with a genius for eloquence, lifted him at once as an
anti-slavery instrument and leader close beside William Lloyd Garrison.
The wild-cat-like spirit which had hunted Thompson out of the country
and Lovejoy to death, had more than made good the immense deficit of
services thus created through the introduction upon the national stage
of the reform of this consummate and incomparable orator.

The assassination of Lovejoy was an imposing object lesson to the North,
but it was not the last. Other and terrible illustrations of the triumph
of mobs followed it, notably the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in
Philadelphia on the evening of May 17, 1838. As the murder of Lovejoy
formed the culmination of outrages directed against the rights of
person, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall furnished the climax of
outrages committed against the rights of property. The friends of the
slave and of free discussion in Philadelphia feeling the need of a place
where