e said to have been rendered completely _hors de combat_.
Almost the whole of 1836 he spent with his wife's family in Brooklyn,
where his first child was born. This new mouth brought with it fresh
cares of a domestic character. He experienced losses also. Death removed
his aged father-in-law in the last month of 1836, and four weeks later
Henry E. Benson, his brother-in-law. Their taking off was a sad blow to
the reformer and to the reform. That of the younger man cast a gloom
over anti-slavery circles in New England; for at the time of his death
he was the secretary and general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and
although not twenty-three, had displayed uncommon capacity for affairs.
The business ability which he brought into his office was of the
greatest value where there was such a distinct deficiency in that
respect among his coadjutors, and the loss of it seemed irreparable.

Afflicted as he was, the leader was nevertheless cheered by the
extraordinary progress of the movement started by him. The growth and
activity of Abolitionism were indeed altogether phenomenal. In February,
1837, Ellis Gray Loring estimated that there were then eight hundred
anti-slavery societies in the United States, that an anti-slavery
society had been formed in the North every day for the last two years,
and that in the single State of Ohio there were three hundred societies,
one of which had a membership of four thousand names. The moral
agitation was at its height. The National Society had hit upon a capital
device for increasing the effectiveness of its agents and lecturers.
This was to bring them together in New York for a few weeks' study of
the slavery question under the direction of such masters as Theodore D.
Weld, Beriah Green, Charles Stuart, and others. All possible phases of
the great subject, such as, What is slavery? What is immediate
emancipation? The consequences of emancipation to the South, etc., etc.,
pro-slavery objections and arguments were stated and answered. The
agents and lecturers went forth from the convention bristling with
facts, and glowing with enthusiasm to renew the crusade against slavery.
Garrison, broken in health as he was, went on from Boston to attend this
school of his disciples. He spoke briefly but repeatedly to them upon
the all-absorbing topic which had brought them together. "It was a happy
circumstance, too," he wrote, "that I was present with them, and that
they had an opportunity to beco