in perfect balance, and on quenching promptly, as
best it might, any incipient blaze of anti-slavery zeal which might
break out from its smoldering, dared make no further move against
her. She was now too much in the public eye to be safe even in
suppression, and so was left to pursue her own way for a time; this
the more readily, of course, because she was doing nothing either
illegal or reprehensible. Indeed, as has been said, she was only
carrying out in private way a pet measure of Mr. Fillmore himself,
one which he had only with difficulty been persuaded to eliminate
from his first presidential message--that of purchasing the slaves
and deporting them from our shores. The government at Washington
perforce looked on, shivering, dreading lest this thing might fail,
dreading also lest it might not fail. It was a day of compromise,
of cowardice, of politics played as politics; a day of that
political unwisdom which always is dangerous--the fear of riding
straight, the ignorance of the saving quality of honest courage.
Wherefore, matters went on thus, fit foundation now building for
that divided and ill-ordered house of this republic, whose
purification could only be found in the cleansing catastrophe of
fire so soon to come.

As to the unfortunate work in which this warm-hearted enthusiast
thus impulsively engaged, small comment need be made, since its
failure so soon was to become apparent to the popular mind. The
Countess St. Auban was not the first to look to colonization and
deportation as the solution of the negro problem in America. But
as the Colonization Society for more than a decade had failed to
accomplish results, so did she in her turn fail. In a work which
continued through all that spring and summer, she drew again and
again upon her own private fortune. Carlisle and Kammerer had
charge of the details, but she herself was the driving force of the
enterprise. While they were abroad lecturing and asking
contributions to their cause--taking with them the slave girl Lily
as an example of what slavery had done--she remained at Washington.
They actually did arrange for the deportation of a ship-load of
blacks to Hayti, another ship-load to Liberia. A colony of blacks
whose freedom had been purchased was established in Tennessee,
others were planned for yet other localities. It was part of her
intent to establish nuclei of freed blacks in different portions of
the southern section.

In all this w