et them, and at sight of the
ladies among them shouted, "Egg the squaws!" and began to pelt them with
eggs and other missiles, while some ran and tried to trip them up.
Many of the men were beaten and egged, and the manes and tails of their
horses were shaved. This was a favorite argument with the friends of
slavery, and if shaving horses' manes and tails could have availed,
their party would easily have won.

Some of the anti-slavery speakers and lecturers came on missions from
the Eastern States, but several of the fiercest and bravest were
like the Rev. John Rankin, of Clermont County, who had emigrated
from Tennessee to Ohio, because he would not live in a slaveholding
community. He used to preach against slavery at frequent peril of his
life, and his son tells how a mob leader once mounted to his pulpit,
and threatened him with his club. "Stop speaking, or I will burst your
head," he shouted, but Rankin went quietly on as if nothing had been
said, and one of his friends dragged the ruffian from his side. Of
course, he was always coming home with his horse's mane and tail shaved,
and of course his house was a station on the underground railroad to
freedom.

One of the boldest of the abolitionists was James G. Birney, who like
Rankin had come to Ohio from the South. He started a newspaper called
_The Philanthropist_ in Cincinnati, and for three months attacked
slavery unsparingly in it. Then, on the 23d of July, 1836, the mob rose,
broke into the printing office, threw the types into the street,
tore down the press, and cast the fragments into the river. Then they
assailed the black people living in one of the alleys, and shots were
exchanged but no lives were lost. A few years later, however, in 1841,
a general assault was made upon the negroes by the mob; several on
both sides were killed and many wounded, and the office of _The
Philanthropist_ was again destroyed. Of course these things did not stop
the fight against slavery, and it did not help slavery at all when
the authorities of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati forbade the
students to write or to talk about it. That was foolish and useless; it
only hurt the seminary, and drove many students from it to the college
at Oberlin, then newly founded in the woods of Lorain County. There they
could not only discuss slavery, but they could learn about it at
first hand from the negro students. The founders of Oberlin were not
abolitionists, but it is related t