Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/350

330 Longstreth obeyed the moral sentiment around him, and, doubtless the voice of his conscience, and pronounced the captive free. "The closing scenes of this trial; the breathless silence with which the crowded assembly in the court-room waited to hear the death-knell of the innocent prisoner; the painfully sudden transition from despair to hope and thence to certainty of joy; the burst of deep emotion; the fervent thanksgiving, wherein was revealed that sense of the brotherhood of man which God has made a part of every human soul; the exultant shout which went up from the multitude who thronged the streets waiting for the decision"; these no language can portray, but they are lifelong memories for those who shared in them. This event proved the great change wrought in the popular feeling, the result of twenty-five years of earnest effort to impress upon the heart of this community antislavery doctrines and sentiments. Then for the first time the Abolitionists of Philadelphia found their right of free speech protected by city authorities. Alexander Henry was the first Mayor of this city who ever quelled a pro-slavery mob.

Our last record of a victim sacrificed to this statute, is of the case of Moses Horner, who was kidnapped near Harrisburg in March, 1860, and doomed to slavery by United States Judge John Cadwallader, in this city. One more effort was made a few months later to capture in open day in the heart of this city a man alleged to be a fugitive slave, but it failed of ultimate success. The next year South Carolina's guns thundered forth the doom of the slave power. She aimed them at Fort Sumter and the United States Government. God guided their fiery death to the very heart of American slavery.

If the history of this Society were fully written, one of its most interesting chapters would be a faithful record of its series of annual fairs. Beginning in the year 1836, the series continued during twenty-six years, the last fair being held in December, 1861. The social attraction of these assemblies induced many young persons to mingle in them, besides those who labored from love of the cause. Brought thus within the circle of anti-slavery influence, many were naturally converted to our principles, and became earnest laborers in the enterprise which had so greatly enriched their own souls. The week of the fair was the annual Social Festival of the Abolitionists of the State. Though held under the immediate direction of this Society, it soon became a Pennsylvania institution. Hither our tribes came up to take counsel together, to recount our victories won, to be refreshed by social communion, and to renew our pledges of fidelity to the slave. There were years when these were very solemn festivals, when our skies were dark with gathering storms, and we knew not what peril the night or the morning might bring. But they were always seasons from which we derived strength and encouragement for future toil and endurance, and their value to our cause is beyond our power to estimate.

The pro-slavery spirit which always pervaded our city, and which sometimes manifested itself in the violence of mobs, never seriously disturbed our fair excepting in one instance. In the year 1859 our whole Southern country quaked with mortal fear in the presence of John Brown's great