Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/84

74 In the North their appeal did not remain unheeded. A fierce outcry arose in the Free States against the abolitionists. Turbulent mobs, composed in part of men of property and prominent standing, broke up their meetings, destroyed their printing-offices, wrecked their houses, and threatened them with violent death. There were riotous attacks upon anti-slavery gatherings in Philadelphia, New York, Utica, and Montpelier. In Boston, William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets with a halter round his body. In Connecticut and New Hampshire, schools which received colored pupils were sacked. In Cincinnati, a large meeting of citizens resolved that an anti-slavery paper published there must cease to appear, and that there must be “total silence on the subject of slavery.” An excited mob executed the decree, threw the press into the Ohio, and looted the homes of colored people. Some time later, Pennsylvania Hall, the meeting house of the abolitionists, was burned in Philadelphia, and Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered in Illinois.

It was a strange commotion. There was the timid citizen, who feared that the anti-slavery agitation might split the Union, and believed that the abolitionists were bent upon inciting slave insurrection; there was the politician, intent upon currying favor with the South; there was the merchant and manufacturer, anxious to protect his Southern market against disturbance, and to please his Southern customer; there was the fanatic of