Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/407

 STEPHEN SVMONDS FOSTER. 371

opposed to war as was be, for any cause, he and a few of his friends proposed a meeting for prayer and conference, in relation to it as then menaced. Fos- ter asked for the use of a lecture room for their purpose, but was surprised as much as grieved to find the seminary faculty not only opposed to granting the use of the room, but sternly against the holding of any such meeting.

That refusal, probably more than any other one event, determined his whole future course. For v/hile in college he had had many serious doubts and mis- givings as to the claim of the great body of the American church and clergy to the Christian name and character ; not only because of their supporting war and approval of his incarceration for peace principles, but also for their persistent countenance of slave-holding and fellowship of even slave- breeders and slave-holders, as Christians and Christian ministers.

In 1S39, ^^1'- Foster abandoned all hope of the Congregational ministry, and entered the anti-slavery service, side by side with Garrison of the Boston Lib- efciior, and Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of the New Hampshire Herald of Free- dovi. And from that time onward till slavery was abolished, and indeed to the day of his death, the cause of freedom and humanity, justice and truth, had no more faithful, few if any more able champions.

In the autumn of 1845 '"^^ married Miss Abby Kelley, of Worcester, Mass., then a well and widely known lecturer on anti-slavery, temperance, peace, and other subjects pertaining to the rights and the welfare of man and womankind. She and a daughter, their only child, survive him and still occupy their Wor- cester home. The daughter graduated first at Vassar College, then entered Cornell University, which she left at the end of the year, with the degree of Master of Arts.

I first saw Stephen P'oster in the autumn of 1834. We were commencing teaching schools in adjoining districts of a small country town. A "revival of religion " soon appeared in the town, and was eminently powerful in his school, if, indeed, it did not commence there. His school was much larger than mine, and many of the parents were members, and some of them officers, of the Congregational church. They found in Mr. Foster a teacher, or at any rate a leader in religion, as well as in the literature of their school. And though most satisfactory progress was made in all the branches, and the discipline of the school was deemed throughout of the very best, nearly every scholar of or above fifteen years old was converted and joined the Orthodox church ; and then their teacher and some of themselves came over as missionaries into my more remote and benighted district, and quite a work was accomplished there. The venerable minister of the town thought and said, and from the standpoint, and in the light of that day, said truly, that " with young Mr. Foster, e\idently, was ' the secret of the Lord ! ' "

And that same characteristic faithfulness, he brought with him into the anti- slavery cause. And soon learning where was the great, deep, tap-root of the deadly upas, he laid the axe at the root of the tree.

The Hon. James G. Birney was a slave-holder in Kentucky, and judge, as well as distinguished lawyer ; a member and ruling elder of the Presbyterian church, and of course of the very highest social quality and position in the community and country. But by the faithful preaching of the abolitionists, he became convinced of the sinfulness of slave-holding, and emancipated all his slaves. Then he removed them into Ohio, settled them on its free and fertile soil, where they or their descendants may be seen to-day. Then he established an anti-slavery newspaper, first in Kentucky, but before he could issue a first number, he was assailed by such a storm of opposition, as drove him across the river into Ohio. There, too, his purpose came near being defeated. Cin- cinnati was as hostile as the slave state of Kentucky. Three times his office

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