Page:The landmark of freedom.djvu/26

Rh left the bench, and clergymen the pulpit, to swell the indignant protest which went up from good men, without distinction of party or of pursuit.

The movement was not confined to a few persons, nor to a few States. A public meeting, at Trenton, in New Jersey, was followed by others in New York and Philadelphia, and finally at Worcester, Salem, and Boston, where committees were organized to rally the country. The citizens of Baltimore, convened at the court-house, with the Mayor in the chair, resolved, that the future admission of slaves into the States hereafter formed west of the Mississippi, ought to be prohibited by Congress. Villages, towns, and cities, by memorial, petition, and prayer, called upon Congress to maintain the great principle of the prohibition of slavery. The same principle was also commended by the resolutions of State Legislatures; and Pennsylvania, inspired by the teachings of Franklin and the convictions of the respectable denomination of Friends, unanimously asserted at once the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit slavery west of the Mississippi, and solemnly appealed to her sister States "to refuse to covenant with crime." New Jersey and Delaware followed, both also unanimously. Ohio asserted the same principle; so did also Indiana. The latter State, not content with providing for the future, severely censured one of its Senators, for his vote to organize Arkansas without the prohibition of slavery.