“One of the most disgraceful things took place under the jurisdiction of Bishop Doane, of New Jersey—I take it for granted, without his knowledge. I have the book. It was an edition of the Episcopal prayer-book. They had put into the front of it a steel engraving of Ary Scheffer’s ‘Christus Consolator’—Christ the Consoler. There was a semi-circle around about the beneficent and aerial figure of our Saviour—the poor, the old, the sick, the mother with her dead babe, bowed in grief; every known form of human sorrow belonged to the original design and picture, and among others a fettered slave, with his hands lifted to heaven, praying for liberty. But this was too much; and so they cut out the slave, and left the rest of the picture, and bound it into the Episcopal prayer-book of New Jersey. I have a copy of it, which I mean to leave to the Historical Society of Brooklyn when I am done using it. “These things are important as showing the incredible condition of public sentiment at that time. If a man came to be known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded bankruptcy in business.” After the intense excitement, within and without Congress, upon the discussion and the passage of the Compromise measures of 1850, a reaction followed, and the year 1851 is, in many respects, a marked contrast to that immediately preceding. The people, in the main, tired of the discussion and the consequent turmoil, thankful for their escape, as they thought, from the threatened danger of the dissolution of the Union, were determined to preserve the peace that had been won, and frowned upon everything that endangered its continuance. Public meetings and conventions, held for the expression of free-State sentiments, were regarded with great disfavor and often broken up by mob violence. Four millions of people in a Christian land were denied every right belonging to them, not only on the ground of Christianity but of humanity, and yet they must be dumb. The pulpit, which represented Him who came to set the captive free and preach the Gospel to the poor, on this great matter must utter no voice. Statesmanship must see consummated an utter perversion of the fundamental principles and policy of the nation, and yet offer no protest. A common humanity, outraged by the atrocities committed against a fellow human being, must be silent or join in the hue and cry for the capture of the unhappy victim. This was the programme that conservatism, through the press, in the pulpit, by the ballot-box, through business patronage, social frowns or favors, and not unfrequently through mob violence, attempted to execute. It was as vain as to try to still the voice of Niagara or the noise of the breakers upon the coast.