For all the years anterior to the period under notice, these people had been, speaking in a general way, safe in Boston. There had, to be sure, been occasional instances of private kidnapping, little known; and there had been an abortive attempt to legally clutch into slavery one negro, Latimer. Still, Boston cherished, sentimentally, at least, free principles, and the New England traditions and laws, all favoring liberty, had been strong enough in her borders to protect the fugitives. Moreover, the caste prejudices against them had for twenty years or so preceding been slowly breaking down. During that time, thanks to one heroic saint, Emerson—thanks to one saintly hero, Garrison—the dawn of a new era was broadening up the northern sky, and all things had begun to come under the sovereignty of reason. Emerson had shed the new and free disclosing light of a poet’s soul and a scholar’s mind on the great problems of spiritual and secular life: straightway the primal soul held session; the old decisions were unsettled; everything was to be reëxamined; thought awoke; the breeze streamed; the sun shone; the Dutch canal fled into a rushing river; all that was generous, all that was thoughtful, all that was intrepid in New England uprose from lethargy; and while he— — “with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied— With a look that solved the sphere, And stirred the devils everywhere— Gave his sentiment divine,”— the contest of reason against authority and precedent began, and amidst much theological mud-flinging and unable-editor jeering, continued from year to year, awakening the distinctive intellectual life of America. On the other hand, Garrison had impeached Slavery before the nation, as the giant foe of civil and political liberty, democracy, society, humanity, in a word, civilization; and amidst a roaring storm of rancor, and the howls of slavers and traders, that tremendous trial also began, and continued from year to year. At the outset, Boston merchants, convulsed with sordid fear lest their southern trade should suffer by this arraignment of the oligarchy, gathered in a mob to hang the gallant citizen—had, in fact, the rope already around his neck, when the Mayor put him in jail, as a dastardly way of saving him. At the outset, too, the gentle Governor of Georgia issued an official proclamation offering five thousand dollars reward for his assassination. Happy, free America! But Garrison had in his heart all that made patriots and Puritans, and amidst a tempest of persecution unequalled since the Dark Ages, dauntless with pen and voice, he held his course against Slavery like the thunder storm against the wind. To his aid gathered a little group of gentlemen and gentlewomen, writers and orators of marked power. Abby Kelley, fair and eloquent for liberty as ever the Greek Hypatia for science: Lydia Maria Child, whose generous and exquisite literary genius all know: Mrs.