The arguments of anti-slavery orators were answered everywhere throughout the free States by rotten eggs, clubs, and missiles. The public journals, as a rule, were unfriendly and intolerant. Even Boston could contemplate, with unruffled composure, a mob of her most "reputable citizens" dragging Mr. Garrison through the streets with a halter about his neck. Public meetings were broken up by pro-slavery mobs; owners of public halls required a moneyed guarantee against the destruction of their property, when such halls were used for anti-slavery meetings. Colored schools were broken up, the teachers driven away, and the pupils maltreated. The mobocratic demonstrations in the Northern States were the thermometer of public feeling upon the subject of slavery. The South was, therefore, emboldened; for the political leaders in that section thought they saw a light from the distance that encouraged them to entertain the belief and indulge the hope that their present sectional institution could be made national. Southerners thought slavery would grow in the cold climate of the North, excited into a lively existence by the warmth of a generous sympathy. But the South misinterpreted the real motive that inspired opposition to anti-slavery agitation in the North. The violent opposition came from the mercantile class and foreign element who believed that the agitation of the slavery question was a practical disturbance of their business affairs. The next class, more moderate in opposition to agitation, believed slavery constitutional, and, therefore, argued that anti-slavery orators were traitors to the government. The third class, conservative, did not take sides, because of the unpopularity of agitation on the one hand, and because of an harassing conscience on the other. There were two classes of men who were seeking the dissolution of the Union. The Garrisonians sought this end in the hope of forming another Union _without_ slavery. In an address delivered by Wm. Lloyd Garrison, July 20, 1860, at the Framingham celebration, he declares: