Such a soul as Dr. Follen could not be indifferent to any movement tending to liberate more than three millions of people in the country, of which he had become a citizen, from the most abject cruel slavery, and his fellow-citizens from the awful iniquity of keeping them in such bondage. The bugle-blast of _The Liberator_ in 1831 summoned him to the conflict. Worldly wisdom, prudential considerations, would have withheld him if he had been like too many other men. He had then been in a professor’s chair at Cambridge about a year. He had married a lady worthy of his love. He had become a father. He had made many friends. He was admired for his rich and varied endowments, his extensive and accurate knowledge, and sound understanding. He was honored for his exertions and sacrifices in the cause of liberty in Europe. He was cherished as an invaluable acquisition to the literature of our country, and as a most successful teacher of youth. How obvious, then, that he had as many reasons as any, and more reasons than most, for remaining quiet, contenting himself with an occasional sigh over the wrongs of the slaves, or an eloquent condemnation of slavery in the abstract, or the utterance of the form of prayer,--that the Sovereign Disposer of all events would, in his own good time, cause every yoke to be broken and oppression to cease. He was occupying a sphere of great responsibility, where, as was intimated to him, he might find enough to fill even the large measure of his ability for labor. Then he was wholly dependent upon his own exertions for the support of his family. Moreover, being a foreigner by birth, he was reminded that it was less decorous in him, than it might be in others, to meddle with the “delicate question” which touched so vitally the institutions of a very sensitive portion of the country.