Their visit was soon succeeded by one of more formidable proportions from indignant citizens, with a local office-holder of the United States at their head. The suspected political “incendiary” was arrested and led a prisoner to the court-house. There excited people gathered, until the room was filled to its utmost capacity. Nor could this fact justly occasion surprise. Slaves bore the fatal stigma in public estimation, generally, of being not _persons_, but _things_. Their classification therefore, in common with houses, goods and whatever else could, like them, be bought and sold, was under the head of property. And any alarm raised that peaceful possession of them was endangered, naturally enough assembled a crowd. A citizen, attracted to the meeting by its understood object, entered the court-room, as Parson Brownlow in concluding a speech, gave no opinion _pro_ or _con_ about the stranger, but advised the people to watch, for that fomenters of trouble with the negroes were abroad in the country. Afterwards, the committee of citizens appointed to consider and determine the extent of grievance inflicted upon the community and what should be its redress, reported through its chairman,--who had led in making the arrest,--that the stranger was guilty of Abolitionism and should be ordered to leave the town which his presence put in danger. But further proceedings in the direct line of a vote upon the proposition, were halted by the courageous interposition of the Deaf Mutes’ Asylum Principal in behalf of the prisoner, with whom he had conversed, and who, he averred, was not an extreme and dangerous anti-slavery man. This reduction of the guilt of the accused, was promptly and hotly resented by the committee’s chairman as a denial of his personal veracity, not to be borne. The Principal, without disputing the logical sequence of that deduction, stoutly maintained the truth of his statement, and an altercation ensued that threatened to end in a general row. The assembly became tumultuous. Men ready for fight with sticks and pistols sprang upon the platform, where stood the disputants, between whom a third person, urged on by others, had interposed himself and essayed to speak. But he could not be heard because of the great clamor, accompanied by violent gesticulations, of the assembly. At length a few words from the _tertium quid_, minimizing the difficulty into a mere difference of opinion between two gentlemen, were listened to, and the excitement subsided. As for the troubled Ohioan, he “stood not upon the order of his going” from a locality inhospitable and dangerous to strangers who felt free to say that they did not find their Bibles and human slavery altogether harmonious. It is to this day, however, an unsolved question, whether as he went, righteous indignation at the treatment he had received or sincere joy at his escape from worse ills, prevailed in his soul.