What are the historical facts as to this? It is true that slavery had been abolished at the North; but this was under conditions which, had they prevailed at the South, would have been taken advantage of there also; and when the institution was abolished in the Northern States, it had become so unprofitable that no great credit can attach to the act of abolition.[71] It is also true that there were throughout the North a considerable body of men and women who, from a very long time back, believed sincerely that human slavery was a crime against nature, and strove zealously and persistently to overthrow it. At the South there were also many who labored with not less earnestness to effect the same end; though, owing to different conditions, the same means could not be employed; and, standing face to face with the immense slave population which existed at the South, they saw the same danger which faces us to-day, and sought in colonization the means at once to abolish slavery, to free America, and to Christianize Africa. As to actual, immediate emancipation, however, it was no more the intentional work of the North as a people than it was of the South. The credit for it, even so far as creating a public opinion which rendered it eventually possible, is due to a band of emancipators, who, for a long time absolutely insignificant in numbers, and ever comparatively few when contrasted with the great body of the people of the North, devoted their energies, their labors, their lives, to the accomplishment of this end. During their labors they encountered no less obloquy, and experienced scarcely less peril at the North than at the South, with this difference, that at the North the outrages perpetrated upon them were inspired by a mere sentiment, while at the South the vast number of slaves made any interference with them intolerable, and the treatment abolitionists received was based on a recognition of the fact that the doctrines they promulgated might at any moment plunge the South into the horrors of insurrection. It was not at the South, but at the North, in Connecticut, that Prudence Crandall was, for teaching colored girls, subjected to a persecution as barbarous as it was persistent. After being sued and pursued by every process of law which a New England community could devise, she was finally driven forth into exile in Kansas.