During the same winter the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, a lawyer of high standing, came to lecture in our city. He was not a brilliant speaker like Mr. Marshall; but he had something to say which was of real value to his fellow-citizens. He had no flights of oratory, but he uttered sound sense and talked right on. He was a self-made man of massive character. For twenty-one years he had represented in the United States Congress the Connecticut Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio, and during all that long period of important public service had sturdily opposed slavery. He had been assaulted and mobbed in Washington for his opinions. But no vituperative opposition in debate, nor physical violence daunted him. Seeing his unflinching courage, many that did not endorse his political doctrines, nor approve of his course of action, admired him. He came to St. Louis with the garnered wisdom of years and with convictions as firm and immovable as a mountain of granite. Still, a large number did not gather to hear him. He was generally regarded as an abolitionist, and that, in the estimation of most men in St. Louis of all parties, was worthy of the deepest detestation. He spoke in Mercantile Library Hall. It was about two-thirds full. Many that came had no sympathy with the speaker’s views. They were attracted by curiosity; they wished to hear what this old anti-slavery war-horse would say in the great commercial city of a slave State. His lecture was a plain unvarnished statement of the rise and growth of slavery in the United States. When about half way through his address he made a declaration that aroused the antagonism of a part of his audience, which expressed itself in an emphatic and prolonged hiss. Those in sympathy with the doctrine of the speaker answered the hiss with a loud and hearty cheer. After the cheer there was a still more determined hiss, which was quickly followed by a still louder cheer. But at last when there came a lull in this sharply contested battle of hissing and cheering, the lecturer, who had stood without the slightest movement coolly surveying the tumultuous scene, said, in a strong, clear voice, “It makes no difference to me whether you hiss or cheer.” By that one declaration he seemed to capture his entire audience, and all broke out into enthusiastic applause. True men everywhere admire honesty and pluck. The coming to our city of one so prominent among anti-slavery men, who was permitted to make unhindered a judicial and luminous historical statement of the beginning and development of African slavery in our country, before a large audience of our fellow-citizens, marked for us the dawn of a new era. The old was passing, the new with its broader freedom was at hand.