“When he took his seat there was a storm of applause. The House was wild with excitement. Some members cried for joy; others cheered, waved their handkerchiefs, and threw whatever they could find into the air.”[12] And so, like David, he won not only the battle of the day, but the leadership of his people in the stormy times that soon followed. When a box of copperhead snakes was sent to our beloved Governor we were again indignant. (Political opponents had not then learned to send gifts of bombs.) From Kansas itself Martin F. Conway came to us, full of fiery zeal for the Free State cause, although born south of Mason and Dixon’s line. He later represented the young State in Congress. Samuel Downer and George L. Stearns we often saw; both were very active in the anti-slavery cause. The latter was remarkable for a very long and beautiful beard, brown and soft, like a woman’s hair and reaching to his waist. We heard burning words about the duty of Massachusetts during these assaults of the slave power. Could she endure them, or should she not rather seek to withdraw from the Union? These words sound strangely to us now, but it must be remembered that in the fifties we had seen our fair Bay State made an annex to slave territory. Men might well ask one another, “Can the Commonwealth of Massachusetts endure the disgrace of having slave-hunts within her borders?” “The Irrepressible Conflict” had come. When the pro-slavery leaders forced the fugitive-slave law through Congress they struck a blow at the life of the nation as deadly as that of Fort Sumter. The latter was the inevitable sequel of the former. We saw often at Green Peace another intimate friend of our parents--Theodore Parker, the famous preacher and reformer. As he wore spectacles and was prematurely bald, he did not leave upon our childish minds the impression of grandeur inseparably connected with Charles Sumner. Yet the splendid dome of his head gave evidence of his great intellect, while his blue eyes looked kindly and often merrily at us. Having no children of his own, he would have liked to adopt our youngest sister, could our parents have been persuaded to part with her. Theodore Parker advocated the anti-slavery cause with great eloquence in the pulpit. He also belonged to my father’s vigilance committee and harbored fugitive slaves in his own home. To one couple of runaway negroes he presented a Bible and a sword--after marrying them legally--a thing not always done in the day of slavery. My father succeeded in sending away from Boston the man who attempted to carry them back to the South, and William and Ellen Croft found freedom in England. Theodore Parker’s sermons had a powerful influence on his great congregation, of which my mother was for some time a member. In one of her tributes to him she tells us how he drew them all toward the light of a better day and prepared them also for “the war of blood and iron.”