The antislavery story from the Calhoun medal, struck to commemorate the supposed birth of a slave empire to the constitutional abolition of slavery, concerned humanity, and has lessons of warning and encouragement for the men and women of to-day, on whom rest the hopes of the country, and who, against odds that seem as formidable as those presented by the Slave Power at its culmination, are bravely striving for the advance of humanity, the purification of our politics, and the preservation of American institutions. They may well adopt the inspiriting legend of Geneva to which the antislavery contest of America has given a new radiance, "Post tenebras lux." Our institutions, no longer endangered by slavery, are assailed with skilful intrigue in their own strongholds, the public school and the polls, especially of our great cities, where a corrupt, irresponsible, secret rule recalls the Council of Ten and the Lion of Saint Mark, and now it is charged that our very legislation at times is not simply partisan but fraudulent. The incompatibility of such proceedings with American principles and American rights recalls with emphatic force the warning so distinctly and repeatedly given us by Dr. Orestes A. Brownson, that eminent and philosophic representative of our citizens of the Roman Catholic faith who stand squarely by the American constitution and American institutions, of the danger of allowing foreigners to meddle with our public schools when he said that American civilization was "the farthest point in advance yet reached by any age or nation, and that foreigners who come to educate according to their civilization necessarily educate for a civilization behind the times and below that of this country." The enlightening effect of an impartial study of the antislavery contest on an independent and philosophic critic can be read in the interesting and instructive pages of Von Holst; and a review of that contest, from the first presentment of the principles of the Antislavery Society to the parting scene of Grant and Lee at Appomatox, and the adoption of the constitutional amendment of emancipation, affords, step by step, amid whatever mistakes and blunders, evidence which becomes the more striking and conclusive, as time passes, of what was accomplished in the antislavery struggle for humanity and the world in shaping the future of the Republic, by calm resolve, a faithful adhesion to truth and principle, patient perseverance, unflinching courage, faith in the triumph of right, American manliness, and far-sighted Christian statesmanship. BEDFORD HOUSE, Katonah, New York, May, 1893. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Birth and Education of William Jay.--His Early Philanthropic Interests.--Appointed Judge of Westchester County. 1 CHAPTER II.