She was a woman of the utmost determination and endurance in carrying out anything she had made up her mind to be right. She once remarked that she had thought the worst that could befall her would be to die of starvation on a doorstep, and added gleefully, “I think I could bear it.” Her courage was put rather unexpectedly to the test in 1835, when she visited the United States. As every one is aware, negro slavery was lawful all over the United States until the civil war of 1862. But every one does not know that the heroic little band of men and women who first protested against the wickedness of slavery in America did so at the peril of their lives. The abolitionists, as they were called, were the objects, even in cities like Boston, usually considered the centres of culture and refinement, of most brutal outrage and cruelty. The abolitionists could not then even hold a meeting but at the peril of their lives. Miss Martineau found herself therefore in a society divided into two hostile factions—one rich, strong, and numerous; the other poor, small, and intensely hated. When she arrived she was disposed to be rather prejudiced against the abolitionists. She condemned slavery as a matter of course, but she thought those who had undertaken the battle against it in America had been fanatical, sentimental, and misguided. This disposition of her mind was diligently fostered by the defenders of slavery, who represented the abolitionists to her as bloodthirsty ruffians who were trying to incite the slaves to the murder of their masters.