Ernest Crosby, Garrison the non-resistant

[29] hundred anti-slavery societies were now in operation, and the foul murder of the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois, by a mob which thus exhibited its disapproval of his anti-slavery journal, did much to stir up Abolition sentiment, already stimulated by many similar outrages in the South. Lovejoy's assassination brought Wendell Phillips into the ranks of the Garrisonians, and he declared himself in an eloquent speech at Faneuil Hall at a meeting called to express the indignation of all that was best in Boston. But still the low passions of the friends of slavery continued to show themselves at the North. In 1838, during a convention of Abolitionists, Pennsylvania Hall, a building recently erected in Philadelphia for these and other philanthropic meetings, was burned to the ground by a pro-slavery mob; and it was only by calling out the militia that a similar crime was prevented in Boston, where another hall had been built for the same purposes.