Chapter 1: the Boston mob (second stage).—1835.
A highly “respectable” mob, excited against George Thompson, vents itself on Garrison at a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-slavery Society on October 21. Mayor Lyman rescues him, and shelters him in the City Hall, whence he is formally committed to jail as a rioter, narrowly escaping the clutches of the mob on the way. The next day he leaves the City. Thompson returns to England. Garrison's partnership with Knapp ends.It was now time for Mr. Garrison to descend into that seething mari magno which, from the tranquil haven of Friendship's Valley, he had calmly regarded for a full month. Leaving Brooklyn, in company with his wife, on September 24, 1835, he spent the following day in Providence, and reached Boston at noon on the 26th. He found there this greeting from David Lee Child, written at New York on the 23d:
Be of good cheer. The Devil comes not out without much1 tearing and rending and foaming at the mouth. With all my confidence in my abolition brothers and sisters, you are the only one on whom I entirely rely for pine-and-faggot virtue—not that I trust others less, but that I trust you more. The Southerners are mad past all precedent. The famous spouter, Governor Hamilton, is here, supposed for the countenancing and organizing of kidnappers and assassins. This is hardly credible, yet it is believed. The report now goes that $100,000 is the prize for Arthur Tappan's head, and that two vessels are in the offing to receive him.Catch a fish before you cook it,
Said the learned Mother Glass.
