Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

‘ [36] in other populous cities, give terrific features to popular and excited assemblages.’ The Courier thought it a most shamefully good mob. The Daily Advertiser ¹ ‘regarded the assemblage not so much as a riot, as the² prevention of a riot. . . . We consider the whole transaction as the triumph of the law over lawless violence, and the love of order over an attempt to produce riot and confusion.’³ The religious press, except the New England Spectator and Zion's Herald (Methodist), was in accord with the secular. The Christian Watchman (Baptist) pronounced the abolitionists equally ⁴ culpable with the mob. Tracy's Recorder (Congregationalist) said it was Mr. Garrison's ‘settled policy to provoke⁵ mobs as much as he can,’ and so ‘identify his cause with the cause of civil liberty,’ to the distress of worthy citizens thus forced to choose between him and the mob. The Christian Register (Unitarian) saw no adequate ⁶ excuse for a mob in the meeting of ‘a few black and white ladies, in an hour of romance or revery,’ but rebuked them and their male associates for courting persecution. ‘As the friends of peace, they ought not to defy public opinion, however wrong.’

It was not otherwise with the most eminent professors and teachers of religion. Harriet Martineau, en route from Salem to Providence, had ‘passed through the mob some time after it had begun to assemble.’ Her ⁷ fellow-passengers, connecting the well-dressed crowd with the adjacent Post-office, naturally ‘supposed it was a busy foreignpost day.’ At Providence the truth reached her:

President Wayland [of Brown University] agreed with me⁸ at the time about the iniquitous and fatal character of the outrage;