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

[185] an anti-slavery publication merely or mainly, but for the right under the Constitution and upon American soil to utter and print freely, subject only to the restraints and penalties of the law. To maintain this right against local public sentiment, the impotence of the city authorities compelled the friends of law and order to enroll themselves in a military organization (having the mayor's approval), whose first duty it was to prevent an antislavery convention from being broken up, and next to guard the newly-arrived press from being thrown into the Mississippi like its predecessors. Among them, not more in defence of himself or of his property than of the principle at stake, Lovejoy took his place; formed one of the little band of twenty who held the warehouse on the night of the fatal attack; volunteered, with a rash and magnanimous heroism, among the first who left the burning building to face the infuriated and drunken mob; was ambushed and fell, the only victim of the defence.

The greatest feeling produced by this atrocity was in the city the most remote from the scene—in Boston, where, by a rich compensation, it overcame the timidity of Channing, revealed the oratory and fixed the destiny of Wendell Phillips, and with him drew Edmund Quincy into the forefront of the ranks of the despised abolitionists. The aldermen, who at first refused the use of Faneuil Hall for an indignation meeting, and Attorney-General Austin, who desecrated the hall afresh by declaring that Lovejoy had died as the fool dieth, were surprised by the demonstration of a new Boston upon which they had not counted. The Boston which had come near having its Lovejoy in the person of Mr. Garrison, in October, 1835, had undergone a revolution in two years—a revolution perhaps to be defined as the weakening of Southern ascendency. The response of Faneuil Hall to the Alton riot was Northern resentment against a pro-slavery invasion, as it seemed.

With more exactness, however, it may be said that Lovejoy was sacrificed on Southern soil. All the towns