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[417] country spoken in Exeter Hall; the abolition of slavery in the British colonies; the mobs awaiting him on his return; his prosecution for libel; finally, the formation of that National Anti-Slavery Society which he had projected from the beginning of his agitation—all these occurrences had fixed public attention on the subject of slavery in a manner never to be diverted for an instant thereafter, had still further awakened the sleeping conscience of the nation, spread the new zeal, and multiplied the advocates and agencies of immediate emancipation, and at the same time developed an active spirit of violent hostility which also would go on widening and intensifying, to cease only on the very eve of the war of emancipation. Statistical signs of the mighty progress are to be found in Mr. Sewall's list, in the second annual report of the New England Anti-Slavery1 Society, of upwards of forty auxiliary organizations formed in the twelvemonth in nearly every Northern State, noticeably at several collegiate institutions and among the gentler sex—the most important of the latter being the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.2 Take also the subscribed declaration of 124 clergymen of all denominations against colonization and in favor of immediate emancipation, obtained in 1833 to be prefixed to the forthcoming edition of the Rev. Amos A. Phelps's3 “Lectures on slavery and its remedy.” 4 The delivery of those lectures was itself an important event, and their publication a powerful contribution to the growing body of anti-slavery literature.

The Rev. J. D. Paxton's “Letters on slavery” ; the Rev. S. J. May's letters to Andrew T. Judson— “The Right of ”

1 P. 11.

2 ‘There was not a woman capable of taking the chair and organizing that meeting in due order; and we had to call on James McCrummell, a colored man, to give us aid in the work. You know that at that time, and even to the present day, negroes, idiots and women were in legal documents classed together; so that we were very glad to get one of our own class [laughter] to come and aid us in forming that Society’ (Speech of Lucretia Mott, Third Decade Proceedings, p. 43).

3 Lib. 4.15.

4 Published by the New England Anti-Slavery Society, Boston, 1834. Mr. Phelps was the pastor of the Pine-Street (Trinitarian) Church in that city.

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