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‘ [6] is beaten by theirs, but they cannot beat types. All hail and glory to Faust, who invented printing, for he made mobs impossible!’ Those who were present on this occasion will long remember the orator's triumph in compelling, by these tactics, the very miscreants who had drowned his voice to weary of their useless clamor, and, lapsing into comparative quiet, to beg him to “speak louder,” Cf. Letters of L. M. Child, pp. 147-49. that they might hear him. He finished his speech without further difficulty, and was followed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had seldom appeared on an antislavery platform, but who came now to bear his testimony in behalf of free speech, and to face a mob for the first time. He, too, was assailed by insult and interruption, but he nevertheless held his ground and made his speech, protesting against further compromise or concession to the South. The last speaker of the morning was T. W. Higginson.1

The afternoon session was even more exciting, for the mob, finding the police passive, and counting on the sympathy

1 The Rev. Jacob M. Manning, the associate pastor of the Old South Church, and as liberal and progressive as his colleague (Dr. George Blagden) was the reverse, had courageously spoken at the meeting in behalf of John Brown's family, held in Tremont Temple, in November, 1859, and was among the speakers invited to participate in this meeting of the Massachusetts A. S. Society. Heartily sympathizing, he at first agreed to do so, but subsequently wrote to Mr. Garrison that he felt he ought to withdraw his promise, as the safety of his brother-in-law, then resident in South Carolina, might be endangered if he should take part at this time. ‘Great God, what a country!’ he exclaimed—‘that I cannot speak for liberty without perilling the life of my brother!’ (Ms. Jan. 8, 1861.) Mr. Garrison, from his sick-bed, dictated a reply, freely absolving him, and said: ‘If it were a question relating to a compromise of principle, then, I am sure, you would be as unwilling to allow father or mother, brother or sister, wife or child, to deter you from uttering your sentiments on the occasion alluded to, as I should be to exonerate you from the discharge of a duty which would then imperatively devolve upon you. But, as there is no moral obligation for you to speak at any particular meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, it simply becomes a question of expediency and sound discretion, and therefore I think you have acted considerately . . . in wishing to recall your promise. . . . You have, on various occasions, shown rare moral courage and independence in bearing a frank, bold, and unequivocal testimony against the colossal sin of our country; and your last effort, on Fast Day, in your own pulpit, must satisfy all of your determination to be true to your conscientious convictions, come what may’ (Ms. copy, Jan. 8, 1861).

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