John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

It was one thing for the American to thrill for the liberty of Greece, Poland, or Hungary; and another to allow foreign enthusiasts to thrill over American Anti-slavery. Thompson was marked for assassination and kidnapping; and a gibbet was erected for him in Boston. It was Thompson whom the mob were in search of when they caught Garrison at the meeting of the Female Antislavery Society, soon to be described. The impertinence of Thompson consisted in his being a foreigner, and this fact played upon the peculiar American weakness — our sensitiveness to foreign opinion. “He comes here from the dark corrupt institutions of Europe,” said Mr. Sprague in Faneuil Hall, “to enlighten us upon the rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition. Received by our hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and hurls ‘firebrands, arrows and death ’ into the habitations of our neighbors, and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over the land, he has only to embark for his own country, and there ”