Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[253] but there was undoubtedly another phase of the agitation, a phase which struck the shallow eye of Benton, and led him into false conclusions. It was not clear sailing for the reform. It was truly a period of stress and storm. Sometimes the reform was in a trough of the sea of public opinion, sometimes on the crest of a billow, and then again on the bosom of a giant ground swell. In Boston in this selfsame year which witnessed Benton's exultation over the fall of Abolitionism, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was not able to obtain the use of hall or church for its annual meeting, and was in consequence forced into insufficient accommodations at its rooms on Washington street. The succeeding year the society was obliged, from inability to obtain the use of either hall or church in the city, to occupy for its annual meeting the loft over the stable connected with the Marlborough Hotel. It is a long way from this rude meeting-house to the hall of the House of Representatives, but in this storm and stress period the distance was traversed in a few brief hours. The society applied in its exigency for the use of the hall for an evening meeting, and the application was granted by the members. It was a jeu d'esprit of Henry B. Stanton, “That when Boston votes we go into a stable, but when the State votes we go into the State House.” It was even so, for the incident served to reveal what was true everywhere through the free States that the anti-slavery reform was making fastest progress among people away from the great centres of population. It found ready access to the simple American folk in villages, in the smaller towns, and in the rural districts of New England and the North. And