Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

[208] readily agreed to give him the meeting-house for that purpose, but when the audience gathered for the first lecture, the doors of the sanctuary were closed, and it appeared that the Trustees had held a meeting and overruled their pastor, who could only express his regret and chagrin that they had refused to sustain him. The Todd influence was still all-powerful, and endeavored to crush the offending editor, who left Newburyport in disgust for Amesbury. As he was driving up the hill beyond the Chain Bridge, he met his friend Dr. Luther F. Dimmick, pastor of the Second Congregational church. ‘William,’ said the Doctor, ‘I thought you were going to lecture last night’; and on William's explaining why he had not done so, the Doctor declared that he should have his church for as many lectures as he wanted. It was agreed that he should return to Newburyport as soon as he had delivered his lectures in Amesbury, and these he gave, probably on three consecutive evenings, before the¹ Amesbury and Salisbury Lyceum. The Lyceum room was so crowded during the first lecture that Rev. Mr. Damon's meeting-house was secured for the second and third addresses, and filled.

‘The first lecture,’ wrote a correspondent of the ² Newburyport Herald, ‘endeavored to refute the strongest and most popular objections to the immediate abolition of slavery, and to show that expediency, as well as justice, urged the necessity of the measure. The second pointed out slavery as it exists in law, and in fact, in our country, the speaker illustrating his remarks by several anecdotes of the extreme cruelty exercised towards the slaves of our Southern States, some of which instances he told us he himself had witnessed. These cruelties he described with so much feeling, and in language so forcible, that one might almost fancy he heard the groans, and viewed the lacerated bodies, of the poor sufferers. While in this part of his discourse, all his feelings and power of soul appeared to be brought into action, and so vividly did he describe the sufferings of the slaves that the audience seemed to be completely carried along with him, and to partake, in some degree at least, of the enthusiasm of the speaker. . . . In the third and last discourse we were told that the crime, the infamy, and the ’