Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[307] Bigelow that of Mayor Woodhull—the one giving and the other obeying instructions not to interfere except to protect the persons of the promoters of the meeting; and the Aldermen, on the Marshal's being subsequently¹ arraigned, found his excuse satisfactory.

The meeting was finally turned out of doors by the police, but the reception was adjourned to Worcester, and² was supplemented by a second, at which the Mayor of that³ city presided in his unofficial capacity. In other Massachusetts cities, too, Mr. Thompson, who preserved the⁴ vigor of his appearance and all his old eloquence, was heard with pleasure and without molestation. He received and accepted invitations even from New Hampshire. Parker Pillsbury, however, wrote from Concord, N. H., to Mr. Garrison:

I take the liberty of calling your attention to the late Union⁵ meeting in Manchester in this State, as reported in the N. H. Patriot. You will, I think, be greatly edified by some of the speeches, particularly with Ichabod Bartlett's, a Portsmouth Whig and the most able lawyer in the State, and also with Chas. G. Atherton's, of gag-rule memory, and Senator Norris's,⁶ who arrested Geo. Storrs while praying in a pulpit. The⁷ indignation in this town on Mr. Thompson's visit to this country burns as hot as when he was here before. I think he would be mobbed as quick as then. . . . My decided opinion is, that a very large majority of the people of this State will support “with alacrity” ⁸ the doctrines of the Manchester meeting. Men in Concord who, three months—and three weeks—ago, defended the “higher law,” are now its open scoffers—and influential men, too. Such cholera of the human conscience never before swept over a nation.

Concord was not more responsive to Manchester than to Richmond, Va., whose Enquirer (of the date of the Boston mob), going into a rage over Thompson's reappearance in the United States, asked if the Government would tolerate him in silence. ‘Does no law, no Power, exist to punish⁹ a member of Parliament who comes among us a disturber ’