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[391] slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement.

In the intervals of the sessions, he visited the World's Temperance Convention, where Wendell Phillips, a delegate, was endeavoring to obtain a hearing for Antoinette Brown, a fellow-delegate. Here the mob was in the governing body, especially the clerical portion of it, which descended to depths of shamelessness not exceeded by the1 gallery disturbers of the Woman's Rights Convention.

‘I have seen many tumultuous meetings in my day,’ reported2 Mr. Garrison subsequently,

but I think on no occasion have I ever seen anything more disgraceful to our common humanity than when Miss Brown attempted to speak upon the platform of the World's Temperance Convention, in aid of the glorious cause which had brought that Convention together.3 It was an outbreak of passion, contempt, indignation, and every vile emotion of the soul, throwing into the shade almost everything coming from the vilest of the vile that I have ever witnessed on any occasion or under any circumstances; venerable men, claiming to be holy men, the ambassadors of Jesus Christ, losing all self-respect and transforming themselves into the most unmannerly and violent spirits, merely on account of the sex of the individual who wished to address the assembly.

On October 3, Mr. Garrison began a tour to the West4 with special reference to Michigan. Cleveland was his first halting-place, for there, on the 6th, 7th, and 8th of the month, the fourth National Woman's Rights Convention was to be held. He served on the business committee and was among the speakers, the nine sessions passing off5 with no sign of popular displeasure, though not without clerical disturbance.6 The first of seven resolutions from his pen read as follows:

Resolved, That the natural rights of one human being are7 those of every other, in all cases equally sacred and inalienable;

1 Lib. 23.146, 147, 149, 150.

2 Hist. Woman Suffrage, 1.160.

3 The political coalition of Prohibitionists and Woman Suffragists in our day throws a curious light on the worldly wisdom of the treatment of Miss Brown.

4 Lib. 23.158.

5 Hist. Woman Suffrage, 1.125, 136; Lib. 23.174, 182.

6 Joseph Barker, having maintained that the Bible was opposed to woman's rights and was therefore to be got rid of (Lib. 23: 174), was fallen foul of as an infidel and a renegade priest by the Rev. Edwin H. Nevin, already known to Mr. Garrison for his assurance and duplicity (Lib. 14: 90; 23: 182). Nevin's outrageous behavior at length drew from Mr. Garrison the open remark: ‘He is manifestly here in the spirit of a blackguard and rowdy’ ( “Hist. Woman Suffrage,” 1: 140). This led to a laughable vindication of the clergyman at the hall door after the session, where his younger brother ‘concluded to take an apology from his [Garrison's] nose, as he could not obtain one from his lips’—to quote the reverend gentleman's own account of this ‘undesirable affair’ (Lib. 23: 178, 182).

7 Hist, Woman Suffrage, 1.818.

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