days. The majority--the living and the working masses of to-day--will,
doubtless, be gratified to have accurate pictures of scenes and events
of which they have heard their seniors speak, that distinguished the
most tempestuous period in our national history--the one in which the
wildest passions were aroused and indulged. Then it was that the
fiercest and bitterest agitation prevailed. The war that followed did
not increase this. It rather modified it--sobered it in view of the
crisis at hand--and served as a safety-valve for its escape.

For the same reason, the general public has now but slight
comprehension of the trials endured by the Abolitionists for
principle's sake. In many ways were they persecuted. In society they
were tabooed; in business shunned. By the rabble they were hooted and
pelted. Clowns in the circus made them the subjects of their jokes.
Newspaper scribblers lampooned and libelled them. Politicians
denounced them. By the Church they were regarded as very black sheep,
and sometimes excluded from the fold. And this state of things lasted
for years, during which they kept up a steady agitation with the help
of platform lecturers, and regularly threw away their votes--so it
was charged--in a "third party" movement that seemed to be a hopeless
venture.

Another inducement to the writer to take up the cause of the
Abolitionists is the fact that he has always been proud to class
himself as one of them. He came into the world before Abolitionism, by
that name, had been heard of; before the first Abolition Society was
organized; before William Lloyd Garrison founded his _Liberator_, and
before (not the least important circumstance) John Quincy Adams
entered Congress. He cannot remember when the slavery question was not
discussed. His sympathies at an early day went out to the slave. He