grandiose. They talked boastfully of the number of their "niggers,"
and told how they were accustomed to "wallop" them.

Then there were marriage ties between the sections. Many domestic
alliances strengthened the bond between slavery and the aristocracy of
the North.

In the circles in which these things were going on, it was the fashion
to denounce the Abolitionists. Women were the most bitter. The
slightest suspicion of sympathy with the "fanatics" was fatal to
social ambition. Mrs. Henry Chapman, the wife of a wealthy Boston
shipping merchant who gave orders that no slaves should be carried on
his vessels, was a brilliant woman and a leader in the highest sense
in that city. But when she consented to preside over a small
conference of Anti-Slavery women, society cut her dead, her former
associates refusing to recognize her on the street. The families of
Arthur and Lewis Tappan, the distinguished merchants of New York, were
noted for their intelligence and culture, but when the heads of the
families came to be classified as Abolitionists the doors of all
fashionable mansions were at once shut against them. They in other
ways suffered for their opinions. The home of Lewis Tappan was invaded
by a mob, and furniture, books, and _bric-a-brac_ were carried to the
street and there burned to ashes.

The masses of the Northern people were, however, led to favor slavery
by other arguments. One of them was that the slaves, if manumitted,
would at once rush to the North and overrun the free States. I have
heard that proposition warmly supported by fairly intelligent persons.

Another argument that weighed with a surprisingly large number of