Although Don Quixote, who, according to the veracious Cervantes, set
out with his unaided strong right arm to upset things, including
wind-mills and obnoxious dynasties, has long been looked upon as the
world's best specimen of a "fanatic," he would ordinarily be set down
as a very Solomon beside the man who would undertake single-handed to
overthrow such an institution as American slavery used to be. Such a
man there was, however. He really entered on the job of abolishing
that institution, and without a solitary assistant. Strange to say, he
was neither a giant nor a millionaire.

According to Horace Greeley, "Benjamin Lundy deserves the high honor
of ranking as the pioneer of direct and distinctive Anti-Slaveryism in
America."

He was slight in frame and below the medium height, and unassuming in
manner. He had, it is said, neither eloquence nor shining ability of
any sort.

At nineteen years of age he went to Wheeling, Virginia, to learn the
trade of a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells
us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh.
Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he
continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of
the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered into my
soul."

But much as Lundy loathed the business of the slave-dealers and
slave-drivers, he then had no idea of attempting its abolishment. He
married and settled down to the prosecution of his trade, and had he
been like other people generally he would have been content. But he