with this traffic in human flesh. He felt keenly the national
disgrace of the iniquity. So deep did the iron enter into his
soul that never again did he find peace of mind except in efforts
to relieve the oppressed. Like hundreds and thousands of others,
Lundy was led on to active opposition to the trade by an actual
knowledge of the inhumanity of the business as prosecuted before
his eyes and by his sympathy for human suffering.

His apprenticeship ended, Lundy was soon established in a
prosperous business in an Ohio village not far from Wheeling.
Though he now lived in a free State, the call of the oppressed
was ever in his ears and he could not rest. He drew together a
few of his neighbors, and together they organized the Union
Humane Society, whose object was the relief of those held in
bondage. In a few months the society numbered several hundred
members, and Lundy issued an address to the philanthropists of
the whole country, urging them to unite in like manner with
uniform constitutions, and suggesting that societies so formed
adopt a policy of correspondence and cooperation. At about the
same time, Lundy began to publish anti-slavery articles in the
Mount Pleasant Philanthropist and other papers.

In 1819 he went on a business errand to St. Louis, Missouri,
where he found himself in the midst of an agitation over the
question of the extension of slavery in the States. With great
zest he threw himself into the discussion, making use of the
newspapers in Missouri and Illinois. Having lost his property, he
returned poverty-stricken to Ohio, where he founded in January,
1821, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. A few months later he
transferred his paper to the more congenial atmosphere of