Philanthropist in 1836. With the connivance of the authorities
and encouragement from leading citizens of Cincinnati, the office
of the Philanthropist was three times looted by the mob, and the
proprietor's life was greatly endangered. The paper, however,
rapidly grew in favor and influence and thoroughly vindicated the
right of free discussion of the slavery question. Another editor
was installed when Birney, who became secretary of the Anti-
slavery Society in 1837, transferred his residence to New York
City.

Twenty-three years before Lincoln's famous utterance in which he
proclaimed the doctrine that a house divided against itself
cannot stand, and before Seward's declaration of an irrepressible
conflict between slavery and freedom, Birney had said: "There
will be no cessation of conflict until slavery shall be
exterminated or liberty destroyed. Liberty and slavery cannot
live in juxtaposition." He spoke out of the fullness of his own
experience. A thoroughly trained lawyer and statesman, well
acquainted with the trend of public sentiment in both North and
South, he was fully persuaded that the new pro-slavery crusade
against liberty boded civil war. He knew that the white men in
North and South would not, without a struggle, consent to be
permanently deprived of their liberties at the behest of a few
Southern planters. Being himself of the slaveholding class, he
was peculiarly fitted to appreciate their position. To him the
new issue meant war, unless the belligerent leaders should be
shown that war was hopeless. By his moderation in speech, his
candor in statement, his lack of rancor, his carefully
considered, thoroughly fair arguments, he had the rare faculty of
convincing opponents of the correctness of his own view.