negroes were reduced to slavery. Freedom of worship was denied to
negroes, and they were not allowed to assemble for any purpose
except under the strict surveillance of white men. Negro
testimony in a court of law was invalid where the rights of a
white man were involved. The right of a negro to his freedom was
decided by an arbitrary court without a jury, while the disputed
right of a white man to the ownership of a horse was conditioned
by the safeguard of trial by jury.

The maintenance of such policies carries with it of necessity the
suppression of free discussion. When Southern leaders adopted the
policy of defending slavery as a righteous institution,
abolitionists in the South either emigrated to the North or were
silenced. In either case they were deprived of a fundamental
right. The spirit of persecution followed them into the free
States. Birney could not publish his paper in Kentucky, nor even
at Cincinnati, save at the risk of his life. Elijah Lovejoy was
not allowed to publish his paper in Missouri, and, when he
persisted in publishing it in Illinois, he was brutally murdered.
Even in Boston it required men of courage and determination to
meet and organize an anti-slavery society in 1832, though only a
few years earlier Benjamin Lundy had traveled freely through the
South itself delivering anti-slavery lectures and organizing
scores of such societies. The New York Anti-Slavery Society was
secretly organized in 1832 in spite of the opposition of a
determined mob. Mob violence was everywhere rife. Meetings were
broken up, negro quarters attacked, property destroyed, murders
committed.

Fair-minded men became abolitionists on account of the crusade