"No, he isn't."

"Then I ask you to define an abolitionist, for I call these men as
radical abolitionists as we have in our country."

"Well, they are not."

"Please define them that I may know who they are."

"They are those who go down South and steal slaves away from their
owners and report that they whip men and women and sell husbands and
wives apart, and separate children from their mothers, and all that
sort of thing, when it's all an arrant black-hearted lie."

"Mr. Lyons, you know all these flat denials are substantial truths. As
you say you have lived in the South, you know in your own heart that
men and women are cruelly whipped, and that families are separated,
and these cases of cruelty are neither few nor far between. I will
tell you what I have done for a woman who was a slave in Kentucky when
she came to me for advice in Cincinnati, as she had a daughter to be
sold, and her mistress was going to sell the whole family down the
river. She was permitted to do her mistress's marketing in Cincinnati
because she had confidence that she would not leave her family. I
advised her to put her husband and children in that market-wagon and
cover them with hay and bring them to a certain place I designated,
and she would be aided in her flight to Canada. She took the plan I
suggested, and her whole remaining family, nine in number, found
themselves free in Canada. Was that the work of an abolitionist?"

"No, it isn't."