Such an instance had
come to him while in the street where the office of the _Genius_ was
located. It was what was occurring at almost all hours of the day and in
almost all parts of the town. He had not been in Baltimore a month when
he saw a specimen of the brutality of slavery on the person of a negro,
who had been mercilessly flogged. On his back were thirty-seven gashes
made with a cowskin, while on his head were many bruises besides. It was
a Sunday morning, fresh from his terrible punishment, that the poor
fellow had found the editors of the _Genius_, who, with the compassion
of brothers, took him in, dressed his wounds, and cared for him for two
days. Such an experience was no new horror to Lundy, but it was
doubtless Garrison's first lesson in that line, and it sank many fathoms
deep into his heart.
Maryland was one of the slave-breeding States and Baltimore a slave
emporium. There was enacted the whole business of slavery as a
commercial enterprise. Here the human chattels were brought and here
warehoused in jails and other places of storage and detention. Here they
were put up at public auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder,
and from here they were shipped to New Orleans, the great distributing
center for such merchandise. He heard what Lundy had years before heard,
the wail of captive mothers and fathers, wives, husbands and children,
torn from each other; like Lundy, "he felt their pang of distress; and
the iron entered his soul.
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