His
manner was peculiarly winning and attractive, and in personal
intercourse almost instantly disarmed hostility. The even gentleness of
his rich voice, his unfailing courtesy and good temper, his quick eye
for harmless pleasantries, his hearty laugh, the Quaker-like calmness,
deliberateness, and meekness, with which he would meet objections and
argue the righteousness of his cause, his sweet reasonableness and
companionableness were in strange contrast to popular misconceptions and
caricatures of him. No one needed to be persuaded, who had once
conversed with him, that there was no hatred or vindictiveness in his
severities of language toward slaveholders. That he was no Jacobin, no
enemy of society, was perceived the moment one looked into his grave,
kind face, or caught the warm accents of his pacific tones, or listened
to the sedate intensity, and humanity of his discourses on the enormity
of American slavery as they fell from him in conversations between man
and man. Here is a case in point, a typical incident in the life of the
reformer; it occurred, it is true, when he was twenty-seven, but it
might have occurred at twenty-five quite as well; it is narrated by
Samuel J. May in his recollections of the anti-slavery conflict: On his
way from New York to Philadelphia with Garrison, Mr. May fell into a
discussion with a pro-slavery passenger on the vexed question of the
day.
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