The great riot gave those young
men their first summons to enter the service of freedom. It was not long
afterward probably that they both began to read the _Liberator_. From
that event many intelligent and conservative people associated slavery
with lynch law and outrage upon the rights of free speech and popular
assembly.
This anti-slavery reaction of the community received practical
demonstration in the immediate increase of subscribers to the
_Liberator_. Twelve new names were added to the subscription list in one
day. It received significant illustration also in Garrison's nomination
to the legislature. In this way did between seventy and eighty citizens
testify their sympathy for him and their reprobation of mob rule. In yet
another way was its influence felt, and this was in the renewed zeal and
activity which it instantly produced on the part of the Abolitionists
themselves. It operated upon the movement as a powerful stimulus to
fresh sacrifices and unwearied exertions. George W. Benson, Garrison's
brother-in-law, led off bravely in this respect, as the following
extract from a letter written by him in Boston, two days after the riot,
to Garrison, at Brooklyn, well illustrates. He had come up to the city
from Providence the night before, in quest of his sister and her
husband. Not finding them, he turned to the cause which had been so
ruthlessly attacked, and this is the sort of care which he bestowed upon
it.
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