For the
cause made many gains thereby, and conspicuously among them was Gerritt
Smith, ever afterward one of its most eloquent and munificent
supporters. If anti-slavery meetings made converts by tens, anti-slavery
mobs made them by hundreds. The enemies of freedom builded better than
they knew or intended, and Garrison had the weightiest of reasons for
feeling thankful to them for the involuntary, yet vast aid and comfort
which their pro-slavery virulence and violence were bringing him and the
anti-slavery movement throughout the free States. Example: in 1835-36,
the great mob year, as many as three hundred and twenty-eight societies
were organized in the North for the immediate abolition of slavery.
The mob did likewise help towards a satisfactory solution of the riddle
propounded by Garrison: "Shall the _Liberator_ die?" The fresh access of
anti-slavery strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers, begotten by
it, exerted no slight influence on the longevity of the _Liberator_.
Poor the paper continued, and embarrassed the editor for many a month
thereafter, but as an anti-slavery instrument its survival may be said
from that proceeding to have become a necessity. To allow the
_Liberator_ to die at this juncture would have been such a confession of
having been put down, such an ignominious surrender to the mobocrats as
the Abolitionists of Boston would have scorned to make.
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