EMINENT OPPONENTY

Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1864 by OD Case

OWEN

LOVEJOY

LAVE POWER

ABOLITION SOCIETIES IN THE SOUTH.

113

was urged to go thither, unite the two journals, and print them himself from the materials of The Emancipator. He consented, and made the journey of eight hundred miles, onehalf on foot and the rest by water. At Jonesborough, he learned the art of printing, and was soon issuing a weekly newspaper beside The Genius, and a monthly agricultural work. He removed his family a few months later, and East Tennessee was thenceforward his home for nearly three years, during which The Genius of Universal Emancipation was the only distinctively and exclusively anti-Slavery periodical issued in the United States, constantly increasing in circulation and influence. And, though often threatened with personal assault, and once shut up in a private room with two ruffians, who undertook to bully him into some concession by a flourish of deadly weapons, he was at no time subjected to mob violence or legal prosecution.

cipator in Tennessee, died, and Lundy | second meeting adjourned, an antiSlavery society was formed; and he proceeded to hold fifteen or twenty similar meetings at other places within that State. In one instance, he spoke at a house-raising; in another, at a militia muster. Here an antiSlavery society of fourteen members was thereupon formed, with the captain of the militia company for its President. One of his meetings was held at Raleigh, the capital. Before he had left the State, he had organized twelve or fourteen Abolition Societies. He continued his journey through Virginia, holding several meetings, and organizing societies— of course, not very numerous, nor composed of the most influential persons. It is probable that his Quaker brethren supplied him with introductions from place to place, and that his meetings were held at the points where violent opposition was least likely to be offered.

He reached Baltimore about the 1st of October, and issued on the 10th No. 1 of Volume IV. of the "Genius," which continued to be well supported, though receiving little encouragement from Baltimore itself. A year afterward, it began to be issued weekly.

In the winter of 1823-4, the first American Convention for the Abolition of Slavery was held in Philadelphia; and Lundy made the journey of six hundred miles and back on purpose to attend it. During his tour, he decided on transferring his establishment to Baltimore; and, in the summer of 1824, knapsack on shoulder, he set out on foot for that city. On the way, he delivered, at Deep Creek, North Carolina, his first public address against Slavery. He spoke in a beautiful grove, near the Friends' meeting-house at that place, directly after divine worship; and the audience were so well satisfied that they invited him to speak again, in their place of worship. Before this

Lundy visited Hayti in the latter part of 1825, in order to make arrangements there for the reception of a number of slaves, whose masters were willing to emancipate them on condition of their removal from the country-in fact, were not allowed, by the laws of their respective States, to free them otherwise. Being detained longer than he had expected, he was met, on his return to Baltimore, with tidings of the death of his wife, after giving birth to twins, and

hastened to his dwelling to find it en- | Poughkeepsie, Albany,' Lockport, Utica, and Buffalo, reaching Baltimore late in October.

Lundy made at least one other visit to Hayti, to colonize emancipated slaves; was beaten nearly to death in Baltimore by a slave-trader, on whose conduct he had commented in terms which seemed disrespectful to the profession; was flattered by the judge's assurance, when the trader came to be tried for the assault, that

tirely deserted, his five children having been distributed among his friends. In that hour of intense affliction, he renewed his solemn vow to devote his entire energies to the cause of the slave, and to efforts designed to awaken his countrymen to a sense of their responsibility and their danger. In 1828, he traveled eastward, lecturing and soliciting subscribers to his "Genius," and calling, in New York, on Arthur Tappan," he [L.] had got nothing more than William Goodell, and other anti- he deserved;" and he made two long Slavery men. At Boston, he could journeys through Texas, to the Mexihear of no Abolitionists, but made can departments across the Rio the acquaintance, at his boarding- Grande, in quest of a suitable lohouse, of WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, cation on which to plant a colony a fellow-boarder, whose attention had of freed blacks from the United not previously been drawn to the States, but without success. He Slavery question, but who readily traveled in good part on foot, obembraced his views. He visited suc- serving the strictest economy, and cessively most of the clergymen of supporting himself by working at Boston, and induced eight of them, saddlery and harness-mending, from belonging to various sects, to meet place to place, as circumstances rehim. All of them, on explanation, quired. Meantime, he had been approved his labors, and subscribed compelled to remove his paper from for his periodical; and, in the course Baltimore to Washington; and finalof a few days, they aided him to hold ly (in 1836), to Philadelphia, where an anti-Slavery meeting, which was it was entitled The National Inlargely attended. At the close of his quirer, and at last merged into The remarks, several clergymen expressed Pennsylvania Freeman. His coloa general concurrence in his views. nizing enterprise took him to MonHe extended his journey to New clova, Comargo, Monterey, MatamoHampshire and Maine, lecturing ras, and Victoria, in Mexico, and conwhere he could, and obtaining some sumed the better part of several encouragement. He spoke also in years, closing in 1835. He also made the principal towns of Massachusetts, a visit to the settlements in Canada, Rhode Island, and Connecticut; and, of fugitives from American Slavery, on his homeward route, traversed the to inquire into the welfare of their State of New York, speaking at inhabitants. On the 17th of May,

9 Lundy's brief journal of this tour has been preserved; and, next to an entry running-"On the 25th I arrived at Northampton, Mass., after 9 o'clock in the evening, and called at three taverns before I could get lodgings or polite treatment"-we find the following:

"September 6th-At Albany, I made some acquaintances. Philanthropists are the slowest creatures breathing. They think forty times before they act."

There is reason to fear that the little Quaker was a 'fanatic.'