The shops in the town boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils.  Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe for them.  It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors.  But firm in her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power.  Then, like savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs and stones, and daubed it with filth.  This drama of diabolism was fitly ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the detestable building devoted to the higher education of “niggers.”  Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.

The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison’s indignation to the highest pitch.  Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony of soul.  In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership he wrote George W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, “we may as well, first as last, meet this proscriptive spirit, and conquer it.  We—­i.e., all the friends of the cause—­must make this a common concern.  The New Haven excitement has furnished a bad precedent—­a second must not be given or I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner which their intellectual and moral necessities demand.  In Boston we are all excited at the Canterbury affair.  Colonizationists are rejoicing and Abolitionists looking sternly.”  Like a true general Garrison took in from his Liberator outlook the entire field of the struggle.  No friend of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready reinforcements.  To him the free people of color turned for championship, and to the Liberator as a mouthpiece.  The battle for their rights and for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace.  Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were beginning “to bellow through the vast and boundless deep” of a nation’s soul.

CHAPTER IX.

AGITATION AND REPRESSION.

William Lloyd Garrison’s return from his English mission was signalized by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of anti-slavery mobs in the North.  The news of his British successes had preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his pro-slavery countrymen.  For had he not with malice prepense put down the “most glorious of Christian enterprises,” and rebuked his own country in the house of strangers as recreant to freedom?  And when O’Connell