M. (hesitatingly)—­“Ham—­Noah’s curse, you know.”

G. (hastily)—­“Oh, sir, you build on a very slender foundation.  Granting even—­what remains to be proved—­that the Africans are the descendants of Ham, Noah’s curse was a prediction of future servitude, and not an injunction to oppress.  Pray, sir, is it a careful desire to fulfill the Scriptures, or to make money, that induces you to hold your fellow-men in bondage?”

M. (excitedly)—­“Why, sir, do you really think that the slaves are beings like ourselves?—­that is, I mean do you believe that they possess the same faculties and capacities as the whites?”

G. (energetically)—­“Certainly, sir, I do not know that there is any moral or intellectual quality in the curl of the hair, or the color of the skin.  I cannot conceive why a black man may not as reasonably object to my color, as I to his.  Sir, it is not a black face that I detest, but a black heart—­and I find it very often under a white skin.”

M. (derisively)—­“Well, sir, how should you like to see a black man President of the United States?”

G. (severely)—­“As to that, sir, I am a true Republican, and bow to the will of the majority.  If the people prefer a black President, I should cheerfully submit; and if he be qualified for the station, may peradventure give him my vote.”

M. (triumphantly)—­“How should you like to have a black man marry your daughter?”

G. (making a home thrust and an end of the dialogue)—­“I am not married—­I have no daughter.  Sir, I am not familiar with your practices; but allow me to say, that slaveholders generally should be the last persons to affect fastidiousness on that point; for they seem to be enamored with amalgamation.”

Garrison’s pen was particularly busy during the term of his imprisonment.  He paid his respects to the State’s Attorney who prosecuted him, to the judge who condemned him, and to Francis Todd, the owner of the ship Francis.  He prepared and scattered broadcast a true account of his trial, showing how the liberty of the press had been violated in the case.  He did not doubt that it would astonish Europe if it were known there “that an American citizen lies incarcerated in prison, for having denounced slavery and its abettors in his own country.”  The fact created no little astonishment in America.  Slavery became distinctly connected for the first time with abridgments of the freedom of the press, and the right of free speech.  And the cause of the slave became involved with the Constitutional liberties of the republic.  In punishing Garrison, the Abolitionist, the rights of Garrison the white freeman were trampled on.  And white freemen in the North, who cared nothing for Abolitionism, but a great deal for their right to speak and write freely, resented the outrage.  This fact was the most important consequence, which flowed from the trial and imprisonment of the young editor of The Genius