Col. T. W. Higginson.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN DURING THE WAR.

save him from the violence of a respectable and influential mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men are created equal,' and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God. Hail Columbia! Cheers for the Autocrat of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey! Reader, let this inscription remain till the last slave in this despotic land be loosed from his fetters!"

Just around the corner from the jail, at No. 23 Brighton Street, Mr. Garrison and his heroic young wife lived at the time. Five weeks before the mob, a strongly built gallows, having two nooses dangling from it, one for Thompson and one for Garrison, was erected before their front door. The house was one of several in a brick block. The block still stands, but exactly which of the dwellings is the identical one occupied by the Garrisons cannot now be satisfactorily established.

When the Female AntiSlavery Society was driven

from its hall by the mob, the ladies, on invitation of
Francis Jackson, retired to his house, but finding Mrs.
Jackson seriously ill went to the home of Maria Weston
Chapman, at No. 11 West Street, where they finished
their annual business. When Mayor Lyman repre-
sented to the ladies that afternoon, at 46 Washington
Street, that it was dangerous for them to remain in
their hall, it was Mrs. Chapman who undauntedly
replied: "If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we
may as well die here as anywhere." James Russell
Lowell has preserved for us the portrait of this beau-
tiful and accomplished woman in the following lines:
"There was Maria Chapman, too,

With her swift eyes of clear steel-blue,
The coiled-up mainspring of the Fair,
Originating everywhere

The expansive force without a sound
That whirled a hundred wheels around;
Herself, meanwhile, as calm and still
As the bare crown of Prospect Hill;
A noble woman, brave and apt,
Cumaan Sibyl not more rapt,

Who might, with those fair tresses shorn,
The Maid of Orleans' casque have worn."

ciety by the "Broadcloth Mob," the ladies, on invitation of Mr. Jackson, retired to his house, but, owing to the illness of the hostess, finished their business at the home of Mrs. Chapman. The invitation to the society to hold a meeting at 31 Hollis Street was subsequently repeated and accepted. On November 19, less than a month after the riot, the ladies held a notable meeting in the parlors of Mr. Jackson, a meeting

1

1835, Wendell Phillips declared twenty years afterward, was owing to " fifty or sixty women and mainly to one man," Francis Jackson, who gave to the women driven from their hall the use of his house. "And if in defence of this sacred privilege (free speech) . . . this roof and these walls shall be levelled to the earth," wrote Mr. Jackson in reply to a note of thanks from the society, "let them fall if they must; they cannot crum

memorable circumstances which called them forth ought to suffice to make the old dwelling-house, which still stands, a landmark of the times when men and women struggled and died for liberty.

For many years it chiefly fell to Mr. Jackson and his neighbors, the Garrisons, "to offer welcome and entertainment to Anti-Slavery lecturers, country delegates and visitors to the various Anti-Slavery anniversaries, newly-made converts, strangers from abroad, and fugitive slaves.

There were others," wrote Mr. Garrison,

was

from whom we quote, "who gave us their company because of our interest in the cause of temperance, or nonresistance, or some other movement, or because of some peculiar crochet of their own." It was a "constant influx, not without its trials and embarrassments, but more commonly with its enlivening influences."

One chamber in 31 Hollis Street Francis Jackson devoted as a room of refuge for fugitive slaves, and many there were who found shelter therein. "I cannot withhold my aid from them," he wrote shortly before his death, "I cannot deny them while I have my strength left. They, and the millions they have left, are my system of Theology, my Religion, my Atonement. I have helped to enslave them - my father helped; unknowingly, it may be, nevertheless, helped. I believe in this kind of Atonement; my reason accepts no other. I believe the slaves are God's chosen people."

Just across the street from this historic house stood Hollis Street church, theatre now, not wanting in dramatic action then. For, from its pulpit, brave and eloquent John Pierpont renewed, Sunday after Sunday, his contest with the rum power and the slave power intrenched within the pews. He sustained in his prolonged contest with these twin abominations by the strong arms and unflagging zeal of Francis Jackson and Samuel May, that sturdy Boston merchant, who, like John Hancock, preferred liberty to dollars and dividends. The name happily survives, and with added lustre, in the venerable son who worthily bears it, and who occupied a position of marked influence and usefulness in the moral movement against slavery.