This latter
consideration I do not think weighed much with me, although I was better
prepared for serious danger than for anything like personal indignity. I
had read Governor Trumbull's description of the tarring and feathering of
his hero MacFingal, when, after the application of the melted tar, the
feather-bed was ripped open and shaken over him, until
"Not Maia's son, with wings for ears,
Such plumes about his visage wears,
Nor Milton's six-winged angel gathers
Such superfluity of feathers,"
and I confess I was quite unwilling to undergo a martyrdom which my best
friends could scarcely refrain from laughing at. But a summons like that
of Garrison's bugle-blast could scarcely be unheeded by one who, from
birth and education, held fast the traditions of that earlier
abolitionism which, under the lead of Benezet and Woolman, had effaced
from the Society of Friends every vestige of slave-holding. I had thrown
myself, with a young man's fervid enthusiasm, into a movement which
commended itself to my reason and conscience, to my love of country, and
my sense of duty to God and my fellow-men.
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