commendation. General A. S. Hartwell, late colonel of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, makes honorable mention of Lieutenant Mitchel.

In the year 1867, Mr. Mitchel was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature, from Ward Six, in Boston. The appointment of John M. Langston to a position in the Freedman Bureau, showed progress.

However, the selection of E. D. Bassett, as Minister and Consul-General to Hayti,' astonished even those who had the most favorable opinion of President Grant, and satisfied the people generally, both colored and white. Since the close of the war, colored men have been appointed to honorable situations in the Custom Houses in the various States, also in the Post Office and Revenue Department.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE ABOLITIONISTS.

A LITTLE more than forty years ago, William Lloyd Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate and unconditional emancipation, as the right of the slave, and the duty of the master. The men and women who gradually rallied around him, fully comprehended the solemn responsibility they were then taking, and seemed prepared to consecrate the best years of their lives to the cause of human freedom. Amid the moral and political darkness which then overshadowed the land, the voice of humanity was at length faintly heard, and soon aroused opposition; for slavery was rooted and engrafted in every fibre of American society. The imprisonment of Mr. Garrison at Baltimore, at once directed public attention to the heinous sin which he was attacking, and called around him some of the purest and best men of the country.

The Boston mob of 1835 gave new impulse to the agitation, and brought fresh aid to the pioneer of the movement. Then came the great battle for freedom of speech and the press; a battle in which the heroism. of this small body of proscribed men and women had

ample room to show their genius and abilities. The bold and seeming audacity with which they attacked slavery in every corner where the monster had taken refuge, even in the face of lynchings, riots, and murders, carried with it a charm which wrung applause from the sympathizing heart throughout the world, and showed that the American Abolitionists possessed a persistency and a courage which had never found a parallel in the annals of progress and reform.

In the spring of 1859, we attended a meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-slavery Society, as it was then organized, and we shall write of the members as they appeared at that time. The committee was composed of twelve persons besides the chairman, and were seated around a long table. At the head of the table sat William Lloyd Garrison, the Chairman of the Board, and the acknowledged leader of the movement. His high and prominent forehead, piercing eye, pleasant, yet anxious countenance, long nose, and smile upon his lips, point him out at once as a man born to guide and direct.

The deference with which he is treated by his associates shows their appreciation of his abilities and his moral worth. Tender and blameless in his family affections, devoted to his friends, simple and studious, upright, guileless, distinguished, and worthy, like the great men of antiquity, to be immortalized by another Plutarch. As a speaker, he is forcible, clear, and logical; as a writer, he has always been regarded as one of the ablest in our country. How many services, never to be forgotten, has he not rendered to the cause of the slave and the welfare of mankind.

Many of those who started out with him in young

manhood, when he left his Newburyport home, were swept away like so much floating wood before the tide.

When the sturdiest characters gave way, when the finest geniuses passed one after another under the yoke of slavery, Garrison stood firm to his convictions, like a rock that stands stirless amid the conflicting agitation of the waves. He is not only the friend and advocate of freedom with his pen and tongue, but to the oppressed of every clime he opens his purse, his house, and his heart. In days past, the fugitive slave, fresh from the prison-house of the South, who was turned off by the politician, and had experienced the cold shoulder of the divine, found a warm bed and breakfast under the hospitable roof of William Lloyd Garrison.

The society whose executive committee is now in session, is one of no inconsiderable influence in the United States. No man has had more bitter enemies or stauncher friends than Mr. Garrison.

There are those among his friends who would stake their all upon his veracity and integrity; and we are sure that the colored people throughout America, in whose cause he has so long labored, will with one accord assign the highest niche in their affections to the champion of universal emancipation. This is not intended as an eulogium, for no words of ours could add the weight of a feather to the world-wide fame of William Lloyd Garrison; but we simply wish to record the acknowledgment of a grateful negro to the most distinguished friend of his race.

On the right of the chairman sat Wendell Phillips, America's ablest orator. He is a little above the middle height, well made, and remarkably graceful in

person. His golden hair is now growing thin and changing its color, and his youthful look has gone; but he shows .no yielding to age, and is in the full maturity of his powers. Descended from one of the oldest and most cultivated stock of New England's sons; educated at the first university; graduating with all the honors which the college could bestow on him; studying law with Judge Story, and becoming a member of the bar; he has all the accomplishments that these advantages can give to a man of a great mind.

Nature has treated Mr. Phillips as a favorite. His expressive countenance paints and reflects every emotion of his soul. His gestures, like his delivery, are wonderfully graceful. There is a fascination in the soft gaze of his eyes, which none can but admire. Being a close student, and endowed by Nature with a retentive memory, he supplies himself with the most complicated dates and historical events. Nothing can surpass the variety of his matter. He extracts from a subject all that it contains, and does it as none but Wendell Phillips can. His voice is beautifully musical, and it is calculated to attract wherever it is heard. He is a man of calm intrepidity, of a patriotic and warm heart, with temper the most gentle, a rectitude of principle entirely natural, a freedom from ambition, and a modesty quite singular.

His speeches upon every subject upon which he has spoken, will compare favorably with anything ever uttered by Pitt or Sheridan in their palmiest days. No American is so eagerly reported in Europe, in what he says on the platform, as Mr. Phillips. His appeal for Cretan independence was circulated in the