They
told the plainest truths in the plainest way. They gave their
audiences hard words, and often received hard knocks in return. They
called the slaveholders robbers and man-stealers. They branded
Northern politicians with Southern principles as "dough-faces." But
their hardest and sharpest expletives were reserved for those Northern
clergymen who were either pro-slavery or non-committal. They blistered
them all over with their lashings. In speaking of one of the most
noted among them, Lowell describes him as
"A kind of maddened John the Baptist
To whom the hardest word came aptest."
The lecturer of whom I saw the most in those early trying days was
Professor Hudson, of Oberlin College. While in that part of the field
he made headquarters at my father's house, radiating out and filling
appointments in different directions. He was exceedingly sharp-tongued
and very fearless. Nothing seemed to please him better than a
"scrimmage" with his opponents. Often he conquered mobs by resolutely
talking them down and making them ashamed of themselves. But on one
occasion, looking through the window from the outside to see what
awaited him in a room where he was to speak, he saw a pot of boiling
tar on the stove that heated the room and a pillow-case full of
feathers conveniently near, while a half-drunken crowd was in
possession of the place, and concluded to run.
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