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posted them in different parts of the Hall and carried the meeting quietly through, though there were a few symptoms of trouble at first—and took W. P. home afterward, with quite a crowd around,—so that all went well.
Gov. Andrew brought a good deal of pressure to bear on the Mayor and he sent police after all—but not in uniform so that it was not generally known till afterwards.
As there is to be an Anti-Slavery Convention next Thursday and Friday it was thought important to have a good organization and make sure of carrying the meetings all through—but I think everything will go well now.
In February,
Mr. Higginson spent another Sunday in
Boston, to help protect
Wendell Phillips, and wrote that ‘a thousand people or so waited on Winter Street to see him—friends, foes and idlers —while we quietly walked him out by the
Bumstead Place entrance.’
When the war-cloud burst in April, 1861, and there was alarm about the safety of
Washington,
Mr. Higginson conceived the daring scheme of recalling
Montgomery and his men from
Kansas and going with them into the mountains of
Virginia to divert the attention of the
Confederacy from the national capital.
In reference to this plan he wrote to his mother:—
I vibrate between rumors of wars—and high school examinations.
Since our troops went, things