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released his slaves, for which his name was stricken off the roll of 
the bar and the press he established at Cincinnati was destroyed. 
Many ministers of religion obeyed the precepts and imitated the 
example of Him who came to “ preach to the captives and to set at 
liberty them that are bruised.” 
The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a Presbyterian pastor, from Maine, 
for denouncing a cruel lynching in St. Louis, was driven from that 
city. The same fate followed him to Alton, Ill., where his house 
was attacked and he was himself shot to death by a mob. He was 
the first but not the last abolition martyr. His fate sounded the 
death knell of slavery. Soon more than a hundred anti-slavery soci- 
eties sprang up throughout the north. 
The Rev. Owen Lovejoy, whose brother, as we have seen, was mur- 
dered for the cause of liberty, was taunted as “ nigger stealer.” He 
replied, “Thou invisible demon of slavery, dost thou think to cross 
my humble threshold, and forbid me to give bread to the hungry and 
shelter to the houseless! I bid you defiance in the name of my God!” 
For many years the light in the window of Thomas Rankin, a 
Presbyterian pastor on the Ohio River, “ were hailed by slaves fleeing 
from the soil of Kentucky as beacons to guide them to a haven of 
safety.” 
Theodore Parker, the accomplished scholar and orator, and 
enthusiastic abolitionist of Boston, writes: “I must attend to living 
men, and not to dead books, and all this winter my time has been 
occupied with these poor souls.” 
The Rev. Charles Torrey in 1838 resigned the pastorate of a 
Congregational church in Providence, Rhode Island, and relinquished 
quiet and comfort that he might devote himself to the work of freeing 
the slaves. He was thrust into prison, attempted to escape, was 
sentenced to penitentiary for six years and in prison he died. In 
1844 he wrote: “If I am a guilty man, I am a very guilty one; for 
I have aided nearly four hundred slaves to escape to freedom, the 
greater part of whom would probably, but for my exertions, have died 
in slavery.” He was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, 
Mass., and a memorial service in Faneuil Hall on the day of his funeral 
was signalized by a poem by Lowell, and addresses by General Fessen- 
den and Walter Channing. Of him, Whittier wrote: “In the wild 
woods of Canada, around many a happy fireside and holy family altar, 
his name is on the lips of God’s poor. He put his soul in their 
soul’s stead; he gave his life for those who had no claim on his love 
save that of human brotherhood.” 
Calvin Fairbank, a student of Oberlin College, read at his father’s 
fireside, a station of the Underground Railway, the story of sorrow 
