It was gaining footholds in the pulpit, the school, and the press.

It was a stalwart sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over the fields of the then coming generation truths and antipathies of social principles, which were to make peace impossible between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding halves of the Union.
In the year 1836 the anti-slavery leaven or residuum for instance, was sufficiently potent to preserve the statutes of the free States, free from repressive laws directed against the Abolitionists.

This was much but there was undoubtedly another phase of the agitation, a phase which struck the shallow eye of Benton, and led him into false conclusions.

It was not clear sailing for the reform.

It was truly a period of stress and storm.