A great meeting was proposed, and Faneuil Hall applied for.
The application was denied by the municipal authorities on the plea that its use for such a purpose might provoke a mob.

The city was, however, dealing now not with the despised Abolitionists, but with men of property and standing in the community and was soon brought to its senses by the indignant eloquence of Dr.Channing, appealing to the better self of Boston in this strain: "Has it come to this?
Has Boston fallen so low?
May not its citizens be trusted to come together to express the great principles of liberty for which their forefathers died?
Are our fellow-citizens to be murdered in the act of defending their property and of assuming the right of free discussion?
And is it unsafe in this metropolis to express abhorrence of the deed ?" A second application for the hall was granted, and a meeting, which is an historical event in the annals of the old town, was held December 8, 1837--a meeting memorable as an uprising, not of the Abolitionists, but of the conservatism and respectability of the city in behalf of the outraged liberties of white men.

Ever memorable, too, for that marvelous speech of Wendell Phillips, which placed him instantly in the front rank of minds with a genius for eloquence, lifted him at once as an anti-slavery instrument and leader close beside William Lloyd Garrison.
The wild-cat-like spirit which had hunted Thompson out of the country and Lovejoy to death, had more than made good the immense deficit of services thus created through the introduction upon the national stage of the reform of this consummate and incomparable orator.
The assassination of Lovejoy was an imposing object lesson to the North, but it was not the last.

Other and terrible illustrations of the triumph of mobs followed it, notably the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia on the evening of May 17, 1838.

As the murder of Lovejoy formed the culmination of outrages directed against the rights of person, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall furnished the climax of outrages committed against the rights of property.