This fact was the most important consequence, which flowed from the trial and imprisonment of the young editor of _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_.

"As the news of my imprisonment became extensively known," he wrote, "and the merits of the case understood, not a mail rolled into the city but it brought me consolatary letters from individuals hitherto unknown to me, and periodicals of all kinds from every section of the Union (not even excepting the South), all uniting to give me a triumphant acquittal--all severely reprehending the conduct of Mr.Todd--and all regarding my trial as a mockery of justice." This unexpected result was one of those accidents of history, which "have laws as fixed as planets have." The prosecution and imprisonment of Garrison was without doubt designed to terrorize him into silence on the subject of slavery.

But his persecutors had reckoned without a knowledge of their victim.

Garrison had the martyr's temperament and invincibility of purpose.

His earnestness burned the more intensely with the growth of opposition and peril.