which the Anti-Slavery Convention had been, but a few months before, forcibly expelled.

"Right heartily glad am I," says Mr. Weld, "that a memoir of Alvan Stewart is to be published, and that you are to write it. The world would be cheated out of its own, if the good and great in Alvan Stewart were to be left in the custody of tradition, subject to all its distortions and dilutions.

"I never saw him in private life, except once at his own table, a part of an evening, at his house when it was full of company; and now and then as we shook hands, and spoke a word of cheer to each other, in our hurryings up and down, driving the brunt of the antislavery conflict.

"Personally I knew him less than I knew any other of the most prominent anti-slavery men of New York city, and State. Yet I knew enough of him to impress me profoundly with the conviction of his rare powers, exhaustless versatility; that marvel of humor, ever fresh, ever at flood tide, and ever his own-those batteries of wit, irony and sarcasm always in play, every shot telling, and never leaving one the less in the locker-that power with the 'reductio ad absurdum' in argument, in which he had no peer; but better far than all, that depth of pathos, those outwelling sympathies, never at ebb: that ever yearning heart-ache for the wronged, that moral courage that always dared yet never knew it dared; all these, with a kindred host come thronging around me at the thought of Alvan Stewart. Blessings on his memory. His works do follow him."

And when Mr. Stewart was removed, by death, from his labors in this cause, the following evidence of the estimation in which he was held, by the friends of reform, appeared as his obituary:

It is with pain that we learn that Alvan Stewart is no more among the living throng of mankind. His death took place in New York city, May 1, 1849, at his home with his family in the 59th year

of his age. This is an event we have been contemplating for months, and always contemplated it with feelings of sadness.

Mr. Stewart was a native of New York, and though of respectable family, emphatically the artificer of his own fortune. He commenced his professional life at Cherry Valley, Otsego county, where he acquired eminence as a lawyer, and for several years had a large lucrative practice. In 1832 Mr. Stewart made this city (Utica) his home, and until falling health demanded a change of climate.

Alvan Stewart was a man-an original man-copying nobody, imitating nobody, and inimitable in himself, both as to genius, modes of expression and the character of his mind and manners. He was well read, and had a mind well stored with varied learning; but his borrowed thoughts and vast information derived from books, received by passing through his mind and finding utterance through his peculiar genius, an originality and freshness which added to their power. But it was not merely books or stereotyped ideas that distinguished Mr. Stewart and elevated him to a post in society, and gave him an honorable name among the distinguished men of the age. It was his originality as a thinker and actor, and his independent self-directed course on the questions of the times in which he lived. As a man of humor and wit, mingled with gravity and profound good sense, he stood forth as peculiar to his day and age. These gave him a power at the bar and force as an orator. But it is of Alvan Stewart as a philanthropist we desire to speak.

He

Perhaps no living man in America, certainly no one in the State of New York, has done more signal service for the cause of human freedom than Alvan Stewart; and it is almost equally true of the Temperance Reform. Mr. Stewart was among the earliest, and certainly among the ablest supporters of the temperance cause. espoused these enterprises when it cost something to make the sacrifice. With no earthly or time-serving motive to gratify--while to "entirely refrain" from the agitation of unpopular subjects would have saved him from a world of odium and malignant misrepresentation-he obeyed the convictions of his inner man, threw himself into the breach, giving to persecuted reform the support of his superior talent and personal influence. His name became synonymous with "abolition," and "teetotalism," at a time when men's souls

were tried. Nor did he shrink from the worst opprobrium which such an identification of himself with reform, brought on his head; but the power of his conviction of the truth and uprightness of his cause enabled him rather to prefer the bad opinion of the world to the applause of a time-serving age. It is not strange that those who can see no virtue in efforts to relieve mankind of the untold evils of drunkenness to upturn and overthrow the despotism of American slavery-should be at a loss to estimate Mr. Stewart's motives; nor is it strange, that, when he in his zealous support of the truth should rebuke religious and political delinquency and frustrate the designs of the politicians, on his head should fall vile slander, and that he should be pointed out as a fanatic. Those who have sought to convict the leaders of the abolitionists of being ambitious have had the most hopeless cause ever brought before the bar of public opinion. Alvan Stewart was a lawyer of the first class. His talent, varied and extensive information, education and wealth, naturally placed him in the upper circle of society; and for him to descend from motives of ambition to take the drunkard by the hand and recognize the despised African as a man and a brother, would have been a freak in human character unaccounted for in the philosophy of human nature. The truth was, Mr. Stewart was highly conscientious, and gave to reform, his thoughts, his time and his money, from a sincere love of it, and lived and labored to better mankind, trusting to the future to vindicate his name, and the Judge of all the earth to mete to him his reward. For some five years we were privileged with an intimacy and constant intercourse with Mr. Stewart, and we know that with him the religious sentiment was predominant and that a clear conviction of duty governed his actions. That he was not without faults, we are duly sensible; but his imperfections were not of a character to seriously detract from a life devoted to the good of his race, and of signal service to mankind. He gave himself heartily to the cause of reform, and that too when reform, feeble and neglected, most needed his wise counsels and strong and vigorous support. From the moment of his consecration, his devotion was untiring and unremitted, until reluctantly forced from active service by disease and a broken constitution. In his retirement, his reflections were those of a good man in view of duties done and responsi

bilities honorably met, and the faith which bringeth salvation was his stay and support in his failing years. Alvan Stewart has lived to some purpose. The world has been made better by his living in it, and the example of his life will shed blessings on ages to come. If a slave now lifts to heaven his manacled limbs, or a drunkard reels through the streets, neither that slave nor that drunkard can reproach Alvan Stewart, for duties left undone in his behalf. To them he gave the better portion of his life-to their deliverance he consecrated his powerful mind and the best portion of his days—and the blessings of the poor and oppressed will rest on his name. We mourn the death of Mr. Stewart and sympathize in the sorrowful feelings the news of his death will impart. To us he was a friend, forbearing and sympathizing. To us he was a counsellor whose advice was imparted with almost parental tenderness. His friendship we shall ever hold in grateful remembrance, and we hope to profit by the lessons of wisdom which have fallen from his lips.

THE SCOPE OF THIS BOOK.

LETTER OF ALVAN STEWART TO THE LIBERTY PARTY, 1846.

LET us move, in the solid column, upon the ranks of slavery! Let us lock our arms, by the power of united political action. Let every man's name be enrolled who has fired the bullet of his ballot against slavery. Let every name be registered by the middle of September. Sixty-five thousand men were found on the Ides of November, 1844, inscribed on the muster roll of human freedom.

THE ARMY OF LIBERATION.

You are the moral army of liberation. It is not an enlistment for one year, but during the war. This army, with its additions, fights for glory in its most exalted sense. To deliver three millions of slaves to self-ownership, and give them the right to do everything which is not wrong, are the pass-words of the army of deliverance. The army of libera tion will remove the fetters from mind and body of enslaver and enslaved of fifteen States, and double the agricultural and treble the manufacturing and mechanical products. Another part of their mission is to establish 36,000 common schools, those nurseries of truth and knowledge, the elements of selfgovernment, in those fifteen States. This army of liberation will carry 500 printing presses, and one million of Bibles, and 20,000 school-masters and mistresses, as free-will offering, in the day of a most glorious emancipation, to these States. This army is charged with the high duty of blotting out Mason & Dixon's line, the line of eternal discord. This