Such was the evil with which Elisha Tyson, when “young, solitary, and friendless,” undertook to grapple; the means he chiefly employed, were such as tended to purify and enlighten public opinion.

“He had two principal modes of operating upon the public mind; by conversation in public and private places, and by the press.  Through the means of the first, he worked upon the feelings and sentiments of the higher and more influential classes; by means of the latter, he influenced in a great degree, the mass of the community.  In private conversation, his arguments were so cogent, his appeals so energetic, and his manner so sincere and disinterested, that few could avoid conviction.  It is true, indeed, as it regards the press, that he did not publish very much of his own composing; but he procured the publication of a vast deal of his own dictating.  By his arguments and entreaties, he aroused the zeal of many individuals, each of whom enlisted himself as a kind of voluntary amanuensis, who wrote and published his dictations.  Many important essays have in this way been communicated to the public.”

But he undertook also, services requiring a yet sterner resolution, and more heroic perseverance, services which demanded that he himself should be in bondage neither to riches, honor, nor reputation, since his exertions endangered all his personal interests in such a community as that by which he was surrounded.

“Of those held in servitude, two classes of beings felt in a peculiar manner the kindness and sympathy of Mr. Tyson—­those entitled to their freedom, and illegally held in slavery—­and those, who, though not illegally kept in bondage, yet were treated with inhumanity by their masters.

“Where he had reason to believe that a person claimed as a slave was entitled to his freedom, he would, in the first place, in order to avoid litigation, lay before the reputed owner, the grounds of his belief.  If these were disregarded, he then proceeded to employ counsel, by whom a petition for freedom was filed in the proper court, and the case prosecuted to a final determination.  What excited most astonishment in these trials, was the extraordinary success which attended him.  Very few were the cases in which he was defeated; and his failure even in these, was more generally owing to the want of testimony, than to the want of justice on his side.  To enumerate his successes, would be as impossible, on account of their vast number, as it would be tedious on account of their similarity to each other.  Whole families were often liberated by a single verdict, the fate of one relative deciding the fate of many.  And often ancestors, after passing a long life in illegal slavery, sprung at last, like the chrysalis in autumn, into new existence, beneath the genial rays of the sun of liberty, which shed at the same time its benign influence upon their children, and children’s children.