Archimedes with his lever had moved the world.  Archimedes “in a small chamber, unfurnitured and mean,” had set a world of pro-slavery passions and prejudices spinning away into space: 

  “Such earnest natures are the fiery pith,
  The compact nucleus, ’round which systems grow;
  Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith,
  And whirls impregnate with the central glow.”

CHAPTER VII.

MASTER STROKES.

“Help came but slowly” to the reformer.  With a single instrument he had stirred the nation, as no other man had done, on the slavery question.  He had thrown the South into widespread excitement, and thawed the apathy of the North into widespread attention.  He had won an almost instant hearing for his cause.  But he knew that this was not enough.  Effective as he had shown the weapon of the press to be, it alone was unequal to the conduct of prolonged agitation.  And prolonged agitation Garrison clearly apprehended was to be the price of abolition.  Back of him and the Liberator he needed an organized force, coadjutors like Aaron and Hur to hold up his arms during the mighty conflict on which he had now entered with the slave interests of the country.  Those interests were organized, and because they were organized they were powerful.  The sentiment of freedom he determined to organize and to render it thereby invincible.  To organized wrong he designed to oppose organized right, confident that organized right would prevail in the end.  He had knowledge of the utility of temperance societies in advancing the cause of sobriety among the people.  He had learned from Lundy how much he had relied upon the union of men as anti-slavery helps.  Garrison determined to summon to his side the powerful agency of an anti-slavery society devoted to immediate and unconditional emancipation.  He had already made converts; he had already a small following.  At Julien Hall, on the occasion of his first lecture on the subject of slavery, he had secured three remarkable men to the movement, viz., Rev. Samuel J. May, then a young Unitarian minister, Samuel E. Sewall, a young member of the Bar, and A. Bronson Alcott, a sage even in his early manhood.  They had all promised him aid and comfort in the great task which he had undertaken.  A little later two others, quite as remarkable as those first three were drawn to the reformer’s side, and abetted him in the treason to iniquity, which he was prosecuting through the columns of the Liberator with unrivaled zeal and devotion.  These disciples were Ellis Grey Loring and David Lee Child.  They were a goodly company, were these five conspirators, men of intellect and conscience, of high family and social connections, of brilliant attainments and splendid promises for the future.  To this number must be added a sixth, Oliver Johnson, who was at the time editing The Christian Soldier, disciple of Garrison then,