Re: As far I can understand
That's funny, because as late as 1850 prominent citizens were being ostracised - frozen out of polite society - in Boston, simply for having come out publicly for the abolition of slavery.
"The Free Soil Party fared ill in Beacon Street. The social arbiters of Boston—George Ticknor and the rest,—had to admit, however unwillingly, that the Free Soil leaders could not mingle with the friends and followers of Mr. Webster. Sumner was socially ostracised, and so, for that matter, were Palfrey, Dana, Russell, Adams, and all the other avowed anti-slavery leaders, but for them it mattered less, because they had houses and families of their own; while Sumner had neither wife nor household, and, though the most socially ambitious of all, and the most hungry for what used to be called polite society, he could enter hardly half-a-dozen houses in Boston".
- "The Education of Henry Adams", Chapter 2.
http://www.bartleby.com/159/2.html
Biting the hand that feeds IT
