Bloggers and abolitionists

Mark Grimsley posts an email from Merton Dillon, author of Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and their Allies, 1619-1865.

It took a while before antislavery advocates found each other and developed something like a community. It took still longer for them to forge a program. It is not ungenerous to conclude that, despite all their writing, all their speaking, all their conferring, they never were able to set forth a program for abolitionism that all opponents of slavery found acceptable, but they did create a society or community. The process was similar to that experienced more recently by the founders of feminism, gay communities, etc.

How do people find each other? Bloggers in quite systematic and lightning-speed fashion are taking advantage of the opportunities technology has given them to speed and share ideas and, potentially, to create societies all with a facility Abolitionists could not have dreamed of.