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178 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDfRICK DOUGLASS

approval of Mrs. M. W. Chapman, an influential member of the board of
managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and called out a sharp
reprimand from her, for insubordination to my superiors. This was a strange
and distressing revelation to me, and one of which I was not soon relieved.
I thought I had only done my duty, and I think so still. The chief reason for
the reprimand was the use which the Liberty party papers would make of my
seeming rebellion against the commanders of our Anti-Slavery Army.

In the growing city of Rochester we had in every way a better reception.
Abolitionists of all shades of opinion were broad enough to give the
Garrisonians (for such we were) a hearing. Samuel D. Porter and the Avery
family, though they belonged to the Gerrit Smith, Myron Holly. and William
Goodell school, were not so narrow as to refuse us the use of their church for
the convention. They heard our moral suasion arguments, and in a manly
way met us in debate. We were opposed to carrying the anti-slavery cause to
the ballot-box, and they believed in carrying it there. They looked at slavery
as a creature of law; we regarded it as a creature of public opinion. It is sur-
prising how small the difference appears as I look back to it, over the space
of forty years; yet at the time of it this difference was immense.

During our stay at Rochester we were hospitably entertained by Isaac
and Amy Post, two people of all-abounding benevolence, the truest and best
of Long Island and Elias Hicks Quakers. They were not more amiable than
brave, for they never seemed to ask. What will the world say? but walked
straight forward in what seemed to them the line of duty, please or offend
whomsoever it might. Many a poor fugitive slave found shelter under their
roof when such shelter was hard to find elsewhere, and I mention them here
in the warmth and fullness of earnest gratitude.

Pleased with our success in Rochester. we—that is Mr. Bradburn and
myself—made our way to Buffalo, then a rising city of steamboats, hustle,
and business. Buffalo was too busy to attend to such matters as we had in
hand. Our friend, Mr. Marsh, had been able to secure for our convention only
an old dilapidated and deserted room, formerly used as a post-office. We
went at the time appointed, and found seated a few cab-men in their coarse,
every-day clothes, whips in hand, while their teams were standing on the
street waiting for a job. Friend Bradburn looked around upon this unpromis-
ing audience, and turned upon his heel, saying he would not speak to "such
a set of ragamuffins," and took the first steamer to Cleveland, the home of
his brother Charles, and left me to "do" Buffalo alone. For nearly a week I
spoke every day in this old post-office to audiences constantly increasing in
numbers and respectability, till the Baptist church was thrown open to me;

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