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about making its new constitution, to avoid the narrow folly of the Dorrites, and make a constitution which should not abridge any man's rights on account of race or color. Such a constitution was finally adopted.†Following the Dorrites' defeat and Dorr's imprisonment in 1842, the conservative Law and Order coalition in Rhode Island drafted a constitution that included the right of suffrage for African American men. Black males were also granted the right to vote for convention delegates in exchange for their support for local authorities and agreement to join local militia units loyal to the Law and Order party. The new constitution was ratified in November 1842. Gettleman, Dorr Rebellion, 129-30, 144-48.
Owing perhaps to my efficiency in this campaign I was for a while employed in further†Editorial Emendation: farther. labors in Rhode Island by the State Anti-Slavery Society,†Local and county organizations of immediate abolitionists began forming across Rhode Island in 1832 to support William Lloyd Garrison's publication of his Liberator in Boston. For several years such groups of both male and female Rhode Islanders functioned as auxiliaries to the New England Anti-Slavery Society. In February 1836 representatives from many of these groups held a three-day convention and formed the Rhode Island State Anti-Slavery Society. Two years later the state society opened an office in downtown Providence from which abolitionist lecturing, fundraising, and petition circulating were coordinated. The Rhode Island State Anti-Slavery Society was practically unique in maintaining cooperation among adherents of both the Garrisonians and their abolitionist opponents after the fractious quarrels of the late 1830s and early 1840s. A dedicated band of women deserves credit for keeping the organization functioning until the Civil War. Van Broeckhoven, Devotion of These Women, 4-5, 13, 17-18, 124-25, 218-19; Roman J. Zorn, "The New England Anti-Slavery Society: Pioneer Abolition Organization," JNH, 42:163-64, 175-76 (July 1957). and made there many friends to my cause as well as to myself. As a class the abolitionists of this State partook of the spirit of its founder.†Douglass projects the independent character of Rhode Island's founder, the dissenting minister Roger Williams (1603-83), onto the nineteenth-century state. Williams's theological disputes with the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts in the mid-1630s caused him to remove to the nearby unsettled Rhode Island to start his own colony with a strict separation of church and state spheres and a high degree of religious toleration. Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York, 1967); DAB, 20:286-89. They had their own opinions, were independent, and called no man master. I have reason to remember them most gratefully. They received me as a man and a brother, when I was new from the house of bondage, and had few of the graces derived from free and refined society. They took me with earnest hand to their homes and hearths, and made me feel that though I wore the burnished livery of the sun I was still a countryman and kinsman of whom they were never ashamed. I can never forget the Clarkes,†Editorial Emendation: Clarks. Keltons,†Probably the family of Caleb Kelton. Chaces, Browns, Adamses,†Editorial Emendation: Adams. Greenes, Sissons, Eldredges, Mitchells,†Probably the family of Daniel Mitchell. Shroves,†Editorial Emendation: Shoves Anthonys, Aplins,†Editorial Emendation: Applins. Janeses,†Editorial Emendation: Janes. Goulds, and Fairbankses,†Editorial Emendation: Fairbanks. and many others.
While thus remembering the noble anti-slavery men and women of Rhode Island, I do not forget that I suffered much rough usage within her borders. It was like all the northern States at that time, under the influence of slave power, and often showed a proscriptive†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: proscription. and persecuting spirit, especially upon its railways and steamboats,†Editorial Emendation: railways, steamboats and in its public†Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: and public. houses. The Stonington route was a "hard road" for a colored man "to travel" in that day. I was several times dragged from the cars for the crime of being colored. On the Sound between New York and Stonington,†The Long Island Sound separates Long Island, New York, and the southeast shore of New York from the East River to Upper New York Bay and connects with the northern Block Island Sound, located southwest of New London, Connecticut. It is ninety miles in length and three to twenty miles in width and is fed by the northern Housatonic, Connecticut, and Thames Rivers. Its major port cities are New Haven, New London, and Bridgeport, Connecticut. It is a primary shipping route along the Atlantic coast and a popular residential boating center. Seltzer, Gazetteer of the World, 1079; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1774. there were the same proscriptions which I have before named as enforced on the steamboats running between New York and Newport. No colored man was allowed abaft the wheel, and in all seasons of the year, in heat or cold, wet or dry, the deck was his only place. If I would lie down at night I must do so upon the freight on deck, and this in cold weather was not a very comfortable bed. When traveling in company with my white friends I always urged them to leave me and go into the cabin and take their comfortable berths. I saw no reason why they should be miserable because I was. Some of them took my advice very readily. I confess, however, that while I was entirely honest in urging them to go, and saw no principle that should bind them to stay and suffer with me, I always felt a little nearer to those who did not take my advice and persisted in sharing my hardships with me.
There is something in the world above fixed rules and the logic of right and wrong, and there is some foundation for recognizing works, which may be called works of supererogation. Wendell Phillips, James Monroe, and
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William White, were always dear to me for their nice feeling at this point. I have known James Monroe to pull his coat about him and crawl upon the cotton bales between decks and pass the night with me, without a murmur. Wendell Phillips would never go into a first-class car while I was forced into what was called the "Jim Crow" car.†The term Jim Crow derives from the refrain of a popular nineteenth-century plantation song, "Wheel about and turn about and jump Jim Crow." The term refers to a stage presentation of a song and dance first performed by Thomas D. Rice and later used in minstrel shows. A "Jim Crow car" was a railroad car for the exclusive use of African Americans, and seems to have first been used in Massachusetts in 1841. Mathews, Dictionary of Americanisms, 1:907. True men they were, who could accept welcome at no man's table where I was refused. I speak of these gentlemen, not as singular or exceptional cases, but as representatives of a large class of the early workers for the abolition of slavery. As a general rule there was little difficulty in obtaining suitable places in New England after 1840, where I could plead the cause of my people. The abolitionists had passed the Red Sea of mobs, and had conquered the right to a respectful hearing.†Douglass refers to the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 15:1-4. When Moses led his people out of Egypt, Pharaoh attempted to thwart their passage, but God intervened, drowning the Egyptian chariots and soldiers. Douglass links this story to the burgeoning abolitionist movement, which had frequently been the target of mob attacks in the 1830s. I, however, found several towns in which the people closed their doors and refused to entertain the subject. Notable†Editorial Emendation: Notably. among these were†Editorial Emendation: was. Hartford, Conn., and Grafton, Mass.†Hartford is a city in central Connecticut on the Connecticut River. Grafton is a town in south-central Massachusetts. Surprisingly, Connecticut and Massachusetts were the most hostile of the New England states to abolitionists, even though they had numerous antislavery societies. Connecticut had sixteen antiabolition mobbings from 1833 to 1837, while Massachusetts surpassed that number with seventeen. Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen of Property and Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York, 1970), 40; Seltzer, Gazetteer of the World, 703, 761. In the former place Messrs. Garrison, Hudson, Foster,†In 1843 Stephen Symonds Foster joined Douglass, Garrison, Abigail Kelley, and others in Hartford, Connecticut, where they were barred from speaking in any building. Lib., 26 May 1843. Abby Kelley, and myself determined to hold our meetings under the open sky, which we did in a little court under the eaves of the "sanctuary" ministered unto by the Rev. Dr. Hawes, with much satisfaction to ourselves, and I think with advantage to our cause. In Grafton I was alone, and there was neither house, hall, church, nor market-place in which I could speak to the people, but determined to speak I went to the hotel and borrowed a dinner bell with which in hand I passed through the principal streets, ringing the bell and crying out, "Notice! Frederick Douglass, recently a slave, will lecture on American Slavery, on Grafton Common,†Douglass recalls his speech at Grafton, Massachusetts. Although a precise date cannot he determined, Douglass spoke there in mid-August 1842. Theron E. Hall wrote a letter dated 18 August 1842 to William Lloyd Garrison, describing Douglass's lectures at Sutton and Grafton, Massachusetts, which was published in the Liberator. Additionally, a firsthand report of the events in Grafton was printed in the Herald of Freedom on 19 August 1842. The Herald account notes that Douglass was there a "few days since," making the most likely dates either 15 or 16 August, putting Douglass at Sutton on 16 or 17 August. Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom, 19 August 1842; Lib., 9 September 1842. this evening at 7 o'clock. Those who would like to hear of the workings of slavery by one of the slaves are respectfully invited to attend." This notice brought out a large audience, after which the largest church in town was open to me. Only in one instance was I compelled to pursue this course thereafter, and that was in Manchester, N.H.,†Douglass, along with Charles Remond, Henry Clapp, Jr., and James Buffum, spoke in Dodge Hall at the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society quarterly meeting on 19 April 1845. Lib., 18 April 1845. and my labors there were followed by similar results. When people found that I would be heard, they saw it was the part of wisdom to open the way for me.
My treatment in the use of public conveyances about these times was extremely rough, especially on the "Eastern Railroad,†The Eastern Railroad extended from East Boston through the Massachusetts towns of Lynn, Salem, and Newburyport, connecting with the Portland, Saco, and Portsmouth Railroad at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1842 the line merged with the larger Boston and Maine Railroad. George Pierce Baker, The Formation of the New England Railroad Systems: A Study of Railroad Combination in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), 147-49. from Boston to Portland." On that road, as on many others, there was a mean, dirty, and uncomfortable car set apart for colored travelers, called the "Jim Crow" car. Regarding this as the fruit of slaveholding prejudice, and being determined to fight the spirit of slavery wherever I might find it, I resolved to avoid this car, though it sometimes required some courage to do so. The colored people generally accepted the situation, and complained of me as making matters worse rather than better by refusing to submit to this proscription. I, however, persisted, and sometimes was soundly beaten by conductor and brakeman. On
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one occasion six of these "fellows of the baser sort,"†Acts 17:5. under the direction of the conductor, set out to eject me from my seat. As usual, I had purchased a first-class ticket, and paid the required sum for it, and on the requirement of the conductor to leave refused to do so, when he called on these men "to snake me out."†As a verb, "to snake'' may carry the meaning of dragging along. The men sent to remove Douglass were told to drag him out of the train car. They attempted to obey with an air which plainly told me they relished the job. They, however, found me much attached to my seat, and in removing me I tore away two or three of the surrounding ones, on which I held with a firm grasp, and did the car no service in some other respects. I was strong and muscular, and the seats were not then so firmly attached or of as solid make as now. The result was that Stephen A. Chase, superintendent of the road, ordered all passenger trains to pass through Lynn (where I then lived) without stopping.†The incident Douglass describes was a combination of two events. The first took place on 8 September 1841 as he traveled to an antislavery meeting in Dover, New Hampshire, with John A. Collins, the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. According to one report, Douglass was forcibly removed to the segregated "Jim Crow" car. Later the same month Douglass challenged this policy of the Eastern Railroad at Lynn, Massachusetts, and, when asked to move to the segregated car, he refused, holding tightly to the bench seat. The incident led to outrage among the citizens of Lynn and a call to boycott the Eastern Railroad. Dover (N.H.) Morning Star, 15 September 1841; Lynn Record, 29 September 6, 27 October 1841. This was a great inconvenience to the people, large numbers of whom did business in Boston, and at other points of the road. Led on, however, by James N. Buffum, Jonathan Buffum, Christopher Robinson, William Bassett, and others, the people of Lynn stood bravely by me, and denounced the railroad management in emphatic terms. Mr. Chase made reply that a railroad corporation was neither a religious nor reformatory body; that the road was run for the accommodation of the public, and that it required the exclusion of colored people from its cars. With an air of triumph he told us that we ought not to expect a railroad company to be better than the evangelical church, and that until the churches abolished the "negro pew,"†Throughout much of the antebellum North, many denominations practiced segregation in their churches. Only whites could lease or purchase pews and sit in the front of church. Separate pews in the back of the church or in a balcony were designated for African American parishioners. In this way whites could ensure that blacks stayed in an inferior social status. Litwack, North of Slavery, 196-97; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 174-75, 180-83. we ought not to expect the railroad company to abolish the negro car. This argument was certainly good enough as against the church, but good for nothing as against the demands of justice and equality. My old and dear friend, J. N. Buffum, made a point against the company that they "often allowed dogs and monkeys to ride in first-class cars, and yet excluded a man like Frederick Douglass!" In a very few years this barbarous practice was put away, and I think there have been no instances of such exclusion during the past thirty years; and colored people now, everywhere in New England, ride upon equal terms with other passengers.
CHAPTER V. ONE HUNDRED CONVENTIONS.
Anti-slavery conventions held in parts of New England, and in some of the Middle and Western States—Mobs—Incidents, etc.
The year 1843 was one of remarkable anti-slavery activity. The New England
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Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting, held in the spring of that year,†After several preliminary meetings in late 1831, a small band of twelve immediate abolitionists met at Boston's African Baptist Church on 6 January 1832 and approved a constitution to launch the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Arnold Buffum was elected the group's president. Lecturing by Buffum, William Lloyd Garrison, and others motivated the formation of large numbers of local auxiliaries to the society across the region in the next few years. The society opened an office in Boston in early 1834 to coordinate distribution of antislavery publications and lecturing by its several full-time field agents. Immediate abolitionists formed a national organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society, at a convention in Philadelphia in December 1833. The New England society made itself an auxiliary of the national group in Fehruary 1834 but in the fall of the same year abolitionists in New Hampshire and Maine met and formed state auxiliaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society. In February 1835 the New England Anti-Slavery Society renamed itself the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and narrowed its operations to the one state. The region's abolitionists, however, continued to meet together in the early spring of each year at a "New England Anti-Slavery Convention," which in some form perpetuated the pioneer abolitionist group. At that convention in 1843, now controlled by supporters of Garrison, the idea of a national speaking tour of "'One Hundred Conventions," conceived by the American Anti-Slavery Society's general agent John A. Collins, was endorsed to stimulate the formation of new local auxiliaries. NASS. 2 March I 843: Thomas D. Hamm, God`s Government Begun: The Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842-1846 (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 88 90: Stanley Harrold, American Abolitionists (New York, 2001), 32- 34; Zorn, "New England Anti-Slavery Society," 159-60. 163-64, 173-76. resolved, under the auspices of Mr. Garrison and his friends, to hold a series of one hundred conventions.†As part of a Garrisonian lecturing campaign known as the "One Hundred Conventions," Douglass traveled extensively in July, August, and September 1843. He usually spoke in the company of George Bradburn and John A. Collins, but Sydney Howard Gay, Charles Lenox Remond, William A. White, Abby Kelley, and other abolitionists sometimes joined him. After speaking in Vermont in mid-July, Douglass and his companions lectured in central and western New York in August. and in Ohio and Indiana in September. Lib., 23 June, 21 July, 11 August, 8, 22 September, 13 October 1843: NASS, 22 June 3, 10, 31 August, 14 September, 19 October 1843. The territory embraced in this plan for creating anti-slavery sentiment included New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. I had the honor to be chosen one of the agents to assist in these proposed conventions, and I never entered upon any work with more heart and hope. All that the American people needed, I thought, was light. Could they know slavery as I knew it, they would hasten to the work of its extinction. The corps of speakers who were to be associated with me in carrying on these conventions were Messrs. George Bradburn, John A. Collins, James Monroe, William A. White, Charles L. Remond, and Sydney Howard Gay. They were all masters of the subject, and some of them able and eloquent orators. It was a piece of great good fortune to me, only a few years from slavery as I was, to be brought into contact with such men. It was a real campaign, and required nearly six months for its accomplishment.
Those who only know the State of Vermont as it is to-day,†In the years following the Civil War, Vermont proudly celebrated its reputation as the "most outspoken antislavery state in the Union." Residents pointed to the Vermont Constitution of 1777, which was the first in the new nation to prohibit slavery, and to the numerous legislative resolutions and petitions Vermonters submitted during the Missouri crisis in 1819-20. Vermont also had many buildings claiming heritage as stops on the Underground Railroad. Bennington was the location of a short-lived abolitionist newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison in 1828. J. Kevin Graffagnino, "Vermont Attitudes toward Slavery: The Need for a Closer Look," Vermont History, 45:31-32 (Winter 1977). can hardly understand, and must wonder that there was need for anti-slavery effort within its borders forty years ago. Our first convention was held in Middlebury,†Located in western Vermont's Addison County, Middlebury is approximately thirty-two miles south of the state's largest city, Burlington. The first of the "One Hundred Conventions" was held there on 13 and 14 July 1843, with Douglass and John A. Collins among the featured speakers. While in Vermont, Collins fell ill and stayed for several days at the home of Rowland T. Robinson, a prominent local abolitionist. Lib., 21 July, 25 August 1843; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 2:1972. its chief seat of learning, and the home of William Slade, who was for years the co-worker with John Quincy Adams in Congress; and yet in this town the opposition to our anti-slavery convention was intensely bitter and violent. The only man of note in the town whom I now remember as giving us sympathy or welcome was Mr. Edward Barber, who was a man of courage as well as ability, and did his best to make our convention a success. In advance of our arrival, the college students had very industriously and mischievously placarded the town with violent aspersions of our characters, and the grossest misrepresentations of our principles, measures, and objects. I was described as an escaped convict from the State Prison, and the other speakers were assailed not less slanderously. Few people attended our meeting, and apparently little was accomplished by it. In the neighboring town of Ferrisburgh†Ferrisburgh, Vermont, lies on Lake Champlain, approximately forty-five miles north of Middlebury. Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:996-97. the case was different and more favorable. The way had been prepared for us by such stalwart anti-slavery workers as Orson S. Murray, Charles C. Burleigh, Rowland T. Robinson, and others. Upon the whole, however, the several towns visited showed that Vermont was surprisingly under the influence of the slave power. Her proud boast that no slave had ever been delivered up to his master within her borders did not hinder her hatred of anti-slavery.†Before and during the Civil War, a segment of Vermont society was hostile to the abolition movement. In the 1830s and 1840s, antislavery organizing was difficult in Vermont commercial towns, and the state's Democratic press tended to denounce antislavery activities. During an 1835 lecture tour on behalf of the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society, Connecticut Unitarian minister Samuel J. May was mobbed on at least five occasions, and his speeches in Rutland and Montpelier were cut short because of hostility from the audience. The Reverend Joshua Young of the Burlington Congregational Unitarian Church was denounced in the Burlington Times for delivering the oration at the funeral of John Brown in North Elba, New York, in 1859. The bishop of Vermont's Protestant Episcopal Church condemned the antislavery movement in several publications, and continued his opposition after the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. Graffagnino, "Vermont Attitudes toward Slavery," 31-34. What was true of†Editorial Emendation: to. the Green Mountain State†Vermont takes its nickname, "the Green Mountain State," from the range of the Appalachian Mountains that stretches from north to south, beginning in southern Quebec and running through the state. The Green Mountains are heavily forested, with low rounded peaks, the highest of which is Mount Mansfield (4,393 ft.). W. Storrs Lee, The Green Mountains of Vermont (New York, 1955), 9-12; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:1167. in this respect, was most discouragingly true of New York, the State next visited.
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All along the Erie canal,†In the nineteenth century, the Erie Canal was the most important waterway in the United States. The state of New York had authorized funds for the project's construction in 1817. When completed in 1825, the 360-mile-long canal ran from Lake Erie, at Tonawanda, to Cohes, on the Hudson River near Albany. Traffic on the narrow channel of water was heavy. Nearly 7,000 boats arrived in Albany from western New York in 1826 alone. In 1836 New York began widening and reinforcing the canal, and construction on this enlargement continued intermittently until 1862. As the sole waterway linking New York City to the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal was responsible for the rapid economic growth of New York during the antebellum era. Some middle-class reformers, however, believed the Erie Canal responsible for attracting boat hands, horse drivers, and laborers whose behavior the reformers criticized as immoral and lewd. Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1794-1854 (Lexington, Ky., 1966), 239-42; Carol Sheriff, The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862 (New York, 1996), 138-71; Cohen, Columbia Gazetteer, 1:949-50. from Albany to Buffalo, there was apathy, indifference, aversion, and sometimes mobocratic†Pertaining to rule by mob, usually connoting violence. spirit evinced. Even Syracuse, afterwards the home of the humane Samuel J. May, and the scene of the "Jerry rescue,"†Douglass alludes to New Yorkers' resistance to enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, especially the famous "Jerry Rescue" at Syracuse on 1 October 1851. William Henry, commonly known as Jerry, a runaway from Missouri residing in Syracuse, was arrested and brought before the local fugitive slave commis-sioner. However, abolitionists attending a Liberty party convention rescued Jerry from his captors and spirited him off to Canada. Although several of the rescuers, including Gerrit Smith, Samuel J. May, and Charles A. Wheaton, were indicted, only one was found guilty, and the rest of the cases were dropped. Abolitionists considered the Jerry Rescue a great victory and commemorated its anniversary with public speeches and festivals until the Civil War. Earl E. Sperry, The Jerry Rescue October 1, 1851 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1924); Campbell, Slave Catchers, 101, 154-57; Gara, Liberty Line, 42, 111-12, 128, 132. where Gerrit Smith, Beriah Greene, William Goodell, Alvan Stewart,†Editorial Emendation: Alvin. and other able men taught†Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: men since taught. their noblest lessons, would not at that time furnish us with church, market, house, or hall in which to hold our meetings. Discovering this state of things, some of our number were disposed to turn our backs upon the town, and shake its dust from our feet, but of these, I am glad to say, I was not one. I had somewhere read of a command to go into the hedges and highways and compel men to come in. Mr. Stephen Smith, under whose hospitable roof we were made at home, thought as I did. It would be easy to silence anti-slavery agitation if refusing its agents the use of halls and churches could effect that result. The house of our friend Smith stood on the southwest corner of the park,†Syracuse's Fayette Park was originally a swamp and a hotbed of malaria. In 1821 Judge Joshua Forman, a Syracuse resident since 1800, initiated the passage of an act to lower Onondaga Lake, which rid the area of unsanitary conditions and allowed the park to be built. Known as Centre Square during its preliminary phase, the area was eventually named Fayette Park in honor of General Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolution. By the late 1830s the park had become a wealthy residential area, housing many of Syracuse's leading businessmen. In the decades following the turn of the century, Fayette Park lost a majority of its surrounding residents and was no longer the thrilling social center it had been during its early years. In 1972 the park was remodeled into a decorative estate and renamed the Fayette-Firefighters' Memorial Park. Dwight H. Bruce, ed., Memorial History of Syracuse, N.Y. (Syracuse, 1891), 130; Strong, Landmarks of Syracuse, 68, 157-58; Franklin H. Chase, Syracuse and its Environs: A History, 3 vols. (New York, 1924), 1:173; Evamaria Hardin, Syracuse Landmarks: An AIA Guide to Downtown and Historic Neighborhoods, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1993), 117-18, 137; Lilian Steele Munson, Syracuse: The City That Salt Built (New York, 1969), 121, 192-93; Connors, Crossroads in Time, 43, 75; DAB, 6:525-26; ANB, 13:37-38. which was well covered with young trees, too small to furnish shade or shelter, but better than none. Taking my stand under a small tree, in the southeast comer of this park, I began to speak in the morning to an audience of five persons, and before the close of my afternoon meeting I had before me not less than five hundred. In the evening I was waited upon by officers of the Congregational church,†The First Congregational Church in Syracuse, N.Y., known as the "Cradle of Liberty," was founded by a group of abolitionists who seceded from the Syracuse First Presbyterian Church in 1838. Because of its widely known antislavery reputation, the church was frequently visited by abolitionists like Douglass and Gerrit Smith. Douglass spoke in Syracuse several times from 30 July to 1 August 1843 as part of the "One Hundred Conventions" campaign of the American Anti-Slavery Society. After experiencing disputes among its members about the manner in which the church should express its abolitionist stance, the First Congregational Church closed its doors in 1850. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:xci; Milton C. Sernett, North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom (Syracuse, N.Y., 2002), 92. and tendered the use of an old wooden building, which they had deserted for a better, but still owned; and here our convention was continued during three days. I believe there was†Editorial Emendation: there has been. no trouble to find places in Syracuse in which to hold anti-slavery meetings thereafter.†Editorial Emendation: since. I never go there without endeavoring to see that tree, which, like the cause it sheltered, has grown large and strong and imposing.
I believe my first offence against our Anti-Slavery Israel was committed during these Syracuse meetings. It was on this wise: Our general agent, John A. Collins, had recently returned from England full of communistic ideas, which ideas would do away with individual property, and have all things in common. He had arranged a corps of speakers of his communistic persuasion, consisting of John O. Wattles, Nathaniel Whiting, and John Orvis, to follow our anti-slavery conventions, and while our meeting was in progress in Syracuse, a meeting, as the reader will observe, obtained under much difficulty, Mr. Collins came in with his new friends and doctrines, and proposed to adjourn our anti-slavery discussions and take up the subject of communism. To this I ventured to object. I held that it was imposing an additional burden of unpopularity on our cause, and an act of bad faith with the people, who paid the salary of Mr. Collins, and were responsible for these hundred conventions. Strange to say, my course in this matter did not meet the