Tappan was asked to preside over an informal meeting preparatory to the opening of the convention. A handsome, intellectual-looking man, in the prime of life, responded to the invitation, and in a clear, well-modulated voice, the firm tones of which inspired hope and confidence, stated the objects of our preliminary council, and the purpose which had called us together, in earnest and well-chosen words. In making arrangements for the convention, it was thought expedient to secure, if possible, the services of some citizen of Philadelphia of distinction and high social standing to preside over its deliberations. Looking round among ourselves in vain for some titled civilian or doctor of divinity, we were fain to confess that to outward seeming we were but "a feeble folk," sorely needing the shield of a popular name. A committee, of which I was a member, was appointed to go in search of a president of this description. We visited two prominent gentlemen, known as friendly to emancipation and of high social standing. They received us with the dignified courtesy of the old school, declined our proposition in civil terms, and bowed us out with a cool politeness equalled only by that of the senior Winkle towards the unlucky deputation of Pickwick and his unprepossessing companions. As we left their doors, we could not refrain from smiling in each other's faces at the thought of the small inducement our proffer of the presidency held out to men of their class. Evidently, our company was not one for respectability to march through Coventry with. tively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that period. They were nearly all plainly dressed, with a view to comfort rather than elegance. Many of the faces turned towards me wore a look of expectancy and suppressed enthusiasm. All had the earnestness which might be expected of men engaged in an enterprise beset with difficulty and perhaps with peril. The fine, intellectual head of Garrison, prematurely bald, was conspicuous. The sunny-faced young man at his side, in whom all the beatitudes seemed to find expression, was Samuel J. May, mingling in his veins the best blood of the Sewalls and Quincys-a man so exceptionally pure and large-hearted, so genial, tender, and loving, that he could be faithful to truth and duty without making an enemy. "The de'il wad look into his face, And swear he couldna wrang him." That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eaglefaced, upon whose somewhat martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery. That slight, eager man, intensely alive in every feature and gesture, was Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector of the free colored people of Philadelphia, and whose name was whispered reverently in the slave cabins of Maryland as the friend of the black man, one of a class peculiar to old Quakerism, who in doing what they felt to be duty and walking as the Light with in guided them knew no fear and shrank from no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite School of Friends, fresh from his farm in Lancaster county, dressed in plainest homes pun, his tall form surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, On the following morning we repaired to the Adelphi Building, on Fifth Street, below Walnut, which had been secured for our use. Sixty-two delegates were found to be in attendance. Beriah Green, of the Oneida (N. Y.) Institute, was chosen president, a fresh faced, sandy haired, rather common-looking man, but who had the reputation of an able and eloquent the odd obliquity of his vision contrastspeaker. He had already made himself known to us as a resolute and self-sacrificing abolitionist. Lewis Tappan and myself took our places at his side as secretaries, on the elevation at the west end of the hall. Looking over the assembly, I noticed that it was mainly composed of compara ing strongly with the clearness and directness of his spiritual insight. Elizur Wright, the young professor of a Western college, who had lost his place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched the proceedings through his spec answer. He began by uttering his heartfelt thanks to the delegates who had convened for the deliverance of his people. He spoke of Garrison in terms of warmest eulogy, as one who had stirred the heart of the nation, broken the tomb-like slumber of the Church, and compelled it to listen to the story of the slave's wrongs. He closed by declaring that the friends of colored Americans would not be forgotten. " "Their memories," he said, "will be cherished when pyramids and monuments shall have crumbled in dust. The flood of time, which is sweeping away the refuge of lies, is bearing on the advocates of our cause to a glorious immortality." tacles, opening his mouth only to speak never seen a finer face and figure; and his directly to the purpose. The portly form manner, words, and bearing were in keepof Dr. Bartholomew Fussell, the beloved ing. "Who is he?" I asked of one of the physician, from that beautiful land of Pennsylvania delegates. Robert Purvis, plenty and peace which Bayard Taylor of this city, a colored man," was the has described in his Story of Kennett, was not to be overlooked. Abolitionist in heart and soul, his house was known as the shelter of runaway slaves; and no sportsman ever entered into the chase with such zest as he did into the arduous and sometimes dangerous work of aiding their escape and baffling their pursuers. The youngest man present was, I believe, James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian minister from Columbia, afterwards one of our most efficient workers. James Mott, E. L. Capron, Arnold Buffum, and Nathan Winslow, men well known in the antislavery agitation, were conspicuous mem bers. Vermont sent down from her mountains Orson S. Murray, a man terribly in earnest, with a zeal that bordered on fa'naticism, and who was none the more genial for the mob-violence to which he had been subjected. In front of me, awakening pleasant associations of the old homestead in Merrimac valley, sat my first schoolteacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian and historian of Newbury. A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite division of Friends, were present, in broad brims and plain bonnets, among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott. Committees were chosen to draft a constitution for a national anti-slavery so ciety, nominate a list of officers, and prepare a declaration of principles to be signed by the members. Dr. A. L. Cox, of New York, while these committees were absent, read something from my pen eulogistic of William Lloyd Garrison; and Lewis Tappan and Amos A. Phelps, a Congregational clergyman of Boston, afterwards one of the most devoted laborers in the cause, followed in generous commendation of the zeal, courage, and devotion of the young pioneer. The president, after calling James McCrummell, one of the two or three colored members of the convention, to the chair, made some eloquent remarks upon those editors who had ventured to advocate emancipation. At the close of his speech a young man rose to speak, whose appearance at once arrested my attention. I think I have The committee on the constitution made their report, which after discussion was adopted. It disclaimed any right or intention of interfering, otherwise than by persuasion and Christian expostulation, with slavery as it existed in the States, but affirming the duty of Congress to abolish it in the District of Columbia and Territories, and to put an end to the domestic slave-trade. A list of officers of the new society was then chosen: Arthur Tappan, of New York, president, and Elizur Wright, Jr., William Lloyd Garrison, and A. L. Cox, secretaries. Among the vice presidents was Dr. Lord, of Dartmouth College, then professedly in favor of emancipation, but who afterwards turned a moral somersault, a selfinversion which left him ever after on his head instead of his feet. He became a querulous advocate of slavery as a divine institution, and denounced woe upon the abolitionists for interfering with the will and purpose of the Creator. As the cause of freedom gained ground, the poor man's heart failed him, and his hope for Church and State grew fainter and fainter. A sad prophet of the evangel of slavery, he testified in the unwilling ears of an unbelieving generation, and died at last, despairing of a world which seemed determined that Canaan should no longer be cursed, nor Onesimus sent back to Phile mon. The committee on the declaration of principles, of which I was a member, It maintained that no compensation held a long session discussing the proper scope and tenor of the document. But little progress being made, it was finally decided to intrust the matter to a subcommittee, consisting of William L. Garrison, S. J. May, and myself; and, after a brief consultation and comparison of each other's views, the drafting of the important paper was assigned to the former gentleman. We agreed to meet him at his lodgings in the house of a colored friend early the next morning. It was still dark when we climbed up to his room, and the lamp was still burning by the light of which he was writing the last sentence of the declaration. We read it carefully, made a few verbal changes, and submitted it to the large committee, who unanimously agreed to report it to the convention. The paper was read to the convention by Dr. Atlee, chairman of the committee, and listened to with the profoundest in terest. should be given to planters emancipating slaves, because that would be a surrender of fundamental principles. "Slavery is a crime, and is, therefore, not an article to be sold"; because slave-holders are not just proprietors of what they claim; because emancipation would destroy only nominal, not real, property; and because compensation, if given at all, should be given to the slaves. It declared any "scheme of expatriation" to be "delusive, cruel, and dangerous." It fully recognized the right of each State to legislate exclusively on the subject of slavery within its limits, and conceded that Congress, under the present national compact, had no right to interfere, though still contending that it had the power, and should exercise it, "to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several States," and "to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under its exclusive jurisdiction." After clearly and emphatically avowing the principles underlying the enter prise, and guarding with scrupulous care the rights of persons and States under the Constitution, in prosecuting it, the declaration closed with these eloquent words: Commencing with a reference to the time, fifty-seven years before, when, in the same city of Philadelphia, our fathers announced to the world their Declaration of Independence-based on the self-evident truths of human equality and rightsand appealed to arms for its defence, it spoke of the new enterprise as one "without which that of our fathers is "We also maintain that there are at incomplete," and as transcending theirs in the present time the highest obligations magnitude, solemnity, and probable re- resting upon the people of the free States sults as much "as moral truth does phys- to remove slavery by moral and political ical force." It spoke of the difference of action, as prescribed in the Constitution the two in the means and ends proposed, of the United States. They are now living and of the trifling grievances of our under a pledge of their tremendous phys fathers compared with the wrongs and ical force to fasten the galling fetters of sufferings of the slaves, which it forcibly tyranny upon the limbs of millions in the characterized as unequalled by any others Southern States; they are liable to be on the face of the earth. It claimed that called at any moment to suppress a genthe nation was bound to repent at once, eral insurrection of the slaves; they auto let the oppressed go free, and to admit thorize the slave-holder to vote on threethem to all the rights and privileges of fifths of his slaves as property, and thus others; because, it asserted, no man has enable him to perpetuate his oppression; a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; they support a standing army at the because liberty is inalienable; because South for its protection; and they seize there is no difference in principle between the slave who has escaped into their terslave-holding and man-stealing, which the ritories, and send him back to be tortlaw brands as piracy; and because no ured by an enraged master or a brutal length of bondage can invalidate man's driver. This relation to slavery is crimclaim to himself, or render slave laws inal and full of danger. It must be broken anything but "an audacious usurpation." up. "These are our views and principles- and humanity, or perish untimely as these our designs and measures. With martyrs in this great, benevolent, and entire confidence in the overruling justice holy cause." "We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city, town, and village in our land. 'We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty and rebuke. "We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively anti-slavery tracts and periodicals. "We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering and the dumb. "We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery. "We shall encourage the labor of freemen over that of the slaves, by giving a preference to their productions; and "We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to speedy repentance. of God, we plant ourselves upon the The reading of the paper was followed Declaration of Independence and the by a discussion which lasted several truths of divine revelation as upon the hours. A member of the Society of everlasting rock. Friends moved its immediate adoption. "We have," he said, "all given it our assent: every heart here responds to it. It is a doctrine of Friends that these strong and deep impressions should be heeded." The convention, nevertheless, deemed it important to go over the declaration carefully, paragraph by paragraph. During the discussion one of the spectators asked leave to say a few words. A beautiful and graceful woman, in the prime of life, with a face beneath her plain cap as finely intellectual as that of Madame Roland, offered some wise and valuable suggestions, in a clear, sweet voice, the charm of which I have never forgotten. It was Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia. The president courteously thanked her, and encouraged her to take a part in the discussion. On the morning of the last day of our session the declaration, with its few verbal amendments, carefully engrossed on parchment, was brought before the convention. Samuel J. May rose to read it for the last time. His sweet, persuasive voice faltered with the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of the concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston, of Maine, rose Submitting this declaration to the as his name was called by one of the seccandid examination of the people of this retaries, and affixed his name to the docucountry and of the friends of liberty all ment. One after another passed up to over the world, we hereby affix our signa- the platform, signed, and retired in tures to it, pledging ourselves that, under silence. All felt the deep responsibility the guidance and by the help of Almighty of the occasion: the shadow and forecast God, we will do all that in us lies, con- of a lifelong struggle rested upon every sistently with this declaration of our countenance. principles, to overthrow the most execrable system of slavery that has ever been witnessed upon earth, to deliver our land from its deadliest curse, to wipe out the foulest stain which rests upon our national escutcheon, and to secure to the colored population of the United States most powerful and eloquent speech to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as men and as Americans, come what may to our persons, our interests, or our reputations, whether we live to witness the triumph of justice, liberty, "Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be personally defeated, but our principles never. Truth, justice, reason, humanity, must and will gloriously triumph. Already a host is coming up to the help of the Lord against the mighty, and the prospect before us is full of encouragement. 66 Our work as a convention was now done. President Green arose to make the concluding address. The circumstances under which it was uttered may have lent it an impressiveness not its own; but, as I now recall it, it seems to me the which I have ever listened. He passed in review the work that had been done, the constitution of the new society, the declaration of sentiments, and the union and earnestness which had marked the pro ceedings. His closing words will never be lar, inviting me to attend the commemoforgotten by those who heard them: Brethren, it has been good to be here. In this hallowed atmosphere I have been revived and refreshed. This brief interview has more than repaid me for all that I have ever suffered. I have here met congenial minds. I have rejoiced in sympathies delightful to the soul. Heart has beat responsive to heart, and the whole work of seeking to benefit the outraged and despised has proved the most blessed employment. 'But now we must retire from these balmy influences, and breathe another at mosphere. The chill hoar-frost will be upon us. The storm and tempest will rise, and the waves of persecution will dash against our souls. Let us be prepared for the worst. Let us fasten ourselves to the throne of God as with hooks of steel. If we cling not to Him, our names to that document will be but as dust. "Let us court no applause, indulge in no spirit of vain boasting. Let us be assured that our only hope in grappling with the bony monster is in an Arm that is stronger than ours. Let us fix our gaze on God, and walk in the light of His countenance. If our cause be just-and we know it is-His omnipotence is pledged to its triumph. Let this cause be entwined around the very fibres of our hearts. Let our hearts grow to it, so that nothing but death can sunder the bond." ration of the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-slavery Society at Philadelphia. It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled by the feeble state of my health to give up all hope of meeting thee and my other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest. How much it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell thee better than any words of mine. I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr. Thurston, of Maine, even then as we thought an old man, but still living, and true as ever to the good cause. I recall the early gray morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to prepare a declaration of sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the small " upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history. I see the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one by one and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity to freedom. Of the signers many have passed away from earth, a few have faltered and turned back; but I believe the majority still live to rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what He ceased, and then, amidst a silence remains of time and strength to the broken only by the deep-drawn breath of cause to which they consecrated their emotion in the assembly, lifted up his youth and manhood thirty years ago. voice in prayer to Almighty God, full of For, while we may well thank God and fervor and feeling, imploring His blessing congratulate one another on the prospect and sanctification upon the convention of the speedy emancipation of the slaves and its labors. And with the solemnity of the United States, we must not for of this supplication in our hearts we a moment forget that from this hour new clasped hands in farewell, and went forth each man to his place of duty, not know ing the things that should befall us as individuals, but with a confidence never shaken by abuse and persecution in the certain triumph of our cause. and mighty responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these millions left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and foodless in the wild chaos of civil war. We have to undo the accumulated wrongs of two centuries, to remake the manhood which slavery has wellnigh unmade, to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair field for development and improvement, and to tread under our feet the last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest external support of Southern Formation of the American Anti-slavery Society. A letter to William Lloyd Garrison, president of the society: AMESBURY, Nov. 24, 1863. MY DEAR FRIEND, I have received thy kind letter with the accompanying circu |