Few and scattered as were the Abolitionists,
they so much the more needed to band together for the great conflict
with a powerful and organized evil. This evil was organized on a
national scale, the forces of righteousness which were rising against
it, if they were ever to overcome it and rid the land of it, had needs
to be organized on a national scale also. Garrison with the instinct of
a great reformer early perceived the immense utility of a national
anti-slavery organization for mobilizing the whole available Abolition
sentiment of the free States in a moral agitation of national and
tremendous proportions.
He had not long to wait after his return from England before this desire
of his soul was satisfied. It was in fact just a month afterward that a
call for a convention for the formation of the American Anti-Slavery
Society went out from New York to the friends of immediate emancipation
throughout the North. As an evidence of the dangerously excited state of
the popular mind on the subject of slavery there stands in the summons
the significant request to delegates to regard the call as confidential.
The place fixed upon for holding the convention was Philadelphia, and
the time December 4, 1833.
Garrison bestirred himself to obtain for the convention a full
representation of the friends of freedom. He sent the call to George W.
Benson, at Providence, urging him to spread the news among the
Abolitionists of his neighborhood and to secure the election of a goodly
number of delegates by the society in Rhode Island.
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