It was a notable gathering of apostolic spirits--"mainly composed of
comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
period." They had come together from ten of the twelve free States,
which fact goes to show the rapid, the almost epidemic-like spread of
Garrisonian Abolitionism through the North. The _Liberator_ was then
scarcely three years old, and its editor had not until the second day of
the convention attained the great age of twenty-eight! The convention of
1787 did not comprise more genuine patriotism and wisdom than did this
memorable assembly of American Abolitionists. It was from beginning to
end an example of love to God and love to men, of fearless scorn of
injustice and fearless devotion to liberty. Not one of those three score
souls who made up the convention, who did not take his life in his hand
by reason of the act. It was not the love of fame surely which brought
them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so many of them endure
real physical privation, which drew all by a common, an irresistible
impulse to congregate for an unpopular purpose within reach of the teeth
and the claws of an enraged public opinion.
The convention, as one man might have said with the single-minded Lundy,
"My heart was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail
of the captive; I felt his pang of distress; and the iron entered my
soul.
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