efore
shown open hostility to abolitionists, Susan's banner, "No Union with
Slaveholders" was torn down and a restless audience hissed her as she
opened her meeting and drowned out the speakers with their shouting
and stamping until at last the police took over and escorted the
speakers home through the jeering crowds.

All but Susan now began to question the wisdom of holding more
meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right
of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne
pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at Port Byron. In
Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee
of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big cloak, furs, and all,"[128] and
rushed to the platform where they sang, hooted, and played cards until
the speakers gave up in despair. Syracuse, well known for its
tolerance and pride in free speech, now greeted them with a howling
drunken mob armed with knives and pistols and rotten eggs. Susan on
the platform courageously faced their gibes until she and her
companions were forced out into the street. They then took refuge in
the home of fellow-abolitionists while the mob dragged effigies of
Susan and Samuel J. May through the streets and burned them in the
square.

Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany
where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick
Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher,
was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming
opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists,
safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his
knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered
through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the
day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and
begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the
meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little
group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob
trailing behind them.

Looking back upon the tense days and nights of this "winter of
mobs,"[129] Susan was proud of her group of abolitionists who so
bravely had carried out their mission. In comparison, the Republicans
had shown up badly, not a Republican mayor having the courage or
interest to give them protection. In fact, she found little in the
attitude of the