ally sustained from our
treasury. We occasionally contributed, from our treasury, small
sums for the use of the Vigilance Committees, organized to assist
fugitive slaves who passed through this State on their way to a
land where their right to liberty would be protected. But these
enterprises were always regarded as of secondary importance to
our great work of direct appeal to the conscience of the nation,
in behalf of the slave's claim to immediate, unconditional
emancipation. To this end a large number of tracts and pamphlets
have been circulated by this Society; but its chief agencies have
been the anti-slavery newspapers of the country. Regarding these
as the most powerful instrumentalities in the creation of that
public sentiment which was essential to the overthrow of slavery,
we expended a considerable portion of our funds in the direct
circulation of _The Liberator_, _The Pennsylvania Freeman_, and
_The National Anti-Slavery Standard_, and a small amount in the
circulation of other anti-slavery papers. Our largest
appropriations of money have been made to the Pennsylvania and
American Anti-Slavery Societies, and by those Societies to the
support of their organs and lecturing agents.

The financial statistics of this Society are easily recorded.
Certain great and thrilling events which marked its history are
easily told and written. But the life which it lived through all
its thirty-six years; the influence which flowed from it,
directly and indirectly, to the nation's heart; the work quietly
done by its members, individually, through the word spoken in
season, the brave, self-sacrificing deed, the example of fidelity
in a critical hour, the calm endurance unto the end; these can be
written in no earthly book of remembrance. Its life is lived; its
work is done; its memorial is sealed. It assembles to-day to take
one parting look across its years; to breathe in silence its
unutterable thanksgiving; to disband its membership, and cease to
be. Reviewing its experience of labor and endurance, the united
voices of its members testify that it has been a service whose
reward was in itself; and contemplating the grandeur of the work
accomplished (in which it has been permitted to bear a humble
part), the overthrow of American slavery, the uplif