cial
consideration and were heartily commended. These planned an organization
of the colored people in their municipal sub-divisions with the special
object of the promotion of their improvement in morals, literature and the
mechanic arts. Lewis Tappan refers to them in the biography previously
referred to. The "Mental Feast" which was a social feature, survived
thirty years later in some of the interior towns of Pennsylvania and the
West. Rt. Rev. Christopher Rush of the A. M. E. Zion, was the president of
these societies. Rev. Theodore S. Wright, the predecessor of Rev. Henry
Highland Garnet at the Shiloh Presbyterian Church, New York, and who
enjoys the unique reputation of claiming Princeton Seminary as his Alma
Mater, was a Vice President. Among its directors were Boston Crummell, the
father of the founder of the AMERICAN NEGRO ACADEMY, Rev. William Paul
Quinn, subsequently a bishop of the A. M. E. Church, and Rev. Peter
Williams. These names suggest that the Phoenix Society movement was not
confined to any special social clique, but was a somewhat wide spread
institution. Unfortunately, there was lost during the excitement of The
New York Draft Riots of 1863, nearly all the documentary data for an
interesting sidelight on the Convention movement, through the study of
these societies.

With 1835, the Convention returned to Philadelphia, June 1-5, was the time
of its sessions. There were forty four delegates enrolled, with Reuben
Ruby of Maine, as president, James H. Fleet of the District of Columbia,
and Nathan Johnson Vice Presidents, John F. Cook of the District of
Columbia, was Secretary, Samuel Van Brackle and Henry Ogden were the
Assistants.

Speaking of its proceedings, "The Liberator" says: "Its pages offered
abundant testimony of the ability of this body to set before the Nation a
detail of the wrongs and grievances to which they are by custom and law
subjected, and they also exhibit a praiseworthy spirit of manly and noble
resolution to contend by moral force alone until their rights so long
withheld shall be restored."

Among other specially notable things, Robert Purvis and Frederick A.
Hinton were appointed a committee to correspond with dissatisfied
emigrants to Liberia and to take such action as would best promote the
sentiment of the colored people respecting the work of the Colonization
Society. The students of Lane Seminary at Cincinnati were thanked for
their zeal in the cause of abolition. Tem