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. He forthwith
bethought him of Whittier on his farm in Haverhill, and enjoined his old
friend to fail not to appear in Philadelphia. But while the young poet
longed to go to urge upon his Quaker brethren of that city "to make
their solemn testimony against slavery visible over the whole land--to
urge them, by the holy memories of Woolman and Benezet and Tyson to come
up as of old to the standard of Divine Truth, though even the fires of
another persecution should blaze around them," he feared that he would
not be able to do so. The spirit was surely willing but the purse was
empty, "as thee know," he quaintly adds, "our farming business does not
put much cash in our pockets." The cash he needed was generously
supplied by Samuel E. Sewall, and Whittier went as a delegate to the
convention after all. The disposition on the part of some of the poorer
delegates was so strong to be present at the convention that not even
the lack of money was sufficient to deter them from setting out on the
expedition. Two of them, David T. Kimball and Daniel E. Jewett, from
Andover, Mass., did actually supplement the deficiencies of their
pocket-books by walking to New Haven, the aforesaid pocket-books being
equal to the rest of the journey from that point.

About sixty delegates found their way to Philadelphia and organized on
the morning of December 4th, in Adelphi Hall, the now famous convention.
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 Abolit