ionism 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." The iron of slavery had indeed entered the soul of every member
of the convention. It was the divine pang and pity of it which collected
from the East and from the West this remarkable body of reformers.

The story of how they had to find a president illustrates the
contemporary distrust and antagonism, which the anti-slavery movement
aroused among the men of standing and influence. Knowing in what bad
odor they were held by the community, and anxious only to serve their
cause in the most effective manner, the members of the convention hit
upon the plan of asking some individual eminent for his respectability
to preside over their deliberations, and thereby disarm the public
suspicions and quiet the general apprehensions felt in respect of the
incendiary character of their intention. So in pursuance of this plan
six of their number were dispatched on the evening of December 3d to
seek such a man. But the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes
proved a failure. After two attempts and two repulses the committee were
not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have
listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation
by Beriah Green, who was one of the six. "If there is not timber amongst
ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get
along without one, or go home and sta