with the vigor and picturesqueness of a
Muggletonian or Fifth Monarchy man of Cromwell's time execrating his
religious adversaries. And, while it was true enough that the Church
and the State were, generally speaking, the obsequious tools of
slavery, it was not easy for an abolitionist to say so in vehement
language without incurring the charge of treason or blasphemy,--an old
trick of bigotry and tyranny to curb freedom of thought and freedom of
speech. The little personal idiosyncrasies which some of the reformers
affected, such as long hair in the men and short hair in the
women,--there is surely some psychological reason why reformers run
to such things,--served as convenient excuses for gibes and unseemly
interruptions at their public meetings. On one memorable occasion,
at Syracuse, New York, in November, 1842, Douglass and his fellows
narrowly escaped tar and feathers. But, although Douglass was
vehemently denunciatory of slavery in all its aspects, his twenty
years of training in that hard school had developed in him a vein of
prudence that saved him from these verbal excesses,--perhaps there was
also some element of taste involved,--and thus made his arguments more
effective than if he had alienated his audiences by indiscriminate
attacks on all the institutions of society. No one could justly
accuse Frederick Douglass of cowardice or self-seeking; yet he was
opportunist enough to sacrifice the immaterial for the essential, and
to use the best means at hand to promote the ultimate object sought,
although the means thus offered might not be the ideal instrument. It
was doubtless this trait that led Douglass, after he separated from
his abolitionist friends, to modify his views upon the subject
of disunion and the constitutionality of slavery, and to support
political parties whose platforms by no means expressed the full
measure of his convictions.

In 1843 the New England Anti-slavery Society resolved, at its annual
meeting in the spring, to stir the Northern heart and rouse the
national conscience by a series of one hundred conventions in New
Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.
Douglass was assigned as one of the agents for the conduct of this
undertaking. Among those associated in this work, which extended over
five months, were John A. Collins, the president of the society, who
mapped out the campaign; James Monroe; George Bradburn; William A.
White; Charles L. Remond, a colored