re intellectual stage when in 1841 the
African Methodist Magazine appeared, since which time the organized
religion of the American Negro has never been for any considerable
time without its organs of communication. The journalistic period
began in 1827, its centre being New York and the work of the journals
almost wholly directed to two ends: the abolition of slavery, and the
enfranchisement and political elevation of the free blacks. This work
had reached its highest form in the Anglo-African, as that epoch of
our national history came to its close in the slave-holders' war.

The titles of the newspapers indicate the opening and continuance of a
period of anti-slavery agitation. Their columns were filled with
arguments and appeals furnished by men who gave their whole souls to
the work. It was a period of great mental activity on the part of the
free colored people. They were discussing all probable methods of
bettering their condition. It was the period that produced both
writers and orators. In 1830 the first convention called by colored
men to consider the general condition of the race and devise means to
improve that condition, met in the city of Philadelphia. The history
of this convention is so important that I append a full account of it
as published in the Anglo-African nearly thirty years after the
convention met. It was called through the efforts of Hezekiah Grice,
of Baltimore, who afterwards emigrated to Hayti, and for many years
followed there the occupation of carver and gilder and finally became
Director of Public Works of the city of Port-au-Prince. While visiting
that city years ago, I met a descendant of Mr. Grice, a lady of great
personal beauty, charming manners, accomplished in the French
language, but incapable of conversing at all in English.

The conventions, begun in 1830, continued to be held annually for a
brief period, and then dropped into occasional and special gatherings.
They did much good in the way of giving prominence to the colored
orators and in stemming the tide of hostile sentiment by appealing to
the country at large in language that reached many hearts.

The physical condition, so far as the health and strength of the free
colored people were concerned, was good. Their mean age was the
greatest of any element of our population, and their increase was
about normal, or 1.50 per cent. annually. In the twenty years from
1840 to 1860 it had kept up this rate with hardly the slight