ies and empires and peoples and tribes, whose minute
actions and reactions on each other are the histories which absorb our
attention, whilst the grand universal life moves on beyond our ken,
or only guessed at, as the astronomers shadow out movements of our
solar system around or towards some distant unknown centre of
attraction.

If the times of 1830 were eventful, there were among our people, as
well as among other peoples, men equal to the occasion. We had giants
in those days! There were Bishop Allen, the founder of the great
Bethel connection of Methodists, combining in his person the fiery
zeal of St. Francis Xavier with the skill and power of organizing of a
Richelieu; the meek but equally efficient Rush (who yet remains with
us in fulfilment of the Scripture), the father of the Zion Methodists;
Paul, whose splendid presence and stately eloquence in the pulpit, and
whose grand baptisms in the waters of Boston harbor are a living
tradition in all New England; the saintly and sainted Peter Williams,
whose views of the best means of our elevation are in triumphant
activity to-day; William Hamilton, the thinker and actor, whose sparse
specimens of eloquence we will one day place in gilded frames as rare
and beautiful specimens of Etruscan art--William Hamilton, who, four
years afterwards, during the New York riots, when met in the street,
loaded down with iron missiles, and asked where he was going, replied,
"To die on my threshold"; Watkins, of Baltimore; Frederick Hinton,
with his polished eloquence; James Forten, the merchant prince;
William Whipper, just essaying his youthful powers; Lewis Woodson and
John Peck, of Pittsburg; Austin Steward, then of Rochester; Samuel E.
Cornish, who had the distinguished honor of reasoning Gerrit Smith out
of colonization, and of telling Henry Clay that he would never be
president of anything higher than the American Colonization Society;
Philip A. Bell, the born sabreur, who never feared the face of clay,
and a hundred others, were the worthily leading spirits among the
colored people.

And yet the idea of the first colored convention did not originate
with any of these distinguished men; it came from a young man of
Baltimore; then, and still, unknown to fame. Born in that city in
1801, he was in 1817 apprenticed to a man some two hundred miles off
in the Southeast. Arriving at his field of labor, he worked hard
nearly a week and received poor fare in return. One day, while a