I entered the Hall of the Convention at so early an hour this morning, that I was able to obtain the same advantageous situation as on the preceding day.
By arriving so early, I was enabled to see each delegate take his seat, and I observed the entrance of some of the Americans with more interest than I did the preceding day, because I had learnt more of their personal history.
To Henry Grew my attention had been particularly drawn on the first day of the meeting, even before he had addressed the chairman; because the arrangement of his hair, and the expression of his countenance, realized my idea of the Covenanters of old, and his speech did not weaken this impression; therefore I was not surprised when I was assured, by a countryman of his, that he not only resembled in appearance one of those pious men, but that, under similar circumstances, he would probably have acted and died as they did.
But, till this second morning, I did not know, that in Wendell Phillips, the young Secretary with the pale golden hair parted on his open forehead, I beheld “the very young speaker” mentioned in the “Martyr Age” of America, “on whose lips hung, for the space of three minutes, the fate of the Abolitionists in Boston.” The dark eyed, dark bearded, intelligent looking young Secretary opposite to him, was pointed out to me as being one of the fifty young men, students in the Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, in Ohio, who left that College, because the president and professors thought proper to prohibit all free inquiry among the students in their leisure hours, and had more particularly forbidden them to discuss the question of Slavery.
In J. G. Birney, the American gentleman sitting to the left hand of the President’s chair, with the thoughtful brow, the dignified and manly bearing, and with an expression of calm deliberate firmness in his countenance, I now knew that I beheld one of whom his country might indeed be proud. He was once a slave-holder; but, being convinced, at an early age, that the religion of Jesus forbade him to remain so, he emancipated his slaves and had them educated; and when, on the death of his father, he became entitled to half of the paternal inheritance, he chose to take that half in the slaves his father had left; and when they became his, he emancipated them also.
“But who is that,” said a friend to me, “with the dark, thick, curly hair, and a plain brown frock coat, who, though he looks somewhat like a Quaker cannot be one, because he answers to the title of Colonel?” “That is,” replied I, “Colonel Jonathan Miller, from Vermont, who, though he looks like a man of peace, in some measure is, or has been, a man of war, as he fought for the Greeks at Missolonghi, and has in his possession the sword of Lord Byron. That broad, brown beaver hat of his, might be worn by a plain Friend; still, I must say that I have seen him wear it on one side, in a manner rather unusual in our meetings; but I have looked upon that hat with much respect, as well as on himself, since I have been informed that he wears it in order that a runaway slave in his own country may know, if he sees it, that he has a friend, and protector nigh.”
It were tedious to enumerate all those whom I was now able to point out to others, and was interested in observing myself; among these, however, I must name the learned Professors Deane and Adam, and J. C. Fuller, an Englishman by birth, but now an American citizen; a delegate, whose short, but shrewd and pithy speeches often amused the hearers. Nor can I omit to mention, with more especial notice, Captain Charles Stuart, one of the delegates from Jamaica, with his fine picturesque head, covered with clustering curls of iron grey, and his deep toned powerful voice, sounding like a minute gun, when he rose from his distant seat, and said, “No,” or “Chair;” but when he spoke at some length, his voice seemed to be a sort of musical thunder. He is honourably distinguished as being one of the most devoted friends of the oppressed. There was, sitting near this gentleman, one from Ohio, whom I had long known and esteemed; a tall, mild looking man, with finely chiselled features, and an expression which, in that convention at least, seemed often to denote he had less communion with earthly things, than “with things above.” He, and the serious, sensible looking man beside him, a minister, and his colleague, came over to England more than a year ago, to plead in behalf of the Oberlin Institute: a blessing has attended their labours; and humble as their demeanour is, there were no men in that meeting more worthy to be welcomed by their oppressed countrymen, as friends and benefactors, than William Dawes and John Keep.
Mrs. Opie afterwards sat to Haydon, who was then painting his picture of the Convention. In the life of the painter we find the following entries in his diary:—
“(July 31st.) A. Opie sat, and a very pleasant hour and a half we had. (Again, the following day,) A. O. sat, a delightful creature; she told me she heard Fuseli say of Northcote, ‘he looks like a rat who has seen a cat.’”
Mr. Haydon, as he looked at the assemblage of portraits in this picture, pronounced it to be his opinion that “such a number of honest heads were never seen together before.”