The following gentlemen were appointed officers of the Convention:
President, George Ripley.
Vice Presidents,
A.B. Smolnikar, Parke Godwin, Horace Greeley,
Charles A. Dana, A. Brisbane, Alonzo M. Watson.
Secretaries,
Osborne Macdaniel, D.S. Oliphant.
Committee on the Roll and Finance.
John Allen, James P. Decker, Nathan Comstock, Jr.
Business Committee.
L.W. Ryckman, John Allen, Osborne Macdaniel,
George Ripley, Horace Greeley, Albert Brisbane,
Parke Godwin, James Kay, Charles A. Dana,
W.H. Channing, A.M. Watson, Solyman Brown.
Before proceeding to business, the secretary read letters addressed to the Convention by a number of societies and individuals in different parts of the United States. The style of these letters may be seen in a few brief extracts. E.P. Grant wrote:
"The day is speedily coming when justice will be done to Fourier and his doctrines; when monuments will rise from ten thousand hills, surmounted by his statue in colossal proportions, gazing upon a happy people, whose God will be truly the Lord, because they will live in spontaneous obedience to his eternal laws."
John White and others wrote:
"We behold in the science of associated industry, a new social edifice, of matchless and indescribable beauty, and true architectural symmetry! Surely, it must be no other than that 'house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;' for its foundation is justice, and the superstructure, praise; in every department of which dwell peace and smiling plenty, and whose walls are every where inscribed with manifold representations of that highest Divine attribute—love."
H.H. Van Amringe wrote:
"Certainly all creation is a reflex of the mind of the Deity, and we cannot hesitate to believe that all the works of Divine wisdom are connected, as Fourier teaches, by laws of groups and series of groups. To discover these, as observers of nature discover and combine the harmonies of astronomy, geology, botany and chemistry, should be our aim; and this noble and heavenly employment, while it banishes want and misery from our present life—destroying the spiritual death and hell which now reign—will, under the Providence of the most High, open to us admission into the Kingdom of the Messiah, that the will of our Father may be done on earth as it is done in heaven."
And so on. After the reading of the letters, Wm. H. Channing, on behalf of the business committee, introduced a series of resolutions, prefacing them with a speech in the following vein:
"It is but giving voice to what is working in the hearts of those now present, and of thousands whose sympathies are at this moment with us over our whole land, to say this is a religious meeting. Our end is to do God's will, not our own; to obey the command of Providence, not to follow the leadings of human fancies. We stand to-day, as we believe, amid the dawn of a new era of humanity; and as from a Pisgah look down upon a promised land."