The next year, 1834, the convention met in New York, June 8th, with Henry Sipkins as President, William Hamilton and John D. Closson, Vice Presidents, Benjamin F. Hughes, Secretary and Rev. H. Francis, Assistant Secretary. There were seven states represented and about 40 delegates present. The usual resolutions were adopted, one commending Prudence Crandall to the patronage and affection of the people at large; another urging the people to assemble on the fourth of each July for the purpose of prayer and the delivery of addresses pertaining to the condition and welfare of the colored people. The foundation of societies on the principle of moral reform and total abstinence from intoxicating liquors was advocated. Moreover, every person of color was urged to discountenance all boarding houses where gambling was admitted.
At the same convention the Phoenix Societies came up for special consideration and were heartily commended. These planned an organization of the colored people in their municipal sub-divisions with the special object of the promotion of their improvement in morals, literature and the mechanic arts. Lewis Tappan refers to them in the biography previously referred to. The “Mental Feast” which was a social feature, survived thirty years later in some of the interior towns of Pennsylvania and the West. Rt. Rev. Christopher Rush of the A. M. E. Zion, was the president of these societies. Rev. Theodore S. Wright, the predecessor of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet at the Shiloh Presbyterian Church, New York, and who enjoys the unique reputation of claiming Princeton Seminary as his Alma Mater, was a Vice President. Among its directors were Boston Crummell, the father of the founder of the American Negro Academy, Rev. William Paul Quinn, subsequently a bishop of the A. M. E. Church, and Rev. Peter Williams. These names suggest that the Phoenix Society movement was not confined to any special social clique, but was a somewhat wide spread institution. Unfortunately, there was lost during the excitement of The New York Draft Riots of 1863, nearly all the documentary data for an interesting sidelight on the Convention movement, through the study of these societies.
With 1835, the Convention returned to Philadelphia, June 1-5, was the time of its sessions. There were forty four delegates enrolled, with Reuben Ruby of Maine, as president, James H. Fleet of the District of Columbia, and Nathan Johnson Vice Presidents, John F. Cook of the District of Columbia, was Secretary, Samuel Van Brackle and Henry Ogden were the Assistants.
Speaking of its proceedings, “The Liberator” says: “Its pages offered abundant testimony of the ability of this body to set before the Nation a detail of the wrongs and grievances to which they are by custom and law subjected, and they also exhibit a praiseworthy spirit of manly and noble resolution to contend by moral force alone until their rights so long withheld shall be restored.”
Among other specially notable things, Robert Purvis and Frederick A. Hinton were appointed a committee to correspond with dissatisfied emigrants to Liberia and to take such action as would best promote the sentiment of the colored people respecting the work of the Colonization Society. The students of Lane Seminary at Cincinnati were thanked for their zeal in the cause of abolition. Temperance reform was advocated in a stirring address to the people. The free people of color were recommended to petition Congress and their respective state legislatures to be admitted to the rights and privileges of American citizenship, and to be protected in the enjoyment of the same.
William Whipper advocated that the word ‘colored’ should be abandoned and the title “African” should be removed from the name of the churches, lodges, societies and other institutions.
In 1836, in the columns of “The Liberator” appear calls for two conventions; the regular annual convention was called to meet in Philadelphia, June 6, by Henry Sipkins of the Convention Board, and the urgent language of the call implies doubt in the interest of the people or the probability of their prompt response to the calls. William Whipper issued the call, through the same medium, for the Convention of the American Moral Reform to meet August 2, 1836, also in Philadelphia. It is worthy of remark that careful perusal of the files of “The Liberator” fails to disclose a comment on the proceedings of either convention. But the perusal of the officers of the American Moral Reform shows the influential man of the Convention Movement at their helm. James Forten, Sr., the revolutionary patriot, was the President, Reuben Ruby, Rev. Samuel E. Cornish, Rev. Walter Proctor and Jacob C. White, Sr., of Philadelphia, were Vice Presidents, Joseph Cassey was Treasurer, Robert Purvis, Foreign Corresponding Secretary and James Forten, Jr., Recording Secretary.
The address was drawn up by William Watkins of Baltimore, who two decades later was an able colleague of Frederick Douglass in the conduct of “The North Star.”
In 1837, the convention of the American Moral Reform was again held in Philadelphia, August 19th, in which William Whipper, John P. Burr and James Forten, Jr., were leading spirits. At the adjournment, an extra meeting was held in St. Thomas P. E. Church, at which an address on Temperance was delivered by John Francis Cook of Washington.
Sufficient has now been stated to show that the convention movement was now deeply rooted in the thought of the disfranchised American. The fact that there was a lull does not at all disprove this contention. The conventions were great educators, alike of the Negro and the American whites. They taught the former parliamentary usages and how to conduct deliberative bodies. They brought to light facts pertaining to the Negro’s status which tended to establish that he was thrifty and steadily improving as a moral and economic force; while the American whites had in them an object lesson from which they learned much. In his “Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro,” Samuel Ringgold Ward says: “A State or a National Convention of black men is held. The talent displayed, the order maintained, the demeanor of the delegates, all impress themselves upon the community. All agree that to keep a people rooted to the soil who are rapidly improving, who have already attained considerable influence and are marshalled by gifted leaders, (men who show themselves qualified for legislative and judicial positions), and to doom them to a state of perpetual vassalage is altogether out of the question.”