Thus dispossessed, we of course retired, and, after consultation, agreed to gather as many of the members of the intended convention, as could be found, at the dwelling-house of Dr. R. W. Pease, who generously proffered us the use of it. A large number of ladies and gentlemen assembled there early in the evening, and were duly organized. Pertinent and impressive addresses were made by Beriah Green, Aaron M. Powell, Susan B. Anthony, C. D. B. Mills, and others, after which a series of resolutions was passed, of which the following were the most important:—
“Resolved, That the only escape for nations, as well as individuals, from sin and its consequences, is by the way of unfeigned repentance; and that our proud Republic must go down in ruin, unless the people shall be brought to repentance,—shall be persuaded to ‘cease to do evil, and learn to do well; to seek justice, relieve the oppressed.’ Compromises with the wrong-doers will only plunge us deeper in their iniquity. Civil war will not settle the difficulty, but complicate it all the more, and superadd rapine and murder to the sin of slaveholding. The dissolution of the Union, even, may not relieve us; for if slavery still remains in the land, it will be a perpetual trouble to the inhabitants thereof, whether they be separate or whether they be united; slavery must be abolished, or there can be no peace within these borders.
“Resolved, That our General Government ought to abolish all Fugitive Slave Laws; for, unless they can dethrone God, the people will ever be under higher obligations to obey him than to obey any laws, any constitutions that men may have framed and enacted. And the law of God requires us to befriend the friendless, to succor the distressed, to hide the outcast, to deliver the oppressed.
“Resolved, That as the people of the free States have from the beginning been partakers in the iniquity of slavery,—accomplices of the oppressors of the poor laborers at the South,—therefore we ought to join hands with them in any well-devised measures for the emancipation of their bondmen. Our wealth and the wealth of the nation ought to be put in requisition, to relieve those who may impoverish themselves by setting their captives free; to furnish the freed men with such comforts, conveniences, implements of labor as they may need; and to establish such educational and religious institutions as will be indispensable everywhere, to enable them, and, yet more, their children and children’s children, to become what the free people, the citizens of self-governing states, ought to be,—intelligent, moral, religious.
“Resolved, That the abolition of slavery is the great concern of the American people,—‘the one thing needful’ for them,—without which there can be no union, no peace, no political virtue, no real, lasting prosperity in all these once United States.
“Resolved, That, so far from its being untimely or inappropriate to stand forth for unpopular truths, in seasons of great popular excitement, apprehension, and wide passionate denial of them, it is then pre-eminently timely, appropriate, and all vitally important, whether regarded in view of the paramount obligations of fealty to the Supreme King, or the sacred considerations of the redemption and welfare of mankind; and as it behooved then most of all to speak for Jesus, when Jesus was arraigned for condemnation and crucifixion, as it has ever been the bounden and, sooner or later, the well-acknowledged duty of every friend of the truth in past history to stand firm, and ever firmer in its behalf, amid whatever wave of passion, malignity, and madness, even though the multitude all shout, Crucify! and devils be gathered thick as tiles on the house-tops of Worms to devour; so at the present hour it sacredly behooves Abolitionists to abide fast by their principles, and in the very midst of the present storm of passion and insane folly, in face of every assault, whether of threat or infliction, to speak for the slave and for man; and, with an earnestness and pointed emphasis unknown before, to press home upon their countrymen the question daily becoming more imminent and vital, whether the few vestiges of freedom yet remaining shall be blotted out, and this entire land overswept with tyranny, violence, and blood.”
The members of the Convention refused to make any further attempt to hold a public meeting, but the citizens who were present at Dr. Pease’s house resolved to attempt a meeting the next forenoon in the hall from which the convention had been expelled, for the express purpose of testing the faithfulness of the city authorities, and manifesting a just indignation at the outrage which had been perpetrated in our midst upon some of the fundamental rights of a free people. But the attempt was frustrated by the same rioters that had ruled the day before.
And the following night the mob celebrated their too successful onslaught upon popular liberty by a procession led by a band of music, with transparent banners, bearing these inscriptions:—
“Freedom of Speech, but not Treason.”
“The Rights of the South must be protected.”
“Abolitionism no longer in Syracuse.”
“The Jerry Rescuers played out.”
Prominently in the procession there were carried two large-sized effigies,—one of a man the other of a woman,—the former bearing my name, the latter Miss Anthony’s. After parading through some of the principal streets, the procession repaired to Hanover Square, the centre of the business part of our city, and there amid shouts, hootings, mingled with disgusting profanity and ribaldry, the effigies were burned up; but not the great realities for which we were contending.
* * * * *
For more than thirty years the Abolitionists had been endeavoring to rouse the people to exterminate slavery by moral, ecclesiastical, and political instrumentalities, urging them to their duty by every religious consideration, and by reiterating the solemn admonition of Thomas Jefferson, that “If they would not liberate the enslaved in the land by the generous energies of their own minds and hearts, the slaves would be liberated by the awful processes of civil and servile war.” But the counsels of the Abolitionists were spurned, their sentiments and purposes were shamelessly misrepresented, their characters traduced, their property destroyed, their persons maltreated. And lo! our country, favored of Heaven above all others, was given up to fratricidal, parricidal, and for a while we feared it would be suicidal war.
God be praised! the threatened dissolution of our Union was averted. But discord still reigns in the land. Our country is not surely saved. It was right that our Federal Government should be forbearing in their treatment of the Southern Rebels, because the people of the North had been, to so great an extent, their partners in the enslavement of our fellow-men, that it would have ill become us to have punished them condignly. But our Government has been guilty of great injustice to the colored population of the South, who were all loyal throughout the war. These should not have been left as they have been, in a great measure, at the mercy of their former masters. Homes and adequate portions of the land (they so long had cultivated without compensation) ought to have been secured to every family of the Freedmen, and some provision for their education should have been made. With these and the elective franchise conferred upon them, the Freedmen might safely have been left to maintain themselves in their new condition, and work themselves out of the evils that were enforced upon them by their long enslavement.