Dr. Cunningham rose to tumultuous applause and began his learned address. With logic and eloquence he built up his argument, the high point of which was that neither Jesus Christ nor his holy apostles had looked upon slaveholding as a sin.
Just as the divine reached this climax, George Thompson called out, in a dear, sonorous, but rebuking voice, “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Speaker and audience were brought to a dead silence.
“The effect of this common exclamation was almost incredible,” Douglass reported.[7] “It was as if a granite wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a river.... Both the Doctor and his hearers seemed appalled by the audacity as well as the fitness of the rebuke.”
After a moment the speaker cleared his throat and continued. But his words stuck in his throat—the flow of language was dammed. The speech dragged on for several minutes, and then the Doctor stumbled to his seat to scattered patting of hands.
The Free Church of Scotland held on to its bloodstained money, and the people bowed their heads in shame.
“Ours is a long history,” said Andrew Paton, sadly, “of incompetent leadership and blind, unquestioning following by the ranks.”
“But this time you did protest. The people of Scotland know what slavery means now,” George Thompson assured him.
Thompson, Buffum and Douglass traveled back to London together. They went by stagecoach, stopping each night at some inn. It was like a holiday. Frederick thought the soft mist that lay over all the land was very lovely. And there was something comforting and homelike about the way the stark grandeur of Scotland’s rugged crags gave way to rounded hills, wide valleys and gently rolling moors. The roads of Ireland had been bad, the occasional inns wretched and dirty. Now, for the most part, they rolled along in state; and, when night came, lights from an inn twinkled a jolly welcome, the dinner was hot and filling, the innkeeper genial. Undoubtedly, thought Frederick, life is pleasanter in England.
The three Abolitionists were teetotalers—temperance men on principle. But Frederick could not stifle a desire to taste of the foamy ale which he saw being tossed off with such gusto.
“Are you sure it’s alcoholic?” he asked.