Fugitive Slave Convention
Many resolutions and position statements were passed; this was the first time slaves still in bondage were publicly encouraged to abscond, stealing their master's fastest horse and money, and using violence if necessary.
Participants included Frederick Douglass, until recently himself a fugitive slave, the Edmonson sisters, Gerrit Smith, Samuel Joseph May, Theodore Dwight Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké, and others.
[2] The original plan had been for William L. Chaplin, the General Agent of the New York State Antislavery Society, to make a dramatic appearance with some fugitive slaves that he was to spirit out off the South.
[1] The local links with the abolitionist movement were Theodore Weld's brother Ezra Greenleaf Weld, who owned a daguerrotype (photography) studio in Cazenovia and to whom we owe a picture of the principal attendees, taken to show Chaplin his supporters meeting.
Even more important, the abolitionist philanthropist Gerrit Smith, one of the Secret Six that years later would finance John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, lived only 10 miles (16 km) away, in more rural Peterboro.
"The vicinity of Cazenovia and Syracuse was such a locality where the enforcement of the fugitive slave enactments was vigorously and violently opposed.
[19] As no other church would host the meeting, it moved the next day to "the orchard of Grace Wilson's School, located on Sullivan Street.
[5]: 50 n. 4 A feature of the convention, as originally planned, was that William Chaplin was to make "a dramatic appearance",[5]: 11 together with some enslaved who he had helped escape.
[21] There was a resolution by James C. Jackson that was adopted to create a committee to raise money in order to liberate Chaplin.
[23] Joseph C. Hathaway, William R. Smith, Eleazer Seymour, and James C. Jackson were appointed to nominate people for the “Chaplin Committee”,[23] "whose business it shall be to adaopt such measures, as they shall judge fit to effect his liberation," which might well "require the expenditure of large sums of money.
[23] Some of the committee members included James C. Jackson, Joseph C. Hathaway, William R. Smith, and George W.
[23] A group of women including Mrs. F. Rice, Phebe Hathaway, and Louisa Burnett were appointed to nominate a committee of females.
[25][5]: 30 What distinguished this convention from other anti-slavery meetings was the open letter titled "To American Slaves from those who have fled from American Slavery",[5]: 21 written, "it is said", by Gerrit Smith, who introduced it to the attendees;[26][27] Smith's authorship was confirmed by Garrison in The Liberator.
[28] This letter encouraged those still enslaved to run away, saying it was their duty to do so, and exposing the lies of their owners about life in the North.
The body recommended to the Liberty Party that at its upcoming convention in Oswego, they nominate Chaplin for president.
"[30] According to the New York Herald, the "free nigger convention" was "one of the most bare-faced, impudent, and presumpt[u]ous exhibitions of fanaticism and treason, which was ever perpetrated in any country.
A correspondent wrote, "A large number of persons of every sect in religion, of every party in politics, and every shade of complexion, met in this magnificent temple of nature" [the grove].
[49] A newspaper story mistakenly reported that John Brown was present and "made a very fiery speech" (in 1850) about his need of funds to buy arms for his and his sons' use fighting slavery in Kansas (1855–56).
[51][52][53][54] The convention was mentioned in the U.S. Senate the next day, August 23, during debate on the 1850 Fugitive Slave Bill: During the debate upon the bill, Mr. Yulee [Senator Yulee, of Florida] read from the New York Journal of Commerce a report of an amalgamated ["racially" mixed] Convention at Cazenovia, commenting on its incendiary address, and calling the attention of the people of the [S]outh to it as a sample of the opinions and feelings of the North in relation to the rights of the South...[55][56][57]Senator Daniel Dickinson, of New York, responded that Mr. Yulee "would never have alluded to it if he knew the scorn and contempt with which all such proceedings were looked upon by the great mass of people of all parties, in the North.
[58] Many of the participants of this convention were also involved in a later anti-fugitive slave law meeting in Syracuse, New York, on Tuesday, January 7, 1851,[59] presided over by Frederick Douglass; 17 resolutions and an address were adopted.
It was intended for the eyes of William L. Chaplin, in jail in Washington for having assisted two slaves in an unsuccessful escape attempt.
To her left is Frederick Douglass; to her right, also with pen, is Joseph Hathaway; behind her stands Gerrit Smith,[61] flanked by the Edmonson sisters.
"[63] This presentation, featuring students playing Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, and the Edmonson sisters, and featuring songs such as "I hear the voice of Lovejoy from Alton's bloody plain", was repeated at the 2023 Juneteenth celebration at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, in Peterboro, New York.
