tyranny to curb freedom of thought and freedom of speech.  The little personal idiosyncrasies which some of the reformers affected, such as long hair in the men and short hair in the women,—­there is surely some psychological reason why reformers run to such things,—­served as convenient excuses for gibes and unseemly interruptions at their public meetings.  On one memorable occasion, at Syracuse, New York, in November, 1842, Douglass and his fellows narrowly escaped tar and feathers.  But, although Douglass was vehemently denunciatory of slavery in all its aspects, his twenty years of training in that hard school had developed in him a vein of prudence that saved him from these verbal excesses,—­perhaps there was also some element of taste involved,—­and thus made his arguments more effective than if he had alienated his audiences by indiscriminate attacks on all the institutions of society.  No one could justly accuse Frederick Douglass of cowardice or self-seeking; yet he was opportunist enough to sacrifice the immaterial for the essential, and to use the best means at hand to promote the ultimate object sought, although the means thus offered might not be the ideal instrument.  It was doubtless this trait that led Douglass, after he separated from his abolitionist friends, to modify his views upon the subject of disunion and the constitutionality of slavery, and to support political parties whose platforms by no means expressed the full measure of his convictions.

In 1843 the New England Anti-slavery Society resolved, at its annual meeting in the spring, to stir the Northern heart and rouse the national conscience by a series of one hundred conventions in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.  Douglass was assigned as one of the agents for the conduct of this undertaking.  Among those associated in this work, which extended over five months, were John A. Collins, the president of the society, who mapped out the campaign; James Monroe; George Bradburn; William A. White; Charles L. Remond, a colored orator, born in Massachusetts, who rendered effective service in the abolition cause; and Sidney Howard Gay, at that time managing editor of the National Anti-slavery Standard and later of the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post.

The campaign upon which this little band of missionaries set out was no inconsiderable one.  They were not going forth to face enthusiastic crowds of supporters, who would meet them with brass bands and shouts of welcome.  They were more likely to be greeted with hisses and cat-calls, sticks and stones, stale eggs and decayed cabbages, hoots and yells of derision, and decorations of tar and feathers.