These were the times when the anti-slavery question was up for hot discussion.  In all the neighboring towns conventions were held in which James G. Birney, a Southern gentleman who had emancipated his slaves, Charles Stuart of Scotland, and George Thompson of England, Garrison, Phillips, May, Beriah Greene, Foster, Abby Kelly, Lucretia Mott, Douglass, and others took part.  Here, too, John Brown, Sanborn, Morton, and Frederick Douglass met to talk over that fatal movement on Harper’s Ferry.  On the question of temperance, also, the people were in a ferment.  Dr. Cheever’s pamphlet, “Deacon Giles’ Distillery,” was scattered far and wide, and, as he was sued for libel, the question was discussed in the courts as well as at every fireside.  Then came the Father Matthew and Washingtonian movements, and the position of the Church on these questions intensified and embittered the conflict.  This brought the Cheevers, the Pierponts, the Delevans, the Nortons, and their charming wives to Peterboro.  It was with such company and varied discussions on every possible phase of political, religious, and social life that I spent weeks every year.  Gerrit Smith was cool and calm in debate, and, as he was armed at all points on these subjects, he could afford to be patient and fair with an opponent, whether on the platform or at the fireside.  These rousing arguments at Peterboro made social life seem tame and profitless elsewhere, and the youngest of us felt that the conclusions reached in this school of philosophy were not to be questioned.  The sisters of General Cochrane, in disputes with their Dutch cousins in Schenectady and Albany, would end all controversy by saying, “This question was fully discussed at Peterboro, and settled.”

The youngsters frequently put the lessons of freedom and individual rights they heard so much of into practice, and relieved their brains from the constant strain of argument on first principles, by the wildest hilarity in dancing, all kinds of games, and practical jokes carried beyond all bounds of propriety.  These romps generally took place at Mr. Miller’s.  He used to say facetiously, that they talked a good deal about liberty over the way, but he kept the goddess under his roof.  One memorable occasion in which our enthusiasm was kept at white heat for two hours I must try to describe, though words cannot do it justice, as it was pre-eminently a spectacular performance.  The imagination even cannot do justice to the limp, woe-begone appearance of the actors in the closing scene.  These romps were conducted on a purely democratic basis, without regard to color, sex, or previous condition of servitude.