“Men of a thousand shifts and wiles look here! 
  See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
  To win a world!  See the obedient sphere
  By bravery’s simple gravitation drawn!

  “Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
  And by the Present’s lips repeated still,
  In our own single manhood to be bold,
  Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?”

The history of the making of this first society is an interesting story.  There were four meetings in all before it was found possible to complete the work of its organization.  These meetings extended over a space of nearly three months, so obstinate were a minority against committing the proposed society to the principle of immediate emancipation.  The very name which was to be given to the association provoked debate and disagreement.  Some were for christening it “Philo-African,” while Garrison would no such milk-and-water title, but one which expressed distinctly and graphically the real character of the organization, viz., “New England Anti-Slavery Society.”  He would sail under no false or neutral colors, but beneath the red flag of open and determined hostility to slavery.  It should be a sign which no one could possibly mistake.  The first meeting was held at the office of Samuel E. Sewall, November 13, 1831.  At the third meeting, convened New Year’s evening of 1832, which was the first anniversary of the publication of the Liberator, the work of organization was finished, with a single important exception, viz., the adoption of the preamble to the constitution.  The character of the preamble would fix the character of the society.  Therefore that which was properly first was made to come last.  The fourth meeting took place on the night of January 6th in the African Baptist Church on what was then Belknap but now known as Joy street.  The young leader and fourteen of his followers met that evening in the school-room for colored children, situated under the auditorium of the church.  They could hardly have fallen upon a more obscure or despised place for the consummation of their enterprise in the city of Boston than was this selfsame negro church and school-room.  The weather added an ever memorable night to the opprobrium of the spot.  A fierce northeaster accompanied with “snow, rain, and hail in equal proportions” was roaring and careering through the city’s streets.  To an eye-witness, Oliver Johnson, “it almost seemed as if Nature was frowning upon the new effort to abolish slavery; but,” he added, “the spirits of the little company rose superior to all external circumstances.”

If there was strife of the elements without, neither was there sweet accord within among brethren.  “The spirits of the little company” may have risen superior to the weather, but they did not rise superior to the preamble, with the principle of immediatism incorporated in it.  Eleven stood by the leader and made it the chief of the corner of the new society, while three, Messrs. Loring, Sewall, and Child, refused to sign the Constitution and parted sorrowfully from the small band of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.  But the separation was only temporary, for each returned to the side of the reformer, and proved his loyalty and valor in the trying years which followed.