We had always counted upon the aid and co-operation of the _Quakers_. We considered them “birthright” Abolitionists. And many of Mr. Garrison’s earliest supporters, most untiring co-laborers, and generous contributors were members of “the Society of Friends,” or had been. Besides John G. Whittier and James and Lucretia Mott, Evan Lewis, Thomas Shipley, and others, of whom I have already spoken, in my account of the Philadelphia Convention, there were the venerable Moses Brown, and the indefatigable Arnold Buffum, and that remarkable man, Isaac T. Hopper, and the large-hearted, open-handed Andrew Robeson and William Rotch, and Isaac and Nathan Winslow, and Nathaniel Barney, and Joseph and Anne Southwick,[D] and fifty more, whose praises I should delight to celebrate. But we had received no expression of sympathy from any “Yearly” or “Monthly Meeting,” and we felt moved to _seek a sign_ from them. Accordingly, at the suggestion of some of the Friends who were actively engaged with us, I went to Newport, R. I., in June, 1835, at the time of the great New England Yearly Meeting, to see if I could obtain from them any intimation of friendliness. My wife accompanied me. When we arrived at the principal hotel in the place, where I was told we should find “the weighty” as well as a large number of the lighter members of the Society, we were at a loss to account for the fluster of the landlord and his helpers, and the tardiness with which we were informed that we could be accommodated. After we had got established, I learned from one who had urged my coming, that there had been quite a commotion in consequence of the report that the General Agent of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society was about to visit the “Yearly Meeting.” William ----, and William ----, and Oliver ----, and Isaac ----, and Thomas ----, wealthy cotton manufacturers and merchants, had bestirred themselves to prevent such “an intrusion,” as they were pleased to term it. They had secured the public halls of Newport against me during the continuance of the “Yearly Meeting,” and had been trying, on the morning of the day that I arrived, to induce the landlord to refuse me any accommodation in his house. And they would have succeeded, had not forty of his boarders informed him that if he did not receive me they would quit his premises. These forty, though of less account in the meeting, which, I learned, was governed by the aristocracy that occupied the high seats, were more weighty in the receipts of the hotel-keeper. He therefore compromised with the dignitaries by agreeing to serve their meals in a private parlor, so that their eyes might not be offended at the sight of the antislavery agent in the common dining hall.