In April, 1845, I came to reside in Syracuse. Having visited the place twice before, I was pretty well acquainted with the characters of the people with whom I should be associated, and the rapidly growing importance of the town, owing to its central position and its staple product. During each of my visits I had delivered antislavery lectures to good audiences, and found quite a number of individuals here who had accepted the doctrines of the Immediate Abolitionists. Mr. Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Mr. Douglass, and others, had lectured in Syracuse several times, and, though at first insulted and repulsed, they had convinced so many people of the justice of their demands for the enslaved, and of the disastrous influence of the “peculiar institution” of our Southern States, that the community had come to respect somewhat the right of any who pleased to hold antislavery meetings. The minister and many of the members of the Orthodox Congregational Church, as well as the Unitarian, were decided Abolitionists, and several members of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches openly favored the great reform. On the first of the following August, at the invitation of a large number of the citizens, I delivered an address on British West India Emancipation from the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church, and it was published by the request of a large number of the auditors,--half of them members of one or another of the orthodox sects. On the 10th of the next month a large meeting was held in the Congregational Church to uphold the freedom of the press, and to protest against the alarming assault that had been made upon that palladium of our liberties in Kentucky, by the violent suppression of _The True American_,--a paper established and edited by Hon. Cassius M. Clay, to urge upon his fellow-citizens the self-evident truths of our Declaration of Independence, and their application to the colored population of that State. Our meeting was officered by some of the most prominent and highly respected citizens of Syracuse. And after several excellent speeches, a series of very pertinent, explicit, emphatic antislavery resolutions was unanimously adopted. Thus was my great regret at being removed so far from the New England Abolitionists assuaged by the sympathy and co-operation of many of my new neighbors and fellow-citizens. On another account I had reason to rejoice in my removal to this place. Here I found myself within a few miles of the residence of Gerrit Smith, and very soon was brought into an intimate acquaintance with that pre-eminent philanthropist. Here I must indulge myself in telling some of the much that I have known of the benefactions of this magnificent giver.