The controversies and disownments in the Society of Friends on account of the slavery question really came after the death of Elias. The trouble in New York resulting in the disownment of Isaac T. Hopper, James S. Gibbons and Charles Marriott came on more than a decade after his death. This entire controversy has been wrongly estimated by most of the biographers and historians, representing the pronounced abolitionists of the period. It was not simply a contest between anti-slavery Friends and pro-slavery Friends. In fact the moving spirits against Isaac T. Hopper were not advocates or defenders of slavery as an institution. George F. White, who was probably the head and front of the movement to disown Isaac T. Hopper, was not in favor of slavery. After his death his monthly meeting memorialized him, and among other things stated that he had for years refrained from using commodities made by slave labor. The conservative wing of the Society was opposed to Friends becoming identified with any organization for any purpose outside of the Society. George F. White attacked temperance organizations, as he did abolition societies. It was a common inference, if not a claim, of the Garrisonian abolitionists, that there were no real anti-slavery men outside of their organization. In Fifth month, 1840, there was a debate involving the abolition attitude of the Society of Friends in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts. In this debate William Lloyd Garrison said of the Society: "If it were an abolition society, its efforts would be identified with ours."[53] [53] The "Liberator," May 1, 1841, p. 3. In the same debate Oliver Johnson disputed the abolition claims of the Society of Friends, saying: "They have asserted for themselves the claim of being an abolition society. But we never could get into their meeting house."[54] Thus was the test of abolitionism made to hinge upon housing the Abolition Society. [54] The "Liberator," May 1, 1841, p. 3. That the attitude of the conservatives was ill-advised and reprehensible may be true. It is also true that this body of Friends were not in favor of any effort to overthrow slavery by popular agitation. They held that all other Christians should do what Friends had done, cease to hold slaves, and that would settle the whole question. However shortsighted this attitude may have been, very few, if any, of the Friends holding it, believed in holding black men in bondage. In fact it is pretty safe to assert that at no time after the Society had freed itself from direct complicity with slavery was there any considerable number of strictly pro-slavery Friends in this country.