For several days George Thompson, James Buffum and another American, Henry C. Wright, had been holding antislavery meetings in the city. As soon as Douglass arrived, they hurried him off to the most beautiful hall he had ever seen. The audience was already assembled and greeted him with cheers. Without taking time to remove the dust and grime of travel, he mounted the platform and told his story. After that, excitement mounted in the town. _Send Back the Money_ appeared in a banner across the top of Edinburgh’s leading newspapers. Somebody wrote a popular street song, with _Send Back the Money_ in the chorus. Wherever Douglass went, crowds gathered. It was as if he had become the symbol of the people’s demand. At last the general assembly of the Free Church rose to the bait and announced they would hold an open session at Cannon Mills. Doctors Cunningham and Candlish would defend the Free Church of Scotland’s relations with slavery in America. The great Dr. Chalmers was in feeble health at the time. “Besides,” Douglass wrote afterward,[6] “he had spoken his word on this question; and it had not silenced the clamor without nor stilled the anxious heavings within.” As it turned out, the whole weight of the business fell on Cunningham. The quartet of Abolitionists made it their business to go to this meeting of the opposition. So did the rest of Edinburgh. The building held about twenty-five hundred persons. Long ahead of time, the crowd gathered outside and stood waiting for the doors to open. Douglass always remembered the meeting at Cannon Mills with relish. Dr. Cunningham rose to tumultuous applause and began his learned address. With logic and eloquence he built up his argument, the high point of which was that neither Jesus Christ nor his holy apostles had looked upon slaveholding as a sin. Just as the divine reached this climax, George Thompson called out, in a dear, sonorous, but rebuking voice, “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Speaker and audience were brought to a dead silence. “The effect of this common exclamation was almost incredible,” Douglass reported.[7] “It was as if a granite wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a river.... Both the Doctor and his hearers seemed appalled by the audacity as well as the fitness of the rebuke.” After a moment the speaker cleared his throat and continued. But his words stuck in his throat--the flow of language was dammed. The speech dragged on for several minutes, and then the Doctor stumbled to his seat to scattered patting of hands. The Free Church of Scotland held on to its bloodstained money, and the people bowed their heads in shame. “Ours is a long history,” said Andrew Paton, sadly, “of incompetent leadership and blind, unquestioning following by the ranks.” “But this time you did protest. The people of Scotland know what slavery means now,” George Thompson assured him.