The year 1843 was one of remarkable antislavery activity. The New England Anti-Slavery Society mapped out a series of one hundred conventions. The territory covered in the schedule included all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Under Garrison’s leadership it was a real campaign, taking more than six months to complete. Frederick Douglass was chosen as one of the agents to tour the country. The first convention was held in Middlebury, Vermont, home of William Slade, for years co-worked with John Quincy Adams in Congress. Yet in this town the opposition to the antislavery convention was intensely bitter and violent. Vermont boasted that within her borders no slave had ever been delivered up to a master, but the towns did not wish to be involved in “agitation.” What was in this respect true of the Green Mountain State was most discouragingly true of New York, the next state they visited. All along the Erie canal, from Albany to Buffalo, they met with apathy, indifference, and sometimes the mob spirit. Syracuse refused to furnish church, market, house, or hall in which to hold the meetings. Mr. Stephen Smith, who had received the little group of speakers in his home, was sick with distress. Frederick, standing beside a wide window, looked out upon a park covered with young trees. He turned to his unhappy host. “Don’t worry, my friend,” he said. “We’ll have our meeting.” The next morning he took his stand under a tree in the southeast corner of this park and began to speak to an audience of five persons. Before the close of the afternoon he had before him not less than five hundred. In the evening he was waited upon by the officers of the Congregational church and tendered the use of an old wooden building which they had deserted for a better. Here the convention continued for three days. In the growing city of Rochester their reception was more cordial. Gerrit Smith, Myron Holly, William Goodell and Samuel Porter were influential Abolitionists in the section. Frederick was to know the eccentric, learned and wealthy Gerrit Smith much better. Now he argued with him, upholding Garrison’s moral persuasion against Gerrit Smith’s ballot-box, as the weapon for abolishing slavery. From Rochester, Frederick and William Bradburn made their way to Buffalo, a rising city of steamboats, business and bustle. The Friends there had been able to secure for the convention only an old dilapidated and deserted room on a side-street, formerly used as a post-office. They went at the time appointed and found seated a few cabmen in their coarse, wrinkled clothes, whips in hand, while their teams were standing on the street waiting for a job.