The storm which the New York press was at so much labor to brew, Garrison did not doubt would break over the convention. He went to it in a truly apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. "Not knowing the things that shall befall me there, saving that bonds and afflictions abide with me in every city," he wrote his wife an hour before the commencement of the convention. His prevision of violence was quickly fulfilled. He had called Francis Jackson to the chair during the delivery of the opening speech which fell to the pioneer to make as the president of the society. His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which he was paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian fashion. Belief in Jesus in the United States had no vital influence on conduct or character. The chief religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery, they had uttered no protest against the national sin. There was the Roman Catholic Church whose "priests and members held slaves without incurring the rebuke of the Church." At this point the orator was interrupted by one of those monstrous products of the slums of the American metropolis, compounded of the bully, the blackleg, and the demagogue in about equal proportions. It was the notorious Captain Isaiah Rynders, perched with his band of blackguards in the organ loft of the tabernacle and ready to do the will of the metropolitan journals by over-throwing the right of free discussion. He was not disposed to permit Mr. Garrison's censure of the Roman Catholic Church to pass unchallenged, so he begged to ask "whether there are no other churches as well as the Catholic Church, whose clergy and lay members hold slaves?" To which the anti-slavery leader replied with the utmost composure, not inclined to let even Captain Rynders interrupt the even and orderly progression of his discourse: "Will the friend wait for a moment, and I will answer him in reference to other churches?" "The friend" thereupon resumed his seat in the organ loft, and Garrison proceeded with his indictment of the churches. There was the Episcopal Church, whose clergy and laity dealt with impunity in human flesh, and the Presbyterians, whose ministers and members did likewise without apparently any compunctious visitings of conscience, ditto the Baptist, ditto the Methodist. In fact "all the sects are combined," the orator sternly continued, "to prevent that jubilee which it is the will of God should come."