They consistently urged the abolition of
slavery in the Southern states, and they condemned the legal and
social discrimination which was rampant throughout the North. At
the 1843 convention in Buffalo, N.Y., Henry Highland Garnet tried to
persuade the movement to declare violence an acceptable tool
in the destruction of slavery. However, by a vote of 19 to 15,
the movement continued to oppose violence and to limit its power
to an appeal based on moral persuasion.
Besides the Convention Movement, there were two other means of
achieving broad leadership. This was still an age of oratory.
Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Sojourner Truth, and
many others traveled from town to town and state to state giving
lectures to both black and white audiences. Also, they exploited
the press to reach even larger numbers. Some of the more famous
autobiographies written at this time were those of Frederick
Douglass, William Wells Brown, Austin Steward, and Josiah
Henson, all of whom recorded the horrors of slavery as well as
the humiliations of racial discrimination.
One of the most vehement attacks against slavery and
discrimination was "Walker's Appeal in Four Articles Together with a
Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World But in Particular and Very
Particularly to those of the United States of America".
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