comfort, it became a community institution, a center for social,
political, and economic life. The minister became the most important
leader of his people. However, the full potential for organizing protest
was overlooked. For the most part, the church taught an other-worldly
religion which strove to provide strength with which to endure the
sorrows of this life, but it did not try too actively to change the
situation. Richard Allen, for example, counseled patience and caution,
advising his people to wait for God to work in His own way. In the
meantime, the Christian was to practice obedience to God and to his
master. Most of the clergy stuck to religious matters and avoided
political questions. However, there were those who took an active part
in politics, and they became leaders in the abolition movement and in the
Negro Convention movement. They included men like Samuel Ringgold Ward
and Henry Highland Garnet.

Another manifestation of group solidarity occurred in the Negro
Convention Movement which began in 1830 and continued until the Civil
War. These meetings brought together leaders from Afro-American
communities throughout the North. They debated important problems,
developed common policies, and spoke out with a united voice. 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 Pr