uperintending of education, and for employment.
While the societies were originally formed to attend to local matters,
their efforts naturally extended in course of time to national affairs,
and on December 8, 1791, nine of them prepared petitions to Congress for
the limitation of the slave-trade. These petitions were referred to a
special committee and nothing more was heard of them at the time. After
two years accordingly the organizations decided that a more vigorous
plan of action was necessary, and on January 1, 1794, delegates from
nine societies organized in Philadelphia the American Convention of
Abolition Societies. The object of the Convention was twofold, "to
increase the zeal and efficiency of the individual societies by
its advice and encouragement ... and to take upon itself the chief
responsibility in regard to national affairs." It prepared an address to
the country and presented to Congress a memorial against the fitting out
of vessels in the United States to engage in the slave-trade, and it had
the satisfaction of seeing Congress in the same year pass a bill to this
effect.

Some of the organizations were very active and one as far South as that
in Maryland was at first very powerful. Always were they interested
in suits in courts of law. In 1797 the New York Society reported 90
complaints, 36 persons freed, 21 cases still in suit, and 19 under
consideration. The Pennsylvania Society reported simply that it had
been instrumental in the liberation of "many hundreds" of persons. The
different branches, however, did not rest with mere liberation; they
endeavored generally to improve the condition of the Negroes in their
respective communities, each one being expected to report to the
Convention on the number of freedmen in its state and on their property,
employment, and conduct. From time to time also the Convention prepared
addresses to these people, and something of the spirit of its work and
also of the social condition of the Negro at the time may be seen from
the following address of 1796:

To the Free Africans and Other Free People of Color in the United
States.

The Convention of Deputies from the Abolition Societies in the
United States, assembled at Philadelphia, have undertaken to address
you upon subjects highly interesting to your prosperity.

They wish to see you act worthily of the rank you have acquired as
freemen, and thereby to do credit to yourselves, an