[216] made a few remarks, then Lucretia Mott, and finally Abby1 Kelley, a noble young woman from Lynn.2 The meeting broke up about 10 o'clock, and we all got safely home. The next day, the street was thronged with profane ruffians and curious spectators—the women, however, holding their meetings3 in the hall all day, till towards evening. It was given out by the mob, that the hall would be burnt to the ground that night. We were to have a meeting in the evening, but it was impossible to execute our purpose. The mayor induced the managers to give the keys of the building into his hands. He then locked the doors, and made a brief speech to the mob,4 assuring them that he had the keys, and that there would be no meeting, and requesting them to retire. He then went home, but the mob were bent on the destruction of the hall. They had now increased to several thousands, and soon got into the hall by dashing open the doors with their axes. They then5 set fire to this huge building, and in the course of an hour it6 was a solid mass of flame. The bells of the city were rung, and several engines rallied; but no water was permitted to be7 thrown upon the building. The light of the fire must have been seen a great distance. At midnight, by the advice of friends, I left the city with a friend in a carriage, and rode to Bristol, a distance
This text is part of:
1 History of Penn. Hall, pp. 126, 127.
2 Her speech so affected Theodore D. Weld that, at the close of the meeting, he urged her to take the field as an anti-slavery lecturer; and, laying his hand upon her shoulder, he said, in his vehement way, ‘Abby, if you don't, God will smite you!’ She obeyed his voice (and her own internal prompting) in the spring of 1839.
3 Namely, the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women ( “History of Pennsylvania Hall,” p. 128).
4 Ibid., p. 140.
5 Ibid., p. 140.
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