John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[215] personage, having one hand tied round with a dirty cotton cloth. Mr. Garrison recognized him as a former pressman in the Liberator office. His thesis was that the blacks were not men, but belonged to the monkey tribe. His speech proved dull and tiresome, and was made sport of by his own set, whom Mr. Garrison had to call to order. There were now loud cries for Frederick Douglass, who came forward to where Rynders stood in the conspicuous position he had taken when he thought the meeting was his, and who remained in it, too mortified even to creep away, when he found it was somebody else's. “Now you can speak,” said he to Douglass; “but mind what I say: if you speak disrespectfully (of the South, or Washington, or Patrick Henry) I'll knock you off the stage.” Nothing daunted, the ex-fugitive from greater terrors began:

The gentleman who has just spoken has undertaken to prove that the blacks are not human beings. He has examined our whole conformation, from top to toe. I cannot follow him in his argument. I will assist him in it, however. I offer myself for your examination. Am I a man?

The audience responded with a thunderous affirmative, which Captain Rynders