The growth and activity of Abolitionism were indeed altogether phenomenal.

In February, 1837, Ellis Gray Loring estimated that there were then eight hundred anti-slavery societies in the United States, that an anti-slavery society had been formed in the North every day for the last two years, and that in the single State of Ohio there were three hundred societies, one of which had a membership of four thousand names.

The moral agitation was at its height.

The National Society had hit upon a capital device for increasing the effectiveness of its agents and lecturers.
This was to bring them together in New York for a few weeks' study of the slavery question under the direction of such masters as Theodore D.
Weld, Beriah Green, Charles Stuart, and others.

All possible phases of the great subject, such as, What is slavery?
What is immediate emancipation?
The consequences of emancipation to the South, etc., etc., pro-slavery objections and arguments were stated and answered.