The decade that opened with that defeat is distinguished as a period of sustained antislavery activity on the part of the united Christian citizenship of the nation in all quarters.[271:1] In New England the focus of antislavery effort was perhaps the theological seminary at Andover.
There the leading question among the students in their "Society of Inquiry concerning Missions" was the question, what could be done, and especially what _they_ could do, for the uplifting of the colored population of the country, both the enslaved and the free.

Measures were concerted there for the founding of "an African college where youth were to be educated on a scale so liberal as to place them on a level with other men";[271:2] and the plan was not forgotten or neglected by these young men when from year to year they came into places of effective influence.

With eminent fitness the Fourth of July was taken as an antislavery holiday, and into various towns within reach from Andover their most effective speakers went forth to give antislavery addresses on that day.

Beginning with the Fourth of July, 1823, the annual antislavery address at Park Street Church, Boston, before several united churches of that city, continued for the rest of that decade at least to be an occasion for earnest appeal and practical effort in behalf of the oppressed.

Neither was the work of the young men circumscribed by narrow local boundaries.