The emigration question was again thoroughly discussed. A committee was appointed to look into the matter of the encouragement of settlement in Upper Canada and all plans for colonization anywhere were rejected.
A general convention fund was provided for a schedule showing the population, churches, day schools, Sunday Schools, pupils, temperance societies, benevolent societies, mechanics and store-keepers. A most significant action was one recommending the establishment in different parts of the country of FREE LABOR STORES at which no produce from the result of slave labor would be exposed for sale.
The next year, 1834, the convention met in New York, June 8th, with Henry Sipkins as President, William Hamilton and John D. Closson, Vice Presidents, Benjamin F. Hughes, Secretary and Rev. H. Francis, Assistant Secretary. There were seven states represented and about 40 delegates present. The usual resolutions were adopted, one commending Prudence Crandall to the patronage and affection of the people at large; another urging the people to assemble on the fourth of each July for the purpose of prayer and the delivery of addresses pertaining to the condition and welfare of the colored people. The foundation of societies on the principle of moral reform and total abstinence from intoxicating liquors was advocated. Moreover, every person of color was urged to discountenance all boarding houses where gambling was admitted.
At the same convention the Phoenix Societies came up for special consideration and were heartily commended. These planned an organization of the colored people in their municipal sub-divisions with the special object of the promotion of their improvement in morals, literature and the mechanic arts. Lewis Tappan refers to them in the biography previously referred to. The "Mental Feast" which was a social feature, survived thirty years later in some of the interior towns of Pennsylvania and the West. Rt. Rev. Christopher Rush of the A. M. E. Zion, was the president of these societies. Rev. Theodore S. Wright, the predecessor of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet at the Shiloh Presbyterian Church, New York, and who enjoys the unique reputation of claiming Princeton Seminary as his Alma Mater, was a Vice President. Among its directors were Boston Crummell, the father of the founder of the AMERICAN NEGRO ACADEMY, Rev. William Paul Quinn, subsequently a bishop of the A. M. E. Church, and Rev. Peter Williams. These names suggest that the Phoenix Society movement was not confined to any special social clique, but was a somewhat wide spread institution. Unfortunately, there was lost during the excitement of The New York Draft Riots of 1863, nearly all the documentary data for an interesting sidelight on the Convention movement, through the study of these societies.