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310 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ment ceases when they cease, and I have no heart to visit upon children the
sins of their fathers.

It will be noticed, when I first met Mr. Sears in Philadelphia, he declined
to talk with me, on the ground that I had been unjust to Capt. Auld, his
father-in-law. Soon after that meeting, Capt. Auld had occasion to go to
Philadelphia, and, as usual, went straight to the house of his son-in-law, and
had hardly finished the ordinary salutations, when he said: "Sears, I see by
the papers that Frederick has recently been in Philadelphia. Did you go to
hear him?" "Yes, sir," was the reply. After asking something about my lecture,
he said, "Well, Sears, did Frederick come to see you?" "Yes. sir." said
Sears. "Well, how did you receive him?" Mr. Sears then told him all about
my visit, and had the satisfaction of hearing the old man say that he had done
right in giving me welcome to his house. This last fact I have from Rev. J.
D. Long, who, with his wife, was one of the party invited to meet me at the
house of Mr. Sears, on the occasion of my visit to Mrs. Sears.

But I must now return from this digression, and further relate my experience
in the National Loyalists' Convention, and how from that time there
was an impetus given to the enfranchisement of the freedmen, which culminated
in the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
From the first, the members of the convention were divided in their views
of the proper measures of reconstruction, and this division was in some
sense sectional. The men from the far South, strangely enough, were quite
radical, while those from the border States were mostly conservative, and,
unhappily, these last had control of the convention from the first. A Kentucky
gentleman was made President, and its other officers were for the most part
Kentuckians, and all opposed to colored suffrage in sentiment. There was a
"whole heap" (to use a Kentucky phrase) of "halfness" in that State during
the war for the union, and there was much more there after the war. The
Maryland delegates, with the exception of Hon. John L. Thomas, were in
sympathy with Kentucky. Those from Virginia, except Hon. John Miner
Botts, were unwilling to entertain the question. The result was, that the convention
was broken square in two. The Kentucky President declared it
adjourned, and left the chair against the earnest protests or the friends of
manhood suffrage.

But the friends of this measure were not to be out-generaled and suppressed
in this way, and instantly reorganized, elected Hon . John M. Botts
of Virginia, President, discussed and passed resolutions in favor of enfranchising
the freedmen, and thus placed the question before the country in
such a manner that it could not be ignored. The delegates from the Southern