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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 179

and when this became too small I went on Sunday into the open Park and
addressed an assembly of four or five thousand persons. After this my col-
ored friends, Charles L. Remond, Henry Highland Gamet, Theodore S.
Wright, Amos G. Beman, Charles B. Ray, and other well-known colored
men, held a convention here, and then Remond and myself left for our next
meeting in Clinton county, Ohio. This was held under a great shed, built by
the abolitionists, of whom Dr. Abram Brooke and Valentine Nicholson were
the most noted, for this special purpose. Thousands gathered here and were
addressed by Bradburn, White, Monroe, Remond, Gay, and myself. The
influence of this meeting was deep and wide-spread. It would be tedious to
tell of all, or a small part of all that was interesting and illustrative of the
difficulties encountered by the early advocates of anti-slavery in connection
with this campaign, and hence I leave this part of it at once.

From Ohio we divided our forces and went into Indiana. At our first
meeting we were mobbed, and some of us got our good clothes spoiled by
evil-smelling eggs. This was at Richmond, where Henry Clay had been
recently invited to the high seat of the Quaker meeting-house just after his
gross abuse of Mr. Mendenhall, because of his presenting him a respectful
petition, asking him to emancipate his slaves. At Pendleton this mobocratic
spirit was even more pronounced. It was found impossible to obtain a build-
ing in which to hold our convention, and our friends, Dr. Fussell and others,
erected a platform in the woods, where quite a large audience assembled. Mr.
Bradburn, Mr. White, and myself were in attendance. As soon as we began
to speak a mob of about sixty of the roughest characters I ever looked upon
ordered us, through its leaders, to "be silent," threatening us, if we were not,
with violence. We attempted to dissuade them, but they had not come to
parley but to fight, and were well armed. They tore down the platform on
which we stood, assaulted Mr. White and, knocking out several of his teeth,
dealt a heavy blow on the back part of the head, badly cutting his scalp and
felling him to the ground. Undertaking to fight my way through the crowd
with a stick which I caught up in the melee, I attracted the fury of the mob,
which laid me prostrate on the ground under a torrent of blows. Leaving me
thus, with my right hand hroken, and in a state of unconsciousness, the mob-
ocrats hastily mounted their horses and rode to Andersonville, where most of
them resided. I was soon raised up and revived by Neal Hardy, a kind-
hearted member of the Society of Friends, and carried by him in his wagon
about three miles in the country to his home, where I was tenderly nursed
and bandaged hy good Mrs. Hardy till I was again on my feet, but as the
bones broken were not properly set my hand has never recovered its natural

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