The Fugitive Slave Law Convention was held in Cazenovia, New York, on August 21 and 22, 1850. Madison County, New York, was the abolition headquarters of the country, because of philanthropist and activist Gerrit Smith, who lived in neighboring Peterboro, New York, and called the meeting "in behalf of the New York State Vigilance Committee." Hostile newspaper reports refer to the meeting as "Gerrit Smith's Convention". Nearly fifty fugitives attended—the largest gathering of fugitive slaves in the nation's history. This was one month before the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by the United States Congress; its passage was a foregone conclusion, and the convention never even discussed how its passage could be prevented. Instead the question was what the existing fugitive slaves were to do, and how their friends could help them. Participants included Frederick Douglass, until recently himself a fugitive slave, the Edmonson sisters, Gerrit Smith, Samuel Joseph May, Theodore Dwight Weld, his wife Angelina Grimké, and others. The convention opened at what the announcement called "the Independent Church", later the Free Congregational Church of Cazenovia and then (2022) Cazenovia College's theater building. The capacity was 400, and there were hundreds who could not get in. As no other venue would host the meeting, it moved the next day to "the orchard of Grace Wilson's School, located on Sullivan Street." Although there were in 1850s no railroads in Cazenovia, it was said to have had 2000 to 3000 participants. In the 1850 census the population of Cazenovia was 4,800. The original plan had been for William L. Chaplin, the General Agent of the New York State Antislavery Society, to make a dramatic appearance with some fugitive slaves that he was to spirit out off the South. It was not to be; things went awry. The meeting was chaired by Douglass. The local links with the abolitionist movement were Theodore Weld's brother Ezra Greenleaf Weld, who owned a daguerrotype (photography) studio in Cazenovia and to whom we owe a picture of the principal attendees. Even more important, the abolitionist philanthropist Gerrit Smith, one of the Secret Six that years later would finance John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, lived only away, in more rural Peterboro. The first book on Madison County, of 1899, says much of Smith, but mentions neither the Convention nor Ezra Weld. That the forgotten meeting is known today is due to the discovery of