the unidentified daguerrotype in the archives of the Madison County Historical Society. Madison County, NY, a haven for slaves The Convention was the creation of Gerrit Smith, the richest man in New York State. He made of Madison County a place where fugitive slaves were safe — slave catchers did not dare show their faces. "The vicinity of Cazenovia and Syracuse was such a locality where the enforcement of the fugitive slave enactments was vigorously and violently opposed." He helped every fugitive that reached his home in neighboring Peterboro — feeding them, sheltering them, and helping them get to Syracuse, also safe, and from there across nearby Lake Ontario to Canada. A visitor in 1841 described Peterboro thus: Between 1840 and 1843 three different abolitionist weeklies were published in Cazenovia: the Cazenovia Abolitionist, Onondaga and Madison Abolitionist, and Madison County Abolitionist. There was a colored conventions movement, but these were free blacks that were meeting. The Convention in Cazenovia—Peterboro was a "tiny hamlet", too small for the number of visitors expected—is the only "Convention of Slaves" ever held in the United States, as it was called by Douglass in The North Star. Douglass, a Black man, presided. Peterboro is since about 2005 the site of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum. Call for the convention The following announcement appeared in the August 1, 1850, issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard: Fugitives from the prison-house of Southern despotism with their friends and protectors in council! Such persons as have escaped from Slavery, and those who are resolved to stand by them, are invited to meet for mutual counsel and encouragement at Cazenovia, Madison County, New York, on Wednesday, 21st of August, 1850. The assembling will take place at 10 o'clock A. M. in the Independent Church, and the meeting will continue through two days. The object aimed at on the occasion will not be simply an exchange of congratulations and an expression of sympathy, but an earnest consideration of such subjects as are pertinent to the present condition and prospects of the slave and free colored population of the country, and to the relations, which good and true men sustain to the cause of impartial freedom and justice. Friends! shall not this be made a grand event? Shall not the channels of former sympathies be opened anew? Will not they of the “old guard” delight to look each other