THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

evident in the way British and American abolitionists referred to the meeting. Officially,
the BFASS referred to the meeting as the “General Anti-Slavery Conference.”
Garrisonians, however, were the first to refer to the meeting as the “World’s
Convention,” a term which gained greater currency after John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem,
“The World’s Convention,” appeared in the Liberator in January 1840. 3 These
differences in intent were just one area of potential dissension between British and
American abolitionists.
Divisions among American abolitionists also threatened the harmony of an
international meeting. As we have seen, in the wake of the Hicksite schism British
Friends recognized only those American Quakers associated with the Orthodox branch.
The presence of Hicksites like James and Lucretia Mott among the American delegates
was sure to create tension between British and American members of the convention.
However, of most immediate impact was the split between American abolitionists in the
weeks before the convention. After years of rancorous debate, the American anti-slavery
movement split over the relationship between abolitionism and other reform movements
such as women’s rights and non-resistance. Conservative abolitionists Lewis and Arthur
Tappan worried the controversy over women’s rights and the introduction of other reform
movements would hinder the progress of abolitionism. Garrison believed otherwise. In
May 1840, at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Tappans and
nearly three hundred supporters left the AASS and formed the American and Foreign
3 William Caleb McDaniel, “Our Country is the World: Radical American Abolitionists Abroad,”
Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2006, ch. 2.
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