Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/114

 I was sent as a delegate and with me were Rogers, Farr and Calhoun. When this convention met on Spring Garden Street, there appeared, asking admission, a delegation from the Banneker Institute, a society of colored men in the lower part of the city, at the head of which was a very light and very bright negro named Octavius V. Catto. The times were not ripe and it was like casting a firebrand. In the midst of a fierce discussion the convention adjourned. All of our delegation except Rogers favored the admission of the negroes. He succeeded in getting our society to pass a resolution instructing us to vote against their admission. We informed the society we would not so vote. They then passed a resolution vacating our seats and appointing another delegation. We denied their right and appeared before the convention, where we had had a majority. The situation had, however, in the meantime changed. A man in town named A. B. Sloanaker, a fat, oily politician, when Andrew Johnson quarreled with his party and apparently had friends nowhere, took to him a basket of wax flowers ostensibly from the schools of Philadelphia, and Johnson thereupon appointed him Collector of Internal Revenue in New Orleans. Hence he received the sobriquet of “Wax Work Sloany.” This gentleman improved the period of adjournment by organizing literary societies all over the city, and when again the convention met the hall was filled with delegates. We were refused admission and the Banneker delegates likewise. I saw much of Catto, who was an intelligent school teacher. He was afterwards murdered, losing his life in another effort to advance his race.

Through Calhoun I became a member of Post 19 and in 1869 was elected its commander, thus attaining the rank in the Grand Army of a colonel. I delivered Decoration Day orations at Laurel Hill, Christ Church-yard and Kennett Square, and in May of 1870 rode at the head of seven hundred men to Mount Moriah Cemetery and conducted the ceremonies. With this service such connection 104