Success Quote by Lewis Tappan

There is a careful salesman’s gleam in Lewis Tappan’s praise: “excited great attention” is less a neutral observation than a performance of legitimacy. Tappan, a businessman turned abolitionist organizer, understood that movements rise or fall on optics. “Attention” is currency; you spend it to buy credibility, recruits, and donations. The line reads like a field report crafted for circulation, the kind meant to reassure distant allies that the cause is not merely righteous but gaining traction.

The phrasing is strategically bloodless. “Meetings” stays safely procedural, avoiding the inflammable realities underneath: slavery, violence, and the social risk attached to opposing the status quo. Calling them “of an exceedingly interesting character” is a genteel euphemism that lets multiple audiences nod along. For supporters, “interesting” can mean morally urgent, spiritually stirring, historically pivotal. For cautious moderates, it can mean merely noteworthy - something to observe without yet committing. Tappan’s restraint is not timidity; it’s coalition-building.

The subtext is a quiet rebuttal to the era’s smear campaigns against abolitionists as fanatics and disturbers of the peace. If the meetings attract “great attention” and remain “interesting,” they sound orderly, persuasive, even fashionable. It’s reputational jiu-jitsu: frame controversy as public interest rather than disorder. Coming from a man whose wealth and networks powered anti-slavery societies, the sentence also signals institutional confidence. Not just people gathering, but a movement learning how to narrate itself as the future arriving on schedule.