After situating the former enslaved people by the Conway family in Yellow Springs, Ohio, Moncure Conway traveled to Boston.   He had speaking engagements along the way and visits with abolitionist activists Samuel Gridley Howe and Julia Ward Howe (author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”).

Moncure was clearly astonished and impressed with the economic viability that he witnessed in Georgetown of those who had been formerly enslaved, Conway must have communicated this discovery to the Howes.

Samuel Gridley Howe was appointed in March 1863 to the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, which conducted extensive interviews and concluded African Americans were fully capable of economic viability throughout the land.