To an eye-witness, Oliver Johnson, "it almost seemed as if Nature was frowning upon the new effort to abolish slavery; but," he added, "the spirits of the little company rose superior to all external circumstances." If there was strife of the elements without, neither was there sweet accord within among brethren.

"The spirits of the little company" may have risen superior to the weather, but they did not rise superior to the preamble, with the principle of immediatism incorporated in it.
Eleven stood by the leader and made it the chief of the corner of the new society, while three, Messrs.

Loring, Sewall, and Child, refused to sign the Constitution and parted sorrowfully from the small band of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

But the separation was only temporary, for each returned to the side of the reformer, and proved his loyalty and valor in the trying years which followed.
The preamble which was the bone of so much contention declared that: "We, the undersigned, hold that every person, of full age and sane mind, has a right to immediate freedom from personal bondage of whatsoever kind, unless imposed by the sentence of the law for the commission of some crime.

We hold that man cannot, consistently with reason, religion, and the eternal and immutable principles of justice, be the property of man.