In small towns they were listened to with only occasional catcalls and boos of disapproval, but in every city from Buffalo to Albany the mobs broke up their meetings. Even in Rochester, which had never before shown open hostility to abolitionists, Susan's banner, "No Union with Slaveholders" was torn down and a restless audience hissed her as she opened her meeting and drowned out the speakers with their shouting and stamping until at last the police took over and escorted the speakers home through the jeering crowds.
All but Susan now began to question the wisdom of holding more meetings, but her determination to continue, and to assert the right of free speech, shamed her colleagues into acquiescence. Cayenne pepper, thrown on the stove, broke up their meeting at Port Byron. In Rome, rowdies bore down upon Susan, who was taking the admission fee of ten cents, brushed her aside, "big cloak, furs, and all,"[128] and rushed to the platform where they sang, hooted, and played cards until the speakers gave up in despair. Syracuse, well known for its tolerance and pride in free speech, now greeted them with a howling drunken mob armed with knives and pistols and rotten eggs. Susan on the platform courageously faced their gibes until she and her companions were forced out into the street. They then took refuge in the home of fellow-abolitionists while the mob dragged effigies of Susan and Samuel J. May through the streets and burned them in the square.
Not even this kept Susan from her last advertised meeting in Albany where Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Gerrit Smith, and Frederick Douglass joined her. Here the Democratic mayor, George H. Thatcher, was determined to uphold free speech in spite of almost overwhelming opposition, and calling at the Delavan House for the abolitionists, safely escorted them to their hall. Then, with a revolver across his knees, he sat on the platform with them while his policemen, scattered through the hall, put down every disturbance; but at the end of the day, he warned Susan that he could no longer hold the mob in check and begged her as a personal favor to him to call off the rest of the meetings. She consented, and under his protection the intrepid little group of abolitionists walked back to their hotel with the mob trailing behind them.