Although it never came together, the attempted organizing of the first ever “World’s Human Rights Convention” was the result of Garrisonians extending their faith in both ‘non-resistence’ and ‘comeouterism’ into the realm of rights. As historian W. Caleb McDaniel has argued, the convention rested on the Garrisonian belief in the degeneracy of nation-states—a conviction that ultimately led Wright to renounce his “nationalism” in favor of the “high and heaven-erected platform of HUMAN BROTHERHOOD” (113-115). The planned convention encapsulates this anti-statist vision for human rights in three important ways. First, the convention was truly global in scope. “Better than Congress of nations, it would be a Congress of humanity,” wrote Maria Weston Chapman in a separate response. Like most Garrisonians, Chapman saw herself as a citizen of the world and viewed the convention as a means of making good on the famous Garrisonian mantra: “Our Country is the world, our Countrymen are all Mankind.”
Second, when it came to human rights, the Garrisonians knew they had to establish a credible foundation before proceeding ahead. This meant deciding not only what human rights were, but inquiring into the “causes of their violation” as well as “the means of their restoration and protection.” Chapman hoped that the convention would eventually become an annual body, and Wright himself imagined that the convention would evolve into a standing tribunal, which would hear and try cases of human rights abuses from around the world. The point is that they imagined the convention as the first step in establishing a global counter to national authority, an institution that might parry away and correct the sins of the state.
Lastly, the Garrisonians made this rejection of state citizenship and national allegiance the central precept behind the entire convention. “In our estimate of man’s relations, rights, duties, and responsibilities, geographical lines and national boundaries must be set aside,” wrote Wright, for as he put it: “Human love is not bounded by longitude or latitude.” Drawing on his commitment to non-resistance, he then went on, “We [the convention] would meet, not as States and nations, to talk about national rights, but as the human race, to consider human rights.” As he explained, he imagined the convention as one where a claim to “HUMANITY” would be the “only certificate of admission, the only wealth, the only badge of honor, the only patent of nobility.” “In the name of humanity,” he concluded in typical Garrisonian gusto, “let us unfurl, in the sight of all nations, the banner of HUMAN RIGHTS…Let us demand an instant, a perfect, practical recognition of human rights and human equality.” He never managed to unfurl this banner on a global stage; Philadelphia was about as far as his message would ever reach.