He was also a fierce abolitionist, an inflammatory impresario of dramatic protests in which he rebuked the Friends for owning slaves. Even as they sat beside him in the meetinghouse, he sprayed them with red pokeberry juice to symbolize the spilled blood of their human chattel. He stood outside in the snow without coat and shoes, chiding them for making Africans toil in rags in winter's throes. During a speech at a Philadelphia market, he smashed cups as a reminder that forced labor had provided the sugar for their spot of tea.