Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher to W. L. Garrison.

Brooklyn, Oct. 20, 1852.
¹ W. L. Garrison.

Dear Sir: Will you send me the Liberator? How far I do, and how far I do not, sympathize with the principles which lie at the bottom of your course, you know as well as I. But allow me to express my conviction of the earnestness, sincerity, and thorough honesty which have marked your course. I wish the Liberator because it is one of the few papers in which I can find a fair republication of the sentiments of those who do not agree, as well as a representation of the views of those who do agree, with you.

I am, very truly yours,

H. W. Beecher.

I will call and pay you when I am next in Boston, which will be in about six weeks.

Up to the appearance of “Uncle Tom,” the orthodox opponents of Mr. Garrison who could not approve the Almighty's selecting an ‘infidel’ instrumentality to effect the overthrow of slavery, saved appearances by alleging that (in the language of H. W. Beecher himself) he “did not create the anti-slavery spirit of the North: he was simply the offspring of it.” Lib. 20.203.² Now, from antedating him, they made bold to throw him out altogether, and to ascribe to the wife of Professor Stowe and the daughter of³ Dr. Lyman Beecher the evangelical Christian origin of emancipation in the United States. It would be idle to discuss the question thus raised, but it is curious to estimate the real effect of Mrs. Stowe's moving tale on its hundreds of thousands of readers among her own countrymen. It undoubtedly stimulated imaginations of the lower order which could not, merely from the given relation