Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

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W. L. Garrison to Thomas Shipley, at Philadelphia.

Brooklyn, December 17, 1835.

¹ Be assured that I am deeply affected in view of the sympathy and regard which some of my beloved friends in Philadelphia have recently manifested for me, especially on account² of my ill-treatment by an infuriated mob, a few weeks since. Among their names I was truly gratified to see that of Thomas³ Shipley, whose labors in the cause of bleeding humanity have been so indefatigable, so disinterested, and, in a multitude of cases, so abundantly successful. I am young in the service, you are old; and if, since our acquaintance happily commenced, we have not always seen precisely alike as to the best mode of advancing the sacred cause of liberty, yet our principles have run pari passu, and our hearts beat spontaneously together.

It is cheering to see that the unsophisticated disciples of Christ, and the true friends of emancipation, are beginning to see and feel and act alike, as it respects both principles and measures. They would have coalesced much earlier, had the same horrible developments of Southern and Northern sentiments, which now affright them by their enormity, been made at an earlier period. Now that it is proclaimed from the high⁴ places of power, that ‘domestic slavery is the corner-stone of our republican edifice’; now that the punishment of death is denounced against those who shall plead for emancipation, whether immediate or ultimate; now that the ‘self-evident truths’ of the Declaration of Independence are religiously declared to be mere ‘rhetorical flourishes’; now that churches, and presbyteries, and synods are impiously voting that slavery⁵ is divinely sanctioned, and may properly be perpetuated; now