[169] distrust between you and the abolitionists. . . . Let the Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood alone for the present, and with my good will you may grind every one of them to powder who brings his popery to sustain the slaveholder. Let the government alone, till, such as it is, all are equally protected by it, and after that you may work your will upon it, for all me. But if all this cannot be done, why, come out plainly, and say you have left the old track and are started on a new one—or, rather, two or three new ones at once, and save us from the miserable business of making disclaimers.1 I cannot but regard the Boston controversy as wrong, wrong, wrong, on both sides. If strict military justice were done, I am thinking both parties would be cashiered!If our dear bro. E. Wright can scribble in the foregoing strain, what have we to expect from other members of the Executive Committee?—I have a letter from Lewis Tappan,2 in which he says— ‘I deeply regretted seeing the Clerical Appeal; but after its publication, my own judgment would have been in favor of a short, well-tempered, dignified, Christ-like reply [thus insinuating that neither brother Phelps nor myself have exhibited any of these qualities!] Your reply to Woodbury pained me exceedingly. It was beneath you in very many respects. Without enlarging, I consider the whole proceedings most unwise and hurtful. The Executive Committee determined on maintaining silence, at least for the present, and they approve the course pursued by the editor of the Emancipator. They will not be deterred from what they deem their duty. They neither approve of the Appeal nor of the replies, but lament the whole. . . . Candor induces me to say, that, in my judgment, objectionable things have appeared in the Liberator, and they have been discussed, at times, with an appearance of acrimony. Questions have been mooted that had better not have been discussed, and language has sometimes been used not in accordance ’
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1 Mr. Wright was not quite so frank to Mr. Garrison as to Mr. Phelps, to whom, on Oct. 26, 1837, he wrote: ‘I have just received a letter from Garrison which confirms my fears that he has finished his course for the slave. At any rate, his plan of rescuing the slave by the destruction of human laws is fatally conflictive with ours. Only one of them can lead to any good result. Still, if he would run up his perfection flag, so that abolitionists might see what they are driving at, shouting for him, he would not do us much hurt. I have conjured him to do so. Honesty requires it of him’ (2d Annual Report Mass. Abolition Society, in Free American, 3.57).
2 Evidently the one to which that just quoted in full was supplementary.
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