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

[177] colored people needed no instruction from him: for, more than thirteen years before they heard of him, they resisted the blandishments of the Colonization Society. It was notorious that the Belknap-Street Church was deserted because of dissensions since the death of their late pastor; to say nothing of the increase in colored churches.¹

The colored people were not slow in answering on their own behalf the Spectator's calumnies, and reaffirming² their love for their champion. Meanwhile, after two absurdly small and incoherent gatherings, chiefly ³ derived from the congregations of Fitch and Towne, these appellants again linked their names together at the head of a list of forty-eight signers of a call to form a New⁴ England Anti-Slavery Society auxiliary to the American. They professed not to assume a hostile attitude towards any existing organizations, being bent on uniting such persons as had serious objections to joining these, growing out of attacks on the churches, the Sabbath, the ministry, etc. Deacon Gulliver had all ready a constitution with a ‘Whereas, we believe that the promotion and⁵ speedy triumph of the cause of emancipation, and the prosperity of evangelical religion, demand a new organization’; and with an evangelical test of membership. But these Lilliputian proceedings had now ceased to have much interest for Mr. Garrison.⁶

In his first issue for November, he met the disquietude⁷ of friends like Whittier, whom the publication of Noyes's ‘sectarian’ letter had caused to write an open expression of regret that the Massachusetts Society was⁸ pecuniarily responsible for a paper not under its control. The editor announced that this responsibility would terminate with the current volume, and as he had not suggested or requested it, so he would not consent to its renewal. ‘We have had no ulterior views to promote under the guise of abolition, nor have we covertly intended to alter the character and object of the Liberator; and we should deserve to be universally despised if we ’