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

[223] Edmund Quincy and Amasa Walker, of Boston, fixed on September 18 as the date, and the Marlboroa Chapel as the place, of holding the proposed convention, to which all were invited without regard to sect or party, and without being committed to any programme. Each of the five committeemen was a ‘Garrisonian abolitionist,’ but they were not equally agreed in their views of peace. ‘You and brother Wright have startled me,’ writes Mr. May to his friend Garrison in July, ‘but I¹ am determined to follow wherever truth may guide. I look forward to the Convention with high expectation. If we do not drive off the timid ones by broaching our ultra doctrines in the beginning, but lead them along through the preliminaries,—getting them to concede certain fundamental truths,—we may at last surprise many into the acknowledgment of a faith from which at first they would revolt.’ By way of preparation, he suggested that Mr. Garrison bring a report on the inquiry ‘whether the principles of Christianity require us even to forgive public criminals, and not put them to death or keep them in prison.’ ‘Brother Wright will prepare one on the inviolability of human life; Quincy, on the right of others, as well as members of the Society of Friends, to have their conscientious scruples respecting military trainings, etc., duly regarded.² Walker will prepare one on military parades and titles. Others have been or will be requested to write on other topics. All this should be inter nos.’

To Mr. Garrison, still at Brooklyn, Edmund Quincy wrote as follows on August 10:

Brother Wright was in town yesterday, and we talked over³ together the approaching Peace Convention and its probable results. The clergy, he tells me, are already preaching against it, the effect of which will probably be the attendance of only