W. L. Garrison to G. W. Benson, at Brooklyn.
I am somewhat apprehensive that this hasty scrawl will not1 meet your eye as promptly as I could wish; for the time is close at hand for holding our State quarterly meeting, which is to decide whether our sacred enterprise shall continue under the management of its old and tried friends, or be given up to the control of politicians and sectarists. I hope you are at home, so that you may know promptly that it is the earnest wish of myself, and others around me, that you would be present with us in this last and most important crisis. You think of coming to Boston in April. Now, just alter your arrangements so as to be with us next Tuesday. Don't fail, for ordinary reasons,2 I pray you. As goes Massachusetts, so go the free States. By one united, vigorous effort, at this time, I am persuaded we shall succeed in utterly discomfiting all insidious plotters— but the least holding back, on our part, will prove fatal. I want to see you particularly in regard to the expediency of publishing the Cradle of Liberty, which you saw noticed as forthcoming in the last Liberator.3 We shall issue a specimen4 number in season for the quarterly meeting next week, and then determine at once as to the course it may be proper to pursue. I have some misgivings on the subject. It may look like a mere personal contest for patronage, though not so intended by myself. Again—I am fearful that for us to afford a weekly paper, of the size of the Abolitionist, for 50 cents a year, containing the cream of the anti-slavery matter in the Liberator, will injure the subscription of our paper. Our
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1 Ms. Boston.
2 March 26, 1839.
3 The issue of this sheet was announced to be weekly at 75 cents per annum, or in large quantities at 50 cents, the contents being principally selections from the anti-slavery department of the Liberator, under Mr. Garrison's editorial supervision. The first number bore date of Saturday, March 23, 1839. A cut of Faneuil Hall made a pictorial heading. The motto was from John Adams: ‘Great is Truth—Great is Liberty—Great is Humanity; and They must and will Prevail.’ The salutatory spoke of this journal as an experiment for the benefit of those who were too poor to take the Liberator, or who craved a paper exclusively devoted to the subject of slavery; not as intended to be a substitute for the Liberator, or to interfere with it in the slightest degree. Its main object was to ‘assist in preserving the integrity of the abolition enterprise in this commonwealth.’ The second number bore date of April 6, after which the Cradle of Liberty appeared weekly, closing its first volume on March 21, 1840, and being finally discontinued with Vol. 2, No. 17, July 18, 1840; the Monthly Offering taking the place of it, with a difference. The size of its printed page was about 11 by 15 1-2 inches.
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