I was very sorry to leave Boston, week before last, not1 having called to see Helen and her mother. But every hour2 of my time was occupied, excepting Friday afternoon; and then, on my way to your house, I met Stanton and St. Clair, and entered into conversation with them about the wretched state of our anti-slavery society, and was detained two hours. Pray give my love to your wife and to her mother, and tell them I hope never again to be so near without seeing them. In the stage which brought me home, I found Bro. Whiting,3 and from him I learnt that you had returned to Boston. And on my desk I found two letters inviting me to meet you at Plymouth. Since then I have seen several Plymouth people, and from all have learnt that the effect of your lectures and conversations there was excellent. Bro. Briggs4 has become deeply interested in the cause. Robert B. Hall's wisdom seems to be turned away backwards.5 But I am told he has not so completely lost his senses as to maintain that the colonization plan can ever effect the abolition of slavery. I now think I shall not go to New York next week. In the first place, I cannot afford the expense. . . . But I confess, I do not lament my inability to go so much as I should do if the prospect of an agreeable meeting was fairer. I am apprehensive that it will be not so much an anti-slavery as an antiGar-rison and anti-Phelps meeting, or an anti-Board-of-Managers and anti-Executive-Committee meeting. Division has done its work, I fear, effectually. The two parties seem to me to misunderstand, and therefore sadly misrepresent, one another. I am not satisfied with the course you and your partizans have pursued. It appears to me not consistent with the nonresist-ant, patient, long-suffering spirit of the Gospel. And I do not
This text is part of:
[293]
the enemies of the Liberator and the Board; and closed his labors in Rhode Island, on the eve of embarking for New York, whither the scene of conflict next shifted.
On May 1, Samuel J. May wrote (‘with unabated affection’) from South Scituate as follows:
1 Ms.
3 Nathaniel H. Whiting, appointed to lecture in the Old Colony (Lib. 9.66).
4 George Ware Briggs, Unitarian clergyman at Plymouth.
5 As early as July, 1837, it was apparent that Mr. Hall's clericalism had got the better of his abolitionism. On the 23d of that month, he refused to read a notice of an anti-slavery lecture, by A. A. Phelps, from the pulpit he was temporarily occupying in Cambridgeport, Mass., on the ground that the regular pastor had refused to do the same (Lib. 7.123). This sin was now doubtless forgiven him by Phelps.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.