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

[294] believe that either the cause of the slave, or the cause of peace and righteousness, has been advanced. I hope and pray that the result of the meeting at New York may be better than I fear.

Why will you not come to Scituate after you return from New York, and spend a few days with me—lecture once in each part of the town—and give me an opportunity to converse with you upon the above-named and upon several other topics that are deeply interesting to us?

In the same sense, Mr. May wrote to Henry C. Wright, on the day following, adding:¹

It is hard and it is painful to me to refuse your urgent solicitation to attend the anniversary meeting of the American A. S. Society. . . . The reason that you urge for my attendance does not weigh with me. If the American Society sees fit to vote that those of us who cannot go to the polls are not qualified to be members, let it. Such a vote will not deaden my sympathy with the slave. It will not change my opinion or alter my course. I joined the Society not with any thought of making it the keeper of my conscience, or the guide of my actions, but in the belief that those of us who thought alike on this momentous subject, might effect more by our joint than by individual effort. I supposed the platform of the Society to be broad enough to sustain all, as fellow-laborers, who believe in the sinfulness of slaveholding and the duty of immediate emancipation, and who are disposed to labor in the use of moral means, to enforce upon slaveholders the duty of giving liberty to their captives without delay. I never dreamt that the Constitution was intended to enforce upon all the members of the Society any particular kind of action (excepting only moral action), but that it left every one to contribute his aid to the common cause in the way he himself believed to be best. If I have been mistaken, all I have to do is to labor as I may single-handed, or look about me for those who are willing to unite with me, and co-operate on some broad principle, that will not require any one to violate his individual convictions of right.

From Providence, on May 5, Mr. Garrison, in the best of spirits from his successful campaign, wrote to his wife: ‘Birney is out, in the last Emancipator, with a² ’