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

[335] before the meeting. Dear George, you see how I am situated: therefore, apologize for my absence to the friends at Hartford. If I can possibly get time, I mean to write a letter to Cowles,¹ to be read at the meeting—but it is doubtful whether I shall succeed. I will do the best I can, and who can do more? Do not fail to be at the meeting yourself, and save Connecticut abolitionism from the political gulf which yawns to devour. And by all means be at our annual meeting on the 22d, if possible: we shall need your presence on many accounts.

Somehow Mr. Garrison contrived to write his report in time to be partly read, and to be cordially received.² It embodied a letter of the Massachusetts Board, dated³ December 6, 1839, declining to come to the aid of the New York Executive Committee in its financial strait. The Society endorsed this refusal, and further declined to accept the Massachusetts apportionment made at the futile meeting of January 15, 1840, towards covering the⁴ Committee's liabilities.

If the resolutions on the death of Lundy and the⁵ awful destruction of Dr. Charles Follen⁶ gave a peculiar solemnity to the occasion, those which welcomed back the penitent author of the following letter (it was Mr. Garrison himself who reported them) inspired a cheerful thanksgiving. Its recipient had read it ‘with a⁷ thrill of sacred joy’:

Rev. Charles Fitch to W. L. Garrison.

Newark, Jan. 9, 1840.

⁸ Dear Sir: Herewith I attempt the discharge of a duty to which I doubt not that I am led by the dictates of an enlightened conscience, and by the influences of the Spirit of God. I have been led, of late, to look over my past life, and to inquire what I would think of past feelings and actions, were I to behold Jesus Christ in the clouds of heaven, coming to judge the world, and to establish His reign of holiness and righteousness and blessedness over the pure in heart. From such an