[355]W. L. Garrison to his wife.
New York, May 15, 1840.1 Our campaign has just closed, and a severe siege we have had of it, and a glorious triumph we have achieved. It was our anti-slavery boat-load that saved our Society from falling into the hands of the new-organizers, or, more correctly, disorganizers. They had drummed up recruits from all quarters, by the most dishonorable means, and a formidable appearance they presented at the opening of the meeting on Tuesday. The first subject that came up to try the strength of the parties was the appointment of Abby Kelley on the Business Committee. The vote stood about 560 in her favor to 450 against her. Where these 450 belonged, or who they were, we had no means of ascertaining, because the question was not taken by yeas2 and nays. The minority finally seceded, and formed a society with the title, ‘The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.’ Arthur Tappan declined a re-election, and Lindley Coates, one of the signers of the Philadelphia Declaration of Sentiments,3 was chosen in his stead. Not one of the Executive Committee was re-elected, except James S. Gibbons. We have made clean work of everything—adopted the most thoroughgoing resolutions, and taken the strongest ground, with crashing unanimity. The excitement in the city has been great. The spirit of mobocracy has been roused, in consequence of so many of the ‘Garrison party’ having come from Massachusetts; and our delegation have been driven out of the halls we had engaged,4 and had to go from pillar to post to find a place where to lay their heads. Goss's Graham House has been assailed by a5 mob, several windows broken, the door burst open, etc., etc.; though not many were engaged in this work of mischief. What particularly excited these ‘lewd fellows of the baser sort’ was, the mixing of our white and colored friends on terms of equality. One of our friends from Oberlin was severely injured. As Rogers and myself have been stopping with our colored6 friend Van Rensalaer,7 we have seen nothing of the mobocrats. It has not amounted to anything like a popular tumult. . . .
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[355]
1 Friday afternoon. Ms.
3 This statement is erroneous. Mr. Coates's name was not subscribed to the Declaration.
5 63 Barclay Street.
7 N. P. Rogers reports (in Herald of Freedom, 6.126): ‘At the National Meeting in May, Thomas Van Rensalaer opened his heart and his home in New York to brother Garrison and us, without money and without price. He had no house there, where he could do for us as he wished to do. His table, in his victualling cellar, was abundant and excellent—too good, “if anything,” for an abolitionist. Our noble-hearted colored friend bade us welcome to it, and treated us with all the kindness and affection of a brother. As his table was underground, his lodging was far above ground. He had not his New Haven dwelling in New York. Such as he had there, he generously provided for us. He made us a “nest on high.” Not so high as his own—but still in the 3d or 4th story of a Wall Street cotton storehouse. There we lodged with the “Liberator,” Henry C. Wright and Geo. Benson of Connecticut,— “on the soft side” of the best accommodations at friend Van Rensalaer's command, and as good as we required,—better far than our poor plantation clients share. Brother Van Rensalaer would have gladly furnished us all a bed of down. We could not pass over the circumstance unnoticed, that the great anti-slavery city of New York, the headquarters of the American Anti-Slavery Society, before the anti-slavery “property and standing” seceded from it, while they were yet in its bosom, —where there is a City Anti-Slavery Society—the place of the Tappans and the Jays—that it had not a place for Wm. Lloyd Garrison to lay his head, below that cotton loft. We trust our new-organized brother Jonathan Curtis had snugger quarters. We take this late opportunity of acknowledging, too, the kind hospitality of Thomas Truesdell and family, who gave us, with brother Garrison, the shelter of his beautiful home on Brooklyn Heights, from the close of the meeting until the departure of our vessel for England.’ (See also Lib. 10: 87.)
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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