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

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W. L. Garrison to Elizabeth Pease, Darlington, England.

Boston, Sept. 1, 1840.

¹ I find that, during my absence in England, the spirit of ‘new organization’ spared no pains, and let slip no opportunity, to make me odious with the public, and, especially, to alienate the affections of the colored people from me. They well know that, so long as I retain the confidence of my colored friends, all their machinations against me will prove abortive. Thus far, it has only been the viper gnawing against the file. You will see, by the last number of the Liberator, an account of a² great meeting which was held in the Marlboroa Chapel, in this city, by the colored inhabitants, in conjunction with their white friends, in order to give a public welcome to dear Rogers and myself on our return from abroad. It was a most interesting, affecting, and sublime spectacle. We were received with great enthusiasm, and deemed it as great an honor as could be conferred upon us by mortals. I wish you could have looked in at the meeting just at the moment when my estimable and much respected colored friend, John T. Hilton, gave me the right hand of fellowship in the presence of the great assembly, and in the name of the colored citizens of Boston. If you could have seen the fervor of his grasp, and the visible emotions of his soul, you would have concurred with me in opinion, that such a reception would more than compensate for a whole life of toil and sacrifice in behalf of ‘the suffering and the dumb.’ On the preceding evening, a³ meeting was got up by the new organizers for Messrs. Colver⁴ and Galusha, but it did not amount to anything: they were⁵ largely indebted to the friends of the old Society for their audience. Colver was vulgar and abusive, as usual—perhaps rather more so.

A similar public welcome has since been given to me by the⁶ colored inhabitants of Salem, and most delightful it was to my spirit. At the close of my address in their meeting-house, an elegant entertainment was served up in the Masonic Hall, in which some eighty persons, male and female, participated—and at the conclusion of which, highly complimentary speeches were made by a number of white and colored friends. It was, indeed, a joyous occasion. After all the manifestations of gratitude and kindness which have been made towards myself by the colored population of the United States, for so many years past,—to say nothing of the obligations which rest upon