Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

[283] records, looked to the preparation for the annual meeting in 1833 of reports on the foreign and domestic slave trade, on colonization, on the condition of the free people of color at large, on slavery in the United States and in the District; and to the despatch of an agent through the New England towns to deliver addresses and make collections on behalf of the Society. By his motion, too, Wilberforce and Clarkson were elected honorary members of the Society. On several of the important committees already enumerated, and on others pertaining to practical management and efficient propagandism, his name is to be found; and when the Society, which had begun by declaring the Liberator its official organ, towards the close of the year concluded that a monthly publication would better serve that purpose, he was one of three nominated by the Board to superintend the publication of it. In these and in other ways to be considered presently, he helped justify the Society's declaration in the first number of the Abolitionist, that, ‘probably, through¹ its instrumentality, more public addresses on the subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people of color, have been made in New England, during the past year [1832], than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization.’

At the monthly meeting in May, Mr. Garrison was appointed a delegate to represent the Society at the second annual Convention of the People of Color, to be held in Philadelphia during the next fortnight; and having accepted an invitation to be the guest of Robert Purvis²³ during his stay in that city, he set out on the first of June, leaving his paper in the friendly charge of Messrs.⁴ Lewis and Coffin. His part in the Convention consisted chiefly in opposition to colonization; Mr. Gurley, the Secretary of the Colonization Society, having made a speech on the second day, to which Mr. Garrison made⁵ an immediate and effective rejoinder. Fragments of an address which the latter delivered at the close of the Convention