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[338] Very, very highly do I prize this volume, not only because of the merit of its pages, but also because you have presented it to me. To be numbered by William Lloyd Garrison among his friends is one of my highest gratifications and honors.

I went to Syracuse to spend several hours with our friend May and other abolitionists in talking about the Jerry Indictments. S. J. May. I take a deep interest in them; and I entertain a strong hope that no little gain to the cause of Liberty will come from them.


The volume of ‘Selections’ referred to by Mr. Smith was a duodecimo of somewhat more than four hundred pages, consisting of extracts from the “Thoughts on1 Colonization,” the antecedent Park-Street Church address,2 and from addresses to the colored people; the Liberator3 salutatory; the Declaration of Sentiments of the4 American Anti-Slavery Society, and of the American Peace5 Convention; a Short catechism adapted to all parts of6 the United States;7 and many editorial articles on Peace, the Bible, the Constitution, etc., from the Liberator's twenty-one volumes, together with the best of Mr. Garrison's verse. The letter to Peleg Sprague was not omitted,8 and the Appendix contained a portion of Sprague's Faneuil9 Hall speech, the account of the Boston mob of October 21,10 1835, written by its victim, Thompson's letter addressed to him on the day following, and sundry proofs of the11 character of the Colonization Society. The title-page bore these lines from Coleridge's “Fears in Solitude” :

O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed;
For never can true courage dwell with them
Who, playing tricks with Conscience, dare not look
At their own vices.

1 Ante, 1.290.

2 Ante, 1.127.

3 Ante, 1.256, 285.

4 Ante, 1.224.

5 Ante, 1.408.

6 ante, 2.230.

7 E. g. ‘1. Why is American slaveholding not in all cases sinful?—Because its victims are black. 2. Why is gradual emancipation right?— Because the slaves are black. 3. Why is immediate emancipation wrong, dangerous, impracticable?—Because the slaves are black,’ etc.

8 Ante, 1.505.

9 Ante, 1.496.

10 Ante, 2.11.

11 Ante, 1.297.

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