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

[282] of the doctrine of immediate emancipation, and, as a corollary, with a denunciation of the aims and methods of the Colonization Society; and concluded with a warning to those who would temporize with slavery, of the danger of slave insurrections.

Of the seventy-two names appended, mostly in autograph, to the Constitution in the Society's records, perhaps a quarter were those of colored men, some of whom were barely able to write. The local membership was at the outset considerably smaller than the total just given. Such was the body pitted against the American Colonization Society, against (as events proved) the American Church, against the American Union. Its first action, at a meeting held in the Liberator office, was to instruct the Board of Managers to memorialize Congress for the abolition of slavery ‘in the District of Columbia and in the Territories of the United States under their jurisdiction,’ and to begin the work of popular agitation by preparing the Address above cited and procuring the delivery of another by its president, Arnold Buffum. In due course it had standing committees to assist in placing colored lads at trades, and to endeavor to get colored children into the public schools; to improve the existing schools for colored children and to build up others; and to inquire into all cases of inhabitants of New England who might be kidnapped, and take the necessary steps to procure their liberation at the Society's expense.¹ It considered a memorial for the repeal of § 7 of the Act of² 1786, prohibiting the intermarriage of blacks and whites; sought to find support for a free-produce grocery in Boston; and resolved to undertake to raise $50,000 toward establishing a manual-labor school for colored youth, through solicitations ‘both in England and America.’ Mr. Garrison's motions, as preserved in the³