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

[415] be forgotten. Three secretaries were appointed, Elizur Wright, Jr., of Domestic Correspondence, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, of Foreign Correspondence, and Abraham L. Cox, Recording Secretary. William Green, Jr., was made Treasurer. Mr. Garrison did not long retain his office. The managers seem to have expected of him services in the field inconsistent with his editorial career—they even talked of merging the Liberator in the Emancipator.¹ The foreign correspondence itself may have appeared to him unduly burdensome, to say nothing of the vexatious restriction that all his letters must first be submitted to the Executive Committee. He did not covet that (or any other) office, and he seems to have owed it to the wellmeant exertions of his impulsive friend R. B. Hall, who wrote to him from New Haven, under date of January 21, 1834, upon hearing of his resignation:

I will give you succinctly the history of that office. When² the committee to form a constitution at Mr. Sharpless's were about to retire, I had reason to suppose that the form of constitution which they had in their hands provided but one secretary to the Society. I knew, too, what was to be the management about that office—that Mr. Wright was to fill it,³ and thus be the mouth [piece] of all anti-slavery men in the U. S. This did not exactly suit me. I knew your claims,⁴ I knew, too, that you would be placed on the Board of Managers or as a Vice-President—in other words, would be second fiddle—and this did not suit me. I laid hold on the committee, and urged and entreated them to create the office to which you were subsequently appointed. I used all the little influence which I had with them to procure the insertion in the draft of the Constitution of that office, and have reason to suppose that they were influenced by my exertions. I remember distinctly telling them, or some of them, that if there was no office for you to fill, or for which you were calculated, one ought to be and must be made. I regarded the office of Foreign Secretary as one of great importance to our cause.