gained by instruments of death. A higher, anobler a mightier than carnal weapon is placed into our hands—one which hurls defiance at all the improvements of carnal warfare. It is the rightious appeal to the understanding and the heart—with this we can withstand the most firey of all the darts of perdition itself. I see that America is boasting of her naval, and military power—let her boast. She may build her walls and her forts, making them proof against ball, and bomb. But while there is a single voice in her midst to charge home upon her the duty of emancipation neither her army, nor her navy can protect her from the knawing of a guilty concience.
I am travelling in company with my good Friend James N. Buffum. Our meetings here have been of the most soul cheering character. The present position of the free church in Scotland makes it emportant to expend as much labor here as posible. You know they sent delegates to the United States to raise money to build their churches and to pay their ministers—they succeeded in getting about four thousand pounds sterling. Well, our efforts are directed to making them disgourge their ill gotten gain—return it to the Slaveholders. Our rallying cry is “No union with Slaveholders⁶Garrisonians began using the rallying cry “No Union with Slaveholders!” at the 1844 meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society. There, Garrison proposed several resolutions to adopt such a policy. A bitter debate ensued, dividing the convention, but the role passed in a 59 to 21 vote. The motto, often used by Garrison, attracted some sympathetic attention in Scotland and Britain and later appeared on the mastheads of the Anti—Slavery Bugle and the Liberator. At first the idea. signified adherence to a belief that the US. Constitution was a proslavery document, that the Union therefore ought to be dissolved, and that an immediate break from complicity in the nation’s slaveholding was required. With the annexation of Texas, however, and with pressure from political aholitionists. to elaborate on his position, Garrison later associated the slogan with actual plans for secession. Walter M. Merrill, Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 204–14, 255, 269–75; Russell E. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston, 1955), 143; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:96–120; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3:118–21; Thomas, Liberator, 328–59, 374 and send back the bloodstained money.[”]⁷Abolitionists from both the United States and England argued that money donated to the Free Church of Scotland by Presbyterians from the southern states had been earned by the labor of slaves and was therefore tainted with the immorality of slavery. Although the Free Church condemned slavery in theory, its leadership was unwilling to alienate its benefactors in the South. “Send back the money” became the cry of the antislavery advocates in demanding that the Free Church take a stronger stand against slavery. Throughout their winter tour of Scotland in 1846, Douglass and James N. Buffum rallied opponents of both slavery and the Free Church, filling their speeches with the slogan. Although they forced advocates of the Free Church to defend their position, they also alienated the church’s leadership, who did not “send back the money.” A. Allan MacLaren, Religion and Social Class: The Disruption Years in Aberdeen (London, 1974), 29—30; George Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” JNH, 38:314 (July 1953). Under these rallying cries, old Scotland boils like a pot. I half think if the free Church had for a moment supposed that her conduct would have been arragned before the the Scotish people by such th[or]ough Garrisonians as H C. Wright⁸Henry C. Wright James N. Buffum, and myself she would never have taken the money. She thought to get the gold and no body see her. It was a sad mistake. It would indeed be a grand Antislavery triumph if we could get her to send back the money. It would break upon the confounded Slaveholders and their [illegible] like a clap from the sky.—We shall con[tin]ue to deal our blows upon her—crying-out disgorge—disgorge—disgorge your horrid plunder and to this cry thus far the great mass of the people have cried amen, Amen. I have disposed of nearly all the first Edition of my Narrative and am publishing a second which will be out about the sixteenth of february.⁹In late 1845 the Irish printer Richard D. Webb published 2,000 copies of Douglass’s Narra-
tive. By November 1845, 500 copies had sold, and all had been purchased by March 1846. Because of the success of this edition, Webb brought out a second edition in February 1846. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 1:87–88; Foner, Life and Writings, 1:59–62; Harrison, Richard Davis Webb, 50. I realize enough from it to meet my expences. I shall probably remain in Scotland till the middle of march. I shall then proceed to England as I have not yet delivered a single lecture on slavery in that country. It is quite an advantage to be a “nigger’ here. I find I am hardly black enough for british taste, but by keeping my hair as woolly as possible, I make out to pass for at least a half a negro, at any rate. My old Fr[iend] Buffum finds the tables turned upon him here completely, the people lavish nearly all their attention on the negro. I can easily understand that such a state of things would greatly embarrass a person with less sense than he, but he stems the currant thus far