For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

WE MUST UNITE.
—

LONG ISLAND, April 26, 1854.

BROTHER DOUGLASS:—Yes; we who are the friends of the slave must unite. Our hearts must be united against that climax of abominations—American Slavery. We must abhor it, because it is iniquitous. Being thus in heart, one on the subject, we shall find ways enough to manifest our feelings by actions which will evince unity, the power of which the oppressor will feel.

Where we cannot agree to work together, we must each take our own course energetically, peacefully and cheerfully. In this way we shall sustain fully our own individuality, and shall also illustrate the truth of the old maxim, "UNION IS STRENGTH."

The rock on which we are most in danger of making shipwreck, is the question about the constitutionality of slavery. Wm. L. GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. , W. PhillipsPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. , Esq., Mrs. H. B. StoweStowe, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811–96), the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and a member of the outspoken Beecher family, began writing early in life and pioneered the use of slang and regional dialects in her works. Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin remains the most famous of Stowe’s writings, she published a number of others widely read in the nineteenth century, including a novel on slavery Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), Little Foxes (1866), and My Wife and I; or Harry Henderson's History (1871). Stowe never spoke publicly on behalf of abolition, but her name was one of those most closely associated with the cause because of the overwhelming international popularity of these novels. She and Douglass continued to correspond after this letter, meeting for the first time in 1853. Although he criticized her for advocating colonization and for failing to donate proceeds from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the antislavery cause, to which she responded with a less than enlightened attitude, she defended him against Garrison. Catherine Gilbertson, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York, 1937); Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (New York, 1994); Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Philadelphia, 1941); Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe; Stowe, Life and Letters , Rev. S. J. MayMay, Samuel Joseph

Samuel Joseph May (1797-1871) mixed abolitionism with a variety of other humanitarian concerns during his long career as a Unitarian clergyman. Boston-born and Harvard-educated, May studied theology at Harvard Divinity School and was ordained in 1822. During his forty-year ministry he championed such causes as temperance, women's rights, pacifism, universal education, and abolitionism. Originally a supporter of African colonization, May joined the abolitionist ranks in 1830, supported Prudence Crandall's efforts to establish a school for black youths in 1833, and enjoyed a long tenure as an agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. During the 1840s and 1850s he helped many fugitive slaves reach Canada; in 1851 he helped rescue Jerry McHenry from slave catchers inSyracuse, New York. After the Civil War he worked with black colleagues such as Jermain W. Loguen and Douglass to fight racial segregation in New York schools. Donald Yacovone, Samuel Joseph May and the Dilemmas of the Liberal Persuasion, 1797-1871 (Philadelphia, 1991); Pease and Pease, Bound with Them in Chains, 276-307; NCAB, 2:313; DAB, 12:447-48. , C. C. BurleighBurleigh, Charles Calistus

Charles Calistus Burleigh (1810-78) was born in Plainfield, Connecticut, and received his early schooling at Plainfield Academy. He had begun to study the law when an attack he published on the Connecticut "Black Law" attracted the attention of abolitionist Samuel J. May. Through May, Burleigh was offered the editorship of the Unionist, a new antislavery paper financed by Arthur Tappan. Burleigh was instrumental in protecting William Lloyd Garrison from a mob in Boston in October 1835, and shortly thereatler became a regular contributor to the Liberator. In the late 1830s Burleigh became one of the editors of the Pennsylvania Freeman, later the organ of the Eastern Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Active in a number of reform movements, Burleigh plunged into the antisabbatarian campaign after he was arrested in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1847 for selling antislavery literature on Sunday. In 1845 he published a pamphlet, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, condemning capital punishment. He participated in the woman suffrage conventions in Cleveland and New York City in 1854, and the American Equal Rights Association meeting in 1867. In the 1870s he joined his brother, William Henry, in the campaign for temperance reform. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vols. (Rochester, 1881-1922), 1:148-51; C. B. Galbreath, "Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 30: 389-91 (October 1921); ACAB, 1:455; DAB, 3:284-85. , Lucy StoneStone, Lucy

Lucy Stone (1818-93) was emerging as one of the leading abolitionist and feminist orators of the day. Born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Francis Stone, a wealthy farmer, and Hannah Matthews Stone. At sixteen, when her father refused to finance her college education, primarily because she was a woman, Lucy decided to teach in the local school and save money. For brief periods she attended Quaboag Seminary in Warren, Massachusetts, the Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and Oberlin College, from which she was graduated in 1847. That same year Stone gave her first public address on women's rights from the pulpit of her brother, William Bowman Stone, at Gardner, Massachusetts, and in 1848 she began to lecture regularly for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1850 she was instrumental in launching the annual National Woman's Rights Conference, first held at Worcester, Massachusetts, and she helped pay for the publication of its proceedings. In May 1855 she married fellow reformer Henry Blackwell but continued to use her family name. In the 1860s Stone was one of the founders of the New England Woman Rights Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1870 she raised money for the founding of the Woman's Journal, and in 1872 she and her husband became its coeditors. Stanton, History of Woman Suffrage, 1:260-62; Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Women's Rights (Norwood, Mass., 1930); ACAB, 5:702-03; NCAB, 29:128; DAB, 17:80-81; NAW, 3:387-90. , and many others equally earnest and honest in their battle for liberty, consider the Constitution as pro-slavery.

Lysander Spooner, Esq., Wm. Goodell, Hon. Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. , S. R. Ward, Frederick Douglass, &c., consider the Constitution as a noble anti-slavery document. Anti-slavery people are ranging themselves on one side or the other of this great question. Let us be as zealous as we please in this investigation—only treat each other fairly and kindly. We will now attempt to state a union platform. It is this, namely:—We fully avow our deep conviction, that on whatever human document the demands of slavery are found, however strongly expressed, and however long and extensively revered, we are under no obligation to obey those demands. Here is where we can meet and heartily shake hands—and unite our hands on most glorious deeds.

Claiming this as union ground, we can send out tracts, sustain newspapers and lecturers, and come up to the "Jerry level."—We can help the fugitive on his way, and thank God that S. R. Ward has raised some funds to help the lover of liberty when he gets to Canada, and can express our gratitude by adding more to those funds from our own purse, if we have any cash in it—also by our influence with those who have this world's goods.

But how shall we manage to vote together at the next Presidential election? Our union platform is broad and firm enough for that action. S. J. May has indicated his readiness to vote for a man who gives a thorough anti-slavery construction to the Constitution—well he may—for his oath to support the Constitution, is an oath to war against slavery. He who calls the Constitution pro-slavery, yet repudiates those insolent demands, is worthy of our vote. Here is union in voting.

Yours,

J. R. JOHNSONJohnson, James Rawson

Probably the frequent correspondent of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, James Rawson Johnson, an African American abolitionist from Syracuse, New York. Johnson was a supporter of the Liberty party and the religious abolitionist cause, as well as hydropathy. FDP, 26 June, 11 September, 9 October 1851, 1 January, 12, 26 February, 25 March, 8 April, 20 May, 9 July, 15 October 1852; DouglassPapers, ser. 3, 1:582-84, 587-88, 590-92, 596, 599. .