FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO THE SECRETARY OF THE EDINBURGH LADIES’ NEW ANTI-SLAVERY ASSOCIATIONEdinburgh Ladies' New Anti-Slavery Association

Founded in 1856, the Edinburgh Ladies’ New Anti-Slavery Association was an active abolitionist society in Scotland for ten years. Though the name contained the word “new,” the association was one of many in Edinburgh during the mid-nineteenth century. For several years the association held bazaars to raise funds for the abolitionist cause. After one such bazaar in 1857, the association sent 30 percent of the proceeds to Frederick Douglass in America, and 40 percent to aid fugitive slaves through American abolitionist societies. The remainder supported the organization’s continued existence. Its guiding motto was “Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.” Although the organization identified itself as a “ladies” association, its prime benefactors were men. The society disbanded in 1866 and recorded the final distribution of its remaining funds. BFASR, 5:279 (December 1857), 14:86 (February 1866). ¹Founded in 1856, the Edinburgh Ladies’ New Anti-Slavery Association was an active abolitionist society in Scotland for ten years. Though the name contained the word “new,” the association was one of many in Edinburgh during the mid-nineteenth century. For several years the association held bazaars to raise funds for the abolitionist cause. After one such bazaar in 1857, the association sent 30 percent of the proceeds to Frederick Douglass in America, and 40 percent to aid fugitive slaves through American abolitionist societies. The remainder supported the organization’s continued existence. Its guiding motto was “Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.” Although the organization identified itself as a “ladies” association, its prime benefactors were men. The society disbanded in 1866 and recorded the final distribution of its remaining funds. , 5:279 (December 1857), 14:86 (February 1866).

Rochester. N.Y. [9] July [1857.]

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE EDINBURGH NEW ANTI-SLAVERY ASSOCIATION

DEAR MADAM:

Your note of june third²This correspondence has not survived. has been received. I beg in response to it, to thank the members of the Edinburgh New Anti Slavery association for the donation of five pounds in aid of the publication of my Anti-Slavery paper. Please assure the association that I also feel deeply grateful for the kind co-operation extended to my zealous and untiring friend Miss Griffiths³Julia Griffiths.—who has labored very earnestly both here and in Great Britain to place my Anti Slavery paper on a firm and permanent basis. I much fear that these exertions, of hers have been greatly beyond her Strength, but that She is, now Seriously Suffering the Consequences of over taxed persons. I am really indebted to Miss Griffiths for these voluntary—and disinterested exertions and am deeply grateful to those dear people who aided and cheered her on in those exertions. I the more especially, Speak of the of Miss Griffiths, because evel minded persons, I learn, have insinuated that Miss G. is receiving donations in my name for her own benefit. There is no truth in this inSinuation or charge. All all donations made through her for the paper—or for the Fugitive fund—come directly and unfailingly to those objects.

You need not be told that we have not the friendship of Mr 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. and his friends either in this Country or in England. They have carried on the war against me with no delicate regard to the means. I am not Sure that I am more obnoxious to them than is Miss Griffiths. Indeed they regard my repudiation of their religious or irreligious teaching to her influence. I am hated not as an apostate from the Anti Slavery Cause—for all know that I am, as faithful to that Cause as I ever was, but I am an apostate from Garrisonism—an “ism’”—which comprehends, opposition to the Church; the ministry, the Sabbath, and the Government as Institutions in themselves conSidered—and viewed a part from the question of Slavery. I am opposed to them at these points—and could not Send my humble influence to the spread of Such opinions in the name of the Slave or his cause. No persecution which I have received causes me any regret for the Course I have felt my duty to pursue.

I have nothing new—(or that you will not get through public channels) to tell you about the present prospect of our Cause. My speech at New York⁴Douglass probably alludes to his address on the Dred Scott decision, delivered in New York City in May 1857 before a meeting of the American Abolition Society. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:163–83.—which I hope may have met your eye states my views of the present aspects of our cause. I am now at work less under the influence orinspiration of hope—than the Settled assurances of faith in God—and the ultimate triumph of Rightiousness in the world. The cause of the Slave is a rightious and humane one—and I believe precious in the Sight of Heaven. Though long delayed, it will triumph at last.

Please excuse this short epistle—

Write me when ever you may desire any information I can give—
I am Dear Madam, With grateful Regards to the Edinburgh new A.S. association— With great Respect, Yours &c.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 661–63, FD Papers, DLC.