WILLIAM W. CHAPMAN¹Born in Sherburne, New York, William W. Chapman (1807—?) resided in Minetto, Oswego County. He was active in the later incarnation of the Liberty party, led by Gerrit Smith, and occasionally contributed letters to Frederick Douglass’ Paper. William W. Chapman to Douglass, 31 May, 23 December 1854 in FDP, 9 June 1854, 4 January 1855; James McCune Smith, The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Abolitionist and Intellectual, ed. John Stauffer (New York, 2006), 134. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Minetto, [N.Y.] 18 June 1853.

I have perused with deep interest the “Call for a Colored Convention,"
published in your paper, to be held at Rochester, the 6th of July ensuing.²In an editorial entitled “Call for a Colored National Convention," Douglass invited representatives to convene in Rochester for a national convention for people of color on 6 July 1853. The purpose of the convention was to “confer and deliberate upon their present condition, and upon principles and measures important to their welfare, progress and general improvement.” Interested organizations were urged to appoint and send between one and three delegates to the convention. FDP, 24 June 1853. The principle and design embodied in the notice, with one exception, meet my views and approbation. I should be highly gratified to be present, and
identify myself with the Convention, but for the feature of exclusiveness

which characterizes the invitation. Perhaps I am the only person who feels
embarrassed by it. I call your attention to it, from the fact that it is quite
unlike your former principles, inasmuch as you have frequently com
plained of this element in the palefaced associations and arrangements
of this country, and its deadly influence upon the colored people.—Would
not the attendance and co operation of such men as Goodell, Smith, and
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. ³William Goodell, Gerrit Smith, and William Lloyd Garrison.
have given great and thrilling interest to your deliberations?
Mr. Smith has publicly acknowledged himself a colored man. And many
of us are, nevertheless, assimilated to you by our complexion and sym
pathies; at least, the complexion of our hearts and activities place us in
strong affinity to you. In my communications with mankind, in an associ
ated or individual form, the term color has long since become obsolete.
The barriers and peculiarities attached to nationality and caste must be
sacrificed, ere the blessings of human liberty can be realized by all. Now,
in this anticipated Convention, and in all future efforts, the colored people
must set the example of equality, and establish the rules of affiliation on
their proper basis and abide by them, come what will.
Affectionately, &c.,

W. W. CHAPMAN.

PLSr: FDP, 1 July 1853.