For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

HOWARD CLARKSON BLISS.

"In his infancy, we dedicated our little boy to
the cause of the Slave, and he has given early
promise that our hopes concerning him shall not
be disappointed,"—.

Tender mother, touched with the deep suffering
of God's poor: stalwart father, the successful
tiller of hundreds of broad acres, the sagacious
planter of trees, where trees alone are
needed to make earth a Paradise; both plentifully
endowed with this world's goods, the best
of which is an improvable future, room for earnest
toil, with toil's sweetest rewards—then have
a man-child born unto them!

There beckon on in this babe's rosy future,
hundreds, perhaps thousands more of broad
acres, the cattle upon a thousand rolling hillocks,
and a horizon-scope of fields on which
wave the golden corn; there also beckon on so—
dear to the American heart—county Clerkships,
Lieutenant Governorship, the Governorship,
Congress, the Senate, and crowning the Gorgeous
Vision, the PRESIDENCY: all white parents
in the land may dream this dream of their new
born white male children:

But, tender mother, touched with the deep
sufferings of God's poor, and stalwart father
away out in the golden fields of Illinois. "In
his infancy dedicate their little boy to the cause
of the slave," in a way whose simplicity is worthy
of the Primeval Time, and in words that
have awakened a dawn of hope in at least one
weary heart.

There is no need to conceal the fact that
nearly all the strong men, of true Anti-Slavery
faith, have entered or passed the age of the
greatest intellectual energy. Goodell, 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. ,
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. , and the Tappans,

Par nobile fratrum,
and Jocelyn, and Purvis, and Remond, and
Francis JacksonJackson, Francis

A leading figure among Boston Garrisonians, Francis Jackson (1789-1861) was president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1837 until his death and secretary of the Boston Vigilance Committee in the 1850s. He presided over the 1841 Nantucket convention where Douglass launched his abolitionist career. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Jackson moved to Boston as a young man to become a prosperous merchant and minor city government official. Jackson's considerable wealth was frequently put at Garrison's disposal to keep the Liberator in print. Lib., 22 November 1861; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 128-31; ACAB, 3:386; NCAB, 2:318. A leading figure among Boston Garrisonians, Francis Jackson (1789–1861) was president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1837 until his death and secretary of the Boston Vigilance Committee in the 1850s. He presided over the 1841 Nantucket convention where Douglass launched his abolitionist career. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Jackson moved to Boston as a young man to become a prosperous merchant and minor city government official. Jackson’s considerable wealth was frequently put at Garrison's disposal to keep the Liberator in print. Lib., 22 November 1861; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 128-31; ACAB, 3:386; NCAB, 2:318. , and Macfarland, must, in the

course of nature, soon cease from that strife to
to which they have nobly devoted the best
years of their lives, and go to that place where

"SLAVERY IS NO MORE."

Yet, with one or two noble exceptions, there
are none of the young men of the land rising
up to fill their places: young men, who, taking
no thought of the morrow and gazing forever
on the huge evil, the monstrous sin of
the land, fling themselves body and soul to the
rescue of the poor slave. The young Anti
Slavery sentiment; or rather the Anti-Slavery
sentiment of the young men is muddled with
dirty considerations of policy, or darkened with
the damnable sin of selfishness. Young women,
in getting up fairs, bazaars, and occasionally
(till matrimony overtakes them) speeches, are,
rather than young men, the hope of the future.
Still, even these have not the one-ness of purpose
which distinguished the pristine Anti-Slavery
Movement. In shouting for Freedom to
the black slave they have discovered the tinkling
of silver gyves around their own fair wrists—
the golden armlets are armlets still, and, naturally
enough, they have a word to say for their
own rights as well as against the wrongs of the
down-trodden slave.

Now, why is this so? Is the Anti-Slavery
movement merely an impulse that will die away
with the departure of those who gave it? Is
it not intrinsically worthy of handing down from
sire to son? What effort has been made in
this direction by Anti-Slavery fathers and
mothers, and the other and the larger parents
of Anti-Slavery stamp, who essay to teach children
thro' School Books and "American First
Class Books?" Some four years ago, I picked
up a school-book, a Reader, by Joshua Leavitt
: running over the Table of Contents, there
appeared, "A Speech by George Thompson;"
my soul shrank within me when I found "SPEECH
ON THE CORN LAWS." The noble and eloquent
Savior of the Slaves of the West Indies, the
daring and devoted advocate of the down-trodden
in the east, the faithful advocate of Ameri-

can Anti-Slavery, embalmed and handed down
to the young—the hope of the slave—in a
speech on the "CORN LAWS."

I have before me at this moment The American
First Class Book, by JOHN PIERPONT, dated
1836: in it I find, the eloquent burst of Webster
on the Slave Trade, uttered at Plymouth
Rock, and Cowper's Immortal lines on Slavery.
But in the editions of this very book issued by
the same compiler PIERPONT, in the present
year, even these anti-slavery pieced are LEFT OUT,
EXPURGATED in order to win a Southern Market
for the Book. "We are all born—not all buried."
And I would tearfully pity the sorrows
of the poor old man, among which may be biting
poverty. Yet, I cannot overlook this deepest
infamy for a Poet man: he might have won
deathless renown, and yet not died in beggary,
had he told the wicked Publishers, "," and then called upon parents of
the north to aid him in the work begun out in
the prairies of Illinois, by "tender mother" who
dedicated her boy in his infancy to the cause
of the Slave.

A word of "application," in reference to
these views.

1st. How many of you, parents, "have dedicated
your children in infancy to the cause of
the slave?" This dedication, earnestly and
prayerfully made, excels in beauty of holiness,
all solemn ritual and golden device whereby the
noblest Minister on the earth is set apart to
worship—excels these just as much as one human
soul excels in value the universe of matter.

Have you done your duty to the slave until
you make such dedication of your new-born?
Have you done your duty by that child? Wo'd
you have him become Garrison or Frank Pierce?
Gerrit Smith or Marcy? Which of the Douglasses?
the black, or the white?

We know not indeed, in the history of our
individual life when thought begins, whence impulses
take origin: we do know that , is a profound physiological
truth, and the bent of most children is estab-

lished at their birth: the wild and absorbing
whirlpool of American Politics, dates back to
the impulses and hopes of parents a generation
or more ago, when the whole people said, Politics
is God: and women bare children to be
Presidents and Governors. The chains were
fastened on our Southern slaves a generation
ago, when the People said, , : and women bare children
and dedicated them to terrible LIE, if not in
formal words, yet in unquestioning assent to
prevailing sentiment.

2nd. But what a preposterous idea! Wait
a whole twenty years before this dedication
yields fruit? Softly, my fast friend. The nursing
mother, filled with the gospel "Metanoia,"
or change of soul, no longer hating, but rather
loving God's poor black man, will give this
sweet humanity with her God-provided nourishment
to her nursing: nurses will be taught to
eschew all stories about bugaboos and
incontinently abandon bugaboos in general.—
"," will not soil lips formed
for words of love and praise. Twenty years
forsooth why little HOWARD CLARKSON BLISS is
only years old, yet he feels impelled by
proper nurture to already begin the preaching
of the Gospel of Abolition.

Children naturally love each other, and caste
hate would not require to be untaught.

Then we come to the school going age:—
Wendell Phillips, in one of those eloquent passages
with which he is wont to adorn his orations,
described "the droppings of the New England
pulpit" as a mammoth power in chaining
down Anti-Slavery sentiment. But what are
the droppings of the New England Pulpit, as
"a power" for pro-slavery evil, compared with
pro-slavery New England Primers, and Northern,
Class Books, and Recitation Books? Has
the South any ally in the North, which approaches,
in power, the pro-slavery or non-anti
slavery teachings of children's school books?

A necessary sequence of a faithful dedication

of our children to the cause of the slave, would
be an issue from the Press of Anti-Slavery
School Books. Beginning with an Anti-Slavery
Alphabet and ending with an Abolition
Cathechism of the Constitution of the United
States.

Before closing I must say a word to

HOWARD CLARKSON BLISS.

: I have read your letter
which you sent to .
You will remember that letter as long as you
live; you would do well to learn it by heart,
and then, when you grow older, and may be
when God spares you to become a big man,
you will always remember the words, the good
words in your letter. Whether you become
rich or poor, whether you become a great man,
or remain a plain common man, always love
your black neighbor, and your white neighbor
as yourself; never be afraid to say that God
made little black boys just as good as he made
you; and, above all, love God who is the
Master of us all, and love father and mother
who have done so much to teach you to be a
good boy.

I am your friend and colored brother,

CAPTAIN JACOB.

NEW YORK, No. 2 Congress-st., Dec. 7, 1855.