FROM OUR PHILADELPHIA CORRESPONDENT.

PHILADELPHIA, 12th mo. 23d., 1856.

Mr. EDITOR:—We are having quite lively
times here occasionally these days. Last week
was especially bracing to one not absolutely
hardened to the usual monotony of Philadelphia.
The grand feature in the programme was the
annal Bazaar of the 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. abolitionists, and
a meeting of theirs of some sort. Usually
there is not much interest in these affairs—es
pecial pains being taken by the disciples of Gar
rison to keep them all to themselves, except
the contributing, which they are quite willing
others should have a hand in. Not so this; it
was quite a "" thing.

The first point we observed was Dr. Robert
Hare (who justly stands first among scientific
men of the country) on the rostrum. We were
curious to know what he could be doing, in an
abolition gathering; we were not long in sus
pense. He, an old man, with one foot in the
grave, was there defaming and maligning the
negro race. No doubt he had selected the
place and occasion with all due regard to
safety. He represented us to his audience as
" at the doors of the whites, who
should be cared for by them (the whites), and
sent to the land of our fathers." When
he had finished, another Doctor (J. J. G.
Bias, M. D.Bias, James Joshua Gould

James Joshua Gould Bias (1807–60) was a physician and preacher living in Philadelphia. Born a slave in Maryland, he learned some medical knowledge while working with a physician there. When Bias obtained his freedom, he moved to Philadelphia, attending the Eclectic Medical School and graduating in 1852. He devoted much of his time before the Civil War tending to the medical and dental needs to fugitive slaves in Southeast Pennsylvania. Bias also was the pastor at the Bethel Church in Philadelphia. He played a leading role in the Colored Conventions movement, holding a number of positions. While Bias endorsed emigration, he rejected the policies of the American Colonization Society, rejecting its White leadership. “Our Philadelphia Letter,”(New York, N.Y.) Weekly Anglo-African, 7 July 1860; George F. Bragg, Jr., Men of Maryland (Baltimore: Church Advocate Press, 1925), 54–55; Michael Dickinson, “Dr. J. J. Gould Bias,” Colored Conventions Project, Coloredconventions.org. , then whom no other negro has
more facts of his people) rose. He most effec
tually pulverized the venerable Hare. He
showed from facts gained from official docu
ments, that we, the negroes of Philadelphia, are
actually taxed to support poor whites, to pay
for the education of white children in the pub
lic schools, and to sustain white teachers. He
denounced most eloquently, the course pursued
by Dr. Hare and the Garrison abolitionists.—"," thundered the
Doctor; "." * *
* * If it is such a God-approved work to
go to Africa, let the learned gentleman and
those like him go thither and labor in the fear
of the Lord. I shall not object. But when
he and they come and tell that must go, I shall take the liberty and say a few words about it." The Doctor say a few words about it, which brough the learned Hare several times to his feet to "explain."

There was a feature of this discussion which is worthy remark, tho' perfectly characteristic of this school of abolitionists. Dr. Hare was at the meeting a mere spectator. Dr. Bias was

there in the same capacity. Dr. Hare asked to
be heard, and was heard without interruption
throughout his unjust misrepresentations of our
people. But when Dr. Bias rose, he was ruled
out of order at once, and even called
for presuming to speak, not until after they tried
their best to stop him, did they let him proceed.
This is the much harped-upon free speech plat
form of these people. Things now moved on
quite smoothly for some time. But at length
another fire brand was flung into the ranks,—Mr.
Robert Douglass, a gentleman of high edu
cation and ability, having seen paraded, as
one could not fail to do, an invitation to "
whether favorable or not to the object of the
meeting to take part in its proceedings," to
speak—when, as soon as it was seen he was
about to question some of the movements of
the Garrisonian party, he was promptly ruled
out of order by the chairman, and all sorts of
quibbling, were resorted to to shut him off. Lu
cretia Mot and James Mott plead pressure of
business and want of time, points whereof both
seem quite unconscious while occupying the
rostrum themselves; Edward M. Davis, a man
of some pretensions, joined his parents-in-law;
Mr. J. M. McKim, general agent, who receives
a fat salary for his eminent services, came to the
rescue of his fellows; and the great Mr. Rob
ert Purvis, Esq., ever ready with what little
strength he has, (which by the by do[e]sn't amount
to much,) and for reasons quite obvious to take
sides his own people and with white ab
olitionists, did not fail to do so now; he dealt
our if we mistake not hard words and epithets—sometimes
know[n] as ""—toward
Douglass, in a manner that evinced an exten
sive range in that field. At length Dr. Bias
and Rev. John Morgan protested eloquently
and powerfully against this miserable quib
bling and unfairness. "Why ask and urge peo
ple to come in here and speak," said they, "if
you don't mean to hear them? If it is your inten
tion to cut short the freedom of speech, have the
manliness to proclaim." Finally, Wm. Lloyd
Garrison heartily ashamed and disgusted as he
must have been, with his party, poured oil on
the troubled waters, by suggesting that Doug
lass be granted a hearing. So Mr. Douglass
proceeded to [pronounce?] an eloquent philippic
of an hour's length; against the hypocrisy of
the Garrisonian party, of which he himself had
been a member for a score of years. Numer
ous reports of this masterly performance ap
peared in our city papers. We clip the follow
ing from, of the 19th inst.,
it being the only one we have at hand.

"Robert Douglass, colored, made a bitter assault upon the Philadelphia members of the Anti-Slavery Society for not having come up to the promises made twenty years since, to the effect that the colored race should improve themselves mentally and morally so as to fit themselves for a social equality with their white brethren. The members at that time declared their determination to become martyrs to their principles, on their promises had all been broken, and the speaker declared that after spending 20 years in improving his mind in hope of the good time to come, he found his social position not improved at all, and he expressed the determination to leave the country forever, utterly disgusted with the hypocrisy of the pretended friends of the colored race. He accused the Anti-Slavery Society with having inveigled Lucy Stone to deliver an address, in the Musical Fund Hall, which he declare was so proslavery, that a colored person was not permitted to show his face within it. Her colored friends, provided with tickets by herself, were excluded with ignominy. The speaker mentioned also that Lucy Stone had been recently engaged to lecture in this city, but the name of the hall was not mentioned, and her non-appearance, he explained as having been cause by the information being communicated to her at the last moment.

"The speaker was scathing in his remarks upon the United States, and trusted that when he himself was personally settled in the Isle of the Antilles, he might know that this whole people had fallen victims to the retributive justice of Heaven, involved in servile insurrections, and engulfed in sudden ruin and bloodshed.

"The speaker was called to order several times but after some discussion was permitted to go on."

We do not agree with Mr. Douglass in some of his positions—his leaving the country, and his invocation of dreadful calamities as just judgments upon the American Government, for instance. But there can be but one opinion of the bold and vigorous manner in which his points were put and made.

The convention ran through three days, during which, besides what we have touched upon, a few others were enacted. Wm. Lloyd Garrison, the great leader, Lucretia Mott, Frances Ellen Watkins, J. M. McKim, Ed. M. Davis, and other of the lesser lights made speeches.—Mr. McKim succeed in pushing the rough some resolutions, which will aid very materially in horrifying the American people and alienating them from the cause of abolition. Not much else of interest took place, except another characteristic speech from Dr. BiasBias, James Joshua Gould

James Joshua Gould Bias (1807–60) was a physician and preacher living in Philadelphia. Born a slave in Maryland, he learned some medical knowledge while working with a physician there. When Bias obtained his freedom, he moved to Philadelphia, attending the Eclectic Medical School and graduating in 1852. He devoted much of his time before the Civil War tending to the medical and dental needs to fugitive slaves in Southeast Pennsylvania. Bias also was the pastor at the Bethel Church in Philadelphia. He played a leading role in the Colored Conventions movement, holding a number of positions. While Bias endorsed emigration, he rejected the policies of the American Colonization Society, rejecting its White leadership. “Our Philadelphia Letter,”(New York, N.Y.) Weekly Anglo-African, 7 July 1860; George F. Bragg, Jr., Men of Maryland (Baltimore: Church Advocate Press, 1925), 54–55; Michael Dickinson, “Dr. J. J. Gould Bias,” Colored Conventions Project, Coloredconventions.org. ; it was searching and able. The fact that his speeches and that of Mr. Douglass were the only ones—not even excepting Mr. Garrison's—which were respectfully reported and treated by the press, shows how superior in dignity of

matter and manner they were to the numerous others made. Mr. Harrison's time was chiefly occupied in attacking the Republican party, and denouncing it as the greatest enemy of the Anti-Slavery cause, because its members recognize the constitution!

Notwithstanding 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. 's monstrous doctrines, there is more manliness in him than in the whole of his satellites counted three times over.

We hereabouts, who sometimes gnaw a classic bone, were much amused at 's extermination of Wendell Phillips' quotation from the pages of Tacitus. Phillips has the reputation of being a classic scholar. It is sometimes rather funny to see what queer work these fellows make who enjoy this reputation, as in the instance to which Communipaw has directed public attention thro' your columns.

More anon,

E. D. B.