FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO RICHARD D. WEBB

Perth, [Scot.] 20 Jan[uary] 1846.

MY DEAR FRIENDWebb, Richard Davis

Richard D. Webb was a Garrisonian abolitionist from Dublin, Ireland, whom Douglass met on his first trip to the British Isles in 1845. Originally a Quaker, he turned toward Unitarianism as his antislavery passions became more radical. A successful printer, Webb guided the small, but intensely active, Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society in Dublin, of which James Haughton and his family were also members. Webb printed the organ of the British Garrisonian abolitionist movement, the Anti-Slavery Advocate, out of his Dublin-based office. The British Garrisonians were active pamphleteers, and Webb's own The National AntiSlavery Societies of England and the United States (1852) was one of the most confident and able statements of the Garrisonian cause to appear on either side of the Atlantic. Temperley, British Antislavery, 210, 212-13, 227, 237, 239, 244, 252-54, 256, 259; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 241-44, 248, 258-59, 293-94. —

I was just about leaving-Glasgow for this place on the arrival of your last,¹Webb’s letter to Douglass has not been located. or I would have answered it immediately[.] If it be possible to make the

alteration which you suggested about the length of the book, and to get it owt in the time I mention in the last note, you will do so by almeans. I think it will look much better a little shorter besides[.] I gave direction to the engraver to make the print of the portrait shorter supposing you were prepared to make the alteration as you said. If you cannot get the edition off in time and make the alteration, I know no better way than to get it out in the old form. I met H. C. Wright here last night²Henry Clarke Wright had recently met Douglass and James N. Buffum in Perth. Lib., 27 February 1846.—he was in good spirit—but was looking rather thin,—of course was glad to see us—as we were him. A letter will reach me by directing to Wm. Smeale Glasgow as I shall return to that place in the course eight or ten days.

I am sory you could not send me the three hundred copies for which I sent last week. When the next edition is published, I wish you to have it bound up at once, so that I may not have to wait, as I have had to do for the last edition.

I held two meetings in Glasgow,³Douglass and Buffum spoke at Glasgow antislavery meetings on 10 and 15 January 1846. Glasgow Argus, 22 January 1846; NASS, 26 February 1846; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:13–44. an account of which you will have from Wm. Smeale. It is a great loss to me to be without my narrative as I am dependant on it for all my support in this country.

My warm regards to Mrs. Webb.⁴Hannah Waring Webb.

Yours tr[ul]y,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Anti-Slavery Collection, MB.