believe it to be a powerful instrument in affording means to carry on our important antislavery Machinery[.] I say this the more freely—because, though I consider my self as forming a humble part of that machinery I have never received any pecuniary aid directly from it. I have never absolutely needed any such aid from it. I have even mannaged to get on—and keep in the field with very little means—Lived in a small house paid a small rent, in-dulged in no luxuries—glad to get the common necessearies of life—and have followed on with a glad heart and willing mind—in the thin but brave ranks of our noble pioneer William Lloyd Garrison. Just before leaving the United States for this country—my warm and excellent friend N. Buffum⁶James N. Buffum.—aware of my poverty, stepped forward with his characteristic liberality and kindly offered to collect a sufficient sum to pay my passage to this land. He tried and succeeded in getting 68 Dollars, just 2 Dollars short of my expences in the steerage.⁷Buffum had solicited funds for Douglass’s passage to Great Britain from wealthy New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith among others. James N. Buffum to Gerrit Smith, 21 June 1845, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. I brought with me three hundred, and fifty dollars, money which I had saved from the sale of my narrative. For means to sustain me while here I have relied—and still rely mainly upon the sale of my narrative. And thus far I have had reason to complain, having already disposed of 2,000 copies. I have mentioned these facts and made these remarks—because I have felt somwhat greaved to see by a letter from you to Mr. R. D. Webb of Dublin that you betray a want of confidence in me as a man, and an abolitionist, utterly inconsistent with all the facts in the history of my connection with the Antislavery enterprise.⁸Maria Weston Chapman wrote a letter to Richard D. Webb in which she voiced suspicions that Douglass was using the British tour and the sales of his book for personal gain rather than for the support of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Webb read that portion of the letter to Douglass. Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 259–60. In that letter you were pointing out to Mr. Webb the necessity of his keeping a watch over myself and freind Mr. Buffum—but as Mr. Buffum was rich—and I poor while there was little danger but what Mr Buffum would stand firm, I might be bought up by the London Committee.⁹The “London Committee” refers to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which was founded by Joseph Sturge in 1839. The organisation sympathised with the anti-Garrisonians after the schism in the American antislavery movement in 1840, a sympathy that grew deeper under the leadership of John Scoble throughout the 1840s. Throughout his stay in Great Britain Douglass battled rumors that he would defect to the opposition abolitionist faction. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 1:343–44n, 2:588–92; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 290–92, 296, 300–305; Temperley, British Antislavery, 215–20. Now Dear Madam, you do me great in justice by such comparisons[.] They are direct insinuations and when whispered in the ear of a stranger to whom I look up as a friend they are very embarrassing. Up to the time of hearing Mr. Webb read that letter I supposed I shared your confidence in common with that of the other members of the committe at Boston; I am disappointed. I can assure you Dear Madam that you have mistaken me altogether if you suppose that ether the love of money—or the hate of poverty will drive me from the ranks of the old organized antislavery society[.] But had I no more confidence in them, than you seem to have in me, I would not take a second breath before leaving them. I have withstood the allurements of New organization liberty party—and no organization at home¹⁰Douglass probably refers to the 1844 controversy among Garrisonians over the extreme anarchist positions adopted by New Hampshire abolitionist editor Nathaniel P. Rogers. While most of the Garrisonian inner circle held some form of nonresistant principles by the early 1840s, Rogers editorialized for a “no-organization” ideology that condemned all forms of restrictions on free speech and action within the antislavery movement. When the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society took away Rogers’s editorship of its official newspaper, Herald of Freedom, he quit the seciety. This purge of Rogers left significant suspicions and hard feelings among Garrisonians for many years. Lawrence J. Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870 (Cambridge, Eng., 1982), 59–61; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 117–28.—why should I not withstand the London Committee. You have trusted me or seemed to do so, at home, why distruste me or seem to do so abroad.