FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GEORGE ARMSTRONG

Bristol, [Eng.] 3 September 1846.

The Rev. George ArmstrongArmstrong, George

Born to a wealthy family in Drogheda, Ireland, George Armstrong (1792–1857) attended Trinity College in Dublin. In 1815 he entered the Church of Ireland clergy and held a pulpit in Bangor, near Belfast. Armstrong publicly advocated both suffrage reform and Catholic Emancipation in numerous magazine articles. In the 1830s, Armstrong’s extensive reading and correspondence with American Unitarians, especially the Reverend William Ellery Channing, led him to adopt that faith. The young British and Foreign Unitarian Association found Armstrong a new congregation in Bristol, England, in 1838. Armstrong was an active public champion of the Unitarian faith and many liberal political causes, including the Anti–Corn Law League. His wife and daughter were frequent contributors of products to the Garrisonian Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Robert Henderson, A Memoir of the Late Reverend George Armstrong (London, 1859); Turley, “British Unitarian Abolitionists,” 59. ,

Clifton.

MY DEAR SIR —

Yours of last evening¹George Armstrong’s 2 September 1846 letter to Douglass appears in this volume. is before me, but being just now about leaving town and greatly hurried,²After delivering a speech in Bristol, England, Douglass traveled to Sheffield, where he spoke to an audience in the Friends’ Meeting House on 11 September 1846. NASS, 1 October 1846; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 1:381, 398—99 I am unable to make it such a response—in explanation of the remarks to which you refer—as I should certainly have done in other circumstances. Suffice it to say, that I fully admit the truths of your statements, respecting the anti-slavery character of Unitarian ministers in the United States. But allow me to remind you, that it is very difficult in a meeting, like that of last night, to do full justice to the friends of the anti-slavery cause, or the enemies of that cause, by a statement of all the facts connected with the one or the other. In saying last night that the Unitarian communion conferred no reputation upon those who partook of it, I meant nothing more than I thought I fully explained on the spot—that Unitarians endorsed no man’s character as a Christian by admitting him to the communion table, but left every one to decide for himself as to his qualification to partake of that ordinance. Believe me nothing was further from my intention than to treat with derision your terms of communion.

I am, dear sir, very sincerely yours,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

PLSr: Bristol Mercury and Western Counties Advertiser, 12 September 1846. Reprinted in London Inquirer, 26 September 1846; NASS, 22 October 1846.