Gilmore Place

Edinburgh 30th. July 1846

My Dear Friend MaryNeill, Mary Anne

Mary Anne Neill (1818–67) was the eldest daughter of Robert and Letitia Neill of Belfast, with whom Douglass and Garrison visited in 1846. Not much is known about her life before 1858 when she appears to have moved to the United States. Even then, not much is known except that she was briefly in California, likely in San Francisco with her sister. She then lived in New York, caring for her sister’s children until her death in 1867. Emma Brace, ed., The Life of Charles Loring Brace: Chiefly Told in His Own Letters (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 288–89; Jim Powell, “The Family of Robert Neill & Letitia Ireland,” Jim-powell.net, 5, 8, 19–20. —I have just bought a beautiful and somewhat costly manifold letter writer—it enables me to write two letters at one time so that I may always retain a copy of what I write. I am just now trying my hand and thus far I feel quite encouraged. I find I must be very careful what I write less I set down something which upon mature reflection I may regret. Having thus promised I may venture to speak to you. If it were allowable and in good taste. I would try to tell you how much I feel indebeted to your self and Dear Sisters for the many pleasant moments I spent in your society during my late visit to Belfast. I was not as happy as I expected to be. I confess my spirit was marred by the malignant slanders of Dr. SmythSmyth, Thomas

A Presbyterian minister of Scots-Irish descent, Thomas Smyth (1808–73) was born in Belfast, Ireland, and educated at Belfast College and in London at Highbury College. After immigrating to the United States with his parents in 1830, he continued his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary before his ordination the following year. From 1834 until his death, he was the pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. A prolific writer of doctrinal treatises and devotional literature, Smyth also wrote an ethnological justification of African slavery titled The Unity of the Human Races (New York, 1850). In 1843 Princeton University awarded him a doctor of divinity degree. Smyth figured prominently in the early fortunes of the Free Church of Scotland, raising a large share of the approximately $9,000 that the Free Church collected from proslavery churches in the South. When some members of the Free Church began expressing abolitionist sentiments, Smyth threatened to discontinue southern financial support. In July 1846, both Douglass and Smyth were in Belfast to influence the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church. While Douglass and other abolitionists urged that the Free Church “send back the money,” Smyth wanted the church to take a proslavery position and counterattacked with the slogan “Send Back the Nigger.” After an attempt to discredit Douglass surfaced, Douglass sued Smyth for defamation of character. To avoid further controversy at the assembly, church leaders asked Smyth not to participate. Lib., 26 April 1844; Louisa Cheves [Smythe] Stoney, ed., Autobiographical Notes, Letters, and Reflections by Thomas Smyth, D.D. (Charleston, SC, 1914), 217–19; Thomas Smyth, The Claims of the Free Church of Scotland to the Sympathy and Assistance ofAmerican Christians (Edinburgh, Scot., 1844); idem, The Character of the Late Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., and the Lessons of His Life, from Personal Recollections (Charleston, S.C., 1848), 13–17; Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 83–97; J. F. MacLear, “Thomas Smyth, Frederick Douglass, and the Belfast Antislavery Campaign,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 80:288–94 (October 1979); George Shepperson, “Notes and Documents: Thomas Chalmers, the Free Church of Scotland, and the South,” Journal of Southern History, 17:520–26 (November 1951); idem, “The Free Church and American Slavery,” 132–33; ACAB, 5:600; DAB, 14:377–78. . I ought not to have permitted this to have disturbed me, but one cannot always command their feelings. I shall lecture in this city tomorrow evening on the subject of West India emancipation this being near the anniversary of that glorious event. I shall leave here on Saturday for New Castle on Tyne. I may go from there to Bristol and it may be from there to London in the hope of meeting friend 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. . I return again to Scotland on the 14 Aug. Make my love—to ElizaSherwood, Eliza Neill

Eliza Neill Sherwood (c. 1830-1912), was the daughter of Robert and Letitia Neill, with whom Douglass and Garrison visited in 1846. She moved to the United States around 1850 and was living with her brother in Mobile, Alabama. Eliza then married Robert Sherwood, another Irishman, living in San Francisco and working as jeweler. Later in their marriage, Robert became the president of a mining company and the family became quite wealthy. She wrote to Douglass in 1892 and lamented that they had not seen each other since “those weeks [she] spent in Lynn,” perhaps in 1853 when she is known to have visited Boston. “Sherwood,” San Francisco Chronicle, 30 May 1912; 1860 U. S. Census, 10th District, San Francisco, California; 1880 U. S. Census, San Francisco, San Francisco, California; Eliza W. Sherwood to Frederick Douglass, 5 January 1892, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 371–73L, FD Papers, DLC; Jim Powell, “The Family of Robert Neill & Letitia Ireland,” Jim-powell.net, 5, 8, 21-24. [,] Letitia[,] Dora—Your fatherNeill, Robert

and all the family.

Sincerely

F Douglass