33. Gilmore Place,
Edinburgh
31^st. July 1846
My Dear FriendPease, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Pease (1807–97), from Darlington, in the north of England, was the daughter of the first Quaker member of Parliament. She organized one of the first antislavery societies in England and was among the foremost correspondents between the American and British abolitionist movements. At the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, she allied with the Garrisonians and began to support an agenda that included rights for women. Her vision expanded to encompass not only the emancipation of all slaves, but also other issues of social justice, including the humane treatment of the native people of India, independence for eastern and central European nations in the Austro-Hungarian empire, opposition to the opium trade, and support for laws to benefit the poor in England. In 1853 she married astronomer John Pringle Nichol, but was widowed six years later. She continued her activism and interest in all aspects of emancipation until her death in 1897. Anna M. Stoddard, Elizabeth Pease Nichol (London, 1899); Karen I. Halbersleben, Women's Participation in the British Antislavery Movement, 1824–1865 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1993), 39, 65, 70, 78, 105, 156, 182, 189–90. ,
I feel as you do quite tantalized by the Idia of being so near you as I shall be when in New Castle—and yet unable to see you. It will not always be so. I hope yet to see you. Your friends here the Wigham family deeply sympathise with you, and unite with me in fervent wishes for your speedy restoration to health. Knowing your interest in the subject of American Slavery and exiciting as it is so much attention at this time in this time Country I am sure if you were in health—you would find much that you could do to advance the cause. We can but illy spare you. We must learn submission—and to be content under the hand of affliction. A hard lesson—learnt by few. It is a high Christian virtue heard of in theory rather than seen in practice. Few reach it who are uniformly in the enjoyment of good heatlth. It pre is a consequence of affliction rather than preceeding it.
I have just arranged to labor in Scotland—for a few months to come. We are anxcious to make the most of the free Church question. If we do not succeed in making them "Send back the Money" we shall have seized an opportunity of enlightening the whole people on the Subject of American Slavery which is deemed quite important.
I will not trouble you with letters—and you need not answer this. Whether I see you or not I shall feel assured that the cause of my injured and long neglected people has a friend in you. I hope to see 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. in a few days. He is indeed a Dear Man—but he needs no praise from me—his life speaks for itself. To praise him to his friends is like praising him to he face. To stand up for him when attacked and maligned is the true position. He will have an exciting tour throu this country. His religious opinions like those of Mr. Wrights will under go a searching examination. I hope he will not be turned aside from his mission of peace and good will to man, by any merely abstract questions. He is of age and I know of no man whose judgement I would follow sooner than his. Still I have my fears. I fear this will tire you—so I will stop—peace be with you—Believe me very sincerely
Yours,
F Douglass