Boston, July 15, 1849.

The fourth of July passed over with (if possible) more than its accustomed animation and patriotism. Among the incidents deserving a North Star notice were first the anti-slavery celebration at Abington under auspices of the Massachusetts Society. The Pic-Nic was held in Island Grove, a well adapted spot. The number in attendance was more numerous than on any previous similar occasion. Appropriate speeches and singing was the order of the day; and when the names of William Lloyd 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. , Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Caleb Stetson and William W. Brown, a constellation of freedom's Oratorsーare mentioned, as participating, the adjectives eloquent and impressive are superfluous.

Henry Box Brown narrated his hazardous escape from slavery in a box as merchandise marked "This side up." The appeal seemed to reach every heart, even those who had not before been moved by a recital of suffering and perils peculiar to American Slavery. William Crafts, whose romantic exodus from the Southern prison house (with his wife Ellen in man's attire) mingled in the crowd, holding groups in close attention while he detailed the evils of the Patriarchal Institution. He engaged in controversy with one pro-slavery specimen of humanity (characteristic of himself as a volunteer in the Mexican War) who rashly ventured to defend Slavery, reiterating the threadbare assertion that slaves were better off as such than when freemen. It was cheering to notice the fact, that not one person present manifested the least affinity with his sentiments, while on the contrary they lavished expressions of sympathy and approbation on the slave arguing for freedom. Mr. Crafts is now endeavoring to do what slaveholders affirm their property unqualified forーthat is "taking care of himself," having recently opened a furniture establishment; and as he is reputed to be au fait with his tools, it may be fairly inferred that his handicraft will yield him a good support. I remember having heard Joseph C. Hathaway, at a western New York Anti-slavery meeting make an eloquent and happy allusion to the fact that slaves at the South not only took care of themselves, but of their masters also, who, but for their labor and skill, would evidently become paupers, adding that he once had his heart made glad by beholding a fugitive just redeemed from chattelism to manhood, in the spirit of independence, making his own bargains, uncontrolled by the presence of an overseer, unawed by whips and chains.

Mr. Garrison referred to the change of public opinion relative to colorphobia, citing in illustration, that a few years since a distinguished Haytien gentleman, whose reputation and learning were those of a merchant and scholar, could not succeed in obtaining accomodation in either a public or private boarding house in Boston; but that within the past few days a Haytien of equal standing with the former and whose complexion was not of an Anglo Saxon stamp, was admitted to first class fare at one of our most popular city Hotels.

Second. This year for the first time the children of the Smith School united with the white pupils of the various public schools, in the procession and festival in honor of the day. They would have been colonized or excluded had not Rev. J. T. Sargent, whose heart beats right for humanity, demanded through the public press, the why and wherefore; and thus a good word spoken at the right time secured a triumph of justice to a much injured portion of God's heritage. The colored citizens are again agitating for equality of school privileges, and victory is destined ere long to reward their persevering effortsーtheir motto is:
We know our rights and knowing dare maintain them."

Among the various sects in this city, the Wesleyans present perhaps the boldest front to pro-slavery It is rare indeed to find an American religious organization ready to extend the hand of impartial recognition to a colored brother or sister; but the pastor and members of this branch, preach, pray and practise antislavery. Their Treasurer is a colored man and is in all respects regarded as a brother beloved.

The presentation and farewell meeting to Mr. Garrison and of William W. Brown, was a most auspicious occasion, of which I would forward a special outline, but presume the Liberator report will occupy a place in the North Star columns.

William W. Brown sailed on the 18th in the noble steamer Canada, in company with President Mahan of Oberlin Institution, and other delegates to the Peace Convention in Paris. Of course no manifestation of Colorphobia is looked for, but should the evil genius show its forked tongue, Captain Judkins will again prove himself a man with a soul, as he did when commander of the Cambria, and Frederick Douglass's presence waked up the wrath of American Republican slaveholders. This prejudice against color is a great torment to these who cherish it. A Parisian correspondent gives the following recent testimony, that Americans are sadly scandalized to find negroes in National Assembly, at Balls and private parties, while their portraits look down on the visitors from the walls of the palace of Versailles, or from those of the Tulleries. Poor fellows!ーthere is no help for them! the day will certainly dawn even in the United States when the color of a man's skin will be no barrier to his ingress to stations of honor and emolument. But a few years since, that gifted philanthropist Prudence Crandall was mobbed by the populance and indicted by the legal authority of Connecticut for the heinous crime of teaching colored girls in her own school on the same terms as white ones, and now in a sister State, Vermontーcolored young men share the honors at College and seminaries with white fellow students; and astonishing to tell, no one is injured, and the sun moon and stars perform their revolutions as regularly as if no such innovation upon a people's prejudices had ever been made. A colored young man belonging to Rutland, Vermont, graduated recently at the Middleton College. A class mate speaks of him as being one of the best speakers and writers of any graduating class in New England. As a tribute of kind feeling and respect, he was assigned the salutatory address. He appeared the second time in an English oration, which for force of thought, terseness of expression, and high tone of moral sentiment, as well as for the propriety and grace of its delivery, has rarely been excelled. Shades of Calhoun and Clay! what is the world coming to?

The civil dissensions on the ill fated island of Hayti have scattered many of its inhabitants to seek refuge in other climes. A Bostonian recently visited Philadelphia, and became acquainted with one of whom he thus narrates through the Atlas. "He has been here about two months and speaks the English language very correctly, though a little broken. He told me that he is a Haytien refugee. He was concerned in the late revolution in Hayti, and the tide of war having gone against him and his party, he fled to the States. He is a very intelligent man, and speaks and writes the French and Spanish languages with great facility. He was an officer in the Haytien Customs, and is evidently a person of education and refinement. In our free and happy republic he sinks to the level of a bootblack and lacquey. He appeared contented, and consoles himself with the reflection that Louis Philippe was once an outcast, and wandered like himself. The former, said he, 'taught a private school in this city for a livelihood, and I am waiter at the hotel for a like purpose.'

Father Matthew has performed wonders here in securing thousands to the Temperance pledge; for which good work, he has the thanks of all Christendom. At home he was conspicious in his efforts not only to break the chain of king Alcohol, but also labored to undo the heavier burdens of the slave of American avarice and wickedness, the victims of Southern whips and fetters; and with Daniel O'Connell signed the memorable Irish Petition (containing sixty thousand names)ーto their brethren in the United States, urging them to co-operation with the cause of anti-slavery; and to manifest his interest for the colored man, tendered a reception to Frederick Douglass. It is to be hoped that some of his influence so potent in behalf of temperance may be put forth while in this country, to redeem the American slave.

W. C. N.Nell, William Cooper

William Cooper Nell (1816–74), a black Garrisonian abolitionist, was one of the original editors of the North Star. A graduate of Boston’s segregated Smith School, Nell studied law but never practiced because he refused, on Wendell Phillips’s advice, to take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution. During the early 1840s he worked for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberator. From 1847 to 1851 he assisted Douglass on the North Star and served as acting editor when Douglass was absent on speaking tours. Nell remained a Garrisonian loyalist and severed his ties with the North Star when Douglass shifted his allegiance to the Liberty party. At meetings of the Colored National Convention and its council in the 1850s, Nell, an opponent of racially exclusive organizations, attacked Douglass’s plans for a black manual-labor college on the grounds that it would hinder, not help, the movement for racial equality. After Nell advised Boston blacks not to subscribe to Douglass’s newspaper, Douglass branded his former associate a “hanger on” and “contemptible tool” of Garrison. In addition to his abolitionist activities, Nell wrote important histories of African Americans. His Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (1851) and The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855) detailed the contributions of black people to the nation’s founding. In 1858 Nell staged the first Crispus Attucks celebration. During Lincoln’s administration he was appointed a clerk in the Boston post office. NS, 16 February 1849; FDP, 12, 19 August, 9 December 1853, 28 February, 31 March 1854, 12 January 1856; San Francisco Elevator, 27 June 1874; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 111–12; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 86, 245, 254; Robert P. Smith, “William Cooper Nell: Crusading Black Abolitionist,” JNH, 55:182–99 (July 1970); ACAB, 4:489; NCAB, 14:306; DAB, 13:413.

P.S. In my lastーyour types made me say elegant instead of eloquent speech of Robert Dougalss, Jr.ーW. C. N.