Communications.

ROCHESTER, Sept. 14, 1853.

DEAR DOUGLASS:—I perceive you contin
ue to be attacked with most unaccountable
asperity by the Liberator, Standard, and
Pennsylvania Freeman. Although the last
two have published long and windy articles
against you, yet the points which they raise
are utterly insignificant. They say you have
attacked George Thompson with bitterness
and malignity, but they utterly fail in thier
proof. When George Thompson saw fit to
attack and misrepresent the Liberty Party
three thousand miles off, where there was no
one present capable of correcting his mis
representations, you saw proper to do it, and
to show his inconsistency by avoiding a colli
sion with that party while here, and by his
readiness to receive money from them for his
anti-slavery labors. They do not, like kind
hearted friends, endeavor to show you that
you are wrong, but utter denunciations,
loud and long. This course will not suit a
discriminating public. They must put forth
something more than long-winded and vapid
declamations.

Your opponents profess to think it strange
that any man can consistently use his politi
cal franchise, because, in their opinion, the
United States Constitution is not, in all re
spects, right. With a "turkey-cock strut,"
they would ride roughshod over the whole of
us for modestly differing in opinion with
them. George Thomoson was elected to the
British Parliament, took the oath of office
under a Constitution, recognizing a queen as
sovereign—a union of church and State—a forced maintenance of the clergy—the law
of primogeniture, &c., &c. Yet his course is
highly approved by these pugnacious non-re
sistants. He approves them and they approve
him. There seems to be a mutual agree
ment; "you tickle me, and I'll tickle you."

Now this course to sensible men seems su
premely ridiculous. It is too childish and
puerile for men of as much capacity as Phil
lips and 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. to put forth their efforts to
support such airy nothings.

It appears to me, my friend, that you have
given great offence, because you saw what
every candid man could not help seeing, and
because you dared to express it, that Horace
Mann was completely triumphant in his con
troversy with Wendell Phillips. Wendell
should have had a little more regard for his
dignity before he commenced his attacks.—After he is "used up," it does not appear
well to fall back sullenly on his dignity. He
should have thought of it at an earlier peri
od, and saved himself from much vexation of
spirit. An able man, placing himself in a
false position, and using all his power to sup
port it, is like Polyphemus in the fable,
strong, but blind.

ALPHA