Letter from J. Lybrand.

Mr. Douglass: Dear Sir: — In your paper of the twenty-fifth of September last, Dr. James McCune Smith, in a letter on the subject of African Colonization, addressed to Horace Greeley, Esq., makes the following remarks: "The loss of the Alexandrian Library and its wealth of ancient lore is a deep grief to scholars, but I am convinced that there will be a profounder grief among thinkers, a century hence, that there is not now placed on record a succinct account of that true relation which the blacks now bear to this Republic—a concise statement of the facts embodied in their resistance and relevation herein against odds sufficient to crush any ordinary variety of the human species. How this laughing, dancing, 'Jim Crow' people, which the builders reject, will have become the corner stone of the Republic will be matter of profound amazement; but an amazement profounder still must grow out of the fact of the existence of that mandate, which you call natural and desirable prejudice, which will have utterly disappeared in the coming era."

The sentiments contained in the above quotation, have often been a subject of meditation with me. I am glad to learn that the matter has been introduced by Doctor Smith, and as he is doubtless competent to the task, and is a suitable person to present the "profounder grief" from being realized, it is to be hoped that he will be the means of placing "on record a succinct account of the true relation which the blacks now bear to this Republic, so that when the "man-hate" shall "have utterly disappeared

in the coming era," the people of that period may have an opportunity of contrasting the difference existing at that time and now while the prejudice remains, which Mr. Greeley considers both national and desirable. Verily, the time will come, when the wickedness, guilt and meanness of this nation will be made apparent to all! We are the most vain, egotistical and presumptuous people upon earth! But we will "see the error of our ways."

Recent developments begin again to give me hope to believe that the day of Freedom is approaching. When the Liberty Party was formed, I vainly believed that Slavery would be abolished in a few years; and I think that circumstances seemed to justify that belief until the organization of the Free Soil Party (!!!) The consequences flowing from the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act - that most infernal of all enactments called Law—will, I trust, hasten the downfall of the demon Slavery, without any more thanks, however, being due to the originator and advocates of that bill than are due to those who crucified the "Lord of Glory."

The series of resolutions passed by the New York State Liberty Party in convention at Syracuse, on the first and second days of last month, I consider as a whole the very best I have ever seen. They are noble, bold and energetic; just such as were needed. In the early agitation of the Anti-Slavery cause in Wisconsin, some who wished to be considered leading spirits in the movement, were timid and compromising, and greatly afraid that we might give offense to some good anti-slavery brother, by being too thorough and too harsh; they thought a more temporising course would be best. I used to think—and think so still—that their course was consequent upon a want on their own part of a full conversion to the interest of the Slave.

The following introduction and resolution passed at the convention above named, is justly due to William Lloyd Garrison, EsqGarrison, 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. ., and those who sympathize with him in his views on the Abolition subject. They are a noble band of patriots; true philanthropists and friends of the SLAVE. Oh! that all Abolitionists would unite in their action for the downfall of Slavery! For many years I have been using my efforts to accomplish that desideratum.

"Whereas, There are anti-slavery men who join in public demonstrations of respect to FillmoreFillmore, Millard

Millard Fillmore (1800-74), thirteenth president of the United States, represented the Buffalo region in the New York state legislature (1828-32) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1833-35, 1837-43), where he generally voted with the Henry Clay wing of the Whig party. Defeated in the 1844 New York governor's race, Fillmore secured the Whig vice-presidential nomination in 1848 and assumed the presidency upon Zachary Taylor's death in July 1850. Fillmore vigorously advocated passage of the Compromise of 1850 and signed each of its measures into law. Denied his party's nomination in 1852, Fillmore ran for president on the American party ticket in 1856 and supported John Bell and the Constitutional Union party in 1860. NCAB, 6:177-78; DAB, 6:380-82. and WebsterWebster, Daniel

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was a lawyer and statesman known for his stirring oratory. As a lawyer, he successfully argued many cases before the Supreme Court, such as the 1816 Dartmouth College case and the 1819 McCulloch v. Maryland case, earning a reputation as a strong nationalist. During the War of 1812 Webster represented New Hampshire in Congress (1812–46). Then, in 1827, he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, where he remained in service through most of his life. He continued to take strong nationalist positions in political debates, attacking Andrew Jackson’s 1832 veto of the Second Bank of the United States and opposing Nullification in 1832–33. Webster accepted appointment as secretary of state under William Henry Harrison and was the sole cabinet member from Harrison’s presidency to retain his office during John Tyler’s administration. In 1842 he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, establishing the modern boundary between the United States and Canada, but resigned his post a year later and returned to the Senate in 1845. In 1848 Webster made an unsuccessful bid for the Whig presidential nomination, losing to war hero Zachary Taylor. In 1850 Webster once again left the Senate to act as secretary of state under Millard Fillmore, a move that placed him in a good position to bid for the presidency; but he lost the 1852 Whig nomination to Winfield Scott. Though not an abolitionist, he opposed the extension of slavery in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Mexican-American War, and the enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Robert V. Remini, Daniel Webster: The Man and His Time (New York, 1997), 15–21; ANB, 22:865–68; DAB, 11:585–92. , and such other conspicuous and murderous enemies of the human race; therefore,

Resolved, That we would abate the pro-slavery exultation over this humiliating inconsistency by publishing the fact, that these anti-slavery men are not of the Garrison type, nor of the Liberty Party type, but only of the free soil type."

The honorable Charles DurkeeDurkee, Charles

Charles Durkee (1805—70), politician and pacifist, was born in Royalton, Vermont, and educated in the town schools and at the Burlington Academy. A merchant, he emigrated in 1836 to Wisconsin, where he was one of the founders of Southport, later Kenosha. Durkee served in the territorial legislature before being elected as a Free Soiler to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1849—53). At the World's Peace Conference in Paris in 1849 he was one of twenty-three American delegates. He later became president of the short-lived Wisconsin Peace Society. After joining the Republican party, Durkee served one term in the U.S. Senate (1855—61) and was appointed governor of Utah Territory in 1865. Curti, American Peace Crusade, 172, 217; BDAC, 839. , who was lately nominated by the Liberty Party, as a candidate for Vice-President of the United States, was exceedingly active in the Free Soil (!!!) ranks, and used considerable persuasion to induce me to join that party; telling me that I was "behind the times;" saying that I would see that I was wrong, and would go over to that organization. Whether he has yet repented of the influence he exerted while with that party, I am uninformed; or whether he still belongs to them, I do not know.

For "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"

Jacob LybrandLybrand, Jacob

Jacob Lybrand (c. 1805–75) was born in Philadelphia but was living in Wisconsin by at least 1836. In Wisconsin, he was very active in the Liberty Party and the Liberty Association. Lybrand was put forward on several occasions for office and in 1848 was a delegate to the Buffalo Free Soil convention. He arrived in Iowa in about 1849, and settled in Allamakee County in 1850/51, planning the town that took his name. Lybrand also founded Knob Prairie (now West Union). Eventually, he relocated north to Minnesota, moving around frequently, until 1875. “Jacob Lybrand,” Redwood (Minn.) Gazette, 4 March 1875; Early M. Hancock, Past and Present of Alamakee County, Iowa, 2 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1913), 1: 498; Reinhard O. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 2021), 358. .

In Frederick Douglass' Paper of the 16th ultimo., Doctor James McCune Smith, under date of the 8th same month, in a communication to you, makes "proposals" for extending the circulation of your exceedingly valuable paper. I was happy to read his letter, and gratified to know that the proposals were made in the right quarter. Go on in your course from "conquering, and to conquer," and you will soon be "well prepared to fight the Devil of oppression and all his satanic cohorts."