Rochester, June 21, 1852.
Mr. Douglass: Dear Sir: — My former
letter closed by an inquiry into the consist
ency or inconsistency of our holding the prin
ciples of the Liberty Party, in co-operating
with the New York State Anti-Slavery Soci
ety, in so far, as it seeks the overthrow of
slavery in its connection with civil govern
ment.

Certainly I do not regard this Society in
an invidious light, as marking off a mere sec
tarian, anti-slavery domain, whose laborers
are to be required to stoop beneath the gate
way of its new Constitution. Far from this.
There are fundamental principles incorpora
ted in this movement, which are found in no
other merely anti-slavery organization.—
Among these, as a prime element of the Con
stitution, is its view of the connection which
slavery has with civil government: and, con

sequently, our duty in relation to it. It ex
pressly declares that it is "morally wrong"
to vote for slaveholders or their apologists, or
for those who will not use their powers for
the abolition of slavery. It affirms that "it
is impossible that slaveholding can be either
sanctioned by the Divine law, or be made le
gal by any human governments, constitu
tions, statutes, or judicial decisions," and it
entitles the colored man "to all the rights,
privileges, and elegibilities of the white
man." This is virtually adopting the creed,
No political union with slavery. It is enter
ing the appropriate domain of politics.--
Then, either the new organization is in part
a political reform society, or it must be a po
litical annihilation society. To be co-work
ers in the movement in either case, would be
abandoning Liberty Party grounds. Let us
see if these positions can be made evident.

The popular voice declares that slavery
can be "legalized by human governments,
constitutions, statutes, and judicial de
cisions; "and that it is now legalized in our
government." It denies the colored man
rights, privileges, and elegibilities in the gov
ernment, which it teaches that it is not
"morally wrong to vote for slaveholders or
their apologists." The society alms at an ut
ter destruction of these time-honored, ma
jority-honored political tenets. It knows
that they are the foundation pillars of the
present and past administration of our gov
ernment; and that if they are thrown down,
the administration must fall with them.

To say that it is not a political reform so
ciety, is to say that it is pulling down without
building up. It is to declare that it is not
endeavoring to separate from the American
government the corrupt views and practices
which have fastened themselves like vampires
upon it, sucking its very heart's blood. But
it does professedly aim to destroy slavery, the
offspring of these corruptions, slavery, whose
life is indissolubly joined with the parent
life, as Milton's grim monster, Death, was
dependent for existence upon the life of his
mother, Sin. So if it does not separate the
corruptions which have grown to the govern
ment, and with the government, till they are
more than Siamese twins, then slavery, sla
very sustaining legislation, and the govern
ment must live or die together. How can we avoid the conclusion?

To destroy them all, is the acknowledged
aim of Mr. 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. . He believes that the
very vitals of the government are infected
with the evil, that the whole land is sick, and
the whole heart faint; from the sole of the
feet even unto the head, there is no sound
ness in it, but it is one mass of putrifying
sores; he contends, too, that they cannot ef
fectually be closed up, neither bound up, nor
in any way mollified with ointment. When
we believe as he believes, that not only the
United States Government, but Civil Govern
ment in general, is a fitting device of the
devil, and must do more evil than good,
then we may do as he does--may adopt as our
watchword toward the government, "raze it,
raze it, even unto the foundations thereof."

But Liberty Party men believe no such
thing. Most of them put an anti-slavery con
struction upon the constitution as it now is:
and all contend for a righteous anti-slavery
government in the country. They are po
litical reformers, and if they work in such an
organization, as the New York State Anti
Slavery Society, they work there as political
reformers, not as political annihilators. If
they do otherwise, then have they clearly
abandoned Liberty Party principles.

We turn now to the inconsistency of work
ing as political reformers in such an organi
zation. First, it is not openly and avoidedly
a political movement. It does not contem
plate leading its members fairly up to the an
ti-slavery polls, only towards them. It is a
sort of grand father grey-beard, made to
point out the the way to others, while it has no
thought of taking a step therein itself. Os
tensibly, it proposes a moral effort, rather
than a political one.

Now, popular politicians say, political come
outers say, and the world at large says,
"there is too much corruption in politics, to
have a moral movement mixed up with it. --
A political platform is no place from which
to reach the people, to enlist their sympa
thies and judgments on the side of truth. --
When one talks morals and religion from a
political stand, it passes for merely party or
personal capital, and produces little effect on
the hearer. From the nature of political ma
chinery, this must always be a fact." If
they say truly, then, in the name of every
thing good, let Liberty Party men abandon
the political yoke at once, and go over to a
simple, moral movement. Let them turn
and do battle against the whole subject of
politics, which is so inherently corrupt, that
everything connected with it loses its power
over the minds of the people, and is deemed
unworthy, on account of the very company
it keeps.

But if politics can be reformed, if the tree [REMAINDER MISSING]