Letter From Geo. T. Downing

Providence, Dec. 21, 1853

Dear Douglass:—I am performing a task with most pleasurable emotions giving you an account of movements for elevation a vindication of the right. Last Sunday, a notice was sent to each of the colored churches in this city for a public meeting which was held last night in the Bethal (Methodist) Church ; the same was read in all of them, except in the Pond St. Baptist meeting.
Mr. Samuel Rodman, the clerk getting possesion of the same, refused to read it, because of his opposition to the movement as a connexion with the Rochester Convention. The ministers of the two Methodist Churches urged their congregations to attend. I am thus particular in giving this account, that it may be known who is for us and who is against us. It is not necessary to be white to be an oppressor.
There is unfortunately a subserviency on the part of some of the leaders of the churches of Providence. Bethal generously threw open its doors, that the oppressed, the slave might there feel at home. Its minister, the Rev. Mr. Hall, was present, and gave the fullest countenance to the meeting. It was a noble, a harmonious, a unanimous meeting a respectable, an intelligent one—ably addressed by Messrs. Waugh, Iverson, Hall, and others. Mr. Thos. Howland presided with dignity and precision.

The following resolutions were unanimously adopted after having been discussed:

Resolved that we have a common foe
without which calls for union within to the end
of which we must put aside all petty
strifes jealousies and animosity that each
may feel that he is working with a brother
for a common inrerest for our interest is a
common one our enemies know no high no
low no rich no poor but black men all to
despise reject and oppress

Resolved that we hail with delight the
union foreshadowed in the organization of
the National Council of our people
believing that if the people will give the same a
hearty support their interest and happiness
will be immeasurably enhanced.

Resolved that we will give our State
Council (auxiliary to the National Council)
our hearty and generous co operation.

Resolved that Messrs Downing and
Iverson be requested to visit the different
towns of the State and urge upon our
people the necessity of their giving their
support to this movement as well as to arouse
a general interest among all classes.

Resolved that in Frederick Douglass we
hail the pride of the free colored man of the
North as well as the hope of the slave in the
South.

Resolved that it would be black
ingratitude on our part did we fail to acknowledge
and appreciate tthe life devotedness of Wm
L 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. and Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. with the many
others who have stood up manfully and
uncompromisingly for our rights—rights
precious to all mankind.

Resolved, that we have noticed with
painful concern the unfortunate controversy
directed against Frederick Douglass and are
satisfied with his manly defence and do
respectfully but earnestly say to our friends—desist—said forces should be levelled against foes without, rather than against friends within.

Resolved, that with us the colored citiziens
of the city of Providence and Frederick
Douglass there is not only a common but a
special identitiy and interest. That we are
fully persuaded that he possesses an
"unswerving fidelity" thereto. That he is ever
ready to "crucify all personal considerations"
to the cause of his people. That he
possesses "high moral attainments" that
"a paramount regard for principle absolute
faith in the right" are shields and weapons
which he posseses and wields in our
common battle. That we deem it fit and meet to
proclaim to the wide wide world our full
appreciation of confidence in and gratitude
to Frederick Douglass as our acknowledged
leader and exponent and that we believe
him entitled to a place amoung the foremost of
those "truest to the cause of human freedom."

Resolved, that crushed, despised,
ill abused as we have been by professed friends
as well as foes nevertheless we feel that
human freedom is a universal heaven given
right intended for all.—a right not so
mystical and intricate that we cannot "perceive
what are its demands" or "understand the
philosophy of its operations;" for were it
so, then it were possible that it might be
felt; that there was some justification in the
God-defying act of holding men women and
lisping babies in bonds, as at the South—a
crimes which a noble Garrision has declared
to be piratical and man-stealing.

Resolved, that Messrs Geo. T. Downing, John Waugh. John N. Smith, David Blue, and our worthy Chairman Mr. Thos.
Howland, be a Committee to invite Frederick
Douglass, Esq., to the city of Providence to
deliver a lecture and that they be
empowered to make all needed arrangements.

Resolved, that the proceedings of this
meeting be sent to Frederick Douglass'
Paper for publication and that all anti-slavery
papers be requested to copy the same

Thus passed Tuesday evening. When will
you be with us?

Geo. T. Downing.