The Liberator Files

February 27, 1852

At the Third Christian Church, New Bedford, the assembly enacts five strong resolutions urging non-support of the Colonization Society.

February 20, 1852

As part of two whole pages addressed to Louis Kossuth, Concerning Freedom and Slavery in the United States, and  over the above title, a whole column begins with:

Three Million One Hundred and Seventy Seven Thousand Five Hundred and Eighty-Nine Slaves (Census of the United States for 1850)

The column is followed by ads for slaves, rewards for runaways, items from laws and legal codes which sustain slavery.

February 13, 1852

Under the Refuge of Oppression column there are excerpts from a pamphlet by Birney, “addressed to the free colored people, taking the detestable colonization position, that they can never be elevated in this country, and therefore advising them to expatriate themselves to Liberia!”

January 30, 1852

A long letter from Henry W. Wright, written Jan 17, 1852, from Michigan, to Richard D. Webb, Dublin, Ireland.  Wright sends excerpts from the Genius of Emancipation, about Garrison, sometimes by Lundy, giving accounts of Garrison’s early crusade against Colonization, then recounting the beginning of the Liberator.   Because Webb has shown interest in the anti-slavery movement in the United States, and in Garrison, Wright
believes these “few items, touching his (Garrison’s) first consecration of himself to the abolition of American slavery, will be of interest to you as well as to others.”

January 23, 1852

“This is the title of an association, which was organized in Boston, last year, by some of the most enterprising colored women, for mutual aid and advantage, in case of sickness and misfortune.  More than a hundred members belong to it, and it promises to be great utility.”   There follow excerpts from a speech by W. J. Watkins, a young man of color. The meeting was at the Belknap Street Meeting House, then adjourned to another place for a soiree, at which both Garrison and Parker Pillsbury spoke.

January 16, 1852

In an anti-tobacco-chewing article, Lewis Ford, comments:  “…most tobacco-chewers keep their mouth so full of the juice as to be unable to enter into a spirited conversation with another, without spattering more or less of the juice into the face of his opponent, not unfrequently causing very unpleasant sensations of the stomach and eyes, bringing tears; and no doubt the chewer, (when talking on serious subjects,) oftentimes mistakes these tears as the effect of his conversation on the mind..”  The writer suggests that, by foregoing the use of tobacco, the tax on same could be saved, and thus contributed to the abolitionist cause.

January 9, 1852

An item by Wendell Phillips, urges upon all readers to circulate petitions to the legislature, asking for the “extension of the elective privilege to women”.  Those petitions should be returned to 21Cornhill St., by the 15th of February.

January 2, 1852

“We enter upon the twenty-second volume of the Liberator.  Twenty-one years, therefore, have been completed by us, in advocacy of the sacred claims of our enslaved brethren, through its columns.  What was sown in weakness has been raised in power; the cloud that erst was no bigger than a man’s hand, has overspread the entire land.  Through obscurity and feebleness through contempt and persecution, through constant vicissitudes and amazing difficulties, the cause of justice has steadily advanced, with a God-given vitality and a divine majesty, till the land rocks beneath its tread, and all eyes are fastened upon it, and all tongues are loosed in its discussion.. ‘the end is not yet’, but the end is neither uncertain nor far distant….”

December 12, 1851

From Louisville, Nov. 13, Fairbanks writes from jail, “once more” for having given aid and comfort to an oppressed slave”.  He gives an account of the event, and appeals for assistance.

November 7, 1851

Henry C. Wright, writes from Indiana, where he has attended a Women’s Convention.  The Convention has adopted several strong anti-slavery resolutions. One Methodist leader, Bible in hand, has spoken of the Biblical injunction of the right of men to compel obedience by women, and to use brute force to do so… “..the last half-day was devoted exclusively to the consideration of woman in slavery as a chattel.”