February 15, 1861
“The Union formed in 1789 is at last dissolved through the secession, without cause, of six of the slave States, the complicity of the remainder, and the imbecility and perfidy of President Buchanan. These six States have organized themselves into a Southern Confederacy, and unanimously elected Jefferson Davis , of Mississippi, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Vice President. All of this has been done, we repeat, without cause…….Now, then, let there be a Convention of the Free States called to organize an independent government on free and just principles……”
February 8, 1861
There is one brief article from Parker Pillsbury, telling of a mob which interrupted an abolition meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a second letter from Susan B. Anthony, telling of a similar disturbance in Rome, New York.
February 8, 1861
This article recounts a debate in the Massachusetts House of Representatives over a motion to allow the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society the use of Representatives Hall, in consequence of the suppression of their meetings recently. The final vote was 69 Yeas, and 136 Nays.
February 1, 1861
Garrison’s letter indicates that he has been ill eighteen days, and that today’s meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society will be the first of its annual meetings he has missed. The meeting will be “the most encouraging and the most potential ever held by the Society, whether broken up by lawless violence, or permitted to proceed without molestation.”
January 25, 1861
An urgent call for people to return signed petitions against Slave-hunting in Massachusetts, to then be laid before the legislature. “Now, while the concessionists are at work… now is the time for those to speak who wish Massachusetts to be made a Free State indeed.”
January 18, 1861
“The ship Lesbia, under French colors, (supposed to be the ship Montauk of New York,) was recently taken by a Spanish steamer of war, and brought into Havana, with 900 negroes on board.”
January 18, 1861
Charles C. Burleigh writes from Florence, telling of two evenings in succession when he was accosted by a mob when giving anti-slavery speeches. On the second evening, during the disturbances, a stove was overturned; later that night in the school-house, where the stove was located, a fire burned the school-house to the ground.
January 11, 1861
“The Editor has been too ill to be able to give any attention to the Liberator this week.”
January 11, 1861
Virginia, Orange County —- People from this county in Virginia pass resolutions, including: “the cotton states will secede; that their destiny is our destiny; and that Virginia should retire before the 4th of March next, and place herself at the head of the column…that, with a united South, Abraham Lincoln will not make war against fifteen states; but should he do so, may God defend the right!”
Louisiana —- resolutions passed include one directed to the “brothers of South Carolina, hailing their noble State as a new and independent power…”
January 4, 1861
“We commence a new decade with the same confidence in the principles we espouse, the same assurance of success in the cause we advocate, that we felt at the commencement of our labors, — only greatly strengthened by the experience gained, and the progress made toward the goal of final victory. It has been a long, desperate, and (humanly speaking) most unequal struggle with the organized religious sentiment, the political power, the combined wealth, the recognized respectability, the popular feeling, the business selfishness, the satanic malignity, and the universal brutality and ruffianism of the country; but, from the hour the bugle of freedom first sounded its notes in favor of immediate and universal emancipation, the movement has advanced with slow but irresistible power, under Divine guidance, confounding the wisdom of the wise, contemning the might of the strong, taking the cunning in their own craftiness, unmasking the hypocritical, swallowing up all the rods of the magicians, breaking sects and parties into fragments, vanquishing all opponents, its poverty more than a match for all the wealth of the land, its spirit sublime and unconquerable , its truths self-evident, and its results glorious in the annals of historic achievement; and still,
“Against the wind, against the tide,
It steadies with upright keel,”
outstripping all competition, and with the haven of righteousness and peace full in view.”
