March 12, 1858
Report of the gathering at Faneuil Hallall, in commemoration of the 87th Anniversary of the Boston Massacre, and in memory Crispus Attucks. William C. Nell chairs the meeting, and speaks, along with speeches by Rock, Parker, Phillips, Remond, and Garrison.
Letters of regret from people who cannot be present include Higginson, and Whittier.
Garrison, in his speech, comments on peace and violence. “While I say that I believe God has called us all to peace – slaveholders as well as slaves, — while I believe in the peace principle, as divine and omnipotent, — nevertheless, I admit, that if any men have a right to fight for liberty with deadly weapons, they are to be found on the Southern plantations; for no wrongs are like theirs…. if Washington and his compatriots were justified in taking up arms,…by the same inexorable logic…those who are enslaved in our country today would also be justified in resorting to armed resistance, and in breaking their chains over the heads of their oppressors….”
March 16, 1860
There are speeches by Nell and Rock. Nell includes an appeal for the erection of a monument to the memory of Attucks, and predicts that by March 5, of 1870, such a monument will be erected.
Rock indicates that he is not ready to “idolize the actions of Crispus Attucks, who was a leader among those who resorted to forcible measures to create a new government…I believe in insurrections – and especially those of the pen and of the sword. Wm. Lloyd Garrison is, I think, a perfect embodiment of the moral insurrection of thought, which is continually teaching the people of this country that unjust laws and compacts made by their fathers, are not binding upon their sons, and that the ‘higher law’ of God, which we are bound to execute, teaches us to do unto others as we would have them to do unto us…..”
October 26, 1860
Here, on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of this event, is a full page from the Liberator of Nov 7, 1835, a letter about the event from George Thompson, and comment by the editor. “Most of the prominent actors in that disgraceful outbreak have gone to their ‘final account’; but the glorious cause which they madly strove to crush is still going on, ‘conquering and to conquer’. Laus Deo!”
