January 11, 1839
Under Refuge of Oppression there is an article from the Boston Recorder, addressed to the Rev. Samuel Osgood, D.D., from Ralph Emerson. Later in the same issue there is an item under the title, Clerical Cant, commenting on what has been an on-going argument between these two men in the Recorder. Evidently, Dr. Osgood, of Springfield, has defended the anti-slavery movement, while Prof. Emerson, of Andover has assailed the movement. There is here a comment, assuming it is from Garrison, but is not so signed, in which the writer refers to Professor Emerson. “…we avow , that a more glaring exhibition of clerical cant, and spurious piety, and holy cunning, and crocodile weeping, and priestly insolence —- all about the awful sin of exposing the dumb dogs, and hirelings of the day, who refuse to open their mouths for the oppressed, and about disturbing the peace of those churches which recognize man-stealers as ‘evangelical’ Christians,— and we have never seen since we sounded the first note of alarm and warning in the ears of this infatuated and guilty nation. “O, its offense is rank—it smells to heaven!’”
January 18, 1839
There is a note that “clerical and sectarian” haters of the paper are circulating rumors of its pending failure, including statements that it lost 200 subscribers on January 1st. The
response is “we do not know of six who have stopped the paper”.
January 25, 1839
A long accounting “To the People of Massachusetts”, from Cushing, telling of the gag-order regarding the anti-slavery petitions in Congress, dated Dec 22,1838, from Washington.
January 25, 1839
This Dec 10, 1838 letter is addressed to Garrison, signed simply “A Universalist Abolitionist”. The tone is a sarcastic question, wondering if there is a Universalist periodical which consistently upholds that doctrine “that all mankind are brethren”.
The specific target of the comments is a Mr. Whittemore, of the Trumpet.
February 8, 1839
Under Refuge of Oppression, there is “from the Hampshire Republican” , no state designated, an article with reference to seven hundred and thirty-five females in Lynn, have petitioned the Legislature for the privilege to marry black husbands. “We have ever been an advocate for rational liberty in the broadest sense. We feel a sympathy for every portion of the human race held in bondage. We believe that ‘all men are created free and equal ‘in a proper sense; but we do NOT believe that they are created FREE to do wrong —to trample upon the rights and purloin the property of others, and to indulge in such excesses, and to gratify such brutal passions as would lead to the subversion of order and destruction of society. We do not believe it was the design of the Creator, that marriages should take place between negroes and whites, and certain, we are, that such alliances will never be tolerated in New England. If the abolitionists, as a party, sanction the course of the FAIR petitioners in Lynn, we eschew them as too filthy and loathsome for a free New Englander to act with……….Slavery is an evil of great magnitude…..is practical amalgamation — a mixture of white and black blood in New England, the remedy for this evil?………..”
February 8, 1839
A letter to Garrison, comes from I. Boutwell, of the Theological Seminary, Andover, dated Dec. 31, 1838. It tells of an African Sabbath School, started in 1832, by a Miss Bliss, from Boston. Held in the basement of the 2d Presbyterian church, the school sometimes numbered 200 people. There was notice that the school could no longer be continued, but the article indicates that a number of people continue to meet with the teachers in their rooms.
February 15, 1839
Under Refuge of Oppression , and labeled, Polite Letters from the South, one letter, from Somerton, VA, tells the Editor: “You can remain in Boston, and preach your doctrines, but coward-like, afraid to open your mouth elsewhere. The writer will visit your paper soon, and pull your d____d nose for you.”
The other letter, from the Lynch Club, of Charleston, South Carolina: “You son of a bitch: If you ever send such papers here again, we will come and give you a good Lynching; for the State will pay all expenses. So you had better keep them at home.”
February 15, 1839
Here is an ad for the new paper, published in the city by George Russell, for an Association of Abolitionists. It is expected that Elizur Wright, Jr. Esq, now one of the secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society, will become its editor.
The new paper ” is neatly printed on a small sheet, and exhibits both tact and talent in its selected and original articles. Some criticisms upon it, this week, are necessarily omitted to make room for Clay’s speech and other articles.”
February 15, 1839
Notice that a Baltimore paper contains notice that a colored man named John Thomas, who says he is free, and who was born and brought up in Boston, has been committed to jail in that city as a runaway slave. Says that if he is not speedily claimed by his owner, he will be sold.
March 1, 1839
Under Refuge of Oppression, there is a copy of a Petition presented to the Massachusetts General Court, in which a large number of men from Lynn, mock the recent attempt by women to secure passage of a law allowing interracial marriage. This “petition” is clearly intended to mock that of the women. The editor presents it under the title, “Low Blackguardism”, and comments that it is “scurrilous”, and that the men have “degraded themselves in the eyes of all upright men……”
