January 7, 1842
Under Refuge for Oppression, with a title, A Northern Apologist for Slavery!. “A recreant New Englander is writing a series of letters for the Puritan in this city, from Byran County, Georgia, in extenuation of the infernal system of slavery. Hear this puritanical knave!” (No city is named, and the following is signed only “N.H. A. M.” The writer begins with an assertion that, on the subject of domestic slavery, the North and South are in disagreement, and that “each has its errors”. The argument presented seems to say, first, that slavery does not always mean that slaves are sunk to some very low social level. The writer then admits that slavery “is not the natural relation in which the different members of society ought to stand to each other.”. But still, the system exists; the question is how is it to be done away. There is then a strong denial of immediate abolition, and the article commends “an increased interest which is felt at the South in the religious improvement of the colored population.”
January 7, 1842
“To the friends of the Liberator”, a notice signed by Francis Jackson, Samuel Philbrick, Ellis Gray Loring, Sm.Bassett, and Edmund Qincy, dated December 31, 1841 Indicates that, at the request of Garrison, “now the sole proprietor” of the Liberator, they have consented to continue to supervise its financial concerns during the ensuing year. Indicates that until two years since it was published on the joint account of Garrison and Knapp, that Knapp transferred to Garrison his half of the right to publish for two years from January, 1840. The whole interest had been transferred to Garrison in October, 1840. Signers urge support of the paper.
January 7, 1842
Included here simply to give a hint of some of the variety of topics included in the paper. This unsigned article occupies about one-half column of this issue
January 14, 1842
From the Abington Congregational Church, October 20, 1841, comes news of a meeting at which five-sixth of the whole church had signed anti-slavery resolutions, and five-seventh had signed temperance resolutions.
January 14, 1842
After a long report on the fair, there is a list of sixty-four towns and cities which participated, and note that there may have been others also.
January 21, 1842
This is a notice from the Governor, to the state Legislature, “laying before it a law of Virginia, calculated to embarrass our commerce.” The message includes the reasons why the Governor has refused to “surrender three persons heretofore demanded by the Lieutenant Governor of that Commonwealth as fugitives from justice.
January 28, 1842
Two lines tell of Pete, a slave who murdered Mrs. McMahon and daughter, in McMinn County. He was hung.
January 28, 1842
The Lynn Register comments on the recent seizure and imprisonment of C. T. Torrey, an abolitionist from Mass., while attending a Slaveholders Convention, in Annapolis, MD. The article contends that when slaveholders attend anti-slavery meetings in the North they are not so treated, but welcomed for participation. The conclusion is summarized in the above title.
February 18, 1842
This meeting, held in the Representatives’ Hall, began at an early evening hour, and continued until almost eleven. Speakers included Remond, Phillips, Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley, and Garrison. It is said of Douglass: “who made, perhaps, although void of any regular education, the best speech of the evening everything considered. He showed great imitative powers, and gave an amusing exhibition of the southern style of preaching to slaves, and the corresponding practice, which seemed to interest the meeting greatly. His natie talents are evidently of a high order.”
February 25, 1842
Notes of a meeting of the Essex County A.S. Society, Feb 8, 1842. A resolution presented by Garrison, calling for disunion, debated, and in evening session, finally voted to be “laid on the table”, for discussion at the next meeting. The resolution included some language such as: “..it is morally and politically impossible for a just or equal union to be formed between Liberty and Slavery”; it refers to the adoption of the Federal constitution as “a guilty and fatal compromise made by the people of the North with southern oppressors, by which slavery has been nourished, protected and enlarged up to the present hour, to the impoverishment and disgrace of the nation, the sacrifice of civil
and religious freedom, and the crucifixion of humanity…..”
