The Liberator Files

January 19, 1844

A correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce writes from Havana with a deplorable account of the slave traffic:  “There is no hope, at present, that the slave trade will cease.”

February 2, 1844

Worship – The Sabbath
        “The Editor of the Liberator will give his ‘infidel’ views, respecting Worship; and the Sabbath, in Amory Hall, on Sunday next, in the forenoon and evening.  Those who dare to prove all things, and to hold fast that which is good, are invited to attend.”

February 2, 1844

The item tells that Charles Spear, noted for his work against Capital Punishment, has been excluded from the State Prison, “as a teacher and comforter of the poor prisoners”…It claims that Spear has been excluded “by the reverend bigot who officiates as chaplain in that gloomy place”, and that the chaplain’s action “is an outrage on religious liberty and a stretch of power, it seems to us, deserving the immediate attention of the State Executive or Legislature. If we have a union of Church and State in Massachusetts, it is time the people should know it.”

February 16, 1844

Addressed to Rev. Orville Dewey, D.D., Smith responds to a lecture in which Dewey has asserted that emancipated blacks in free states are worse off than the slaves of the south. Smith refutes this claim, and invites a debate.

March 22, 1844

Here is an announcement of one hundred conventions to be held in Massachusetts, listing the towns and dates for each (usual two days each), and indicating some of the speakers at the various conventions. A message signed by Wendell Phillips, General Agent of the Mass. A.S. Society, calls this list to the attention of readers: “The friends of the cause in the above named towns and their immediate vicinity are urgently requested to take every means of giving the widest possible notice of these meetings. Let each one consider this his own personal duty……..”

March 29, 1844

Under Refuge of Oppression, titled Folly of the Abolitionists, this item seems to be from the Yarmouth Register, and is by a correspondent from the Plymouth (Mass) Rock.   It refers to a recent anti-slavery convention and is critical of a speech by Foster.  “These modest gentry have but a few wants beyond other citizens; they only desire to bring the church and clergy into contempt – to destroy the constitution, that we may be a country like the South American States, tossed forever in a storm of anarchy and blood  — to take possession of our houses, and use them for their destructive purposes — to thrust their precious doctrines upon religious congregations when they please, and a few other trifles incidental to these. How strange that we cannot grant their wishes! ……Suppose the abolitionists could succeed in destroying the church, the clergy, the army, the navy, the judiciary, the Union, would slavery fall with them?  They should demonstrate that it would, before we make so costly a sacrifice…..”

April 19, 1844

Here is a song by the Hutchinson’s, dedicated to Nathaniel P. Rogers
Some verses:
 Ho!  The car Emancipation
 Rides majestic thro’ our nation,
 Bearing on its train the story,
 Liberty!  A nation’s glory.
    Roll it along, thro’ the nation
    Freedom’s car, Emancipation.

 First of all, the train, and greater,
 Speeds the dauntless Liberator,
 Onward cheered amid hosannas
 And the waving of free banners.
    Roll it along! Spread your banners,
    While the people shout hosannas.

 Men of various predilections,
 Frightened, run in all directions,
 Merchants, editors, physicians,
 Lawyers, priests, and politicians,
     Get out of the way!  Every station!
     Clear the track of Emancipation!

April 26, 1844

A notice that Dumas, “a colored man and member of the French Institute”, has engaged a book-seller in Paris, to furnish him twenty volumes of travels at $200,000.

“…Wonder how much some of our American literary men, who talk so much of the incapacity of the colored man, could get for a volume of their travels?”

May 17, 1844

Brother Kurtz, a clergyman and editor of Lutheran Observer, is here quoted:
‘A number of individuals, with Mr. Garrison at their head, have been petitioning the Massachusetts Legislature to abolish capital punishment, and, in case their prayer should be denied, they ask that the gallows be erected near a meeting house, that the execution take place on the Sabbath day, and that the minister be the executioner’  We give the foregoing to show where this notorious individual has got to. What will be his next step, time alone will tell.”

May 31, 1844

At the tenth anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in New York City, May 7th,  “it  was decided by a vote of nearly three to one of members present….that the existing national compact should be instantly dissolved; that secession from the government is a religious and political duty, that the motto inscribed on the banner of Freedom should be NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS; that it is impractical for tyrants and the enemies of tyranny to coalesce and legislate together for the preservations of human rights, or the promotion of the interests of Liberty;  and that revolutionary ground should be occupied by all those who abhor the thought of doing evil that good may come, and who do not mean to compromise the principles of Justice and Humanity…..”