The Liberator Files

January 1, 1847

A letter, signed by Richard D.Webb, recounts the story of Rogers’ friendship with and then alienation from Garrison; the letter is addressed to “Dear Friend”, probably Maria W. Chapman.

January 1, 1847

A letter to Garrison, from Edward Search, in London.   “Our English government and the Irish people are both at this time reaping the bad fruit arising from the love of rule in our aristocracy in times past, their incapacity to exercise it for the general good, and the little progress people make when not allowed to govern themselves, and gather wisdom from their own mistakes.  Our aristocracy have managed the Irish and their affairs, that they have for ages reduced the people to semi-starvation upon inferior potatoes, and themselves, to the state, generally speaking, to a pauper aristocracy, and land-ocracy,…….and the English half-starved poor are taxed to feed and sustain the starving poor of Ireland  …..The Irish are starving, and the English government are driven to spend large sums, to find the Irish people work and wages. ….”  The letter then goes on to draw comparisons to what has happened in the United States….with slavery depriving people of liberty, and the right to govern themselves…”Slavery lowered the national character till it became sufficiently degraded  to disavow its debts, and with all the power and means of payment, it sunk so low as to refuse payment; and this country is the sufferer, as the largest creditor…..

January 1, 1847

Benjamin Chase, writes to Garrison, from Auburn, N.H.   She now resides in Greenland, N.H., with a colored woman.  The slave was married to a Mr. Staines, and uses that name.

January 8, 1847

Here is an article from the Pittsburgh Christian Advocate, signed, “W.W.M.”, in which the idea of “come-outism” is derided.  “This is expressive of a class persons, who come out from all organizations of Church and State, and are seeking their overthrow, either by physical or moral means. ….seeking their overthrow, and not their reform…. a brotherhood of disorganizers, who wear the cloak of anti-slavery….It is Infidelity that keeps the slave in bondage.   When Christianity is believed and practiced by a majority of the South, the slave will be free…. The Come-outer would dash in pieces the church, with all its institutions, leaving the poor slave at the mercy alone of the passions, and the revenge of his enemy, without the influences of the institutions of the Christian church……”

January 8, 1847

From the N.Y. Eve Post

“Persons who have never visited our prisons and police offices, can form no adequate idea of the suffering endured by many of the weaker sex who reside in this city.  …..If they could but attend on our police offices for one or two weeks, and mark the bruised eyes, the faces beaten almost to a jelly, the broad gashes in the head or on the body, and the almost paralyzed limbs of the numberless females who apply to the magistrate for redress of their wrongs, they would be almost ready to swear vengeance on the heads of those brutal husbands….”

January 15, 1847

Tells of how, soon after his arrival in England there were people intent on effecting legal emancipation of Douglass, “provided his ransom could be effected at a fair market value.” Garrison mentions names of some of the leaders in the effort, Anna Richardson, George Thompson, and says, “I also contributed my mite.”  The total sum came to about $725.  This ransoming has raised questions among Abolitionists, who have often maintained that to offer money to secure emancipation of a person is tantamount to saying that the slaveholder had a right to his “property”.  Garrison tries to explain his position….  “I still hold firmly to the doctrine laid down in the Declaration of Sentiments, adopted in Philadelphia in 1833, as I did at that time when I wrote that instrument.. …’We maintain that no compensation should be given to the planters emancipating their slaves, because it would be a surrender of the great fundamental principle, that ‘man cannot hold property in man.’   Now what was the assumption intended to be disclaimed by this empathic language?  Most certainly not that it would be wrong to contribute money for the redemption of the pining bondman from his cruel fate, provided that the right of the kidnapper to make the pecuniary exaction was not conceded, but expressly disclaimed……The claim for ‘compensation’ which the Declaration reprobates, is that which is put forth by those who maintain that the slaves are bona fide property—that the slaveholders are guilty of no wrong in holding slaves — that emancipation ought not to be granted, unless the masters are remunerated.  But what analogy exists between the affirmation of the right of the slaveholder to be compensated for his slave, and the compliance with his demand, though in open denial of his right, in order to extricate from a horrible doom, ‘a man and a brother’?  I see none whatever.”

January 22, 1847

“The following is an Article in the Constitution of Wisconsin, which guarantees to every wife her own property, and to every family a home, beyond the power of alienation by a drunken or otherwise profligate husband or father. The vote on its passage stood — Yeas 65; Nays 31″
Then follow the two articles quoted.

January 29, 1847

“About half past l0 o’clock, on the night of the 21s instant, a fire broke out in a bowling alley; known as the ‘Neptune Saloon’, on Haverhill Street.”… A description of the blaze and attempt by the firefighters to contain it, and the total loss, follows.

January 29, 1847

Here is a long article, under the title above, with no designation of source, except that reference is made to New York state.   It concludes:  “I fain would hope that, when next the people frame a Constitution for this State, the stupendous fact will not be overlooked, that more than one half of our population are females, to whom equal rights and equal privileges ought to be accorded.”

February 12. 1847

A statement against Slavery, signed with the names of 153 Baptist Ministers in Maine.