January 7, 1848
From the New England Puritan, and placed under Refuge of Oppression, ” .. we have a multitude of reforms, so entitled, which assail the church and the clergy as false to Scripture principles…. By going back some sixteen or seventeen years, we find the beginning of this new mode of warfare, and the inventor to be Wm. Lloyd Garrison….. he commenced filling the columns of the Liberator with Scripture quotations and religious appeals….to deceive many Christians as to his real character and motives, and very soon created quite an effervescence in the bosom of the church…. He has been successful, however, in doing much injury to the church….”
January 21, 1848
From Frederick Douglass’s North Star there is an account of the Bazaar, from Douglass, who indicates that “It was our lot to make the last anti-slavery speech in Faneuil Hall on the last night of the old year.” ….. “We know that imputations have been cast upon those who act most prominently in conducting this fair. It is said that they seek popularity, and play into the hands of the Beacon street aristocracy. This insinuation is base. Where has aristocracy, cotton-ocracy or slave-ocracy received more faithful rebukes, within the last few weeks, than in the Liberator of Boston?”
January 28, 1848
“Do they suppose that slaveholders, in open violation of their laws, will allow their slaves to have the Bible? How do they mean to get the Bible among the slaves? It cannot go by itself – it must be carried….of what value is the Bible to one who cannot read its contents?” …. In speaking of those who want to distribute the Bible among slaves: Douglass says,”… the immediate and only effect of their efforts must be to turn off attention from the main and only momentous connection with the slave, and absorb energy and money in giving to him the Bible, that ought to be used in giving him to himself. …The slave is a thing – and it is the all-commanding duty of the American people to make him a man. …To demand less than this …..is to deceive the fettered bondman, and to soothe the conscience of the slaveholder on the very point where he should be most stung with remorse and shame….”
January 28, 1948
”The past week is memorable in the history of the colored people of this State, if not of the Union, by the first appearance in the Courts of Justice, of one of their number as a member of the bar.” …Mr. Morris is too well known to make it necessary that we should recommend him to the notice of those who need his professional services.”
January 28, 1948
“Four numbers of the Star have been issued, and they are sufficient to indicate what will be its character, and the probability of its success. They have appeared with commendable punctuality, and exhibited no lack on the score of editorial tact or talent. The facility with which Mr. Douglass has adapted himself to his new and responsible situation is another proof of his genius, and worthy of special praise. His editorial articles are exceedingly well written; and the typographical, orthographical and grammatical accuracy with which the Star is printed surpass that of any other paper ever published by a colored man. …”
February 11, 1848
A notice of two recent concerts by the Hutchinsons, at the Melodeon, with new songs and music, to crowded audiences. “…they are always listed (sic) to with great delight…”
February 18, 1848
Here is a complaint that Webster, who receives eight dollars a day, has “scarecely given a vote in the Senate during the present session”. … “What to him are the sighs and sufferings of three millions of his countrymen in slavery? He sees and hears them with stolid apathy. But he is prompt to bow down and worship the slaveholding Moloch on the soil of Virginia , that he may receive the applause of the vilest of men. He has, in every exigency, basely betrayed the cause of liberty, and ought to be held in righteous abhorrence.”
February 25, 1848
A notice that there will be a hearing at the State House, before the Judiciary Committee, on the coming Friday afternoon. The Committee will be addressed on behalf of the petitioners, by Wendell Phillips and Garrison
March 3, 1848
A notice that, because of the death of Mr. Adams, the hearing has been postponed. Until next week, probably. In a tone of sarcasm, a claim is made that the hearing ought to take place in the House Chambers, but it has been assigned to a small hearing room. “If the hearing was in regard to a matter such as a Bank corporation or a Bank Charter, it doubtless would be in the House itself,…But since it relates only to seizure, imprisonment, and reduction to slavery of citizens of Massachusetts”, and to “the enormity of the act of entering into ‘a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell’, by the people of this Commonwealth” etc. “there is reason for the hearing to “be properly confined to the narrow limits of the hearing room.”
March 3, 1848
“This ambitious and inflated leader of the cottonocracy, has done more, perhaps, than any other man, to repress the rising spirit of anti-slavery in New England.”
