January 2, 1852
“We enter upon the twenty-second volume of the Liberator. Twenty-one years, therefore, have been completed by us, in advocacy of the sacred claims of our enslaved brethren, through its columns. What was sown in weakness has been raised in power; the cloud that erst was no bigger than a man’s hand, has overspread the entire land. Through obscurity and feebleness through contempt and persecution, through constant vicissitudes and amazing difficulties, the cause of justice has steadily advanced, with a God-given vitality and a divine majesty, till the land rocks beneath its tread, and all eyes are fastened upon it, and all tongues are loosed in its discussion.. ‘the end is not yet’, but the end is neither uncertain nor far distant….”
January 9, 1852
An item by Wendell Phillips, urges upon all readers to circulate petitions to the legislature, asking for the “extension of the elective privilege to women”. Those petitions should be returned to 21Cornhill St., by the 15th of February.
January 16, 1852
In an anti-tobacco-chewing article, Lewis Ford, comments: “…most tobacco-chewers keep their mouth so full of the juice as to be unable to enter into a spirited conversation with another, without spattering more or less of the juice into the face of his opponent, not unfrequently causing very unpleasant sensations of the stomach and eyes, bringing tears; and no doubt the chewer, (when talking on serious subjects,) oftentimes mistakes these tears as the effect of his conversation on the mind..” The writer suggests that, by foregoing the use of tobacco, the tax on same could be saved, and thus contributed to the abolitionist cause.
January 23, 1852
“This is the title of an association, which was organized in Boston, last year, by some of the most enterprising colored women, for mutual aid and advantage, in case of sickness and misfortune. More than a hundred members belong to it, and it promises to be great utility.” There follow excerpts from a speech by W. J. Watkins, a young man of color. The meeting was at the Belknap Street Meeting House, then adjourned to another place for a soiree, at which both Garrison and Parker Pillsbury spoke.
January 30, 1852
A long letter from Henry W. Wright, written Jan 17, 1852, from Michigan, to Richard D. Webb, Dublin, Ireland. Wright sends excerpts from the Genius of Emancipation, about Garrison, sometimes by Lundy, giving accounts of Garrison’s early crusade against Colonization, then recounting the beginning of the Liberator. Because Webb has shown interest in the anti-slavery movement in the United States, and in Garrison, Wright
believes these “few items, touching his (Garrison’s) first consecration of himself to the abolition of American slavery, will be of interest to you as well as to others.”
February 13, 1852
Under the Refuge of Oppression column there are excerpts from a pamphlet by Birney, “addressed to the free colored people, taking the detestable colonization position, that they can never be elevated in this country, and therefore advising them to expatriate themselves to Liberia!”
February 20, 1852
As part of two whole pages addressed to Louis Kossuth, Concerning Freedom and Slavery in the United States, and over the above title, a whole column begins with:
Three Million One Hundred and Seventy Seven Thousand Five Hundred and Eighty-Nine Slaves (Census of the United States for 1850)
The column is followed by ads for slaves, rewards for runaways, items from laws and legal codes which sustain slavery.
February 27, 1852
At the Third Christian Church, New Bedford, the assembly enacts five strong resolutions urging non-support of the Colonization Society.
March 5, 1852
A long letter from Smith: “You have suddenly fallen in love with the American Colonization Society. You are deceived by it, as I was deceived by it. There is less excuse, however, for you, than there was for me. My joining that Society was the folly of a young man. But you are guilty of such folly in your mature years ….”
March 5, 1852
A letter from Nell, from Rochester, N.Y., dated Feb 19, 1852, addressed to Esteemed Friend Garrison, is “sent by way of most grateful remembrance”. Nell yearns to “see the opening buds and sunny skies of coming spring”. In that mood, he reflects on memories, which includes mentioning of Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, George Thompson, Maria Stewart, and others. He comments on the ravages of the Fugitive Slave Law in Rochester, and on the numbers of fugitives constantly passing through the city on their way to Canada.
