The Liberator Files

December 16, 1853

Signed by “N.B.”, here is an article titled, The Mask Entirely Removed.  The context is twelve columns in Douglass’s paper, which are in response to articles in several other  papers, including one in The Liberator.  The topic for this response is “his feelings and attitudes towards his old friends and associates in the cause of emancipation.”  Here are excerpts only.

“The history of the Anti-slavery struggle has been marked by instances of defection, alienation, apostasy, on the part of some of its most efficient supporters for a given time; but by none more signal, venomous, or extraordinary, than the present.  Mr. Douglass now stands self-unmasked, his features flushed with passion, his air scornful and defiant, his language bitter as wormwood, his pen dipped in poison; as thoroughly changed  in his spirit as was ever ‘arch-angel ruined’, and as artful and unscrupulous a schismatic as has yet appeared in the abolition ranks.” …..   “He now assumes an attitude which is eliciting the warmest encomiums from the most malignant enemies of the Anti-Slavery movement, and which is undisguisedly  hostile to his old companions in arms. No marvel, therefore, that he can speak of the ‘Garrisonians’ with as much flippancy of any of our pro-slavery contemners; or that he can aver, ‘Word-wise, these Garrisonians are my best friends — deed-wise, I have no more vigilant enemies’;  or that he is able to say of the “Refuge of Oppression’, that ‘of late, it has become the best part of Mr. Garrison’s paper, and about which nobody cares  a single straw;’ or that he cam utter the monstrous untruth, that, ‘a fierce and bitter warfare’ is waged against him, ‘under the generalship; of William Lloyd Garrison,’ with a view to destroy his anti-slavery usefulness !!”

“Jaundiced in vision, and inflamed with passion, he affects to regard us as the ‘disparager’, (!) of the colored race, and artfully endeavors to excite their jealousy and opposition by utterly perverting the meaning of our language.”………”Yet Mr. Douglass presumes upon the color of his skin to vindicate his superior fidelity to that cause, and to screen himself from criticism and rebuke! This trick cannot succed.”

The article continues with remonstrance to Douglass because he has been critical of Charles L. Remond, William C. Nell, and Oliver Johnson.  It concludes with a promise that an article from Douglass’s paper which he complains has not been included in The Liberator, will be printed in the next one.

December 2, 1853

A letter to Garrison, from Anna Douglass, requesting that he publish her letter, in which she states, that “it is not true, that the presence of a certain person in the office of Frederick Douglass causes unhappiness in his family”.  Garrison’s introduction to the letter, doubts that she means to affirm “deliberately” that there has been no unhappiness created in her family in regard to the person alluded to, “though there may be no cause for any such feeling at the present time.”

December 2, 1853

Mary M. Gould, Secretary of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Sewing Circle, of Cincinnati, sends one hundred dollars as a contribution to the Liberator.

November 25, 1853

The article reports on the success of the School, with an average enrollment of sixty-two  It is to receive for three years an annual grant of fifteen hundred dollars from the State, but the article doe not say which State, nor indicate the location of the School.

November 25, 1853

From a newspaper from the capital of Brazil there is notice of items which have been introduced in the legislature, which proposes to abolish slavery for any who are born in Brazil after the date when the law is passed, or who come into Brazil after that date. It passed the Chamber of Deputies, May, 1852, but it must pass another Chamber.

November 18, 1853

Here is an account of a meeting of colored citizens, October 25, 1853,  a large meeting, held at the AME Church. Resolutions are passed, among them one which “condemns as unjust” two recent Daily Democrat articles attacking Garrison and the Fosters. They appoint a committee to draft a constitution and by-laws for a proposed association to be known as the Sons and Daughters of Liberty.

November 18, 1853

Under the Refuge of Oppression column, comes from the Detroit Free Press an article announcing the Decline of Abolitionism.  “…there exists , we presume to say, no honest anti-slavery sentiment….the only genuine abolitionists that give evidence of vital existence are certain crazy men and strong-minded women — the Garrisons, the Phillipses, the Abby Kelleys, the Lucretia Motts, et cetera, et cetera.  Their conduct illustrates the idea of fanaticism run mad. …..

November 11, 1853

At a recent meeting in Adrian, Michigan, the new Society was formed, with a constitution, and officers elected, and resolutions presented by Garrison, were adopted.

October 21, 1853

Henry C. Wright sends a letter to Garrison , from Ohio. He has visited the Penitentiary and Lunatic Asylum there. In the name of justice, love, and mercy he calls for a complete examination and overhaul of the system.

October 14, 1853

Here is a letter from Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington, Delaware, who has sent three dollars to the paper.  Garrison indicates that Garrett is an old man and “that many a slave owes his freedom to his good offices”.   Garrison says that Mr. Garrett had his property taken from him and given to a slaveholder, to whose slaves he had given food and shelter. A letter from Garrett is included , in which he praises The Liberator for “causing alarm to the slaveholders of the South.”