The Liberator Files

January 6, 1854

“What disclosure have been made as to the heart of this nation toward the oppressed, as to the position of the Government in regard to their enslavement, and as to the spirit of religion of the land, universally !  How many have gone backward, become alienated, or shamefully apostatized, among the professional friends of the slave!  And what multitudes of sterling men and women have been added to our ranks since the tocsin of alarm was first sounded!…..O, the work that remains to be done!  O, the darkness that still broods over the land, yet to be dissipated!..But the signs of the time are undeniably cheering. The South is perceptibly faltering, and we have only to persevere in the same uncompromising spirit that has hitherto characterized our efforts, and the jubilee will assuredly come.
‘Fly swiftly round, ye wheels of time,
And bring the welcome day!’

January 6, 1854

A large audience assembled in the Belknap Street Church for the second annual meeting of the Association.  The group had been established in the previous year, “for the purpose of annually testifying the love and affection we cherish for the Pioneer, and unflinching Advocate of Immediate Emancipation”.  Speakers review his life and its importance in the emancipation cause.  In his response Garrison affirms his central commitments, and at the conclusion, “he briefly alluded, as a matter of deep regret, to the alienation of Mr. Douglass from his old friends, but said he had no wish to bias the minds of any present in regard to the controversy.  They must read and decide for themselves.  Whoever might falter or prove recreant, our cause was of God, and must ultimately grind all opposition to powder.  (Cheers.)”

January 6, 1854

Smith’s speech in the House, December 20, 1853, is included in this edition. There is also a column of comment by the editor.  “It is greatly to his credit that, instead of keep dumb, (as did Mr. Sumner), for the space of nine months, on the subject of slavery, he seized the very earliest opportunity to open the discussion…..finding fault with some portions of his speech, we honor Mr. Smith for having thus early in the session ‘put the ball in motion’”……when expatiating on the guilt of our nation for its enslavement of a vast multitude on its own soil, he speaks in clear, strong, unequivocal phraseology, and forcibly rebukes the country  for its glaring hypocrisy……”

January 13, 1854

The editor introduces extracts from this “timely, able and fearless speech”, Dec. 21, 1853, in the U. S. House. “Certain Cuban slave dealers” have asked for payment for the loss of their slaves in the Amistad case. Some members of Congress have recommended to the President that he give favorable consideration of the those claims. After recounting the history of the Amistad case, Giddings, in his speech comments: “We ask no favors at the hands of those who advocate the slave trade, and I will frankly say to them, that I apprehend they will recede from the position which the President has assumed; that they will not dare sustain him.” He urges that “he who holds ‘that this Government was constituted to secure the right to life, liberty, and happiness’ to the people, will never vote to prostitute its powers to encourage the slave trade, to maintain oppression, or dishonor our race.”

January 20, 1854

Here is a report on the results of the recent Anti-Slavery Bazaar, which exceeded those of the last year, and amounted to $4,256

January 27, 1854

From the Frederick Douglass’s Paper,  under the title The Liberator, A.S. Standard and Pennsylvania Freeman,  Douglass says that his purpose “..is not to re-open, but, if possible, to close up our account with these Anti-Slavery journals….bearing upon the personal controversy into which we believe every candid observer will admit, we have been reluctantly drawn, if not absolutely forced…..”  Douglass indicates no wish to
“be embroiled in personal conflict with anti-slavery men of any sort; there is better work for all of us to do, than to keep up a warfare against each other.”…”If Mr. Garrison and his friends have lost confidence in us, the world has been most fully acquainted with the fact…..Here, therefore, may the matter safely repose…..”….”To the various mischievous and scandalous charges brought against us, we have humbly pleaded, throughout NOT GUILTY, and have exposed the complicated sophistry, and the false and hollow evidence upon which our condemnation was sought, without, in the least degree, wishing to retaliate, or to discredit our accusers, further than was absolutely necessary to our own proper vindication.”

The page includes items from the Rochester American, the Syracuse Journal, the Syracuse League, the N. Y. Journal, the Boston Catholic Pilot, all of which seem to exploit the controversy.

Comment by the Editor

The Editor calls attention to the article on the first page (above),  names the “vile papers” which have extended to Douglass “sympathy and aid”, claiming that ” if he cannot blush in presenting such backers to his readers, we can blush for him.”  “we defy him or them to quote a single line from the Liberator condemning him for anything but his aspersions of those who have been his best friends, and to whom he is eternally indebted for his emerging from obscurity.”

January 27, 1854

An article disparages a gathering of the Massachusetts Webster Association, to a honor his birthday.  “No matter how deformed or monstrous the idol may be, its worshippers are none the less ready to bow down, and adore it as pre-eminently great, illustrious, and powerful.”    The celebratory dinner was held at the Revere House, which the article characterizes as “the headquarters of genteel dissipation.”  Among those in attendance, “it would be preposterous to suppose that there was one who was not both a timer-server and a sycophant……..the sum total of independent manhood among them all, amounted exactly to a cipher….”

February 10, 1854

With the sub-title Freedom for All the North!, here is notice of a State Convention, called to meet at Faneuil Hall, “to consult upon measures to prevent… the great political and moral evil” which is evident by the intention of the Slave Powers to extend slavery to the new territory.

March 24, 1854

Here is the fourth annual call for a gathering in regard to the Fugitive Slave Act.  “… deeds have been done in our midst that warn us not to relax our efforts.’…Our city, until within the past year, free from the deep disgrace of having sent back a poor fugitive to his chains, under the Fugitive Slave Act, now stand doubly degraded.”

March 31, 1854

Three thousand clergymen of all denominations have presented to the US Senate a Remonstrance Against the Nebraska Bill.  “No such religious demonstration has been made, touching the action of the government on any subject, since the adoption of the American Constitution.  The article quotes newspapers which condemn the clergymen for this action….All this is equally instructive and refreshing. For more than twenty years , the clergy of New England have denounced the abolitionists as lacking in sound judgment, good temper, Christian courtesy, and brotherly kindness, in their treatment of the question of Slavery, and hence they have needlessly brought upon themselves the hot indignation of the South;  and now, these reverend critics, waking up at last to a sense of their duty, attempt to prevent the introduction of slavery to an immense territory plighted to freedom, are denounced by the minions of the Slave Power as bitterly as the most ‘ultra’ of the ‘Garrisonians’!”