Harrison Otis Gray, former Boston Mayor, says, “don’t agitate the south”

There is a long letter from Gray in the Liberator, March 15, 1839, which expresses a common view in Boston.  Gray responds to actions in the Rhode Island legislature which include anti-slavery resolutions.  He admits that the “evil of slavery is not a new discovery”, but “can conceive no justification for my fellow citizens this side of the line of Mason and Dixon, to throw firebrands, and arrows of death, on the other side of the line  …. ”  He claims that any agitation of the issue in the south will only make matters worse for the slaves.