Phillips and Jackson: Let There Be Light!

LET THERE BE LIGHT ! New Movement — “Anti-Slavery Tracts The Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society have recently issued, and extensively circulated through the Free States, the following letter. The tracts proposed are now in course of preparation. Four have already been written, and are in the Committee’s hands, ready for publication.
Dear Friend: — The present is the most auspicious period for the diffusion of Anti-Slavery principles, that we have witnessed since the commencement of the enterprise, more than twenty years ago.  Besides the steady growth of our grand idea, through which we should naturally realize this result, the recent outrages of the Slave Power in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the carrying off of Burns, and other deeds of terrible atrocity, have suddenly startled thousands from their death-slumbers to the dreadful fact that Slavery is determined never to cease making greater and bolder aggressions on Liberty, till no vestige of Freedom shall be left on our soil or in our souls. …. In this crisis, so favorable to our work, we propose to give the light so loudly demanded, by sending into the fields as many devoted, efficent Lecturers, and by scattering throughout the county as many Tracts, as the friends of the cause will furnish us the means of supplying…. We rely on your exertions and sacrifices to aid us in this enterprise. The work must not be postponed. The best portion of the lecturing season is at hand. What is done must be done quickly, or half the good we might accomplish will be lost…..” On behalf of the Committe of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Wendell Phillips, Rec. Sec’y Francis Jackson, Treas.
(Liberator, November 10, 1854, pg 2)