Reading Garrison's Letters

April 4, 1833

Garrison writes to members of a Committee of Boston’s colored community, thanking them for a silver cup presented to him at the home of George Putnam.  It was presented on the occasion of a farewell interview, as Garrison prepared for his first trip to England.  “I thank you for this liberal expression of your sentiments.  It was not needed to convince me of your friendship for my person … Gratitude shall engrave your names upon the tablet of my memory, more deeply than they are engraved upon this cup. … I will endeavor to be more worthy of your regard. ¹

¹ Letters of William Lloyd Garrison – Volumes I – VI

My 13, 1830

Garrison writes to his prosecutor. “Your presumptuous, feeble, ridiculous remarks upon the subject of slavery, and the rights of slaveholders, exhausted my patience. A buzzing fly may disturb the equanimity of a sage; but if a pin be stuck through its wings, the insect, Sir, is harmless . Beware of my pen!”¹

¹ Letters of William Lloyd Garrison – Volumes I – VI

May 13, 1830

Convicted of libel after publishing a charge that Francis Todd was involved in the slave trade, Garrison writes from jail. He writes in a partly playful mood. “… I am in prison, as snug as a robin in his cage, but I sing as often, and quite as well, as I did before my wings were clipped “… He claims a number of visitors … so that, “between the labors of my brain, the conversations of my friends, and the ever-changing curiousities of this huge menagerie, time flies away astonishingly swift … this is a capital place to sketch the lights and shadows of human nature…”¹

¹ Letters of William Lloyd Garrison – Volumes I – VI

August 15, 1828

Writing to the Yankee and the Boston Literary Gazette, Garrison asserts “that, if my life be spared, my name shall one day be known so extensively as to render private enquiry unecessary, and known, too, in a praiseworthy manner. I speak in the spirit of prophecy, not of vainglory — with a strong pulse, a flashing eye, and a glow of the heart.”¹

¹ Letters of William Lloyd Garrison – Volumes I – VI