John Quincy Adams
January 21, 1832
Garrison criticizes Adams, because in his early year in Congress, he has not presented to Congress petitions from Quakers in Pennsylvania, relative to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. “The nature of my enterprise unavoidably brings me into a collision with you, as painful as it is unexpected. … Another week, perhaps, may give to the public your ‘reasons why you could give no countenance or support’ to these petitions: these reasons may be so conclusive as to establish the propriety of ten millions of freemen holding six thousand human beings in abject bondage, and to render unnecessary a second letter from my pen. ” 1