Anti-Abolition violence, and Angelina Grimke
Sept 12, 1835
In a letter to George W. Benson, Garrison summarizes some recent evidence of hatred against abolitionists. He mentions that Benson himself has been put in a Providence jail “for safe keeping from your enemies”. George Thompson is in Pittsburgh, fearful to come back to Boston. A meeting in Haverhill was broken up by a “shower of brickbats”. Thompson and Whittier have been pelted with mud and stones, in Concord. “That some of us will be assassinated or abducted, seems more than probable — but there is much apparent, without any real danger.” Garrison then quotes a note which has come to him from Angelina Grimke: “with a spirit worthy of the best days of martyrdom, she says — ‘A hope gleams across my mind, that our blood will be spilt, instead of the slaveholders: our lives will be taken, and theirs spared.’ Is this not Christ-like?” 1