Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 4

[77] any pro-slavery poison that may be diffused through the press or the legislature; and there are men in the House of Commons who are now so thoroughly conversant with the merits of the question, that any misrepresentation of facts would be met at once with an ample and overwhelming refutation. . . .

I read with deep interest your speech at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and have made good use of it. It came to hand very seasonably, and might have been made for the purpose of disabusing the minds of the people here.

Mr. Garrison was strongly urged by Gerrit Smith and¹ other friends to visit England during the spring and add his efforts to those of George Thompson and the London and Manchester Societies, but he was unable to do so, and tried in turn to persuade Mr. Smith and Mr. Phillips to go together. The latter was at first disposed to consider it, but finally gave up the project, in spite of many entreaties. Subsequently, Henry Ward Beecher converted an ordinary tour in Great Britain into one in behalf of the Union cause, and held that brilliant series of meetings in which he did such effective service, and found how much the labors of the Garrisonian abolitionists had done towards familiarizing the minds of the English people with the anti-slavery question in America, and enlisting and strengthening that sympathy with the North which was so essential to the success of the Government.²

But to return to this side of the water, and to the American Anti-Slavery Society: