Description

Holograph, signed.Title devised by cataloger.Boston Public Library (Rare Books Department) manuscript composed in black ink on blue paper containing a watermark that reads "Monckton". Above the salutation, the number "142" is written in pencil. On the back of the last page, "1862 G.T." is written in pencil upside-down, and "Christmas, 1862" is written along the spine edge, vertically.George Thompson writes to William Lloyd Garrison quoting from a Thanksgiving sermon delivered by Henry Ward Beecher which accused the English public of becoming pro-slavery. Thompson disagrees with Beecher's comments and contrasts them "with England at the time Mrs. [Harriet Beecher] Stowe was here, when half a million of signatures were attached to a document" urging the immediate end to American slavery. Thompson asserts he could have a similar petition created now with "the names of at least two hundred thousand women, who are at this moment suffering heroically & uncomplainingly" from the lack of "slave-grown cotton". Thompson then compares English public opinion about slavery in the present time with opinions when emancipation was declared in the British Empire in 1833, stating that "the sentiments of our leading journals, of a portion of public men and of the aristocratic circles ... are precisely similar" in remaining pro-slavery. However, "the heart of the people is sound" for abolition, and that only "certain classes in our country ... [oppose] any object connected with the elevation or freedom of the many." Thompson also discusses English journals that used President Lincoln's "expedient" statements to show that the...

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