The Liberator (newspaper)/September 18, 1857/Reminiscences
Reminiscences.
Dear Yerrington:
You and I were play fellows in boyhood, some five and forty years ago! Indeed, I believe you are, now, the only person, except my own relatives, of whom I have so long a remembrance, extending back, as you will bear me witness, to incidents in the war with Great Britain in 1812. So quickly does time pass away! And, now, I find my old friend toiling at the case on The Liberator, a most honorable employment, and devoting his best days to the cause of Human Freedom. May he have gratitude for the present, and hope for the future—hope for himself, and for the whole human race!
Here is a letter I received, as you will see, from Mr. Garrison, twenty-six years ago. It is interesting as having been written in his ‘first love,’ and will enable us to see whether he has backslidden or not. I submit it to you, with a hope that it may find a place in The Liberator.
Yours, truly,
Laroy Sunderland.
Boston, September 14, 1857.
☞We thank our old friend, as we are sure the readers of The Liberator will, for the privilege (with the editor’s consent) of laying this heroic and heavenly tempered letter before the public. Our ‘honorable employment’ of ‘toiling at the case on The Liberator,’ to which our friend alludes, though at times wearisome to the flesh, is nevertheless a delightful task, and always strengthening to the soul and spirit.—Y.
Boston, Sept. 8, 1831.
Dear Sir:
I labor under very signal obligations to you for your disclosures, relative to my personal safety. These do not move me from my purpose the breadth of a hair. Desperate wretches exist at the South, no doubt, who would assassinate me for a sixpence. Still, I was aware of this peril when I began my advocacy of the cause of the slave. Slaveholders deem me their enemy; but my aim is simply to benefit and save them, and not to injure them. I value their bodies and souls at a high price, though I abominate their crimes. Moreover, I do not justify the slaves in their rebellion: yet I do not condemn them, and applaud similar conduct in white men. I deny the right of any people to fight for liberty, and so far am a Quaker in principle. Of all men living, however, our slaves have the best reason to assert their rights by violent measures, inasmuch as they are more oppressed than others.
My duty is plain—my path without embarrassment. I shall still continue to expose the criminality and danger of slavery, be the consequences what they may to myself. I hold my life at a cheap rate: I know it is in imminent danger: but if the assassin take it away, the Lord will raise up another and a better advocate in my stead.
Again thanking you for your friendly letter, I remain, in haste,
Yours, in the best of bonds,
Wm. Lloyd Garrison.
To La Roy Sunderland.
