Appendix IV.
Notwithstanding the caution I have given my readers in the Preface and elsewhere, not to expect in this volume anything like a complete history of our antislavery conflict, many may be disappointed in not finding any acknowledgment of the services of some whom they have known as efficient, brave, self-sacrificing laborers in our cause. I was reproached, accused of ingratitude and injustice, because I did not give in my articles in The Christian Register any account of the labors of certain persons, whose names stand high on the roll of antislavery philanthropists. The following is a copy of a part of one of the letters that I received:—
Boston, April, 1868.
Dear Sir,—The writer of this is a subscriber to The Christian Register, and has there read your “Reminiscences of the Antislavery Reformers.” The numbers thus far (including the thirty-eighth) contain no notice of, or allusion to, our late lamented friend, Nathaniel P. Rogers, editor of The Herald of Freedom. His numerous friends in New England have been waiting and wondering that his name did not appear in your papers. Mr. Rogers gave up a lucrative profession, in which he had attained a high rank, and devoted himself soul, body, and estate, to the service of the antislavery cause, in which he labored conscientiously during the rest of his life, and left his family impoverished in consequence. That Mr. Rogers was one of the few most talented Abolitionists no one will deny who knew them; and that he was the intimate friend and fellow-laborer of Mr. Garrison was equally well known. He went to Europe with Mr. Garrison, and together they visited the most distinguished Abolitionists in England and Scotland; and, after his return, George Thompson, on his first visit to this country, was received by him in his family, and passed several days with him.
You have mentioned many names in your papers quite obscure, and of very little account in this movement, and why you have thus far omitted one of such prominence has puzzled many of your readers.
Notwithstanding, the writer will not allow himself to doubt that it is your intention in the end to do to all equal and exact
Justice.
I cordially indorse my unknown correspondent’s eulogium of Nathaniel P. Rogers. I remember hearing much of his faithfulness and fearlessness in the cause of our enslaved countrymen, and of liberty of speech and of the press. Between the years 1836 and 1846 he wrote much, and so well that his articles in the Herald of Freedom were often republished in the Antislavery Standard and Liberator. I generally read them with great satisfaction. They were racy, spicy, and unsparing of anything he deemed wrong. Mr. Rogers, I have no doubt, rendered very important services to the antislavery cause, especially in New Hampshire, and was held in the highest esteem by the Abolitionists of that State. But it was not my good fortune to know much of him personally. I seldom saw him, and never heard him speak in any of our meetings more than two or three times. The only reason why I have only named him is that I really have no personal recollections of him. A volume of his writings, prefaced by a sketch of his life and character from the pen of Rev. John Pierpont, was published in 1847 and republished in 1849. It will repay any one for an attentive perusal, and help not a little to a knowledge of the temper of the times,—the spirit of the State and the Church,—when N. P. Rogers labored, sacrificed, and suffered for impartial liberty, for personal, civil, and religious freedom. The fact that he was a lineal descendant of the never-to-be-forgotten Rev. John Rogers—the martyr of Smithfield—and also one of the Peabody race, will add to the interest with which his writings will be read.