SAMUEL MAY, JUN.
Boston, July 18, 1849.
My dear friend,
To-day you leave the land of your nativity, in which you have been reared and treated as a slave—a chattel personal—a marketable commodity—though it claims to be a republican and Christian land, the freest of the free, the most pious of the pious—for the shores of Europe; on touching which, your shackles will instantly fall, your limbs expand, your spirit exult in absolute personal freedom, as a man, and nothing less than a man. Since your escape from bondage, a few years since, you have nobly devoted yourself to the cause of the three millions of our countrymen who are yet clanking their chains in hopeless bondage—pleading their cause eloquently and effectively, by day and by night, in season and out of season, before the people of the Free States (falsely so called) of America, at much personal hazard of being seized and hurried back to slavery. Not to forsake that cause, but still more powerfully to aid it, by enlisting the sympathies, and consolidating the feelings and opinions of the friends of freedom and universal emancipation in the old world in its favour and against the atrocious slave system, do you bid farewell to the land of whips and chains to-day. God—the God of the oppressed, the poor, the needy, the defenceless—be with you, to guide, strengthen, aid, and bless you abundantly! Three millions of slaves are your constituents, and you are their legitimate and faithful representative. With a mother, sister, and three brothers, yet pining in hopeless servitude, with the marks of the slavedriver’s lash upon your body, you cannot but “remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.” Speak in trumpet tones to Europe, and call upon the friends of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” there, to cry, “Shame upon recreant and apostate America, which flourishes the Declaration of Independence in one hand, and the whip of the negro overseer in the other!” Challenge all that is free, all that is humane, all that is pious, across the Atlantic, to raise a united testimony against American slaveholders and their abettors, as the enemies of God and the human race! So shall that cry and that testimony cause the knees of the oppressor to smite together, the Bastile of slavery to tremble to its foundation, and the hearts of the American Abolitionists to be filled with joy and inspired afresh! Tell Europe that our watchword is, “Immediate—unconditional emancipation for the slave,” and the motto we have placed on our anti-slavery banner is, “No Union with Slaveholders, religiously or politically!”
You have secured the respect, confidence, and esteem of thousands of the best portion of the American people; and may you continue faithful to the end, neither corrupted by praise, nor cast down by opposition, nor intimidated by any earthly power!
Accept the assurances of my warm personal regard, and believe me to be,
Your faithful co-labourer and unwearied advocate of the best of causes,
WM. LLOYD GARRISON,
President of the American Anti-Slavery Society.