Ask the Scholar

In this letter to William Lloyd Garrison, James Caleb Jackson welcomes Garrison back to the United States. He then comments on Garrison's decision not to take his seat at the World Anti-Slavery Convention, and to sit with the rejected women delegates instead, calling it a "most noble position to see, & to be seen, too, & above all, to be felt." He says this event "adds greatly to the influence you exert in [the] community after this." Jackson discusses how busy he has been and the success of the [National Anti-Slavery] Standard newspaper in New York. He remarks that the paper "has caused a new Era in this city. People do not know what to think," and they now have "1300 subscribers - 37 new ones to day." He believes this will help the American Anti-Slavery Society to "have an organ to represent something else besides 'New Organization' the bane of holiness & freedom." Jackson also discusses "Poor Gerrit Smith" saying he has given up Non-Resistance and "has fallen like Lucifer from heaven." He writes that he was glad "that George Thompson did not fail you," mentioning that the first report he heard from the Convention "represented him as having gone against you ..." Jackson then asks Garrison if he received the letters he wrote to him while Garrison was in Europe, saying they were "directed with scrupulous care to J[ohn] H[arfield] Tredgold."