Ask the Scholar

Charles Calistus Burleigh writes to William Lloyd Garrison to give him "a sketch of my proceedings from about [the] time of my last letter [sometime in November], up to the present date." Burleigh describes traveling to New Ispwich, New Hampshire, and a debate about temperance between himself and fellow passengers. He then discusses his lectures in the town, commenting that while one lecture had "a respectably numerous audience," less people attended his second lecture due to "the coldness of the weather." He says that after the lectures, he was asked to stay in town and "hold a converstaion with some persons who were not able to see eye to eye with us [and] to hear & endeavor to answer such objections as they might suggest." He then returned to Boston and celebrated a Thanksgiving dinner with Isaac Knapp and Henry [Egbert Benson?], before detailing how he caught a departing train to Providence after finding "the cars just started off, by running a brisk race of a few rods, I overtook & climbed in to the hindermost one ..." Burleigh describes another lecture he delivered in Foxboro[ugh], Massachusetts, in which a collection of $10.35 was taken, telling Garrison, "they wish to have the donation noticed in the Liberator ..." He says he traveled to Providence on the invitation of Henry Brewster Stanton who asked him "to come & labor a month or so, in Rhode Island." Burleigh discusses his time in Providence, Newport, and Block Island, remarking that in Block Island he "addressed collections of people as large as could be accommodated in dwelling houses." He discusses his approach to lecturing on the island and adds that he also "addressed the people several times on Temperance." Burleigh notes that the harbor on Block Island exerts an "influence which opp[oses] Abolition [and] also opposes Temperance."