Ask the Scholar

Sameul Edmund Sewall writes to WIlliam Lloyd Garrison about Garrison staying in Brooklyn, Connecticut, remarking, "you will certainly have less interruption there in preparing matter for the paper." Sewall believes that Garrison "would be perfectly safe in Boston now," but reminds him that "your life was undoubtedly in imminent peril last Wednesday, and your escape under all the circumstances was miraculous." Sewall relates the news that Isaac Knapp was forced to move the printing presses from the Liberator office and "it will be difficult for him to find another room to print the paper in." Still, he "trust[s] there will not be even one week's interruption in the publication of the Liberator." Sewall states that George Thompson "is at Isaac Winslow's in Danvers" and is "in fine spirits then, and nothing daunted." He suggests that Thompson publishes "a statement of the material circumstances in relation to the charge brought against him." He then notes that "the state of things here is lamentable. The most respectable people either open justify or coldly disapprove the riot, while they are loud in the condemnation and abuse of the abolitionists ..." He tells Garrison of the inaction of the city authorities and the view of Boston abolitionists that "some of the gentlemen who were most active in the mob out to be prosecuted." Sewall also offers to assist Isaac Knapp with the Liberator, and in the postscript, he comments that "Mr. May has not yet returned."