1843. CHAP. III. Webb, "is attracting general attention, and exciting a growing interest. Many schemes are in embryo, and others have had a birth, and are now struggling for an existence. As experiments to bless our race, I feel an interest in them all, though I am not very sanguine as to the result of this new species of colonization." MS. Edmund Quincy to Richard D. Webb. DEDHAM, June 27 (-July 26), 1843. Garrison has been but in indifferent health since his dreadful illness in the winter. He has some sort of a swelling in his breast, about the region of his heart, which he believes will soon destroy him. He always speaks of it as an animal or devil (I don't mean that he thinks it is either) busy about his heart, John Collins which will soon put an end to him. However, Dr. Warren, our most eminent surgeon, and one of the first in the world, does not regard it as anything serious. When Garrison had finished consulting him, and tendered him his fee, he declined taking any fee "from Mr. Garrison," which we regard as quite a sign of progress, as the Dr. has never shown any leaning towards anti-slavery. Warren. Notwithstanding this handsome conduct on the part of the Dr., of which G. was duly sensible, he regards his opinion with infinite scorn and contempt, having on the other side the opinions of certain homoeopathists 1 and hydropathists, not to mention a couple of clairvoyants who examined his internals with the back of their heads. The ocular, or rather occipital, evidence of these last worthies is the most satisfactory to his mind. To most men, the circumstance that they gave diamet 1 June 12, 1843, Mr. Garrison writes to G. W. Benson (MS.): "Last Tuesday [June 6] Dr. Warren made a careful examination of my side in the presence of Dr. [Henry I.] Bowditch. He says it is neither a tumor nor an enlargement of the spleen, but a great distension of the intestinal parts connected with the stomach, and more troublesome than dangerous. Dr. [Robert] Wesselhoeft laughs at his opinion, and is confident that his own is the correct one. 'Who shall decide when doctors disagree?' The examination, though tenderly managed, gave me great pain for several days afterward. I think Dr. Wesselhoeft is nearer right than Dr. Warren; but Dr. Bowditch fully agrees with the latter." Dr. Wesselhoeft's diagnosis was a tumor, "partaking somewhat of the nature of a polypus"; Dr. H. B. C. Greene's, the enlarged spleen; and this was confirmed by the post-mortem examination in 1879. rically opposite accounts of the case would be startling, but CHAP. III. then G. believes them both equally, which arranges the affair satisfactorily.1 It is a thousand pities that New Organization is not to do over again, for besides Garrison's heresies about Non-Resistance, Church, Sabbath, Ministry, Perfectionism, and Thomsonianism (do you know what that is ?) — which last Phelps industriously bruited about to disgust the country doctors, an influential class with us - they would now have homoeopathy, hydropathy, and animal magnetism to add to the list. The rest of us, however, are inclined to hope that Dr. Warren knows as much about the matter as any of these new lights, and that Garrison may get over it. 1843. Cf. ante, 2:281. Lib. 14:35; ante, p. 71. Ante, 2:353. Lib. 13:111, 117, 118. He is now at Northampton, with Geo. Benson, his wife's brother, at a Community to which Prof. Adam belongs. He went there for rest, and the way he rests himself is to lecture every night in the neighboring towns, and on Sundays in Northampton in the open air! D. L. Child, however, who took Boston in his way to New York to take the Standard, reports that he Lib. 13:123. looks well and seems well, with the exception of his enemy in the chest. He is also engaged, or is to be, in making selections Lib. 13:31. for the volume of his works. I hope he will have grace to select the best and to omit the mediocre. Literary taste, however, is not his forte. I wish he had left the selections to Mrs. Chapman. When Caroline Weston expressed her regrets that certain things were inserted in the volume of his poems by Johnson, he replied, with a smile, "Ah, you know there are all sorts of tastes in the world." To which she answered, that was true enough; but when a man was collecting his writings in a permanent form, that there was but one kind of taste to be consulted, and that was the best.2 The Northampton Community had chosen a beautiful site on Mill River, some two or three miles from the town, in the suburb now known as Florence and as a 1 Badinage. Of one of these, Mr. Garrison wrote that she "could not see that anything affected my left side, but said that I had been considerably troubled with my right side-a piece of intelligence which was entirely new to me!" (MS. May 1-June 10, 1843, to Phoebe Jackson.) 2 Both were right. Mr. Garrison's literary ambition, like his poetic talent, was subordinate to his moral purpose in life. Hence, in noticing the appearance of his little volume of 'Sonnets and Other Poems' (ante, p. 8), he professed not to be ashamed of the sentiments expressed in his verses, "though not persuaded of their poetical merit" (Lib. 13:71). Oliver Johnson. 1843. Lib. 13:131, 146; MS. Aug. 12, 1843, Rogers to F. Jack son. 154. CHAP. III. great manufacturing centre. Mr. Garrison's delight in the natural scenery of the Connecticut Valley was shared for a week in August by N. P. Rogers, with whom he drove in a gig on both sides of the river from Greenfield to Springfield. Shortly afterwards an accident occurred which sadly marred the pleasure of the sojourn at the Community. In watering his horse at a wayside brook, Lib. 13: 135, Mr. Garrison, by some maladroitness, upset his wife, with her three-year-old boy in her arms, and her aged mother, who all narrowly escaped drowning.1 Mrs. Garrison's right arm was dislocated at the elbow, but was maltreated by an ignorant doctor as if broken, so that weeks of suffering ensued till the limb could be set. This was Lib. 13:171. made the occasion of special visits to Dr. Stephen Sweet, the famous bone-setter, at Franklin, Conn., who succeeded in the difficult operation, though a subsequent dislocation of the same joint was carried through life. By the end of October the family had returned to Boston, occupying a new house on Pine Street, with Oliver Johnson and his wife as welcome co-tenants. No. 13. MS. Lib. 13:179. Joshua Leavitt. The Liberator, all this time, had been supplied editorially by several friends-by Quincy and Mrs. Chapman above all—with no loss to the readers of the paper. Mr. Garrison's physical condition and various distractions during the past two years had confirmed his native habit of procrastination, and laid him open to friendly criticism: Edmund Quincy to W. L. Garrison. DEDHAM, November 6, 1843. I have sent in to you my concluding article on Leavitt,2 which I hope will meet with your gracious approbation. This, I presume, will terminate my editorial labors for the present, and I 1 "Anne Weston says: 'It was Garrison's vain attempt to show how well he could drive. It may be well enough to talk about "every man his own priest," but "every man his own driver" is another thing'" (MS. Aug. 24, 1843, W. Phillips to E. Pease). 2 See the whole series of articles, discussing anew the embezzlement of the Emancipator, in which Quincy had the help of D. L. Child, and compelled gladly resign my share of the vice-regal throne to its legitimate CHAP. III. possessor. I congratulate you, and all the friends of the cause 1843. at the same time, upon your restoration to health and your ancient occupation. May you live long to discharge it worthily! And now, upon the occasion of my restoring to you my part of your delegated authority, will you pardon me if I say a word as to what I, in common with the best friends of the paper, wish to see the Liberator in your hands? I am sure that I know you well enough to feel confident that you will pardon the bungling manner in which it is very likely I may perform the delicate and somewhat ungracious task of finding fault and giving advice. I think that you cannot doubt my interest in you and in the Liberator, and that you cannot attribute anything I may say, however awkwardly I may express myself, to anything but an earnest wish to make you and your paper as useful as possible to the cause. Now, my dear friend, you must know that to the microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic eyes of its enemies, the Liberator has faults. These they keep to themselves as much as they honestly may, but they are not the less sensible of them, and are all the more desirous to see them immediately abolished. Luckily, they are not faults of principle - neither moral nor intellectual deficiencies - but faults the cure of which rests solely with yourself. I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are that we find with it, lest you should think them none at all or else unavoidable. But no matter, of that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen to our opinions. We think that the paper often bears the marks of haste and carelessness in its getting up; that the matter seems to be hastily selected and put in higgledypiggledy, without any very apparent reason why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the place where it is. I suppose this is often caused by your selecting articles with a view to connect remarks of your own with them, which afterwards in your haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper is not so nearly a complete work in itself as it might be made, but that things are often left at loose ends, and important matters broken off in the middle. I assure you, brother Harriman is not the only one of the friends of the Liberator who grieve over your notice at the hands of Leavitt, Torrey, Elizur Wright, and Lewis Tappan (Lib. 13: 165, 169, 170, 171, 174, 179, 185, 201). The Whig papers eagerly copied the attacks on their Liberty Party opponents, who all in turn had a hearing in the Liberator, though Quincy's arraignments were carefully excluded from the Emancipator (MS. Nov. 27, 1843, Quincy to R. D. Webb). Jesse P. Harriman, of Danvers, Mass. CHAP. III. 66 1843. Nov. 3, 10, 1844. Joshua Leavitt. 'more anon" and "more next week"- which "anon" and Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important moments like the present neglected. Perhaps the last Liberator and the present are the two most important ones in the year, as thousands of persons read them, on account of the elections, who never open an A. S. paper at any other time. And yet the last was without editorial. We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends and the staunchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the Liberator a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the Liberator and the Emancipator with regard to the manner of getting it up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them and we knowing all the time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a good paper that Leavitt has, with as much more intellectual ability as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me) industry, application, and method. Now we know that you have talent enough and to spare to write editorials, such as no other editor can; that you have the most ample materials for the best of selections, and eminent tact and sagacity for judging what is timely; and, moreover, that you have abundance of time for doing all this, if you would but have a little method in your madness. A week is long enough and to spare for getting up a paper if it be properly used, and all its work be not crowded into the last day. Fewer hours a day than most men of business have to give to their affairs, would do it all — provided the work were begun soon enough. It is not often that a crisis occurs that demands the editorial of an A. S. paper to be written at the last moment. Selections might be made with an eye to two or three papers ahead, and even editorials written, so as to give you opportunity to perform |