William Lloyd Garrison | Autograph manuscript "Appeal to the Friends of Abolition in England", 1833

William Lloyd Garrison

Autograph manuscript "Appeal to the Friends of Abolition in England"

describing in powerful terms the conditions of slavery in the USA ("...Imprisonment, fines, stripes, and even death, are threatened if they should attempt to learn the alphabet, or get instruction in a Sabbath School!..."), encouraging British support following the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act, and asking for money to pay for the lecturer George Thompson to travel to America ("...Let him be unremittingly and exclusively employed among us, as our agent, in rousing up the nation to a sense of its danger, guilt and duty-in forming anti-slavery societies-and in overthrowing the great Babel of oppression..."), addressed to "Respected Friends" and signed at the foot as "Representative of the New England Anti-Slavery Society", 7 pages, 4to, London 10 August 1833, some light staining

"...Two millions of slaves have already perished in my guilty country; but I plead not for the dead-they are at rest-but for the two millions who are now living. Living, did I say? O! it is not life-it is something more than death. But I bring them before you, in their rags and fetters, weeping in the bitterness of despair, gory with blood, and sinking under the weight of their sorrows. There, are the wives whose husbands were but yesterday driven off in chains to a far distant State!-There, are parents whose children have been ruthlessly torn from their arms by the slave speculator!-There, are the children who are sobbing for the loss of their parents!-There, are brothers, bewailing an eternal separation!-There, are sisters, loathing their own polluted bodies!..."

George Thompson travelled to America in September 1833

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's, London, 21 July 1980, lot 127 (part lot)