Letter from Elizur Wright, New York, to Amos Augustus Phelps, 1837 Oct[ober] 20

Elizur Wright Jr. writes to Amos A. Phelps regarding William Lloyd Garrison and the "Appeal." He writes, "if we had only condemned the Appeal, we should have placed ourselves in the predicament in which you seem to stand, and in which I fear you will be somewhat embarrassed--for, when you protest against Garrison, will he not turn upon you and ask, Why thus did you fight by my side through half the battle without saying ought against me? We had too many inklings and presentiments of the future, and some of them from Garrison himself too, to permit us to involve the high interests left in our care in such a squabble." He further adds that, "if you think our condemnations of the Appeal would have satisfied him and kept him from raising heaven & earth into a storm against the clergy--as clergy. No, he would have rammed our shot into his cannon the first thing. His perfectionism had got the mastery of his soul." Wright continues to denounce Garrison and his use of the Liberator which "has been saved from death time and again by abolition money, to propagate sentiments which the abolitionists who gave the money abhor-sentiments which are truly sectarianism of the worst sort."
Courtesy of Boston Public Library