Mr Garrison's letter is dated Boston, May 15, and in it he says

"In the month of May, 1830, forty years ago, I was lying in the jail in Baltimore for bearing an uncompromising testimony against certain Northern participants in the domestic slave trade. I need not say that my imprisonment, so far from operating as a discouragement gave a powerful impetus to my anti-slavery zeal, and led me still more feelingly to remember those in bonds as being bound with them.

"Eternal spirit of the chainless mind,
Brightest in dungeons of Liberty thou art,
For there thy habitation is the heart"

"From that time to the completion of the anti slavery struggle, through trials and perils which only those who were called to meet them can ever fully realize, I do not remember an hoar when my faith in its final triumph wavered.

After expressing joy that the prohibitions of slavery no longer exist he adds
"Citizenship is yours with political enfranchisement whereby you are to help decide what shall be the laws for the common defense and the general welfare and ultimately to obtain a fair share of the honors and emoluments of public life. In this hour of jubilation I will not pause to give you any counsel as to your future course. I have no misgiving on that score. You have been the best behaved people in the past under the most terrible provocations and why should any doubt as to your behavior hereafter under all the favorable conditions of freedom and equality? I believe you are destined to rise high in the scale of civilization and to take a prominent part in our national affairs. Indeed in view of your liberated and enfranchised condition it may be truly affirmed that since the Declaration of Independence was published to the world, never has our country been so powerful as we now, never so prosperous as now, never so united as now, never so reputable and influential as now, in the eyes of the world. Hence, we have all reason to be glad as to the present and hopeful as to the future, for the interests of the North are as the interests of the South, and the institutions of one section of the country essentially like those of every other.

"I rejoice that the South will now have unlimited means for growth in population, in education, in enterprise, in invention, in literature in the arts and sciences, in material prosperity – Henceforth may every blessing be vouchsafed to her through the removal of slavery so that as her depression has been deplorable her exaltation shall be glorious! Such has ever been the desire of my heart and the aim of all my labors."