Selections from the Writings and Speeches.

From A Black Philadelphian Woman
To A Female Transcendalist Heir:

Dora Forten Gives Garrison’s Writings To
Her Abolitionist “Sister,” Sophia Thoreau

(Thoreau, Sophia). Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison. With an appendix. Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1852.

8vo.; interior bright white through p. 348; pp. 349-360, and pp. [373]-408 (most of Appendix) browned, possibly printed on different paper stock; black cloth, stamped in blind and gilt; light wear to extremities, and a small closed tear to the foot of the spine, else a lovely copy. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.

First edition of this selection of nearly seventy-five of Garrison’s speeches, poems, letters, and other writings. In addition to many pieces on freedom, liberty, abolition, and Christianity, he also includes writings on Harriet Martineau, a letter to Elizabeth Pease, and other items of interest.

A moving gift copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: Sophia E. Thoreau from her affectionate sister Dora S. Forten. Oct. 1852. This short inscription is a powerful and important document, linking Dora Forten—a female member of a prominent Philadelphian black family—to Sophia Thoreau—the female engine behind the radicalization of her brother, Henry David Thoreau. The cross-racial bond is made via the work of William Lloyd Garrison, whose life was intimately linked with both families.

James Forten, a “wealthy sailmaker” and black leader in Philadelphia, was an early and pivotal financial supporter of Garrison’s now legendary publication, The Liberator. While Garrison was motoring forward with issue number one in 1931, despite his inability to pay the paper bill, his anxiety was growing increasingly acute. At the crucial moment, historian Henry Mayer tells us, Garrison visited the post office to discover a check from Forten for $54—“advance payment for 27 subscriptions” (All On Fire, by Mayer, St. Martin’s, 1998, p. 110).

Names and addresses were carefully enclosed, along with Forten’s ardent hopes that Garrison’s efforts to combat slavery and prejudice would not be in vain. The editor had appealed to Forten a few days after the meeting with Boston’s black leaders, and he always credited the wealthy sailmaker’s prompt and generous response with making The Liberator a reality. (ibid.)

After that, Forten and Garrison’s shared views on abolition and related issues—notably regarding the African colonization plan by some Americans as a possible solution to the “problem” of anti-slavery—were no secret. Both publicly advocated financial support for black apprenticeships in various industries and trades, and Garrison proved an exemplar in apprenticing a young black man to The Liberator. Forten’s name appeared in The Liberator at least once, as Mayer notes, in support of the abolitionist cause.

Mayer also describes a visit Garrison made to the Forten home around 1833:

In visits with these families [James Forten, and other black propertied families] Garrison found in their company “a river of delight.” Sitting at Forten’s cultivated table, guests laughed uproariously when their host observed that after his family had lived four generations in Philadelphia the colonizationists could hardly expect to set him on the shores of Africa and watch him “run at once to the old hut.” (p. 173)

Links between Garrison and Henry David Thoreau are still more bountiful, though they traveled parallel courses which did not intersect for a shockingly long period. Mayer points out that Garrison was speaking and writing against the unconstitutionality of the law a decade before Thoreau made the speech that would become “On Civil Disobedience” (p. 342), but also notes that in 1848 when Thoreau—whom he describes as “one of the few Americans who had an affinity with Garrison’s understanding of citizenship”—made the now-famous speech which would eventually be published as “On Civil Disobedience,” a strange thing happen

Item ID#: 6422

Print   Inquire

Copyright © 2024 Dobkin Feminism