Letter from Samuel Joseph, Brooklyn, [Connecticut], to William Lloyd Garrison, 1831 Mar[ch] 26

In this letter to William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel Joseph May praises Garrison's "fearless, self-devoted spirit" in the antislavery cause and confesses that Garrison's "arguments and facts fully convinced my understanding on several points about which I differed from you at first." However, May says that he "cannot go along" with Garrison's opposition to the Colonization Society, telling him that he has "gone too far." May defends the colonization movement, stating he believes "it will be introductory to more efficient measures" for providing African-Americans rights, as it will show Americans that they are not "fitted only for the station of servants and slaves." He also argues it has "opened a channel through which information and correct sentiments, respecting our coloured brethren, may be diffused" across the country. May tells Garrison that they have both "wronged" the society, or at least "a large and influencial [sic] part of them" for supposing them to have only "sinister motives". May explains that he "conversed at length with Mr. [Thomas H.] Gallaudet [an agent for the American Colonization Society] and found his views much more accordant with my own than I expected." He adds that "the very thing which most of all prevents their [African-Americans] rise in America is the public sentiment against them" and since he "fear[s] it must continue to be such for years to come" the American Colonization Society has value in providing African-Americans "an asylum from prejudice - a[n] hour of freedom in a distant land, where they may go on improving in knowledge and virtue, as fast as may be possible."
Courtesy of Boston Public Library