Benjamin Lundy

And in looking back now over these strange and eventful providences, in the light of the wonderful changes wrought by emancipation, I am more and more constrained to believe that the reasons, which years ago led me to aid the bondman and preserve the records of his sufferings, are today quite as potent in convincing me that the necessity of the times requires this testimony.

And since the first advent of my book, wherever reviewed or read by leading friends of freedom, the press, or the race more deeply represented by it, the expressions of approval and encouragement have been hearty and unanimous, and the thousands of volumes which have been sold by me on the subscription plan, with hardly any facilities for the work, makes it obvious that it would, in the hands of a competent publisher, have a wide circulation.

And here I may frankly state, that but for the hope I have always cherished that this work would encourage the race in efforts for self-elevation, its publication never would have been undertaken by me.

I believe no more strongly at this moment than I have believed ever since the proclamation of emancipation was made by Abraham Lincoln, that as a class, in this country, no small exertion will have to be put forward before the blessings of freedom and knowledge can be fairly enjoyed by this people, and until colored men manage by dint of hard acquisition to enter the ranks of skilled industry, very little substantial respect will be shown them, even with the ballot box and musket in their hands.

Eastport, Mississippi, February 3, 1851.

To William Still.

Our friends in Cincinnati have failed finding anybody to assist me on my return.

Searching the country opposite Paducah, I find that the whole country fifty miles around is inhabited only by Christian wolves.

It was, therefore, with no small pleasure that he discovered the existence of the salt of America in the despised abolitionists of the Northern States.

He read with assiduity the writings of Benjamin Lundy, William Lloyd Garrison, and others; and after his own twenty years' experience of slavery, it is not surprising that he should have enthusiastically embraced the principles of total and immediate emancipation, and no union with slaveholders.

In proportion as his mind expanded under the more favorable circumstances in which he was placed, he became anxious, not merely for the redemption of his race from personal slavery, but for the moral elevation of those among them who were free.

Finding that habits of intoxication were too prevalent amongst his colored brethren, he, in conjunction with others, commenced a temperance reformation in their body.

He was now twenty-two, poor, but God-fearing and self-reliant.

About this time there came to Boston a man whose influence changed young Garrison's whole life, Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, thirty-nine years of age.

Leaving his father's home at nineteen, he had spent four years at Wheeling, Virginia, where he learned the saddler's trade and learned also the cruelties of slaveholding.

After this, he moved to Ohio and in four years earned three thousand dollars above his living expenses.