CLIPPING

Letter from Camilla Ware to William Lloyd Garrison
Pomfret, VT July 11, 1838

My Dear Mr. Garrison,

What excuse can I make for not giving you, before this late day, a thousand thanks for the Liberator you are so kind to send me, that is, if it is you that sent it. It comes – and I can think of no one but yourself whom I dare thank for it – and as I have no good excuse for not doing it before, I pray you to allow me to do it now. It came very opportunely, for nothing but an unwillingness to recall myself to your memory, prevented me from writing for it some time before.

I was not a little gratified to find myself remembered even if the paper was not to put me in mind that it was time that you had heard from one. But if I could have given a good account of myself you should have heard from me sooner.

But while I have nothing to say in favor of myself, permit me to congratulate you not only for the unexampled success of the Good Cause, but for the envious place you occupy among your contemporaries and the glorious one you will have in the history of Liberty, and of “Democratic equality among men” and last tho’ not least in that of Christianity.

Were it not for the awkward manner in which I should do it, I would undertake to tell you how well I am satisfied with you and your doings, although I would not expect you would need the homage of so humble a person as myself after being so highly commended by Miss Martineau and by so many other ladies who, save being our own country women, are not perhaps her inferiors.

Once, thinking that the work you were about was that which belonged only to the sphere of Jackson Men, I was not inclined to give you so much credit, but since I have seen their “departure” from their proper sphere, and heard them in their ‘morbid’ patriotism denouncing the very principles of which they have claimed for so many years, to be the only preservers. For who so mad against liberty or in favor of slavery, except in the ‘abstracts’ as a good democrat; no one unless it be one of the ‘Church.’

Since I have seen so much, I have been certainly willing you should have all the praise, and great praise indeed it is, due for having the heroism to advocate the name of humanity and Liberty beyond what Gen. Jackson and his coadjutors have to think of. For who does not know that the hero of New Orleans dares to say or do what he dares think.

But I feel little disposed to give the glory resigned by the reigning party to those selfish ‘Whigs’ whom the Liberator sometimes extolls so highly. Though I can’t excuse any Anti-Americanism in you who have been in a country where it was safe to talk of Liberty, and that too, among many gentlemen of property and standing – when you shall say fine things of Robert Rantoul (whom I only know through the newspapers) I suppose we shall be disposed to agree with you.

I must also congratulate you for having that great man John Q. Adams following so closely in your ‘footsteps.’ Will not the ladies do something for him? I should think he deserved to be ‘crowned by the bright hand of Beauty’ if anyone. What must the preux chevalier of the sweet south think of their mothers, who in the time that tried men’s souls, were so highly admired by their countrymen for their patriotism and by their English enemies for their spirit, and even so late as Nullification times their ladies gave ‘patriotism fêtes,’ and talked about ‘Palmetto-logs.’ Now they tell us that women are only fit to be ‘Christians’ and that our ‘proper sphere’ is in honoring our husbands (or trying to get one) and taking care of his domestic affairs. One would guess that they learnt their Christianity of their clergy.

I was glad to see in the advertisement of Mr. Benson for a school, that public opinion would sustain it. I have some distant ‘cousins’ in Brooklyn whom I should be proud to find engaged in the good cause – a cause which the descendants of one who did something in a ‘rough way’ towards making us free should be engaged in & by gaining a second battle of New Orleans, one 15 of June. May the ‘monument’ get high enough one day to erect his statue on or at least that it might be known that my grandfather was there. I hope I shall be able sometime to make a pilgrimage to Brooklyn and around it to the old Wolf-den so renown’d in story &c.

As for my dear cousins, I fear they are not of your party. I cannot forbear to tell you Mr. Garrison that my lamented father was one of your admirers – and that he was an Abolitionist. I never saw him manifest greater pleasure than in reading your resolves upon the murder of (Elijah Parish) Lovejoy, he read them more than once and preferred them before Channings or Hallets made about that time. What he most admired was their boldness, a boldness which was lacking in both Channings & Hallets.

It was the first time that I heard him speak of you in particular, to find that you were a favorite of his. I was almost disposed to tell him I had seen you. My sister, who is not an Abolitionist, told me that she believed he did not like the meeting in Faneuil Hall – where he took the cold which destroyed his life in so short a time – one week. When he went to Boston, I felt rather awkward lest he should make you a call I do not know that he would have been pleased with my adventure. But now I feel that I should have been almost happy if he had known it. I cannot bear to think that I had done nothing to please him, or that he should have thought that I was not disposed to do anything worthy of all his pains. My only desire was to do something to convince him that I was disposed to do something if I could.

I often think of you and the Miss Parkers. My only regret is that I was not able to gain more of your good opinion on matter that I would not render myself more pleasing – au neste, a leaf from the journal of one would be rather amusing. Remember me to Mrs. G. and when you see the Misses P. will you have the kindness to tell them I should be happy to learn something of what they are doing. I am waiting very impatiently to see your 4 of July orations.

Mrs. G., I will let you hear from me again. I have not given up all hopes of relieving myself from some obligations – if I can do nothing more.

Yours with great respect,
Camilla Ware

To William Lloyd Garrison
Brooklyn, Conn.