MADAM: The citizens of Aberdeen have much pleasure in embracing the
opportunity now afforded them of expressing at once their esteem for
yourself personally, and their interest in the cause of which you have
been the distinguished advocate.
While they would, not render a blind homage to mere genius, however
exalted, they consider genius such as yours, directed by Christian
principle, as that which, for the welfare of humanity, cannot be too
highly or too fervently honored.
Without depreciating the labors of the various advocates of slave
emancipation who have appeared from time to time on both sides of the
Atlantic, they may conscientiously award to you the praise of having
brought about the present universal and enthusiastic sentiment in regard
to the slavery which exists in America.
The galvanic battery may be arranged and charged, every plate, wire, and
fluid being in its appropriate place; but, until some hand shall bring
together the extremities of the conducting medium, in vain might we
expect to elicit the latent fire.
Every heart may throb with the feeling of benevolence, and every mind
respond to the sentiment that man, in regard to man, should be free and
equal; but it is the province of genius such as yours to give unity to
the universal, and find utterance for the felt.
When society has been prepared for some momentous movement or moral
reformation, so that the hidden thoughts of the people want only an
interpreter, the thinking community an organ, and suffering humanity a
champion, distinguished is the honor belonging to the individual in whom
all these requisites are found combined.
To you has been assigned by Providence the important task of educing the
latent emotions of humanity, and waking the music that slumbered in the
chords of the universal human heart, till it has pealed forth in one
deep far rolling and harmonious anthem, of which the heavenly burden is,
"Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are
bound!"
The production of your accomplished pen, which has already called forth
such unqualified eulogy from almost every land where Anglo-Saxon
literature finds access, and created so sudden and fervent an excitement
on the momentous subject of American slavery, has nowhere been hailed
with a more cordial welcome, or produced more salutary effects, than in
the city of Aberdeen.
Though long ago imbued, with antislavery principles and interested in
the progress of liberty in every part of the world, our community, like
many others, required such information, suggestions, and appeals as your
valuable work contains in one great department of slavery, in order that
their interest might be turned into a specific direction, and their
principles reduced, to combined practical effort.
Already they have esteemed it a privilege to engage with some activity
in the promotion of the interests of the fugitive slave; and they shall
henceforth regard with a deeper interest than ever the movements of
their American brethren in this matter, until there exists among them no
slavery from which to flee.
While they participate in your abhorrence of slavery in the American
states, they trust they need scarcely assure you that they participate
also in your love for the American people.
It is in proportion as they love that nation, attached to them by so
many ties, that they lament the existence of a system which, so long as
it exists, must bring odium upon the national character, as it cannot
fail to enfeeble and impair their best social institutions.
They believe it to be a maxim that man cannot hold his fellow-man in
slavery without being himself to some extent enslaved. And of this the
censorship of the press, together with the expurgatorial indices of
various religious societies in the Southern States of America, furnish
ample corroboration.
It is hoped that your own nation may speedily be directed to recognize
you as its best friend, for having stood forth in the spirit of true
patriotism to advocate the claims of a large portion of your countrymen,
and to seek the removal of an evil which has done much to neutralize the
moral influence of your country's best (and otherwise free)
institutions.
Accept, then, from the community of Aberdeen their congratulations on
the high literary fame which you have by a single effort so deservedly
acquired, and their grateful acknowledgments for your advocacy of a
cause in which the best interests of humanity are involved.
Signed in name and by appointment of a public meeting of the citizens of
Aberdeen within the County Buildings, this 21st April, 1853, A.D.