The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Requests Accommodation for an Annual Meeting of Members

Boston, December 28, 1835. Bifolium, 9 1/2 x 8 in. (241 x 203 mm.) Autograph letter, signed by Rev. Samuel J. May, Henry G. Chapman, and Henry E. Benson, managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, addressed to George E. Head, Secretary of the Boston Academy of Music, requesting use of their facilities for an upcoming meeting. In part: "The Annual Meeting of the Masschts. Anti-Slavery Society will be held the 20th of January next. We have reason to expect that it will be very numerously attended-and we are therefore anxious to procure as large and commodious a room as the city affords. The Odeon would be, in every respect the most convenient for us-and we earnestly request you-Gentlemen-to grant us the use of it on that occasion...You cannot have failed, furthermore, to notice that not only the rights of the enslaved, but also the rights of Freeman in our country have been set at defiance by the opposers of abolition. May we not therefore hope, that you will evince a due respect for those rights, which have been so grossly outraged in us..." Hand-addressed and docketed on verso. Wax seal remnant. Creasing from old folds; scattered stains.

Letter written on the back of a printed circular, with a printed header quoting Daniel Webster ("Free Discussion is a Homebred Right!"), featuring the text of Gerrit Smith's October 22, 1835 speech before the New York Anti-Slavery Convention at Peterboro, the day after the Utica riot which converted him to the abolitionist cause.

An important autograph letter signed by the managers of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, requesting the Boston Academy of Music to use their facilities for the 1836 Annual Society Meeting.

Even though Anti-Slavery Societies began to spring up throughout Massachusetts in the early 1830s, the issue of abolition was still a highly contested subject for most of the general population. Many abolitionists in the state, including Rev. Samuel J. May, were adherents to William Lloyd Garrison's philosophy, which called for an immediate and uncompromising dismantling of the slavery system. Some viewed this position as too extreme, and thus sought to distance themselves from affiliation societies.

When discussing the Anti-Slavery societies' attempts to secure meeting places in the early years of its organization, historian Elaine Brooks observed "an evidence of the illiberality of Boston, it was with difficulty that any place could be obtained for the meetings of an abolition convention. Eight of the churches were applied for without success." (Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1945) The constant search for meeting accommodation was a problem that plagued many abolitionist groups throughout their early histories.