[Letter to] Dear Anne
Contributors: Weston, Anne Warren, 1812-1890, recipient
Series: Deborah Weston Correspondence (1830-1879)
Published: 1851
Place of publication: Weymouth, [Mass.]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Number of pages: 12
Subjects: Correspondence; Free Soil Party (Mass.); Railroads; Women abolitionists; Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed with initials.

Deborah Weston received Anne Warren Weston's letter about Warren Weston and is glad that he is "trying active remedies" [for some unnamed ailment]. She gives news of the family in Weymouth. She tells about getting [Robert?] Rantoul interested in "a slave case" [of Thomas Sims, a fugitive slave,] and how his subsequent acts embarrassed Caleb Cushing and the Whigs. F. Dexter wrote to Judge Shaw urging him to grant a writ of habeas corpus. Prayers for Sims were sent all over Massachusetts. Rev. J. Perkins would only deliver the prayer if Sims were "unjustly detained." Deborah disapproved of Rev. Dean's preaching, a minister from Quincy. Deborah comments: "[Edmund] Quincy spoke in the worst manner possible of young Josiahs anti-slavery, that is, said he was not the least of an abolitionist & you would have thought he was talking of a person in George Ticknor's state of mind." Deborah said: "Hervey [Weston?] said in his pigeon letter that a few orthodox ministers prayed for Sims, but Huntington, Coolidge & Young did not." Wendell [Phillips] was five hours in the police court fighting over the two Snowdons." There was added train service and Joe Lampson and others from the Old Colony Road resigned. Sheriff Coburn failed to arrest a man for a stabbing in spite of considerable financial inducements. Deborah gives an account of a Free Soil convention, of which Rodney French was the chairman and Wendell Phillips the principal speaker. Deborah said: "The military are talking large of shooting Wendell & of firing upon the coloured people with blank cartridges." She speculates on the identity of the vessel in which a slave [perhaps Thomas Sims] is to be carried to safety. Charles Grant reports on the plans of his family. Mrs. Ann Phillips is sick.