[Letter to] My Dear Friend
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1843
Place of publication: Dedham, [Mass.]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; American Anti-Slavery Society; Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed with initials.

Edmund Quincy was present at all the meetings of the committee of 25 (at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society) where: "It was conceded on all hands that there was not material in N.Y. to make an effective Ex[ecutive] Com[mittee]---J. S. G. [James Sloan Gibbons] being in effect the only person of whom the Soc. knew anything." William Lloyd Garrison, John A. Collins, and others urged removal of the American Society to Boston. Thomas Earle suggested the appointment in the neighborhood of Boston of an executive committee, who should do the business. The nominal location of the Society would continue to be in New York. All conceded that this was the best arrangement. Edmund Quincy explains: "It was fully understood, as I conceive, that everything was to be done by the quorum in Boston---that the committee in N.Y. was to be a mere roi faineant." Edmund Quincy is surprised at James S. Gibbon's scruples "because I am so confident he understood the whole matter & conceded in it at the time." Some way must be contrived of letting friends know that "we are the responsible working people without publishing it in the papers."