[Letter to] Dear Friend
Contributors: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, recipient
Series: Maria Weston Chapman Correspondence (1835-1885)
Published: 1846
Place of publication: Dublin, [Ireland]
Language: eng
Format: [manuscript]
Subjects: Correspondence; Women abolitionists; Herald of freedom (Concord, N.H. : 1835); Antislavery movements; History
Notes: Holograph, signed.

Richard Davis Webb reacts to the news, just received in the Herald of Freedom of Friday, October 23, of the death of Nathaniel P. Rogers. Webb says about Nathaniel P. Rogers: "He was an original, fearless thinker and a remarkably original writer. He was a master of language, and though he did not write numbers he had more of the soul of a poet than nine tenths of the poets in the English language." He reminisces about his first meeting with Nathaniel P. Rogers and William Lloyd Garrison at the time of the World Convention of 1840. Nathaniel P. Rogers became one of Richard D. Webb's most intimate and valued correspondents. Richard D. Webb reviews his own reaction to the controversy about the Herald of Freedom, showing the wrongness of J. R. French's statement that Maria Weston Chapman had "with cunningly devised falsehoods" tried to turn Richard D. Webb's "love [for Rogers] into hatred." Richard D. Webb declares: "I never hated him. I could not if I tried. I was sorry for him ..." Richard D. Webb tells of the "day-dreaming" anticipation he had of visiting Rogers in New Hampshire. He protests that it was bad taste to attack Maria Weston Chapman in the obituary notice.