Holograph, signed.
William Lloyd Garrison accepts Oliver Johnson's invitation and will try to spend a day or two with him in New York. Samuel May, Jr., returned from New York today. Garrison remarks on the unity of views between Oliver Johnson and himself and pays tribute to Johnson's common sense and absolute disinterestedness. Despite progress, the "old pro-slavery venom remains in the North" and John C. Fremont and Charles Sumne are referred to as serpants. Garrison lists the title of newspapers whose support of the government is the "basest dissimulation." They would prefer the reign of Jefferson Davis and slavery to abolition by the Republicans. Garrison writes: "Yet Mr. Lincoln is so infatuated as to shape his course of policy in accordance with their wishes, and is thus unwittingly helping to prolong the war, and to render the result more and more doubtful! If he is 6 feet 4 inches high, he is only a dwarf in mind." E. H. Heywood has been sick at Garrison's house for the past three weeks. Francis Jackson has recovered his health. Garrison sends his warm personal regards to Theodore Tilton.
Notes (citation):
Merrill, Walter M. Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, v.5, no.14.