Letter from James Cropper, Liverpool, [England], to William Lloyd Garrison, 1834 [May] 17th

James Cropper writes to William Lloyd Garrison after receiving a bound volume of the Liberator for 1833 and telling him that he had subscribed through Joseph Sturge to receive the Liberator regularly. He then praises the American Anti-Slavery Society's Declaration of Sentiments, saying "the friends of Negro emancipation were greatly rejoiced to see your manly Declarlation against slavery," before discussing the challenges to emancipation in the United States. Cropper then proposes changing state to make it easier to free slaves and suggests that showing slaveholders the advantages of free labor will encourage them to free their slaves. He tells Garrison that his view is "one mode at least to which your aims should be subjected". He also says he is "about to try an experiment which if it succeeds would be of vast importance to the Coloured people in your Country, whether children or grown up" and sends Garrison a copy of his plan hoping "some individual or Society in America will take it up". After his autograph, Cropper adds a note about Charles Stuart's visit to the United States, stating that he is "a little afraid of our stepping out of our proper place in paying Agents to travel in the United States, but I am satisfied there is a degree of apathy from which it is needfull the people in your Country should by some means be arouzed [sic]."

Courtesy of Boston Public Library

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1834

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