Letter from James Forten, Philad[elphi]a, [Pennsylvania], to William Lloyd Garrison, 1831 August 9th

James Forten writes to William Lloyd Garrison sending him the latest annual report from the [American] Colonization Society and discussing the Independence Day speech of John Quincy Adams. Forten says that he agrees with Adams in declaring "it must be arbitrary force and not right to make a slave," adding that the speech is "one of the best I have read, and is worthy of so great a scholar and so distinguised a statesman." He then praises the Liberator for "it has silenced the Colonization Society," and says he is "much mortified by the delay of the Publishing Committee" for not immediately publishing its account of the General Convention of Colored Delegates that recently met in Philadelphia.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library