Description

Holograph, signed.This letter is partly concerned with anti-slavery fair business and includes a statement of accounts. Richard Davis Webb received a letter from Sidney Howard Gay touching on "the Howitt affair," and Gay observed that "when his friend [Charles Frederick?] Briggs wrote the tactless(?) notice of Homes and Haunts he was quite innocent of any connexion between the Howitts & the A.S. cause." [In 1847, William Howitt wrote Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets.] Richard D. Webb feels that he has mortally offended Maria Weston Chapman. Webb thinks that "if Briggs be a good abolitionist, he is certainly to be preferred to all the Howitts in the world." Webb remarks that Frederick Douglass is intensely suspicious "and this only can explain his not having been open with Garrison." Webb comments on the inappropriateness of coming to England to collect money at this time when it is scarce. The friends of the Garrisonians "lie manily in Bristol, Scotland, Manchester & Ireland." Richard Davis Webb accounts for his own remarks about Nathaniel P. Rogers in the Standard: "Perhaps if I had read some of the later passages [in the Herald of Freedom] after the schism, I should not have been so romantic & pathetic." Richard D. Webb criticizes Henry Clapp: "He has been making most improper use of my name since he returned."Originally enclosed with this manuscript was a letter by Richard Davis Webb to Anne Warren Weston, Nov. 18, 1847, Call No. Ms.A.9.2 v.23, p.77.

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