Holograph, signed

Title devised by cataloger

Manuscript is accompanied by envelope addressed to "Mrssrs Murray & Smeal Secretaries to the Glasgow Emancipation Society". The verso of the envelope has a note which details the nature of the envelope's contents

Included with manuscript and envelope is a separate, related manuscript, addressed from Boston, [Mass.], and dated Sept[emeber] 30, 1840, from the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Signed by Francis Jackson, it recounts the resolution of the society to engage John A. Collins on a voyage to Great Britain to solicit aid and support for the American abolitionist cause

James Gibbons, writing on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society as the Chair of the Executive Committee, forwards the credentials of John A. Collins, whom the American Anti-Slavery Society has deputed to England in order to "obtain such pecuniary aid" for the abolitionist cause in America as its British allies possess within "their hearts and within [their] ability to bestow". Gibbons describes the situation in the United States as urgent, and relays the state of political affairs vis-©-vis slavery in noting that both Presidential candidates up for election have pledged their support for slavery. Gibbons laments those who are "abolitionists only in name", who shirk when they discover that they must "either sacrifice their sectarian or party prejudices, or compromise their anti-slavery principles". Gibbons notes that a prime source of their "present embarassment" lies in the division of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the formation of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and charges that the primary goal of the latter is not the extermination of slavery, but that of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Gibbons cites the origins of this split as dating in 1839, when an "attempt was made for the first time to exclude persons from acting as members on account of their sex"

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