Holograph, signed.

For the last eighteen days William Lloyd Garrison has been kept at home by a fever, and he is not strong enough to attend the meeting. It will be the first anniversary meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that Garrison has failed to attend. He believes that this meeting "will be the most encouraging and the most potential ever held by the Society, whether broken up by lawless violence, or permitted to proceed without molestation." Garrison says that the anti-slavery cause is "not ours, but God's." He wishes that a patient, peaceful spirit may prevail at the meeting. (This letter was read by Edmund Quincy at the Anti-Slavery Society meeting held at Tremont Temple, Jan. 24, 1861.)