Holograph, signed.

William Lloyd Garrison wrote this letter on his 56th birthday, in response to the letter and gift given to him by his wife and children on this occasion. (See the letter by Helen Eliza Garrison, Dec. 10, 1861, Call No. Ms.A.1.1 v.6, p.19, wishing him a happy birthday. William Lloyd Garrison was given a suit of clothes as a gift from his family.) In this letter, William Lloyd Garrison makes puns and humorous remarks about his suit of clothes. Garrison says that "in the land of Secessia" there would be those who would be "pleased to see him wearing a 'coat of tar and feathers'; ...however, he does not mean to play the turn-coat.'" William Lloyd Garrison also writes that "he cannot find words to express his love for his wife and children, and the amount of blessedness they have afforded him, because none such are to be found in any vocabulary; but he invokes upon them all whatever blessings Heaven may be able to bestow, and trusts that every succeeding birthday may find them steadily advancing in knowledge, goodness and truth, until clothed upon with the robes of immortal life." He especially thanks his children Fanny and Franky for their gift of a photographic volume.

Merrill, Walter M. Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, v.5, no.19.