Mr. Breckinridge had amused them with another Andover story. He had
read an extract from a speech said to have been delivered by him (Mr.
T.) during the protracted meeting he had held there. He would just
take the liberty of assuring the audience that he had never uttered
the speech which had that night been put into his mouth. It had been
said that the speech was reported by a student. Had Mr. B. given the
name of the student?--No. He (Mr. B.) knew that it was an anonymous
communication, written by a vile enemy of a righteous cause, who was
too much ashamed of his own productions to sign his name, but put the
initial C. at the end of his libellous productions, which were
greedily copied into the pro-slavery papers of the United States. The
reports furnished by that scribbler were known in Andover to be false,
and laughed at by the students as monstrous and ludicrous perversions
of the truth. Upon this point also, he (Mr. T.) had ample documentary
evidence. He did not wonder that Mr. Breckinridge had so frequently
twitted him respecting the multitude of documents which he (Mr. T.)
was in the habit of producing. It must be peculiarly unpleasant to
find that he (Mr. T.) had always the document at hand necessary to
annihilate the pretended proof of his opponent. He would now read from
a report of the proceedings at Andover--but a very different report
compared with that they had just heard--not an anonymous one, but
signed by a respectable and pious student in the Theological Seminary,
R. Reed, Corresponding Secretary of the Andover Anti-Slavery Society.
As reference was made, in the extract he was going to read, to a
former visit, he would just state, that about three months after his
arrival in the United States, he visited Andover, and delivered three
lectures, besides undergoing a long examination into his principles in
the College Chapel; and that on his return to Boston, where he was
then residing, he received from the Institution a series of
resolutions signed by upwards of fifty of the students, expressive of
their entire concurrence in the sentiments he had advanced, and their
high approbation of the temper in which he had advocated those
sentiments, and commending him to the blessing and protection of
Heaven. He (Mr. T.) need not say that such a testimonial from
theological students, unasked and unexpected, was peculiarly
gratifying.
The account of his second visit in July, 1835, was thus given in a
letter addressed to the editor of the Liberator.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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