Holograph, signed.

William Lloyd Garrison has declined an invitation sent by Mayor Cobb to be present at the Centennial Celebration. Garrison explains that while slavery has been abolished, "equal rights are not enjoyed or recognized, even for those who have been emancipated; and it is humiliating to think that, while the Revolutionary ground of complaint against the mother country was taxation without representation, to this day one half of the inhabitants of the land, though subjected to taxation, are deprived of all right of representation either in local or national affairs."

Includes an envelope with the delivery address: Rev. Samuel May, Care of the Sergeant-at-Arms, State House, Boston.