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Oliver Johnson (1809-89), a very old friend of Garrison's, became in 1832 one of the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. He also worked with Garrison on the publication of the Liberator and served as editor during Garrison's trips to Britain in 1833 and 1840 (Merrill III 72).

He was editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle in Salem, Ohio, in the 1840s and 1850s (Ruchames IV 205) and from 1853-65 associate editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard . He was also for a time Horace Greeley's assistant on the New York Tribune . At the time of his letter to Milo Townsend, he held the post of associate editor of the New York Independent , an influential religious paper, which position he filled from 1865-1870 (Ruchames IV 205; Nye 193; Merrill V 6). He also contributed to many humanitarian movements (Hart 432).

Milo, aware of Arthur Bullus Bradford's need for a remunerative profession, wrote to Oliver Johnson hoping that he, through the Independent , could promote Bradford as a lecturer. Johnson's reply to this request follows:

Letter 146

from Oliver Johnson

Independent office

New York, Oct. 12, 1869

My Dear Friend,

I thank you for sending me Mr. Bradford's article on the Independent. It is not only fine in its spirit but able, and does credit to the author's head and heart.

I have long known Mr. Bradford and admired him for his large intellectual gifts, his personal independence and boldness, and his beautifully Christian spirit. I have watched with interest and sympathy his growth out of the narrowness of the old creeds into broader views and a truer perception of the spirit of Christianity. Few things would afford me greater pleasure than to help him to an audience that would "put money in his purse." But, of all the professions there is not one in respect to which the public are so exacting as they are in respect to lecturers. It is not enough that a man has high and noble thoughts, and that he holds a strong and able pen. If with all this he has not the gift of oratory, the power of enchaining and magnetizing an audience, it will be in vain for him to attempt to make his living by lecturing. Of all those who try it only here and there one succeeds. Candidly I am constrained to say that I do not see how it is possible for me to do anything for him in the way you speak of. The newspaper cannot make the reputation of a lecturer. He must make his own way from one audience to another, beginning where he is known and working out into the great world as way opens. If he should thus enter the field, we would gladly say a good word for him in the Independent; but we cannot control the popular taste, which demands the lecturer to be an eloquent man, or, like Horace Greeley, to have done the world such signal service that the people are anxious to see and hear him.

I am, my dear friend,

Yours cordially,

Oliver Johnson

There is no further correspondence with Oliver Johnson.