Palfrey, clergyman, author, politician, and abolitionist, here writes Brooks to enlist his support in protesting the Annexation of Texas, which abolitionists vehemently opposed because it meant the extension of slavery into the vastness of Texas and beyond.

     “My dear Sir,

           I take the liberty to mail to your address some papers which will acquaint you with what we are doing in Massachusetts in the matter of the Annexation of Texas. Can you not get up a public meeting in your town, with the cooperation of others, able, like yourself, to give an impulse to the movement? We wish to pile mountains of remonstrances on the tables of Congress. Whatever is to be done must be done at once. …”

          John Gorham Palfrey (May 2, 1796 – April 26, 1881) was an American clergyman and historian who served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. A Unitarian minister, he played a leading role in the early history of Harvard Divinity School, and he later became involved in politics as a State Representative and U.S. Congressman.

            Palfrey’s father was an unsuccessful merchant and shipmaster, after his mother’s death in 1802, his father left him (the eldest) and his four brothers with relatives. Two years later his father moved permanently to New Orleans, taking only his four youngest sons with him, and became a plantation owner and slaveholder. John was left behind and left to essentially fend for himself. He attended the Berry Street Academy in Boston and Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Harvard as a scholarship student.  

          He graduated from Harvard College in 1815, received the degree of D.D. in 1834, L.L.D., in 1838. He was professor of Sacred Literature in Harvard College from 1830 to 1839. He was Editor of the North American Review some years. Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Member of Congress from Massachusetts; Postmaster of Boston and Author of “History of New England”

           A dramatic event made Palfrey an active, even heroic abolitionist. He had long opposed slavery theoretically, but in 1843 his father’s death in Louisiana left him and his pro-slavery brothers’ inheritors of slaves. John Gorham inherited twenty slaves as his portion of his father’s estate. Three of the slaves were legally freed at once because of old age. After much difficulty and expense, he transported the remaining seventeen to freedom in Boston. A ceremonial welcome was held at King’s Chapel celebrating their emancipation, before being located at placements arranged by abolitionists.

          In 1846 he and two friends bought the Boston Whig. He wrote frequently for it and gathered some two dozen of his contributions, into his Papers on the Slave Power … (1846). He was elected to Congress but served only one term (1847-1849) because he offended his Whig party supporters by associating with Free Soilers and other radicals. Defeated for reelection as a Free-Soil candidate, and then as a Free oil candidate for governor in 1851, he tried to remain a behind-the -scenes political force but devoted his energies successfully thereafter only to renewed research and publication. His monograph, The Inter-State Slave Trade (1855) castigates the Old South – Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina – for breeding and selling slaves to planters in the New South – Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas – and thus encouraging the spread of slavery. Palfrey was appointed postmaster of Boston from 1861-1867.                                                                                                                     

     American National Biography, vol. 16, pp., 932-934