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in the facts to prove the statement at the head of this article, which is but simple truth and historic justice. Mrs. Griffing was engaged in an arduous work for the Loyal League in the Northwest in 1862, and foresaw the need of a comprehensive system of protection, help, and education, for the slaves in the trying transition of freedom. She sought counsel and aid from fit persons in Ohio and Michigan, and came here only in 1863 to begin her work of urging the plan of a Bureau for that purpose. Nothing daunted by coldness or indifference she nobly persisted, until in December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon T. D. Elliott, of Massachusetts. After some changes in the bill, and a committee of conference of the House and Senate, and the valuable aid of Sumner, Wilson, and other Senators, the bill for the Freedman's Bureau finally passed in March, 1865, and was signed by President Lincoln just before his assassination. The original idea was Mrs. Griffing's; her untiring efforts gave it life, and it is but just that the colored people, of the South especially, should bear in grateful remembrance this able and gentle woman, whose life and strength were spent for their poor sufferers, and who called into useful existence that great national charity, the Freedman's Bureau. The following letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Giles B. Stebbins, then in Washington, corroborates the above statements: ROXBURY, MASS., _March 4, 1872_. MY DEAR FRIEND: ... I was glad to see the well-merited tributes paid by yourself and others to the memory of Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing. She was, for a considerable period, actively engaged in the anti-slavery struggle in Ohio, where by her rare executive ability and persuasiveness as a public lecturer, she aided greatly in keeping the abolition flag flying, enlightening and changing public sentiment, and hastening the year of jubilee. With what unremitting zeal and energy did she espouse the cause of the homeless, penniless, benighted, starving freedmen, driven by stress of circumstances into the national capital in such overwhelming numbers; and what a multitude were befriended and saved through her moving appeals in their be
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