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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Lloyd Garrison, by Archibald H. Grimke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: William Lloyd Garrison
+       The Abolitionist
+
+Author: Archibald H. Grimke
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2005 [EBook #14555]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Amy Overmyer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Wm. Lloyd Garrison]
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
+
+
+
+
+
+_THE ABOLITIONIST_
+
+BY ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE, M.A.
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
+
+Grimké, Archibald Henry, 1849-1930.
+
+William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist.
+
+Reprint of the 1891 ed. published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York.
+
+1. Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879.
+
+Reprinted from the edition of 1891, New York First AMS edition published
+in 1974
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Anna M. Day, who has been a mother to my little girl, and a
+sister to me, this book is gratefully and affectionately dedicated, by_
+
+_The Author_.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The author of this volume desires by way of preface to say just two
+things:--firstly, that it is his earnest hope that this record of a hero
+may be an aid to brave and true living in the Republic, so that the
+problems knocking at its door for solution may find the heads, the
+hands, and the hearts equal to the performance of the duties imposed by
+them upon the men and women of this generation. William Lloyd Garrison
+was brave and true. Bravery and truth were the secret of his marvelous
+career and achievements. May his countrymen and countrywomen imitate his
+example and be brave and true, not alone in emergent moments, but in
+everyday things as well.
+
+So much for the author's firstly, now for his secondly, which is to
+acknowledge his large indebtedness in the preparation of this book to
+that storehouse of anti-slavery material, the story of the life of
+William Lloyd Garrison by his children. Out of its garnered riches he
+has filled his sack.
+
+HYDE PARK, MASS., May 10, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+Dedication                                          III
+
+Preface                                               V
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Father of the Man                                11
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Man Hears a Voice: Samuel, Samuel!               38
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Man Begins his Ministry                          69
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Hour and the Man                                 92
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Day of Small Things                             110
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Heavy World is Moved                            118
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Master Strokes                                      133
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Colorphobia                                         157
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Agitation and Repression                            170
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Between the Acts                                    192
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Mischief Let Loose                                  208
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Flotsam and Jetsam                                  233
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The Barometer Continues to Fall                     242
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Brotherly Love Fails, and Ideas Abound              263
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Random Shots                                        292
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The Pioneer Makes a New and Startling Departure     306
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+As in a Looking Glass                               319
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The Turning of a Long Lane                          335
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Face to Face                                        356
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The Death-Grapple                                   370
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The Last                                            385
+
+Index                                               397
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+THE FATHER OF THE MAN.
+
+
+William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, December
+10, 1805. Forty years before, Daniel Palmer, his great-grandfather,
+emigrated from Massachusetts and settled with three sons and a daughter
+on the St. John River, in Nova Scotia. The daughter's name was Mary, and
+it was she who was to be the future grandmother of our hero. One of the
+neighbors of Daniel Palmer was Joseph Garrison, who was probably an
+Englishman. He was certainly a bachelor. The Acadian solitude of five
+hundred acres and Mary Palmer's charms proved too much for the
+susceptible heart of Joseph Garrison. He wooed and won her, and on his
+thirtieth birthday she became his wife. The bride herself was but
+twenty-three, a woman of resources and of presence of mind, as she
+needed to be in that primitive settlement. Children and cares came apace
+to the young wife, and we may be sure confined her more and more closely
+to her house. But in the midst of a fast-increasing family and of
+multiplying cares a day's outing did occasionally come to the busy
+housewife, when she would go down the river to spend it at her father's
+farm. Once, ten years after her marriage, she had a narrow escape on one
+of those rare days. She had started in a boat with her youngest child,
+Abijah, and a lad who worked in her household. It was spring and the St.
+John was not yet clear of ice. Higher up the river the ice broke that
+morning and came floating down with the current. The boat in which Mary
+Garrison and her baby rode was overtaken by the fragments and wrecked.
+The mother with her child sought refuge on a piece of ice and was driven
+shoreward. Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could spare she threw
+him ashore. She and the lad followed by the aid of an overhanging willow
+bough. The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him into a snow-bank.
+But the perils of the river gave place to the perils of the woods. In
+them Mary Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less a personage
+than the father of William Lloyd Garrison, until at length she found the
+hut of a friendly Indian, who took her in and "entertained her with his
+best words and deeds, and the next morning conducted her safely to her
+father's."
+
+The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of farmers, and Joseph
+Garrison was a man of unusual force and independence of character. The
+life which these early settlers lived was a life lived partly on the
+land and partly on the river. They were equally at home with scythe or
+oar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the
+children should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them
+took to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The
+amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, roving
+character. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. He
+was a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain of
+romance and adventure in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life he
+probably craved strong excitement. This craving was in part appeased no
+doubt by travel and drink. He took to the sea and he took to the cup.
+But he was more than a creature of appetites, he was a man of sentiment.
+Being a man of sentiment what should he do but fall in love. The woman
+who inspired his love was no ordinary woman, but a genuine Acadian
+beauty. She was a splendid specimen of womankind. Tall she was, graceful
+and admirably proportioned. Never before had Abijah in all his
+wanderings seen a creature of such charms of person. Her face matched
+the attractions of her form and her mind matched the beauty of her face.
+She possessed a nature almost Puritanic in its abhorrence of sin, and in
+the strength of its moral convictions. She feared to do wrong more than
+she feared any man. With this supremacy of the moral sense there went
+along singular firmness of purpose and independence of character. When a
+mere slip of a girl she was called upon to choose between regard for her
+religious convictions and regard for her family. It happened in this
+wise. Fanny Lloyd's parents were Episcopalians, who were inclined to
+view with contempt fellow-Christians of the Baptist persuasion. To have
+a child of theirs identify herself with this despised sect was one of
+those crosses which they could not and would not bear. But Fanny had in
+a fit of girlish frolic entered one of the meetings of these low-caste
+Christians. What she heard changed the current of her life. She knew
+thenceforth that God was no respecter of persons, and that the crucified
+Nazarene looked not upon the splendor of ceremonies but upon the
+thoughts of the heart of His disciples. Here in a barn, amid vulgar
+folk, and uncouth, dim surroundings, He had appeared, He, her Lord and
+Master. He had touched her with that white unspeakable appeal. The
+laughter died upon the fair girlish face and prayer issued from the
+beautiful lips. If vulgar folk, the despised Baptists, were good enough
+for the Christ, were they not good enough for her? Among them she had
+felt His consecrating touch and among them she determined to devote
+herself to Him. Her parents commanded and threatened but Fanny Lloyd was
+bent on obeying the heavenly voice of duty rather than father and
+mother. They had threatened that if she allowed herself to be baptised
+they would turn her out of doors. Fanny was baptised and her parents
+made good the threat. Their home was no longer her home. She had the
+courage of her conviction--ability to suffer for a belief.
+
+Such was the woman who subsequently became the wife of Abijah Garrison,
+and the mother of one of the greatest moral heroes of the century.
+Abijah followed the sea, and she for several years with an increasing
+family followed Abijah. First from one place and then another she glided
+after him in her early married life. He loved her and his little ones
+but the love of travel and change was strong within him. He was ever
+restless and changeful. During one of his roving fits he emigrated with
+his family from Nova Scotia to the United States. It was in the spring
+of 1805 that he and they landed in Newburyport. The following December
+his wife presented him with a boy, whom they called William Lloyd
+Garrison. Three years afterward Abijah deserted his wife and children.
+Of the causes which led to this act nothing is now known. Soon after his
+arrival in Newburyport he had found employment. He made several voyages
+as sailing-master in 1805-8 from that port. He was apparently during
+these years successful after the manner of his craft. But he was not a
+man to remain long in one place. What was the immediate occasion of his
+strange behavior we can only conjecture. Possibly an increasing love for
+liquor had led to domestic differences, which his pleasure-loving nature
+would not brook. Certain it was that he was not like his wife. He was
+not a man in whom the moral sense was uppermost. He was governed by
+impulse and she by fixed moral and religious principles. He drank and
+she abhorred the habit. She tried first moral suasion to induce him to
+abandon the habit, and once, in a moment of wifely and motherly
+indignation, she broke up one of his drinking parties in her house by
+trying the efficacy of a little physical suasion. She turned the company
+out of doors and smashed the bottles of liquor. This was not the kind of
+woman whom Abijah cared to live with as a wife. He was not the sort of
+man whom the most romantic love could attach to the apron-strings of any
+woman. And in the matter of his cup he probably saw that this was what
+he would be obliged to do as the condition of domestic peace. The
+condition he rejected and, rejecting it, rejected and cast-off his wife
+and family and the legal and moral responsibilities of husband and
+father.
+
+Bitter days now followed and Fanny Garrison became acquainted with grief
+and want. She had the mouths of three children to fill--the youngest an
+infant at her breast. The battle of this broken-hearted woman for their
+daily bread was as heroic as it was pathetic. She still lived in the
+little house on School street where Lloyd was born. The owner, Martha
+Farnham, proved herself a friend indeed to the poor harassed soul. Now
+she kept the wolf from the door by going out as a monthly nurse--"Aunt
+Farnham" looking after the little ones in her absence. She was put to
+all her possibles during those anxious years of struggle and want. Even
+Lloyd, wee bit of a boy, was pressed into the service. She would make
+molasses candies and send him upon the streets to sell them. But with
+all her industry and resource what could she do with three children
+weighing her down in the fierce struggle for existence, rendered tenfold
+fiercer after the industrial crisis preceding and following the War of
+1812. Then it was that she was forced to supplement her scant earnings
+with refuse food from the table of "a certain mansion on State street."
+It was Lloyd who went for this food, and it was he who had to run the
+gauntlet of mischievous and inquisitive children whom he met and who
+longed for a peep into his tin pail. But the future apostle of
+non-resistance was intensely resistant, we may be sure, on such
+occasions. For, as his children have said in the story of his life:
+"Lloyd was a thorough boy, fond of games and of all boyish sport.
+Barefooted, he trundled his hoop all over Newburyport; he swam in the
+Merrimac in summer, and skated on it in winter; he was good at sculling
+a boat; he played at bat and ball and snowball, and sometimes led the
+'Southend boys' against the Northenders in the numerous conflicts
+between the youngsters of the two sections; he was expert with marbles.
+Once, with a playmate, he swam across the river to 'Great Rock,' a
+distance of three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against the
+tide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life by breaking through
+the ice on the river and reached the shore only after a desperate
+struggle, the ice yielding as often as he attempted to climb upon its
+surface. It was favorite pastime of the boys of that day to swim from
+one wharf to another adjacent, where vessels from the West Indies
+discharged their freight of molasses, and there to indulge in stolen
+sweetness, extracted by a smooth stick inserted through the bung-hole.
+When detected and chased, they would plunge into the water and escape to
+the wharf on which they had left their clothes." Such was the little man
+with a boy's irrepressible passion for frolic and fun. His passion for
+music was hardly less pronounced, and this he inherited from his mother,
+and exercised to his heart's content in the choir of the Baptist Church.
+These were the bright lines and spots in his strenuous young life. He
+played and sang the gathering brood of cares out of his own and his
+mother's heart. He needed to play and he needed to sing to charm away
+from his spirit the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever over
+his childhood. It was able to do many hard things to him, break up his
+home, sunder him from his mother, force him at a tender age to earn his
+bread, still there was another bird in the boy's heart, which sang out
+of it the shadow and into it the sunshine. Whatever was his lot there
+sang the bird within his breast, and there shone the sun over his head
+and into his soul. The boy had unconsciously drawn around him a circle
+of sunbeams, and how could the vulture of poverty strike him with its
+wings or stab him with its beak. When he was about eight he was parted
+from his mother, she going to Lynn, and he, wee mite of a man, remaining
+in Newburyport. It was during the War of 1812, and pinching times, when
+Fanny Garrison was at her wit's end to keep the wolf from devouring her
+three little ones and herself into the bargain. With what tearing of the
+heart-strings she left Lloyd and his little sister Elizabeth behind we
+can now only imagine. She had no choice, poor soul, for unless she
+toiled they would starve. So with James, her eldest son, she went forth
+into the world to better theirs and her own condition. Lloyd went to
+live in Deacon Ezekiel Bartlett's family. They were good to the little
+fellow, but they, too, were poor. The Deacon, among other things, sawed
+wood for a living, and Lloyd hardly turned eight years, followed him in
+his peregrinations from house to house doing with his tiny hands what he
+could to help the kind old man. Soon Fanny Lloyd's health, which had
+supported her as a magic staff in all those bitter years since Abijah's
+desertion of wife and children, began in the battle for bread in Lynn,
+to fail her. And so, in her weakness, and with a great fear in her heart
+for her babies, when she was gone from them into the dark unknown
+forever, she bethought her of making them as fast as possible
+self-supporting. And what better way was there than to have the boys
+learn some trade. James she had already apprenticed to learn the mystery
+of shoemaking. And for Lloyd she now sent and apprenticed him, too, to
+the same trade. Oh! but it was hard for the little man, the heavy
+lapstone and all this thumping and pounding to make a shoe. Oh! how the
+stiff waxen threads cut into his soft fingers, how all his body ached
+with the constrained position and the rough work of shoemaking. But one
+day the little nine-year-old, who was "not much bigger than a last," was
+able to produce a real shoe. Then it was probably that a dawning
+consciousness of power awoke within the child's mind. He himself by
+patience and industry had created a something where before was nothing.
+The eye of the boy got for the first time a glimpse of the man, who was
+still afar off, shadowy in the dim approaches of the hereafter. But the
+work proved altogether beyond the strength of the boy. The shoemaker's
+bench was not his place, and the making of shoes for his kind was not
+the mission for which he was sent into the world. And now again poverty,
+the great scene-shifter, steps upon the stage, and Fanny Lloyd and her
+two boys are in Baltimore on that never-ending quest for bread. She had
+gone to work in a shoe factory established by an enterprising Yankee in
+that city. The work lasted but a few months, when the proprietor failed
+and the factory was closed. In a strange city mother and children were
+left without employment. In her anxiety and distress a new trouble, the
+greatest and most poignant since Abijah's desertion, wrung her with a
+supreme grief. James, the light and pride of her life, had run away from
+his master and gone to sea. Lloyd, poor little homesick Lloyd, was the
+only consolation left the broken heart. And he did not want to live in
+Baltimore, and longed to return to Newburyport. So, mindful of her
+child's happiness, and all unmindful of her own, she sent him from her
+to Newburyport, which he loved inexpressibly. He was now in his eleventh
+year. Very happy he was to see once more the streets and landmarks of
+the old town--the river, and the old house where he was born, and the
+church next door and the school-house across the way and the dear
+friends whom he loved and who loved him. He went again to live with the
+Bartletts, doing with his might all that he could to earn his daily
+bread, and to repay the kindness of the dear old deacon and his family.
+It was at this time that he received his last scrap of schooling. He
+was, as we have seen, but eleven, but precious little of that brief and
+tender time had he been able to spend in a school-house. He had gone to
+the primary school, where, as his children tell us, he did not show
+himself "an apt scholar, being slow in mastering the alphabet, and
+surpassed even by his little sister Elizabeth." During his stay with
+Deacon Bartlett the first time, he was sent three months to the
+grammar-school, and now on his return to this good friend, a few more
+weeks were added to his scant school term. They proved the last of his
+school-days, and the boy went forth from the little brick building on
+the Mall to finish his education in the great workaday world, under
+those stern old masters, poverty and experience. By and by Lloyd was a
+second time apprenticed to learn a trade. It was to a cabinetmaker in
+Haverhill, Mass. He made good progress in the craft, but his young heart
+still turned to Newburyport and yearned for the friends left there. He
+bore up against the homesickness as best he could, and when he could
+bear it no longer, resolved to run away from the making of toy bureaus,
+to be once more with the Bartletts. He had partly executed this
+resolution, being several miles on the road to his old home, when his
+master, the cabinetmaker, caught up to him and returned him to
+Haverhill. But when he heard the little fellow's story of homesickness
+and yearning for loved places and faces, he was not angry with him, but
+did presently release him from his apprenticeship. And so the boy to his
+great joy found himself again in Newburyport and with the good old
+wood-sawyer. Poverty and experience were teaching the child what he
+never could have learned in a grammar-school, a certain acquaintance
+with himself and the world around him. There was growing within his
+breast a self-care and a self-reliance. It was the autumn of 1818, when,
+so to speak, the boy's primary education in the school of experience
+terminated, and he entered on the second stage of his training under the
+same rough tutelage. At the age of thirteen he entered the office of the
+Newburyport _Herald_ to learn to set types. At last his boy's hands had
+found work which his boy's heart did joy to have done. He soon mastered
+the compositor's art, became a remarkably rapid composer. As he set up
+the thoughts of others, he was not slow in discovering thoughts of his
+own demanding utterance. The printer's apprentice felt the stirrings of
+a new life. A passion for self-improvement took possession of him. He
+began to read the English classics, study American history, follow the
+currents of party politics. No longer could it be said of him that he
+was not an apt pupil. He was indeed singularly apt. His intelligence
+quickened marvelously. The maturing process was sudden and swift. Almost
+before one knows it the boy in years has become a man in judgment and
+character. This precipitate development of the intellectual life in him,
+produced naturally enough an appreciable enlargement of the _ego_. The
+young eagle had abruptly awakened to the knowledge that he possessed
+wings; and wings were for use--to soar with. Ambition, the desire to
+mount aloft, touched and fired the boy's mind. As he read, studied, and
+observed, while his hands were busy with his work, there was a constant
+fluttering going on in the eyrie of his thoughts. By an instinct
+analogous to that which sends a duck to the water, the boy took to the
+discussion of public questions. It was as if an innate force was
+directing him toward his mission--the reformation of great public
+wrongs. At sixteen he made his first contribution to the press. It was a
+discussion of a quasi-social subject, the relation of the sexes in
+society. He was at the impressionable age, when the rosy god of love is
+at his tricks. He was also at a stage of development, when boys are
+least attractive, when they are disagreeably virile, full of their own
+importance and the superiority of their sex. In the "Breach of the
+Marriage Promise," by "An Old Bachelor," these signs of adolescence are
+by no means wanting, they are, on the contrary, distinctly present and
+palpable. But there were other signs besides these, signs that the youth
+had had his eyes wide open to certain difficulties which beset the
+matrimonial state and to the conventional steps which lead to it, and
+that he had thought quite soberly, if not altogether wisely upon them.
+The writer was verdant, to be sure, and self-conscious, and partial in
+his view of the relations of the sexes, but there was withal a serious
+purpose in the writing. He meant to expose and correct what he conceived
+to be reprehensible conduct on the part of the gentler sex, bad feminine
+manners. Just now he sees the man's side of the shield, a few years
+later he will see the woman's side also. He ungallantly concludes "to
+lead the '_single life_,' and not," as he puts it, "trouble myself about
+the ladies." A most sapient conclusion, considering that this veteran
+misogynist was but sixteen years old. During the year following the
+publication of this article, he plied his pen with no little
+industry--producing in all fifteen articles on a variety of topics, such
+as "South American Affairs," "State Politics," "A Glance at Europe,"
+etc., all of which are interesting now chiefly as showing the range of
+his growing intelligence, and as the earliest steps by which he acquired
+his later mastery of the pen and powerful style of composition. In a
+letter addressed to his mother about this time, the boy is full of
+Lloyd, undisguisedly proud of Lloyd, believes in Lloyd. "When I peruse
+them over" (_i.e._ those fifteen communications to the press), "I feel
+absolutely astonished," he naïvely confesses, "at the different subjects
+which I have discussed, and the style in which they are written. Indeed
+it is altogether a matter of surprise that I have met with such signal
+success, seeing I do not understand _one single rule of grammar_, and
+having a very inferior education." The printer's lad was plainly not
+lacking in the bump of approbativeness, or the quality of
+self-assertiveness. The quick mother instinct of Fanny Garrison took
+alarm at the tone of her boy's letter. Possibly there was something in
+Lloyd's florid sentences, in his facility of expression, which reminded
+her of Abijah. He, too, poor fellow, had had gifts in the use of the
+pen, and what had he done, what had he come to? Had he not forsaken wife
+and children by first forsaking the path of holiness? So she pricks the
+boy's bubble, and points him to the one thing needful--God in the soul.
+But in her closing words she betrays what we all along suspected, her
+own secret pleasure in her son's success, when she asks, "Will you be so
+kind as to bring on your pieces that you have written for me to see?"
+Ah! was she not every inch a mother, and how Lloyd did love her. But she
+was no longer what she had been. And no wonder, for few women have been
+called to endure such heavy burdens, fight so hopelessly the battle for
+bread, all the while her heart was breaking with grief. Disease had made
+terrible inroads upon her once strong and beautiful person. Not the
+shadow of the strength and beauty of her young womanhood remained. She
+was far away from her early home and friends, far away from her darling
+boy, in Baltimore. James, her pride, was at sea, Elizabeth, a sweet
+little maiden of twelve, had left her to take that last voyage beyond
+another sea, and Abijah, without one word of farewell, with the silence
+of long years unbroken, he, too, also! had hoisted sail and was gone
+forever. And now in her loneliness and sorrow, knowing that she, too,
+must shortly follow, a great yearning rose up in her poor wounded heart
+to see once more her child, the comfort and stay of her bitter life. And
+as she had written to him her wish and longing, the boy went to her, saw
+the striking change, saw that the broken spirit of the saintly woman was
+day by day nearing the margin of the dark hereafter, into whose healing
+waters it would bathe and be whole again. The unspeakable experience of
+mother and son, during this last meeting is not for you and me, reader,
+to look into. Soon after Lloyd's return to Newburyport a cancerous tumor
+developed on her shoulder, from the effects of which she died September
+3, 1823, at the age of forty-five. More than a decade after her death
+her son wrote: "She has been dead almost eleven years; but my grief at
+her loss is as fresh and poignant now as it was at that period;" and he
+breaks out in praise of her personal charms in the following original
+lines:
+
+  "She was the masterpiece of womankind--
+  In shape and height majestically fine;
+  Her cheeks the lily and the rose combined;
+  Her lips--more opulently red than wine;
+  Her raven locks hung tastefully entwined;
+  Her aspect fair as Nature could design;
+  And then her eyes! so eloquently bright!
+  An eagle would recoil before her light."
+
+
+The influence of this superb woman was a lasting power for truth and
+righteousness in the son's stormy life. For a whole year after her
+death, the grief of the printer's lad over his loss, seemed to have
+checked the activity of his pen. For during that period nothing of his
+appeared in the _Herald_. But after the sharp edge of his sorrow had
+worn off, his pen became active again in the discussion of public men
+and public questions. It was a period of bitter personal and political
+feuds and animosities. The ancient Federal party was _in articulo
+mortis_. The death-bed of a great political organization proves
+oftentimes the graveyard of lifelong friendships. For it is a scene of
+crimination and recrimination. And so it happened that the partisans of
+John Adams, and the partisans of John Adams's old Secretary of State,
+Timothy Pickering, were in 1824 doing a thriving business in this
+particular line. Into this funereal performance our printer's apprentice
+entered with pick and spade. He had thus early a _penchant_ for
+controversy, a soldier's scent for battle. If there was any fighting
+going on he proceeded directly to have a hand in it. And it cannot be
+denied that that hand was beginning to deal some manly and sturdy blows,
+whose resound was heard quite distinctly beyond the limits of his
+birthplace. His communications appeared now, not only in the _Herald_,
+but in the Salem _Gazette_ as well. Now it was the Adams-Pickering
+controversy, now the discussion of General Jackson as a presidential
+candidate, now the state of the country in respect of parties, now the
+merits of "American Writers," which afforded his 'prentice hand the
+requisite practice in the use of the pen. He had already acquired a
+perfect knowledge of typesetting and the mechanical makeup of a
+newspaper. During his apprenticeship he took his first lesson in the art
+of thinking on his feet in the presence of an audience. The audience to
+be sure were the members of a debating club, which he had organized. He
+was very ambitious and was doubtless looking forward to a political
+career. He saw the value of extempore speech to the man with a future,
+and he wisely determined to possess himself of its advantage. He little
+dreamt, however, to what great use he was to devote it in later years.
+There were other points worth noting at this time, and which seemed to
+prophecy for him a future of distinction. He possessed a most attractive
+personality. His energy and geniality, his keen sense of humor, his
+social and bouyant disposition, even his positive and opinionated
+temper, were sources of popular strength to him. People were strongly
+drawn to him. His friends were devoted to him. He had that quality,
+which we vaguely term magnetic, the quality of attaching others to us,
+and maintaining over them the ascendency of our character and ideas.
+
+In the midst of all this progress along so many lines, the days of his
+apprenticeship in the _Herald_ office came to an end. He was just
+twenty. With true Yankee enterprise and pluck, he proceeded to do for
+himself what for seven years he had helped to do for another--publish a
+newspaper. And with a brave heart the boy makes his launch on the
+uncertain sea of local journalism and becomes editor and publisher of a
+real, wide-awake sheet, which he calls the _Free Press._ The paper was
+independent in politics and proved worthy of its name during the six
+months that Garrison sat in the managerial chair. Here is the tone which
+the initial number of the paper holds to the public: "As to the
+political course of the _Free Press_, it shall be, in the widest sense
+of the term, _independent_. The publisher does not mean by this, to rank
+amongst those who are of everybody's and of nobody's opinion; ... nor
+one of whom the old French proverb says: _Il ne soit sur quel pied
+danser_. [He knows not on which leg to dance.] Its principles shall be
+open, magnanimous and free. It shall be subservient to no party or body
+of men; and neither the craven fear of loss, nor the threats of the
+disappointed, nor the influence of power, shall ever awe one single
+opinion into silence. Honest and fair discussion it will court; and its
+columns will be open to all temperate and intelligent communications
+emanating from whatever political source. In fine we will say with
+Cicero: 'Reason shall prevail with him more than popular opinion.' They
+who like this avowal may extend their encouragement; and if any feel
+dissatisfied with it, they must act accordingly. The publisher cannot
+condescend to solicit their support." This was admirable enough in its
+way, but it was poor journalism some will say. And without doubt when
+judged by the common commercial standard it _was_ poor journalism. In
+this view it is a remarkable production, but in another aspect it is
+still more remarkable in that it took with absolute accuracy the measure
+of the man. As a mental likeness it is simply perfect. At no time during
+his later life did the picture cease to be an exact moral representation
+of his character. It seems quite unnecessary, therefore, to record that
+he proceeded immediately to demonstrate that it was no high sounding and
+insincere declaration. For in the second number, he mentions with that
+singular serenity, which ever distinguished him on such occasions, the
+discontinuance of the paper on account of matter contained in the first
+issue, by ten indignant subscribers. "Nevertheless," he adds, "our
+happiness at the loss of such subscribers is not a whit abated. We _beg_
+no man's patronage, and shall ever erase with the same cheerfulness that
+we insert the name of any individual.... Personal or political offence
+we shall studiously avoid--truth _never_." Here was plainly a wholly new
+species of the _genus homo_ in the editorial seat. What, expect to make
+a newspaper pay and not beg for patronage? Why the very idea was enough
+to make newspaperdom go to pieces with laughter. Begging for patronage,
+howling for subscribers, cringing, crawling, changing color like the
+chameleon, howling for Barabbas or bellowing against Jesus, all these
+things must your newspaper do to prosper. On them verily hang the whole
+law and all the profits of modern journalism. This is what the devil of
+competition was doing in that world when William Lloyd Garrison entered
+it. It took him up into an exceedingly high mountain, we may be certain,
+and offered him wealth, position, and power, if he would do what all
+others were doing. And he would not. He went on editing and publishing
+his paper for six months regardful only of what his reason
+approved--regardless always of the disapproval of others. Not once did
+he palter with his convictions or juggle with his self-respect for the
+sake of pelf or applause. His human horizon was contracted, to be sure.
+It could hardly be otherwise in one so young. His world was his country,
+and patriotism imposed limits upon his affections. "Our country, our
+whole country, and nothing but our country," was the ardent motto of the
+_Free Press_. The love of family comes, in the order of growth, before
+the love of country; and the love of country precedes the love of all
+mankind. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,"
+is the great law of love in the soul as of corn in the soil. Besides
+this contraction of the affections, there was also manifest in his first
+journalistic venture a deficiency in the organ of vision, a failure to
+see into things and their relations. What he saw he reported faithfully,
+suppressing nothing, adding nothing. But the objects which passed across
+the disk of his editoral intelligence were confined almost entirely to
+the surface of things, to the superficies of national life. He had not
+the ken at twenty to penetrate beneath the happenings of current
+politics. Of the existence of slavery as a supreme reality, we do not
+think that he then had the faintest suspicion. No shadow of its
+tremendous influence as a political power seemed to have arrested for a
+brief instant his attention. He could copy into his paper this atrocious
+sentiment which Edward Everett delivered in Congress, without the
+slightest comment or allusion. "Sir, I am no soldier. My habits and
+education are very unmilitary, but there is no cause in which I would
+sooner buckle a knapsack on my back, and put a musket on my shoulder
+than that of putting down a servile insurrection at the South." The
+reason is plain enough. Slavery was a _terra incognito_ to him then, a
+book of which he had not learned the ABC. Mr. Everett's language made no
+impression on him, because he had not the key to interpret its
+significance. What he saw, that he set down for his readers, without
+fear or favor. He had not seen slavery, knew nothing of the evil.
+Acquaintance with the deeper things of life, individual or national,
+comes only with increasing years, they are hardly for him who has not
+yet reached his majority. Slavery was the very deepest thing in the life
+of the nation sixty-four years ago. And if Garrison did not then so
+understand it, neither did his contemporaries, the wisest and greatest
+of them so understand it. The subject of all others which attracted his
+attention, and kept his editorial pen busy, was the claim of
+Massachusetts for indemnity from the general government, for certain
+disbursements made by her for the defence of her sea-coast during the
+war of 1812. This matter, which forms but a mere dust point in the
+perspective of history, his ardent young mind mistook for a principal
+object, erected into a permanent question in the politics of the times.
+But the expenditure of enormous energies upon things of secondary and of
+even tertiary importance, to the neglect of others of prime and lasting
+interest, is supremely human. He was errant where all men go astray. But
+the schoolmaster of the nation was abroad, and was training this young
+man for the work he was born to do. These six months were, therefore,
+not wasted, for in the university of experience he did ever prove
+himself an apt scholar. One lesson he had learned, which he never needed
+to relearn. Just what that lesson was, he tells in his valedictory to
+the subscribers of the _Free Press_, as follows: "This is a time-serving
+age; and he who attempts to walk uprightly or speak honestly, cannot
+rationally calculate upon speedy wealth or preferment." A sad lesson, to
+be sure, for one so young to learn so thoroughly. Perhaps some reader
+will say that this was cynical, the result of disappointment. But it was
+not cynical, neither was it the result of disappointment. It was
+unvarnished truth, and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less.
+It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men, needed to know at
+the threshold of his experience with the world. Such a revelation proves
+disastrous to the many who go down to do business in that world.
+Ordinary and weak and neutral moral constitutions are wrecked on this
+reef set in the human sea. Like a true mariner he had written it boldly
+on his chart. There at such and such a point in the voyage for the
+golden fleece, were the rocks and the soul-devouring dragons of the way.
+Therefore, oh! my soul, beware. What, indeed, would this argonaut of the
+press take in exchange for his soul? Certainly not speedy wealth nor
+preferment. Ah! he could not praise where he ought to reprobate; could
+not reprobate where praise should be the meed. He had no money and
+little learning, but he had a conscience and he knew that he must be
+true to that conscience, come to him either weal or woe. Want renders
+most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age,
+absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent
+inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon
+any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee
+that the young recusant could never be starved into silence or
+conformity to popular standards. And with this stern, sad lesson
+treasured up in his heart, Garrison graduated from another room in the
+school-house of experience. All the discoveries of the young journalist
+were not of this grim character. He made another discovery altogether
+different, a real gem of its kind. The drag-net of a newspaper catches
+all sorts of poets and poetry, good, bad, and indifferent--oftener the
+bad and indifferent, rarely the good. The drag-net of the _Free Press_
+was no exception to this rule; but, one day, it fetched up from the
+depths of the hard commonplaces of our New England town life a genuine
+pearl. We will let Mr. Garrison tell the story in his own way:
+
+
+    "Going up-stairs to my office, one day, I observed a letter
+    lying near the door, to my address; which, on opening, I found
+    to contain an original piece of poetry for my paper, the _Free
+    Press_. The ink was very pale, the handwriting very small; and,
+    having at that time a horror of newspaper original poetry--which
+    has rather increased than diminished with the lapse of time--my
+    first impulse was to tear it in pieces, without reading it; the
+    chances of rejection, after its perusal, being as ninety-nine to
+    one; ... but summoning resolution to read it, I was equally
+    surprised and gratified to find it above mediocrity, and so gave
+    it a place in my journal.... As I was anxious to find out the
+    writer, my post-rider, one day, divulged the secret, stating
+    that he had dropped the letter in the manner described, and that
+    it was written by a Quaker lad, named Whittier, who was daily at
+    work on the shoemaker's bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East
+    Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time in driving to
+    see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with
+    shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like
+    a maiden. Giving him some words of encouragement, I addressed
+    myself more particularly to his parents, and urged them with
+    great earnestness to grant him every possible facility for the
+    development of his remarkable genius."
+
+
+Garrison had not only found a true poet, but a true friend as well, in
+the Quaker lad, John Greenleaf Whittier. The friendship which sprang up
+between the two was to last during the lifetime of the former. Neither
+of them in those days of small things could have possibly by any flight
+of the imagination foreseen how their two lives, moving in parallel
+lines, would run deep their shining furrows through one of the greatest
+chapters of human history. But I am anticipating, and that is a vice of
+which no good storyteller ought to be guilty. So, then, let me
+incontinently return from this excursion and pursue the even tenor of my
+tale.
+
+Garrison had stepped down from his elevated position as the publisher
+and editor of the _Free Press_. He was without work, and, being
+penniless, it behooved him to find some means of support. With the
+instinct of the bright New England boy, he determined to seek his
+fortunes in Boston. If his honesty and independence put him at a
+disadvantage, as publisher and editor, in the struggle for existence, he
+had still his trade as a compositor to fall back upon As a journeyman
+printer he would earn his bread, and preserve the integrity of an
+upright spirit. And so without a murmur, and with cheerfulness and
+persistency, he hunted for weeks on the streets of Boston for a chance
+to set types. This hunting for a job in a strange city was discouraging
+enough. Twice before had he visited the place, which was to be his
+future home. Once when on his way to Baltimore to see his mother, and
+once afterward when on a sort of pleasure tramp with three companions.
+But the slight knowledge which he was able to obtain of the town and its
+inhabitants under these circumstances did not now help him, when from
+office to office he went in quest of something to do. After many
+failures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, an
+opportunity to practice his trade. Business was dull, which kept our
+journeyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at another
+printing office we find him setting types for a living during the year
+1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was not ashamed to
+work, neither was he afraid of hard work. During this year, he found
+time to take a hand in a little practical politics. There was in July,
+1827, a caucus of the Federal party to nominate a successor to Daniel
+Webster in the House of Representatives. Young Garrison attended this
+caucus, and made havoc of its cut and dried programme, by moving the
+nomination of Harrison Gray Otis, instead of the candidate, a Mr.
+Benjamin Gorham, agreed upon by the leaders. Harrison Gray Otis was one
+of Garrison's early and particular idols. He was, perhaps, the one
+Massachusetts politician whom the young Federalist had placed on a
+pedestal. And so on this occasion he went into the caucus with a written
+speech in his hat, eulogistic of his favorite. He had meant to have the
+speech at his tongue's end, and to get it off as if on the spur of the
+moment. But the speech stayed where it was put, in the speaker's hat,
+and failed to materialize where and when it was wanted on the speaker's
+tongue. As the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet like a sensible
+prophet went to the mountain. Our orator in imitation of this
+illustrious example, bowed to the inevitable and went to his mountain.
+Pulling his extempore remarks out of his hat, he delivered himself of
+them to such effect as to create quite an Otis sentiment in the meeting.
+This performance was, of course, a shocking offence in the eyes of
+those, whose plans it had disturbed. With one particular old fogy he got
+into something of a newspaper controversy in consequence. The
+"consummate assurance" of one so young fairly knocked the breath out of
+this Mr. Eminent Respectability; it was absolutely revolting to all his
+"ideas of propriety, to see a stranger, a man who never paid a tax in
+our city, and perhaps no where else, to possess the impudence to take
+the lead and nominate a candidate for the electors of Boston!" The
+"young gentleman of six months standing," was not a whit abashed or awed
+by the commotion which he had produced. That was simply a case of cause
+and effect. But he seemed in turn astonished at his opponent's evident
+ignorance of William Lloyd Garrison. "It is true," he replied, with the
+proud dignity of conscious power, "it is true that my acquaintance in
+this city is limited. I have sought none. Let me assure him, however,
+that if my life be spared, my name shall one day be known to the
+world--at least to such extent that common inquiry shall be unnecessary.
+This, I know will be deemed excessive vanity--but time shall prove it
+prophetic." To the charge of youth he makes this stinging rejoinder,
+which evinces the progress he was making in the tournament of language:
+"The little, paltry sneers at my youth by your correspondent have long
+since become pointless. It is the privileged abuse of old age--the
+hackneyed allegation of a thousand centuries--the damning _crime_ to
+which all men have been subjected. I leave it to metaphysicians to
+determine the precise moment when wisdom and experience leap into
+existence, when, for the first time, the mind distinguishes truth from
+error, selfishness from patriotism, and passion from reason. It is
+sufficient for me that I am understood." This was Garrison's first
+experience with "gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston. It was
+not his last, as future chapters will abundantly show.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+
+THE MAN HEARS A VOICE: SAMUEL, SAMUEL!
+
+
+There is a moment in the life of every serious soul, when things, which
+were before unseen and unheard in the world around him become visible
+and audible. This startling moment comes to some sooner, to others
+later, but to all, who are not totally given up to the service of self,
+at sometime surely. From that moment a change passes over such an one,
+for more and more he hears mysterious voices, and clearer and more clear
+he sees apparitional forms floating up from the depths above which he
+kneels. Whence come they, what mean they? He leans over the abyss, and
+lo! the sounds to which he hearkens are the voices of human weeping and
+the forms at which he gazes are the apparitions of human woe; they
+beckon to him, and the voices beseech him in multitudinous accent and
+heart-break: "Come over, come down, oh! friend and brother, and help
+us." Then he straightway puts away the things and the thoughts of the
+past and girding himself with the things, and the thoughts of the divine
+OUGHT and the almighty MUST, he goes over and down to the rescue.
+
+Such an epochal first moment came to William Lloyd Garrison in the
+streets of Boston. Amid the hard struggle for bread he heard the abysmal
+voices, saw the gaunt forms of misery. He was a constant witness of the
+ravages of the demon of drink--saw how strong men succumbed, and weak
+ones turned to brutes in its clutch. And were they not his brothers, the
+strong men and the weak ones alike? And how could he, their keeper, see
+them desperately beset and not fly to their help? Ah! he could not and
+did not walk by on the other side, but, stripling though he was, rushed
+to do battle with the giant vice, which was slaying the souls and the
+bodies of his fellow citizens. Rum during the three first decades of the
+present century was, like death, no respecter of persons, entering with
+equal freedom the homes of the rich, and the hovels of the poor. It was
+in universal demand by all classes and conditions of men. No occasion
+was esteemed too sacred for its presence and use. It was an honored
+guest at a wedding, a christening, or a funeral. The minister whose
+hands were laid in baptismal blessing on babes, or raised in the holy
+sacrament of love over brides, lifted also the glass; and the selfsame
+lips which had spoken the last words over the dead, drank and made merry
+presently afterward among the decanters on the side-board. It mattered
+not for what the building was intended--whether for church, school, or
+parsonage, rum was the grand master of ceremonies, the indispensable
+celebrant at the various stages of its completion. The party who dug the
+parson out after a snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort of
+prelibation of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing not, according
+to the Jewish notion, with milk and _honey_, but according to the
+revised version of Yankeedom, with milk and _rum_. Rum was, forsooth, a
+very decent devil, if judged by the exalted character of the company it
+kept. It stood high on the rungs of the social ladder and pulled and
+pushed men from it by thousands to wretchedness and ruin. So flagrant
+and universal was the drinking customs of Boston then that dealers
+offered on the commons during holidays, without let or hindrance, the
+drunkard's glass to the crowds thronging by extemporized booths and
+bars. Shocking as was the excesses of this period "nothing comparatively
+was heard on the subject of intemperance--it was seldom a theme for the
+essayist--the newspapers scarcely acknowledged its existence, excepting
+occasionally in connection with some catastrophes or crimes--the
+Christian and patriot, while they perceived its ravages, formed no plans
+for its overthrow--and it did not occur to any that a paper devoted
+mainly to its suppression, might be made a direct and successful engine
+in the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individual
+confessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts were
+adopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments of
+the people." Such was the state of public morals and the state of public
+sentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This change
+was brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist city
+missionary, the Rev. William Collier. His labors among the poor of
+Boston had doubtless revealed to him the bestial character of
+intemperance, and the necessity of doing something to check and put an
+end to the havoc it was working. With this design he established the
+_National Philanthropist_ in Boston, March 4, 1826. The editor was one
+of Garrison's earliest acquaintances in the city. Garrison went after
+awhile to board with him, and still later entered the office of the
+_Philanthropist_ as a type-setter. The printer of the paper, Nathaniel
+H. White and young Garrison, occupied the same room at Mr. Collier's.
+And so almost before our hero was aware, he had launched his bark upon
+the sea of the temperance reform. Presently, when the founder of the
+paper retired, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, that the
+young journeyman printer, with his editorial experience and ability,
+should succeed him as editor. His room-mate, White, bought the
+_Philanthropist_, and in April 1828, formally installed Garrison into
+its editorship. Into this new work he carried all his moral earnestness
+and enthusiasm of purpose. The paper grew under his hand in size,
+typographical appearance, and in editorial force and capacity. It was a
+wide-awake sentinel on the wall of society; and week after week its
+columns bristled and flashed with apposite facts, telling arguments,
+shrewd suggestions, cogent appeals to the community to destroy the
+accursed thing. No better education could he have had as the preparation
+for his life work. He began to understand then the strength of
+deep-seated public evils, to acquaint himself with the methods and
+instruments with which to attack them. The _Philanthropist_ was a sort
+of forerunner, so far as the training in intelligent and effective
+agitation was concerned, of the _Genius of Universal Emancipation_ and
+of the _Liberator_. One cannot read his sketch of the progress made by
+the temperance reform, from which I have already quoted, and published
+by him in the _Philanthropist_ in April, 1828, without being struck by
+the strong similitude of the temperance to the anti-slavery movement in
+their beginnings. "When this paper was first proposed," the young
+temperance editor records, "it met with a repulsion which would have
+utterly discouraged a less zealous and persevering man than our
+predecessor. The moralist looked on doubtfully--the whole community
+esteemed the enterprise desperate. Mountains of prejudice, overtopping
+the Alps, were to be beaten down to a level--strong interest, connected
+by a thousand links, severed--new habits formed; Every house, and almost
+every individual, in a greater or less degree, reclaimed. Derision and
+contumely were busy in crushing this sublime project in its
+birth--coldness and apathy encompassed it on every side--but our
+predecessor, nevertheless, went boldly forward with a giant's strength
+and more than a giant's heart--conscious of difficulties and perils,
+though not disheartened, armed with the weapons of truth--full of
+meekness, yet certain of a splendid victory--and relying on the promises
+of God for the issue." What an inestimable object-lesson to Garrison was
+the example of this good man going forth singlehanded to do battle with
+one of the greatest evils of the age! It was not numerical strength, but
+the faith of one earnest soul that is able in the world of ideas and
+human passions to remove mountains out of the way of the onward march of
+mankind. This truth, we may be sure, sunk many fathoms deep into the
+mind of the young moralist. And no wonder. For the results of two years
+agitation and seed sowing were of the most astonishing character. "The
+change which has taken place in public sentiment," he continues, "is
+indeed remarkable ... incorporated as intemperance _was_, and still
+_is_, into our very existence as a people.... A regenerating spirit is
+everywhere seen; a strong impulse to action has been given, which,
+beginning in the breasts of a few individuals, and then affecting
+villages, and cities, and finally whole States, has rolled onward
+triumphantly through the remotest sections of the republic. As union and
+example are the levers adopted to remove this gigantic vice, temperance
+societies have been rapidly multiplied, many on the principle of entire
+abstinence, and others making it a duty to abstain from encouraging the
+distillation and consumption of spirituous liquors. Expressions of the
+deep abhorrence and sympathy which are felt in regard to the awful
+prevalence of drunkenness are constantly emanating from legislative
+bodies down to various religious conventions, medical associations,
+grand juries, etc., etc. But nothing has more clearly evinced the
+strength of this excitement than the general interest taken in this
+subject by the conductors of the press. From Maine to the Mississippi,
+and as far as printing has penetrated--even among the Cherokee
+Indians--but one sentiment seems to pervade the public papers, viz., the
+necessity of strenuous exertion for the suppression of intemperance."
+Such a demonstration of the tremendous power of a single righteous soul
+for good, we may be sure, exerted upon Garrison lasting influences. What
+a revelation it was also of the transcendent part which the press was
+capable of playing in the revolution of popular sentiment upon moral
+questions; and of the supreme service of organization as a factor in
+reformatory movements. The seeds sowed were faith in the convictions of
+one man against the opinions, the prejudices, and the practices of the
+multitude; and knowledge of and skill in the use of the instruments by
+which the individual conscience may be made to correct and renovate the
+moral sense of a nation. But there was another seed corn dropped at this
+time in his mind, and that is the immense utility of woman in the work
+of regenerating society. She it is who feels even more than man the
+effects of social vices and sins, and to her the moral reformer should
+strenuously appeal for aid. And this, with the instinct of genius,
+Garrison did in the temperance reform, nearly seventy years ago. His
+editorials in the _Philanthropist_ in the year 1828 on "Female
+Influence" may be said to be the _courier avant_ of the Woman's
+Christian Temperance Union of to-day, as they were certainly the
+precursors of the female anti-slavery societies of a few years later.
+
+But now, without his knowing it, a stranger from a distant city entered
+Boston with a message, which was to change the whole purpose of the
+young editor's life. It was Benjamin Lundy, the indefatigable friend of
+the Southern slave, the man who carried within his breast the whole
+menagerie of Southern slavery. He was fresh from the city which held the
+dust of Fanny Garrison, who had once written to her boy in Newburyport,
+how the good God had cared for her in the person of a colored woman.
+Yes, she had written: "The ladies are all kind to me, and I have a
+colored woman that waits on me, that is so kind no one can tell how kind
+she is; and although a slave to man, yet a free-born soul, by the grace
+of God. Her name is Henny, and should I never see you again, and you
+should come where she is, remember her, for your poor mother's sake."
+And now, without his dreaming of it, this devoted Samaritan in black,
+who, perhaps, had long ago joined her dear friend in the grave, was
+coming to that very boy, now grown to manhood, to claim for her race
+what the mother had asked for her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of all
+those little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansioned
+heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism of
+slavery. "My heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross
+abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of
+distress, and the iron entered my soul." With apostolic faith and zeal
+he had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his
+bruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great love, he had gone about the
+country on his self-imposed task. To do this work he had given up the
+business of a saddler, in which he had prospered, had sacrificed his
+possessions, and renounced the ease that comes with wealth; had courted
+unheard-of hardships, and wedded himself for better and worse to poverty
+and unremitting endeavor. Nothing did he esteem too dear to relinquish
+for the slave. Neither wife nor children did he withhold. Neither the
+summer's heat nor the winter's cold was able to daunt him or turn him
+from his object. Though diminutive and delicate of body, no distance or
+difficulty of travel was ever able to deter him from doing what his
+humanity had bidden him do. From place to place, through nineteen
+States, he had traveled, sowing as he went the seeds of his holy
+purpose, and watering them with his life's blood. Not Livingstone nor
+Stanley on the dark continent exceeded in sheer physical exertion and
+endurance the labors of this wonderful man. He belongs in the category
+of great explorers, only the irresistible passion and purpose, which
+pushed him forward, had humanity, not geography, as their goal. Where,
+in the lives of either Stanley or Livingstone do we find a record of
+more astonishing activity and achievement than what is contained in
+these sentences, written by Garrison of Lundy, in the winter of 1828?
+"Within a few months he has traveled about twenty-four hundred miles, of
+which upwards of nineteen hundred were performed _on foot!_ during which
+time he has held nearly fifty public meetings. Rivers and mountains
+vanish in his path; midnight finds him wending his solitary way over an
+unfrequented road; the sun is anticipated in his rising. Never was moral
+sublimity of character better illustrated." Such was the marvelous man,
+whose visit to Boston, in the month of March, of the year 1828, dates
+the beginning of a new epoch in the history of America. The event of
+that year was not the "Bill of Abominations," great as was the national
+excitement which it produced; nor was it yet the then impending
+political struggle between Jackson and Adams, but the unnoticed meeting
+of Lundy and Garrison. Great historic movements are born not in the
+whirlwinds, the earthquakes, and the pomps of human splendor and power,
+but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits. Up to this
+time Garrison had had, as the religious revivalist would say, no
+"realizing sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. Occasionally an
+utterance had dropped from his pen which indicated that his heart was
+right on the subject, but which evinced no more than the ordinary
+opposition to its existence, nor any profound convictions as to his own
+or the nation's duty in regard to its extinction. His first reference to
+the question appeared in connection with a notice made by him in the
+_Free Press_ of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa," in which the
+authoress sings of:
+
+  "The wild and mingling groans of writhing millions,
+  Calling for vengeance on my guilty land."
+
+
+He commended the verses "to all those who wish to cherish female genius,
+and whose best feelings are enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressed
+sons of Africa." He was evidently impressed, but the impression belonged
+to the ordinary, transitory sort. His next recorded utterance on the
+subject was also in the _Free Press_. It was made in relation with some
+just and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth of July oration,
+with its "ceaseless apostrophes to liberty, and fierce denunciations of
+tyranny." Such a tone was false and mischievous--the occasion was for
+other and graver matter. "There is one theme," he declares, "which
+should be dwelt upon, till our whole country is free from the curse--it
+is slavery." The emphasis and energy of the rebuke and exhortation lifts
+this second allusion to slavery, quite outside of merely ordinary
+occurrences. It was not an ordinary personal occurrence for it served to
+reveal in its lightning-like flash the glow and glare of a conscience
+taking fire. The fire slumbered until a few weeks before Lundy entered
+Boston, when there were again the glow and glare of a moral sense in the
+first stages of ignition on the enormity of slave institutions. The act
+of South Carolina in making it illegal to teach a colored person to read
+and write struck this spark from his pen: "There is something
+unspeakably pitiable and alarming," he writes in the _Philanthropist_,
+"in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary, for
+self-preservation, to seal up the mind and debase the intellect of man
+to brutal incapacity.... Truly the alternatives of oppression are
+terrible. But this state of things cannot always last, nor ignorance
+alone shield us from destruction." His interest in the question was
+clearly growing. But it was still in the gristle of sentiment waiting to
+be transmuted into the bone and muscle of a definite and determined
+purpose, when first he met Lundy. This meeting of the two men, was to
+Garrison what the fourth call of God was to Samuel, the Hebrew lad, who
+afterward became a prophet. As the three previous calls of God and the
+conversations with Eli had prepared the Jewish boy to receive and
+understand the next summons of Jehovah, so had Garrison's former
+experience and education made him ready for the divine message when
+uttered in his ears by Lundy. All the sense of truth and the passion for
+righteousness of the young man replied to the voice, "Here am I." The
+hardening process of growth became immediately manifest in him. Whereas
+before there was sentimental opposition to slavery, there began then an
+opposition, active and practical. When Lundy convened many of the
+ministers of the city to expose to them the barbarism of slavery,
+Garrison sat in the room, and as Lundy himself records, "expressed his
+approbation of my doctrines." The young reformer must needs stand up and
+make public profession of his new faith and of his agreement with the
+anti-slavery principles of the older. But it was altogether different
+with the assembled ministers. Lundy, as was his wont on such occasions,
+desired and urged the formation of an anti-slavery society, but these
+sons of Eli of that generation were not willing to offend their
+slave-holding brethren in the South. Eyes they had, but they refused to
+see; ears, which they stopped to the cry of the slave breaking in
+anguish and appeal from the lips of this modern man of God. Garrison,
+eleven years later, after the lips, which were eloquent then with their
+great sorrow, were speechless in the grave, told the story of that
+ministers' meeting. And here is the story:
+
+"He (Lundy) might as well have urged the stones in the streets to cry
+out in behalf of the perishing captives. Oh, the moral cowardice, the
+chilling apathy, the criminal unbelief, the cruel skepticism, that were
+revealed on that memorable occasion! My soul was on fire then, as it is
+now, in view of such a development. Every soul in the room was heartily
+opposed to slavery, but, it would terribly alarm and enrage the South to
+know that an anti-slavery society existed in Boston. But it would do
+harm rather than good openly to agitate the subject. But _perhaps a
+select_ committee might be formed, to be called by some name that would
+neither give offence, nor excite suspicion as to its real design! One or
+two only were for bold and decisive action; but as they had neither
+station nor influence, and did not rank among the wise and prudent,
+their opinion did not weigh very heavily, and the project was finally
+abandoned. Poor Lundy! that meeting was a damper to his feelings." There
+is no doubt that Garrison was one of the very few present, who "were for
+bold and decisive action" against the iniquity. The grief and
+disappointment of his brave friend touched his heart with a brother's
+affection and pity. The worldly wisdom and lukewarmness of the clergy
+kindled a righteous indignation within his freedom-loving soul. This was
+his first bitter lesson from the clergy. There were, alas, many and
+bitterer experiences to follow, but of them he little recked at the
+time. As this nineteenth-century prophet mused upon the horrible thing
+the fires of a life purpose burned within him. And oftener thenceforth
+we catch glimpses of the glow and glare of a soul bursting into flame.
+The editorials in the _Philanthropist_, which swiftly followed Lundy's
+visit, began to throw off more heat as the revolving wheels of an
+electrical machine throw off sparks. The evil that there was in the
+world, under which, wherever he turned, he saw his brother man
+staggering and bleeding, was no longer what it had been, a vague and
+shadowy apparition, but rather a terrible and tremendous reality against
+which he must go forth to fight the fight of a lifetime. And so he
+girded him with his life purpose and flung his moral earnestness against
+the triple-headed curse of intemperance, slavery, and war. A mighty
+human love had begun to flow inward and over him. And as the tide
+steadily rose it swallowed and drowned all the egoism of self and race
+in the altruism of an all-embracing humanity. When an apprentice in the
+office of the Newburyport _Herald_, and writing on the subject of South
+American affairs he grew hot over the wrongs suffered by American
+vessels at Valparaiso and Lima. He was for finishing "with cannon what
+cannot be done in a conciliatory and equitable manner, where justice
+demands such proceedings." This was at seventeen when he was a boy with
+the thoughts of a boy. Six years later he is a man who has looked upon
+the sorrows of men. His old boy-world is far behind him, and the
+ever-present sufferings of his kind are in front of him. War now is no
+longer glorious, for it adds immeasurably to the sum of human misery.
+War ought to be abolished with intemperance and slavery. And this duty
+he began to utter in the ears of his country. "The brightest traits in
+the American character will derive their luster, not from the laurels
+picked from the field of blood, not from the magnitude of our navy and
+the success of our arms," he proclaimed, "but from our exertions to
+banish war from the earth, to stay the ravages of intemperance among all
+that is beautiful and fair, to unfetter those who have been enthralled
+by chains, which we have forged, and to spread the light of knowledge
+and religious liberty, wherever darkness and superstition reign.... The
+struggle is full of sublimity, the conquest embraces the world." Lundy
+himself did not fully appreciate the immense gain, which his cause had
+made in the conversion of Garrison into an active friend of the slave.
+Not at once certainly. Later he knew. The discovery of a kindred spirit
+in Boston exerted probably no little influence in turning for the second
+time his indefatigable feet toward that city. He made it a second visit
+in July, 1828, where again he met Garrison. His experience with the
+ministers did not deter him from repeating the horrible tale wherever he
+could get together an audience. This time he secured his first public
+hearing in Boston. It was in the Federal Street Baptist Church. He spoke
+not only on the subject of slavery itself, the growth of anti-slavery
+societies, but on a new phase of the general subject, viz., the futility
+of the Colonization Society as an abolition instrument. Garrison was
+present, and treasured up in his heart the words of his friend. He did
+not forget how Lundy had pressed upon his hearers the importance of
+petitioning Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of
+Columbia, as we shall see further on. But poor Lundy was unfortunate
+with the ministers. He got this time not the cold shoulder alone but a
+clerical slap in the face as well. He had just sat down when the pastor
+of the church, Rev. Howard Malcolm, uprose in wrath and inveighed
+against any intermeddling of the North with slavery, and brought the
+meeting with a high hand to a close. This incident was the first
+collision with the church of the forlorn hope of the Abolition movement.
+Trained as Garrison was in the orthodox creed and sound in that creed
+almost to bigotry, this behavior of a standard-bearer of the church,
+together with the apathy displayed by the clergy on a former occasion,
+caused probably the first "little rift within the lute" of his creed,
+"that by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowly
+silence all." For in religion as in love, "Unfaith in aught is want of
+faith in all." The Rev. Howard Malcolm's arbitrary proceeding had
+prevented the organization of an anti-slavery committee. But this was
+affected at a second meeting of the friends of the slave. Garrison was
+one of the twenty gentlemen who were appointed such a committee. His
+zeal and energy far exceeded the zeal and energy of the remaining
+nineteen. He did not need the earnest exhortation of Lundy to impress
+upon his memory the importance of "activity and steady perseverance." He
+perceived almost at once that everything depended on them. And so he had
+formed plans for a vigorous campaign against the existence of slavery in
+the District of Columbia. But before he was ready to set out along the
+line of work, which he had laid down for Massachusetts, the scene of his
+labors shifted to Bennington, Vermont. Before he left Boston, Lundy had
+recognized him as "a valuable coadjutor." The relationship between the
+two men was becoming beautifully close. The more Lundy saw of Garrison,
+the more he must have seemed to him a man after his own heart. And so no
+wonder that he was solicitous of fastening him to his cause with hooks
+of steel. The older had written the younger reformer a letter almost
+paternal in tone--he must do thus and thus, he must not be disappointed
+if he finds the heavy end of the burthen borne by himself, while those
+associated with him do little to keep the wheels moving, he must
+remember that "a few will have the labor to perform and the honor to
+share." Then there creeps into his words a grain of doubt, a vague fear
+lest his young ally should take his hands from the plough and go the way
+of all men, and here are the words which Paul might have written to
+Timothy: "I hope you will persevere in your work, steadily, but not make
+too large calculations on what may be accomplished in a particularly
+stated time. You have now girded on a holy warfare. Lay not down your
+weapons until honorable terms are obtained. _The God of hosts is on your
+side._ Steadiness and faithfulness will most assuredly overcome every
+obstacle." The older apostle had yet to learn that the younger always
+did what he undertook in the field of morals and philanthropy.
+
+But the scene had shifted from Boston to Bennington, and with the young
+reformer goes also his plan of campaign for anti-slavery work. The
+committee of twenty, now nineteen since his departure, slumbered and
+slept in the land of benevolent intentions, a practical illustration of
+Lundy's pungent saying, that "philanthropists are the slowest creatures
+breathing. They think forty times before they act." The committee never
+acted, but its one member in Vermont did act, and that promptly and
+powerfully as shall shortly appear. Garrison had gone to Bennington to
+edit the _Journal of the Times_ in the interest of the reelection of
+John Quincy Adams to the Presidency. For this object he was engaged as
+editor of the paper. What he was engaged to do he performed faithfully
+and ably, but along with his fulfillment of his contract with the
+friends of Mr. Adams, he carried the one which he had made with humanity
+likewise. In his salutatory he outlined his intentions in this regard
+thus: "We have three objects in view, which we shall pursue through
+life, whether in this place or elsewhere--namely, the suppression of
+intemperance and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation of every
+slave in the republic, and the perpetuity of national peace. In
+discussing these topics what is wanting in vigor shall be made up in
+zeal." From the issue of that first number if the friends of Adams had
+no cause to complain of the character of his zeal and vigor in their
+service, neither had the friends of humanity. What he had proposed doing
+in Massachusetts as a member of the anti-slavery committee of twenty, he
+performed with remarkable energy and success in Vermont. It was to
+obtain signatures not by the hundred to a petition for the abolition of
+slavery in the District of Columbia, but by the thousands, and that from
+all parts of the State. He sent copies of the petition to every
+postmaster in Vermont with the request that he obtain signatures in his
+neighborhood. Through his exertions a public meeting of citizens of
+Bennington was held and indorsed the petition. The plan for polling the
+anti-slavery sentiment of the State worked admirably. The result was a
+monster petition with 2,352 names appended. This he forwarded to the
+seat of Government. It was a powerful prayer, but as to its effect,
+Garrison had no delusions. He possessed even then singularly clear ideas
+as to how the South would receive such petitions, and of the course
+which it would pursue to discourage their presentation. He was no less
+clear as to how the friends of freedom ought to carry themselves under
+the circumstances. In the _Journal of the Times_ of November, 1828, he
+thus expressed himself: "It requires no spirit of prophecy to predict
+that it (the petition) will create great opposition. An attempt will be
+made to frighten Northern 'dough-faces' as in case of the Missouri
+question. There will be an abundance of furious declamation, menace, and
+taunt. Are we, therefore, to approach the subject timidly--with half a
+heart--as if we were treading on forbidden ground? No, indeed, but
+earnestly, fearlessly, as becomes men, who are determined to clear their
+country and themselves from the guilt of oppressing God's free and
+lawful creatures." About the same time he began to make his assaults on
+the personal representatives of the slave-power in Congress, cauterizing
+in the first instance three Northern "dough-faces," who had voted
+against some resolutions, looking to the abolition of the slave-trade
+and slavery itself in the District of Columbia. So while the South thus
+early was seeking to frighten the North from the agitation of the
+slavery question in Congress, Garrison was unconsciously preparing a
+countercheck by making it dangerous for a Northern man to practice
+Southern principles in the National Legislature. He did not mince his
+words, but called a spade a spade, and sin, sin. He perceived at once
+that if he would kill the sin of slave-holding, he could not spare the
+sinner. And so he spoke the names of the delinquents from the housetop of
+the _Journal of the Times_, stamping upon their brows the scarlet letter
+of their crime against liberty. He had said in the October before: "It
+is time that a voice of remonstrance went forth from the North, that
+should peal in the ears of every slaveholder like a roar of thunder....
+For ourselves, we are resolved to agitate this subject to the utmost;
+nothing but death shall prevent us from denouncing a crime which has no
+parallel in human depravity; we shall take high ground. _The alarm must
+be perpetual._" A voice of remonstrance, with thunder growl
+accompaniment, was rising higher and clearer from the pen of the young
+editor. His tone of earnestness was deepening to the stern bass of the
+moral reformer, and the storm breath of enthusiasm was blowing to a
+blaze the glowing coals of his humanity. The wail of the fleeing
+fugitive from the house of bondage sounded no longer far away and unreal
+in his ears, but thrilled now right under the windows of his soul. The
+masonic excitement and the commotion created by the abduction of Morgan
+he caught up and shook before the eyes of his countrymen as an object
+lesson of the million-times greater wrong daily done the slaves. "All
+this fearful commotion," he pealed, "has arisen from the abduction of
+_one man_. More than two millions of unhappy beings are groaning out
+their lives in bondage, and scarcely a pulse quickens, or a heart leaps,
+or a tongue pleads in their behalf. 'Tis a trifling affair, which
+concerns nobody. Oh! for the spirit that rages, to break every fetter of
+oppression!" Such a spirit was fast taking possession of the writer.
+
+Of this Lundy was well informed. He had not lost sight of his young
+coadjutor, but had watched his course with great hope and growing
+confidence. In him he found what he had discovered in no one else,
+anti-slavery activity and perseverance. He had often found men who
+protested loudly their benevolence for the negro, but who made not the
+slightest exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes. "They will
+pen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or so--and then--_the subject is
+exhausted!_" It was not so with his young friend, the Bennington editor.
+He saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject of African
+emancipation can never be exhausted until the system of slavery itself
+be totally annihilated." He was faithful among the faithless found by
+Lundy. To reassure his doubting leader, Garrison took upon himself
+publicly a vow of perpetual consecration to the slave. "Before God and
+our country," he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation of
+the enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost in our pursuits. The
+people of New England are interested in this matter, and they must be
+aroused from their lethargy as by a trumpet-call. They shall not quietly
+slumber while we have the management of a press, or strength to hold a
+pen." The question of slavery had at length obtained the ascendency over
+all other questions in his regard. And when Lundy perceived this he set
+out from Baltimore to Bennington to invite Garrison to join hands with
+him in his emancipation movement at Baltimore. He performed the long
+journey on foot, with staff in hand in true apostolic fashion. The two
+men of God met among the mountains of Vermont, and when the elder
+returned from the heights the younger had resolved to follow him to the
+vales where men needed his help, the utmost which he could give them. He
+agreed to join his friend in Baltimore and there edit with him his
+little paper with the grand name (_The Genius of Universal
+Emancipation_), devoted to preaching the gospel of the gradual
+abolishment of American slavery. Garrison was to take the position of
+managing editor, and Lundy to look after the subscription list. The
+younger to be resident, the elder itinerant partner in the publication
+of the paper. Garrison closed his relations with the _Journal of the
+Times_, March 27, 1829, and delivered his valedictory to its readers.
+This valedictory strikes with stern hammer-stroke the subject of his
+thoughts. "Hereafter," it reads, "the editorial charge of this paper
+will devolve on another person. I am invited to occupy a broader field,
+and to engage in a higher enterprise; that field embraces the whole
+country--that enterprise is in behalf of the slave population."
+
+"To my apprehension, the subject of slavery involves interests of
+greater moment to our welfare as a republic, and demands a more prudent
+and minute investigation than any other which has come before the
+American people since the Revolutionary struggle--than all others which
+now occupy their attention. No body of men on the face of the earth
+deserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much as
+the slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected.
+It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our national
+inconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African. It is
+true examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices are
+numerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic,
+vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow this
+fabric of oppression. I trust in God that I may be the humble instrument
+of breaking at least one chain, and restoring one captive to liberty; it
+will amply repay a life of severe toil." The causes of temperance and
+peace came in also for an earnest parting word, but they had clearly
+declined to a place of secondary importance in the writer's regard. To
+be more exact, they had not really declined, but the slavery question
+had risen in his mind above both. They were great questions, but it was
+_the_ question--had become _his_ cause.
+
+Lundy, after his visit to Garrison at Bennington, started on a trip to
+Hayti with twelve emancipated slaves, whom he had undertaken to colonize
+there. Garrison awaited in Boston the return of his partner to
+Baltimore. The former, meanwhile, was out of employment, and sorely in
+need of money. Never had he been favored with a surplusage of the root
+of all evil. He was deficient in the money-getting and money-saving
+instinct. Such was plainly not his vocation, and so it happened that
+wherever he turned, he and poverty walked arm in arm, and the
+interrogatory, "wherewithal shall I be fed and clothed on the morrow?"
+was never satisfactorily answered until the morrow arrived. This led him
+at times into no little embarrassment and difficulty. But since he was
+always willing to work at the case, and to send his "pride on a
+pilgrimage to Mecca," the embarrassment was not protracted, nor did the
+difficulty prove insuperable.
+
+The Congregational societies of Boston invited him in June to deliver
+before them a Fourth of July address in the interest of the Colonization
+Society. The exercises took place in Park Street Church. Ten days before
+this event he was called upon to pay a bill of four dollars for failure
+to appear at the May muster. Refusing to do so, he was thereupon
+summoned to come into the Police Court on the glorious Fourth to show
+cause why he ought not to pay the amercement. He was in a quandary. He
+did not owe the money, but as he could not be in two places at the same
+time, and, inasmuch as he wanted very much to deliver his address before
+the Congregational Societies, and did not at all long to make the
+acquaintance of his honor, the Police Court Judge, he determined to pay
+the fine. But, alack and alas! he had "not a farthing" with which to
+discharge him from his embarrassment. Fortunately, if he wanted money he
+did not want friends. And one of these, Jacob Horton, of Newburyport,
+who had married his "old friend and playmate, Harriet Farnham," came to
+his rescue with the requisite amount.
+
+On the day and place appointed Garrison appeared before the
+Congregational Societies with an address, to the like of which, it is
+safe to say, they had never before listened. It was the Fourth of July,
+but the orator was in no holiday humor. There was not, in a single
+sentence of the oration the slightest endeavor to be playful with his
+audience. It was rather an eruption of human suffering, and of the
+humanity of one man to man. What the Boston clergy saw that afternoon,
+in the pulpit of Park Street Church, was the vision of a soul on fire.
+Garrison burned and blazed as the sun that July afternoon burned and
+blazed in the city's streets. None without escaped the scorching rays of
+the latter, none within was able to shun the fervid heat of the former.
+Those of my readers who have watched the effects of the summer's sun on
+a track of sandy land and have noted how, about midday, the heat seems
+to rise in sparkling particles and exhalations out of the hot,
+surcharged surface, can form some notion of the moral fervor and passion
+of this Fourth of July address, delivered more than sixty years ago, in
+Boston. Through all the pores of it, over all the length and breadth of
+it, there went up bright, burning particles from the sunlit sympathy and
+humanity of the young reformer.
+
+In beginning, he animadverted, among other things, on the spread of
+intemperance, of political corruption, on the profligacy of the press,
+and, amid them all, the self-complacency and boastfulness of the
+national spirit, as if it bore a charmed life.
+
+"But," he continued, "there is another evil which, if we had to contend
+against nothing else, should make us quake for the issue. It is a
+gangrene preying upon our vitals--an earthquake rumbling under our
+feet--a mine accumulating material for a national catastrophe. It should
+make this a day of fasting and prayer, not of boisterous merriment and
+idle pageantry--a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory joy.
+It should spike every cannon, and haul down every banner. Our garb
+should be sack-cloth--our heads bowed in the dust--our supplications for
+the pardon and assistance of Heaven.
+
+"Sirs, I am not come to tell you that slavery is a curse, debasing in
+its effects, cruel in its operations, fatal in its continuance. The day
+and the occasion require no such revelation. I do not claim the
+discovery as my own, that 'all men are born equal,' and that among their
+inalienable rights are 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
+Were I addressing any other than a free and Christian assembly, the
+enforcement of this truth might be pertinent. Neither do I intend to
+analyze the horrors of slavery for your inspection, nor to freeze your
+blood with authentic recitals of savage cruelty. Nor will time allow me
+to explore even a furlong of that immense wilderness of suffering which
+remains unsubdued in our land. I take it for granted that the existence
+of these evils is acknowledged, if not rightly understood. My object is
+to define and enforce our duty, as Christians and philanthropists."
+
+This was, by way of exordium, the powerful skirmish line of the address.
+Assuming the existence of the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme,
+viz., the duty of abolishing it. To this end he laid down four
+propositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon on the heights
+overlooking and commanding his enemies' works. The first, broadly
+stated, asserted the kinship of the slave to the free population of the
+republic. They were men; they were natives of the country; they were in
+dire need. They were ignorant, degraded, morally and socially. They were
+the heathen at home, whose claims far outranked those in foreign lands;
+they were higher than those of the "Turks or Chinese, for they have the
+privileges of instruction; higher than the Pagans, for they are not
+dwellers in a Gospel land; higher than our red men of the forest, for we
+do not bind them with gyves, nor treat them as chattels."
+
+Then he turned hotly upon the Church, exclaiming: "What has Christianity
+done by direct effort for our slave population? Comparatively nothing.
+She has explored the isles of the ocean for objects of commiseration;
+but, amazing stupidity! she can gaze without emotion on a multitude of
+miserable beings at home, large enough to constitute a nation of
+freemen, whom tyranny has heathenized by law. In her public services
+they are seldom remembered, and in her private donations they are
+forgotten. From one end of the country to the other her charitable
+societies form golden links of benevolence, and scatter their
+contributions like rain drops over a parched heath; but they bring no
+sustenance to the perishing slave. The blood of souls is upon her
+garments, yet she heeds not the stain. The clanking of the prisoner's
+chains strike upon her ear, but they cannot penetrate her heart."
+
+Then, with holy wrath upon the nation, thus:
+
+"Every Fourth of July our Declaration of Independence is produced, with
+a sublime indignation, to set forth the tyranny of the mother country,
+and to challenge the admiration of the world. But what a pitiful detail
+of grievances does this document present, in comparison with the wrongs
+which our slaves endure? In the one case it is hardly the plucking of a
+hair from the head; in the other, it is the crushing of a live body on
+the wheel--the stings of the wasp contrasted with the tortures of the
+Inquisition. Before God I must say that such a glaring contradiction as
+exists between our creed and practice the annals of six thousand years
+cannot parallel. In view of it I am ashamed of my country. I am sick of
+our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our
+hypocritical cant about the inalienable rights of man. I would not for
+my right hand stand up before a European assembly, and exult that I am
+an American citizen, and denounce the usurpations of a kingly government
+as wicked and unjust; or, should I make the attempt, the recollection of
+my country's barbarity and despotism would blister my lips, and cover my
+cheeks with burning blushes of shame."
+
+Passing to his second proposition, which affirmed the right of the free
+States to be in at the death of slavery, he pointed out that slavery was
+not sectional but national in its influence. If the consequences of
+slave-holding did not flow beyond the limits of the slave section, the
+right would still exist, on the principle that what affected injuriously
+one part must ultimately hurt the whole body politic. But it was not
+true that slavery concerned only the States where it existed--the parts
+where it did not exist were involved by their constitutional liability
+to be called on for aid in case of a slave insurrection, as they were in
+the slave representation clause of the national compact, through which
+the North was deprived of its "just influence in the councils of the
+nation." And, furthermore, the right of the free States to agitate the
+question inhered in the principle of majority rule--the white population
+of the free States being almost double that of the slave States, "and
+the voice of this overwhelming majority should be potential." He
+repelled in strong language the wrongfulness of allowing the South to
+multiply the votes of those freemen by the master's right to count three
+for every five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican to
+suffer property to be represented as men, and _vice versa_, because it
+gives the South an unjust ascendancy over other portions of territory,
+and a power which may be perverted on every occasion."
+
+He looked without shrinking upon the possibility of disunion even then.
+
+"Now I say that, on the broad system of equal rights," he declared,
+"this inequality should no longer be tolerated. If it cannot be speedily
+put down--not by force but by fair persuasion--if we are always to
+remain shackled by unjust, constitutional provisions, when the emergency
+that imposed them has long since passed away; if we must share in the
+guilt and danger of destroying the bodies and souls of men _as the price
+of our Union_; if the slave States will haughtily spurn our assistance,
+and refuse to consult the general welfare, then the fault is not ours if
+a separation eventually takes place."
+
+Considering that he was in his twenty-fourth year, and that the
+Abolition movement had then no actual existence, the orator evinced
+surprising prescience in his forecast of the future, and of the strife
+and hostility which the agitation was destined to engender.
+
+"But the plea is prevalent," he said, "that any interference by the free
+States, however benevolent or cautious it might be, would only irritate
+and inflame the jealousies of the South, and retard the cause of
+emancipation. If any man believes that slavery can be abolished without
+a struggle with the worst passions of human nature, quietly,
+harmoniously, he cherishes a delusion. It can never be done, unless the
+age of miracles returns. No; we must expect a collision, full of sharp
+asperities and bitterness. We shall have to contend with the insolence,
+and pride, and selfishness of many a heartless being.
+
+"Sirs, the prejudices of the North are stronger than those of the South;
+they bristle like so many bayonets around the slaves; they forge and
+rivet the chains of the nation. Conquer them and the victory is won. The
+enemies of emancipation take courage from our criminal timidity.... We
+are ... afraid of our own shadows, who have been driven back to the wall
+again and again; who stand trembling under their whips; who turn pale,
+retreat, and surrender at a talismanic threat to dissolve the Union...."
+But the difficulties did not daunt him, nor the dangers cow him. He did
+not doubt, but was assured, that truth was mighty and would prevail.
+"Moral influence when in vigorous exercise," he said, "is irresistible.
+It has an immortal essence. It can no more be trod out of existence by
+the iron foot of time, or by the ponderous march of iniquity, than
+matter can be annihilated. It may disappear for a time; but it lives in
+some shape or other, in some place or other, and will rise with
+renovated strength. Let us then be up and doing. In the simple and
+stirring language of the stout-hearted Lundy, all the friends of the
+cause must go to work, keep to work, hold on, and never give up." The
+closing paragraph is this powerful peroration: "I will say, finally,
+that I despair of the republic while slavery exists therein. If I look
+up to God for success, no smile of mercy or forgiveness dispels the
+gloom of futurity; if to our own resources, they are daily diminishing;
+if to all history our destruction is not only possible but almost
+certain. Why should we slumber at this momentous crisis? If our hearts
+were dead to every thought of humanity; if it were lawful to oppress,
+where power is ample; still, if we had any regard for our safety and
+happiness, we should strive to crush the vampire which is feeding upon
+our life-blood. All the selfishness of our nature cries aloud for a
+better security. Our own vices are too strong for us, and keep us in
+perpetual alarm; how, in addition to these, shall we be able to contend
+successfully with millions of armed and desperate men, as we must,
+eventually, if slavery do not cease?" Exit the apprentice, enter the
+master. The period of preparation is ended, the time of action begun.
+The address was the fiery cry of the young prophet ere he plunged into
+the unsubdued wilderness of American slavery.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+
+THE MAN BEGINS HIS MINISTRY.
+
+
+Some time in August, 1829, Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began with
+Lundy the editorship of _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_. Radical
+as the Park Street Church address was, it had, nevertheless, ceased to
+represent in one essential matter his anti-slavery convictions and
+principles. The moral impetus and ground-swell of the address had
+carried him beyond the position where its first flood of feeling had for
+the moment left him. During the composition of the address he was
+transported with grief and indignation at the monstrous wrong which
+slavery did the slaves and the nation. He had not thought out for
+himself any means to rid both of the curse. The white heat of the
+address destroyed for the instant all capacity for such thinking. "Who
+can be amazed, temperate, and furious--in a moment? No man. The
+expedition of his violent love outran the pauser reason" He had accepted
+the colonization scheme as an instrument for removing the evil, and
+called on all good citizens "to assist in establishing auxiliary
+colonization societies in every State, county, and town"; and implored
+"their direct and liberal patronage to the parent society." He had not
+apparently, so much as dreamed of any other than gradual emancipation.
+"The emancipation of all the slaves of this generation is most assuredly
+out of the question," he said; "the fabric which now towers above the
+Alps, must be taken away brick by brick, and foot by foot, till it is
+reduced so low that it may be overturned without burying the nation in
+its ruins. Years may elapse before the completion of the achievement;
+generations of blacks may go down to the grave, manacled and lacerated,
+without a hope for their children." He was on the Fourth of July a firm
+and earnest believer in the equity and efficacy of gradualism. But after
+that day, and some time before his departure for Baltimore, he began to
+think on this subject. The more he thought the less did gradualism seem
+defensible on moral grounds. John Wesley had said that slavery was the
+"sum of all villainies"; it was indeed the sin of sins, and as such
+ought to be abandoned not gradually but immediately. Slave-holding was
+sin and slaveholders were sinners. The sin and sinner should both be
+denounced as such and the latter called to instant repentance, and the
+duty of making immediate restitution of the stolen liberties of their
+slaves. This was the tone ministers of religion held every where toward
+sin and sinners, and this should be the tone held by the preachers of
+Abolition toward slavery, and slaveholders. To admit the principle of
+gradualism was for Abolition to emasculate itself of its most virile
+quality. Garrison, consequently rejected gradualism as a weapon, and
+took up instead the great and quickening doctrine of immediatism. Lundy
+did not know of this change in the convictions of his coadjutor until
+his arrival in Baltimore. Then Garrison frankly unburdened himself and
+declared his decision to conduct his campaign against the national
+iniquity along the lines of immediate and unconditional emancipation.
+The two on this new radicalism did not see eye to eye. But Lundy with
+sententious shrewdness and liberality suggested to the young radical:
+"Thee may put thy initials to thy articles and I will put my initials to
+mine, and each will bear his own burden." And the arrangement pleased
+the young radical, for it enabled him to free his soul of the necessity
+which was then sitting heavily upon it. The precise state of his mind in
+respect of the question at this juncture in its history and in his own
+is made plain enough in his salutatory address in _The Genius of
+Universal Emancipation_. The vow made in Bennington ten months before to
+devote his life to philanthrophy, and the dedication of himself made six
+months afterward to the extirpation of American slavery, he solemnly
+renews and reseals in Baltimore. He does not hate intemperance and war
+less, but slavery more, and those, therefore, he formally relegates
+thenceforth to a place of secondary importance in the endeavors of the
+future. It is obvious that the colonization scheme has no strong hold
+upon his intelligence. He does not conceal his respect for it as an
+instrument of freedom, but he puts no high value on its utility. "It may
+pluck a few leaves," he remarks, "from the Bohon Upas, but can neither
+extract its roots nor destroy its withering properties. Viewed as an
+auxiliary, it deserves encouragement; but as a remedy it is altogether
+inadequate." But this was not all. As a remedy, colonization was not
+only altogether inadequate, its influence was indirectly pernicious, in
+that it lulled the popular mind into "a belief that the monster has
+received his mortal wound." He perceived that this resultant
+indifference and apathy operated to the advantage of slavery, and to the
+injury of freedom. Small, therefore, as was the good which the
+Colonization Society was able to achieve, it was mixed with no little
+ill. Although Garrison has not yet begun to think on the subject, to
+examine into the motives and purposes of the society, it does not take a
+prophet to foresee that some day he will. He had already arrived at
+conclusions in respect of the rights of the colored people "to choose
+their own dwelling place," and against the iniquity of their
+expatriation, which cut directly at the roots of the colonization
+scheme. Later the pro-slavery character of the society will be wholly
+revealed to him. But truth in the breast of a reformer as of others must
+needs follow the great law of moral growth, first the blade, then the
+ear, and then the full corn in the ear. It is enough that he has made
+the tremendous step from gradual to immediate and unconditional
+emancipation on the soil.
+
+At this period he tested the disposition of slaveholders to manumit
+their slaves. The Colonization Society had given it out that there was
+no little desire on the part of many masters to set their slaves free.
+All that was wanted for a practical demonstration in this direction was
+the assurance of free transportation out of the country for the
+emancipated slaves. Lundy had made arrangement for the transportation of
+fifty slaves to Hayti and their settlement in that country. So he and
+Garrison advertised this fact in the _Genius_, but they waited in vain
+for a favorable response from the South--notwithstanding the following
+humane inducement which this advertisement offered: "THE PRICE OF
+PASSAGE WILL BE ADVANCED, and everything furnished of which they may
+stand in need, until they shall have time to prepare their houses and
+set in to work." No master was moved to take advantage of the
+opportunity. This was discouraging to the believers in the efficacy of
+colonization as a potent anti-slavery instrument. But Garrison was no
+such believer. With unerring moral instinct he had from the start placed
+his reliance "on nothing but the eternal principles of justice for the
+speedy overthrow of slavery."
+
+He obtained at this period an intimate personal knowledge of the free
+colored people. He saw that they were not essentially unlike other
+races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about
+them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common
+property of mankind in similar circumstances. He forthwith became their
+brave defender against the common slanders of the times. "There is a
+prevalent disposition among all classes to traduce the habits and morals
+of our free blacks," he remarked in the _Genius_. "The most scandalous
+exaggerations in regard to their condition are circulated by a thousand
+mischievous tongues, and no reproach seems to them too deep or
+unmerited. Vile and malignant indeed is this practice, and culpable are
+they who follow it. We do not pretend to say that crime, intemperance,
+and suffering, to a considerable extent, cannot be found among the free
+blacks; but we do assert that they are as moral, peaceable, and
+industrious as that class of the whites who are, like them, in indigent
+circumstances--and far less intemperate than the great body of foreign
+immigrants who infest and corrupt our shores." This idea of the natural
+equality of the races he presented in the _Genius_ a few weeks before
+with Darwinian breadth in the following admirable sentences: "I deny the
+postulate that God has made, by an irreversible decree, or any inherent
+qualities, one portion of the human race superior to another. No matter
+how many breeds are amalgamated--no matter how many shades of color
+intervene between tribes or nations give them the same chances to
+improve, and a fair start at the same time, and the result will be
+equally brilliant, equally productive, equally grand."
+
+At the same time that he was making active, personal acquaintance with
+the free colored people, he was making actual personal acquaintance with
+the barbarism of slavery also. "The distinct application of a whip, and
+the shrieks of anguish" of the slave, his residence in Baltimore had
+taught him was "nothing uncommon" in that city. Such an instance had
+come to him while in the street where the office of the _Genius_ was
+located. It was what was occurring at almost all hours of the day and in
+almost all parts of the town. He had not been in Baltimore a month when
+he saw a specimen of the brutality of slavery on the person of a negro,
+who had been mercilessly flogged. On his back were thirty-seven gashes
+made with a cowskin, while on his head were many bruises besides. It was
+a Sunday morning, fresh from his terrible punishment, that the poor
+fellow had found the editors of the _Genius_, who, with the compassion
+of brothers, took him in, dressed his wounds, and cared for him for two
+days. Such an experience was no new horror to Lundy, but it was
+doubtless Garrison's first lesson in that line, and it sank many fathoms
+deep into his heart.
+
+Maryland was one of the slave-breeding States and Baltimore a slave
+emporium. There was enacted the whole business of slavery as a
+commercial enterprise. Here the human chattels were brought and here
+warehoused in jails and other places of storage and detention. Here they
+were put up at public auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder,
+and from here they were shipped to New Orleans, the great distributing
+center for such merchandise. He heard what Lundy had years before heard,
+the wail of captive mothers and fathers, wives, husbands and children,
+torn from each other; like Lundy, "he felt their pang of distress; and
+the iron entered his soul." He could not hold his peace in the midst of
+such abominations, but boldly exposed and denounced them. His
+indignation grew hot when he saw that Northern vessels were largely
+engaged in the coastwise slave-trade; and when, to his amazement, he
+learned that the ship _Francis_, owned by Francis Todd, a Newburyport
+merchant, had sailed for New Orleans with a gang of seventy-five slaves,
+his indignation burst into blaze. He blazoned the act and the name of
+Francis Todd in the _Genius_, and did verily what he had resolved to do,
+viz., "to cover with thick infamy all who were concerned in this
+nefarious business," the captain as well as the owner of the
+ill-freighted ship. He did literally point at these men the finger of
+scorn. Every device known to the printer's art for concentrating the
+reader's attention upon particular words and sentences, Garrison made
+skillful use of in his articles--from the deep damnation of the heavy
+black capitals in which he printed the name Francis Todd, to the small
+caps in which appeared the words, "sentenced to solitary confinement for
+life," and which he flanked with two terrible indices. But the articles
+did not need such embellishment. They were red hot branding irons
+without them. One can almost smell the odor of burning flesh as he reads
+the words: "It is no worse to fit out piratical cruisers or to engage in
+the foreign slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade along our coast;
+and the men who have the wickedness to participate therein, for the
+purpose of keeping up wealth should be ==>SENTENCED TO SOLITARY
+CONFINEMENT FOR LIFE; <==_they are the enemies of their own
+species--highway robbers, and murderers_; and their final doom will be,
+unless they speedily repent, _to occupy the lowest depths of perdition_.
+I know that our laws make a distinction in this matter. I know that the
+man who is allowed to freight his vessel with slaves at home, for a
+distant market, would be thought worthy of death if he should take a
+similar freight on the coast of Africa; but I know, too, that this
+distinction is absurd, and at war with the common sense of mankind, and
+that God and good men regard it with abhorrence.
+
+"I recollect that it was always a mystery in Newburyport how Mr. Todd
+contrived to make profitable voyages to New Orleans and other places,
+when other merchants, with as fair an opportunity to make money, and
+sending to the same ports at the same time invariably made fewer
+successful speculations. The mystery seems to be unravelled. Any man can
+gather up riches if he does not care by what means they are obtained."
+
+A copy of the _Genius_, containing this article Garrison sent to the
+owner of the ship _Francis_. What followed made it immediately manifest
+that the branding irons of the reformer had burned home with scarifying
+effect. Mr. Todd's answer to the strictures was a suit at law against
+the editors of the _Genius_ for five thousand dollars in damages. But
+this was not all. The Grand Jury for Baltimore indicted them for
+publishing "a gross and malicious libel against Francis Todd and
+Nicholas Brown." This was at the February Term, 1830. On the first day
+of March following, Garrison was tried. He was ably and eloquently
+defended by Charles Mitchell, a young lawyer of the Baltimore Bar. But
+the prejudice of judge and jury rendered the verdict of guilty a
+foregone conclusion. April 17, 1830, the Court imposed a penalty of
+fifty dollars and costs, which, with the fine amounted in all to nearly
+one hundred dollars. The fine and costs Garrison could not pay, and he
+was therefore committed to jail as a common malefactor. His confinement
+lasted seven weeks. He did not languish during this period. His head and
+hands were in fact hardly ever more active than during the term of his
+imprisonment. Shut out by Maryland justice from work without the jail,
+he found and did that which needed to be done within "high walls and
+huge." He was an extraordinary prisoner and was treated with
+extraordinary consideration by the Warden. He proved himself a genuine
+evangel to the prisoners, visiting them in their cells, cheering them by
+his bouyant and benevolent words, giving them what he had, a brother's
+sympathy, which to these ill-fated ones, was more than gold or silver.
+He indited for such of them as he deemed deserving, letters and
+petitions to the Governor praying their pardon; and he had the great
+satisfaction of seeing many of his efforts in this regard crowned with
+success.
+
+But more than this his imprisonment afforded him an opportunity for a
+closer acquaintance with the barbarism of slavery than he could possibly
+have made had he lived otherwise in Baltimore. A Southern jail was not
+only the place of detention of offenders against social justice, but of
+slaves waiting for the next market-day, of recaptured fugitives waiting
+for their owners to reclaim them. Here they were huddled and caged,
+pitiful and despairing in their misery. Such scenes sickened the young
+reformer every day. God had opened to him the darkest chapter in the
+book of the negroes' wrongs. Here is a page from that black volume of
+oppression and cruelty, the record of which he has preserved in the
+following graphic narrative: "During my late incarceration in Baltimore
+prison, four men came to obtain a runaway slave. He was brought out of
+his cell to confront his master, but pretended not to know him--did not
+know that he had ever seen him before--could not recollect his name. Of
+course the master was exceedingly irritated. 'Don't you remember,' said
+he, 'when I gave you not long since thirty-nine lashes under the
+apple-tree? Another time when I gave you a sound flogging in the barn?
+Another time when you was scourged for giving me the lie, by saying that
+the horse was in a good condition?' 'Yes,' replied the slave, whose
+memory was thus quickened, 'I do recollect. You have beaten me cruelly
+without cause; you have not given me enough to eat and drink; and I
+don't want to go back again. I wish you to sell me to another master. I
+had rather even go to Georgia than to return home!'
+
+"'I'll let you know, you villain,' said the master, 'that my wishes and
+not _yours_, are to be consulted. I'll learn you how to run away
+again.'"
+
+The other men advised him to take the black home, and cut him up in inch
+pieces for his impudence, obstinacy, and desertion--swearing
+tremendously all the while. The slave was ordered back to his cell. Then
+ensued the following colloquy between Garrison and the master:
+
+G.--"Sir, what right have you to that poor creature?"
+
+M.--"My father left him to me."
+
+G.--"Suppose your father had broken into a bank and stolen ten thousand
+dollars, and safely bequeathed that as a legacy; could you
+conscientiously keep the money? For myself, I had rather rob any bank to
+an indefinite amount than kidnap a fellow-being, or hold him in bondage;
+the sin would be less injurious to society, and less sinful in the sight
+of God."
+
+M.--"Perhaps you would like to buy the slave and give him his liberty?"
+
+G.--"Sir, I am a poor man; and were I ever so opulent, it would be
+necessary, on your part, to make out a clear title to the services of
+the slave before I could conscientiously make a bargain."
+
+M--"Well, sir, I can prove from the Bible that slavery is right."
+
+G.--"Ah! that is a precious book--the rule of conduct. I have always
+supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape
+of fraud and oppression. However, sir, I should be glad to hear your
+text."
+
+M. (hesitatingly)--"Ham--Noah's curse, you know."
+
+G. (hastily)--"Oh, sir, you build on a very slender foundation. Granting
+even--what remains to be proved--that the Africans are the descendants
+of Ham, Noah's curse was a _prediction_ of future servitude, and not an
+injunction to oppress. Pray, sir, is it a careful desire to fulfill the
+Scriptures, or to make money, that induces you to hold your fellow-men
+in bondage?"
+
+M. (excitedly)--"Why, sir, do you really think that the slaves are
+beings like ourselves?--that is, I mean do you believe that they possess
+the same faculties and capacities as the whites?"
+
+G. (energetically)--"Certainly, sir, I do not know that there is any
+moral or intellectual quality in the curl of the hair, or the color of
+the skin. I cannot conceive why a black man may not as reasonably object
+to my color, as I to his. Sir, it is not a black face that I detest, but
+a black heart--and I find it very often under a white skin."
+
+M. (derisively)--"Well, sir, how should you like to see a black man
+President of the United States?"
+
+G. (severely)--"As to that, sir, I am a true Republican, and bow to the
+will of the majority. If the people prefer a black President, I should
+cheerfully submit; and if he be qualified for the station, may
+peradventure give him my vote."
+
+M. (triumphantly)--"How should you like to have a black man marry your
+daughter?"
+
+G. (making a home thrust and an end of the dialogue)--"I am not
+married--I have no daughter. Sir, I am not familiar with _your_
+practices; but allow me to say, that slaveholders generally should be
+the last persons to affect fastidiousness on that point; for they seem
+to be enamored with _amalgamation_."
+
+Garrison's pen was particularly busy during the term of his
+imprisonment. He paid his respects to the State's Attorney who
+prosecuted him, to the judge who condemned him, and to Francis Todd, the
+owner of the ship _Francis_. He prepared and scattered broadcast a true
+account of his trial, showing how the liberty of the press had been
+violated in the case. He did not doubt that it would astonish Europe if
+it were known there "that _an American citizen lies incarcerated in
+prison, for having denounced slavery and its abettors in his own
+country_." The fact created no little astonishment in America. Slavery
+became distinctly connected for the first time with abridgments of the
+freedom of the press, and the right of free speech. And the cause of the
+slave became involved with the Constitutional liberties of the republic.
+In punishing Garrison, the Abolitionist, the rights of Garrison the
+white freeman were trampled on. And white freemen in the North, who
+cared nothing for Abolitionism, but a great deal for their right to
+speak and write freely, resented the outrage. This fact was the most
+important consequence, which flowed from the trial and imprisonment of
+the young editor of _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_. "As the news
+of my imprisonment became extensively known," he wrote, "and the merits
+of the case understood, not a mail rolled into the city but it brought
+me consolatary letters from individuals hitherto unknown to me, and
+periodicals of all kinds from every section of the Union (not even
+excepting the South), all uniting to give me a triumphant acquittal--all
+severely reprehending the conduct of Mr. Todd--and all regarding my
+trial as a mockery of justice." This unexpected result was one of those
+accidents of history, which "have laws as fixed as planets have."
+
+The prosecution and imprisonment of Garrison was without doubt designed
+to terrorize him into silence on the subject of slavery. But his
+persecutors had reckoned without a knowledge of their victim. Garrison
+had the martyr's temperament and invincibility of purpose. His
+earnestness burned the more intensely with the growth of opposition and
+peril. Within "gloomy walls close pent," he warbled gay as a bird of a
+freedom which tyrants could not touch, nor bolts confine:
+
+  "No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose,
+  Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole,
+  And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes!"
+
+
+or with deep, stern gladness sang he to "The Guiltless Prisoner" how:
+
+  "A martyr's crown is richer than a king's!
+  Think it an honor with thy Lord to bleed,
+  And glory 'midst intensest sufferings;
+  Though beat--imprisoned--put to open shame
+  Time shall embalm and magnify thy name."
+
+
+"Is it supposed by Judge Brice," the guiltless prisoner wrote from his
+cell, "that his frowns can intimidate me, or his sentence stifle my
+voice on the subject of African oppression? He does not know me. So long
+as a good Providence gives me strength and intellect, I will not cease
+to declare that the existence of slavery in this country is a foul
+reproach to the American name; nor will I hesitate to proclaim the guilt
+of kidnappers, slave abettors, or slaveowners, wheresoever they may
+reside, or however high they may be exalted. I am only in the _alphabet_
+of my task; time shall perfect a useful work. It is my shame that I have
+done so little for the people of color; yea, before God, I feel humbled
+that my feelings are so cold, and my language so weak. A few white
+victims must be sacrificed to open the eyes of this nation, and to show
+the tyranny of our laws. I expect and am willing to be persecuted,
+imprisoned, and bound for advocating African rights; and I should
+deserve to be a slave myself if I shrunk from that duty or danger." The
+story of the trial of William Lloyd Garrison, from which the above brave
+words are taken, fell into the hands of that noble man and munificent
+merchant, Arthur Tappan, of New York. From the reading of it he rose
+"with that deep feeling of abhorrence of slavery and its abettors which
+every one must feel who is capable of appreciating the blessings of
+liberty," and thereupon notified Lundy to draw upon him for one hundred
+dollars if that amount would give the young editor his liberty. The fine
+and costs of court were accordingly paid and just forty-nine days after
+entering Baltimore jail a prisoner, Garrison recovered his freedom. The
+civil action of Todd against him was still pending. Nothing daunted
+Garrison went North two days after his discharge to obtain certain
+evidence deemed important by his counsel to his defence. He took with
+him an open letter from Lundy looking to the renewal of the weekly
+_Genius_ under their joint control. Prior to Garrison's trial the paper
+had fallen into great stress for want of money. Lundy and he had made a
+division of their labors, the latter doing the editorial and office
+work, while the former traveled from place to place soliciting
+subscriptions and collecting generally the sinews of war. But the
+experiment was not successful from a business standpoint. For as
+Garrison playfully observed subsequently: "Where friend Lundy could get
+one new subscriber, I could knock a _dozen_ off, and I did so. It was
+the old experiment of the frog in the well, that went two feet up and
+fell three feet back, at every jump." Where the income of the paper did
+not exceed fifty dollars in four months and the weekly expenditure
+amounted to at least that sum, the financial failure of the enterprise
+was inevitable. This unhappy event did actually occur six weeks before
+the junior editor went to jail; and the partnership was formally
+dissolved in the issue of the _Genius_ of March 5, 1830. But when Arthur
+Tappan made his generous offer of a hundred dollars to effect Garrison's
+release, he made at the same time an offer of an equal amount to aid the
+editors in reëstablishing the _Genius_. This proposition led to hopes on
+the part of the two friends to a renewal of their partnership in the
+cause of emancipation. And so Garrison's visit to the North was taken
+advantage of to test the disposition of Northern philanthropy to support
+such a paper. But what he found was a sad lack of interest in the slave.
+Everywhere he went he encountered what appeared to him to be the most
+monstrous indifference and apathy on the subject. The prejudices of the
+free States seemed to him stronger than were those of the South. Instead
+of receiving aid and encouragement to continue the good work of himself
+and coadjutor, and for the doing of which he had served a term of seven
+weeks in prison, men, even his best friends sought to influence him to
+give it up, and to persuade him to forsake the slave, and to turn his
+time and talents to safer and more profitable enterprises nearer home.
+He was informed by these worldly wise men and Job's counselors that his
+"scheme was visionary, fanatical, unattainable." "Why should he make
+himself," they argued, "an exile from home and all that he held dear on
+earth, and sojourn in a strange land, among enemies whose hearts were
+dead to every noble sentiment?" Ah! he himself confessed that all were
+against his return to Baltimore. But his love of the slave was stronger
+than the strength of the temptation. He put all these selfish objections
+behind him. As he has recorded the result of this experience:
+"Opposition served only to increase my ardor, and confirm my purpose."
+Strange and incomprehensible to his fellows is the man who prefers
+"persecution, reproach, and poverty" with duty, to worldly ease and
+honor and riches without it. When a man appears in society who is not
+controlled by motives which usually govern the conduct of other men he
+becomes at first an object of pity, then of contempt, and, lastly, of
+hate. Garrison we may be sure at the end of this visit had made rapid
+transit from the first to the second of these stages in the esteem of
+his generation.
+
+His experience was not all of this deplorable kind. He left Baltimore
+without the money required to pay his way North, depending literally
+upon the good God to provide for him the necessary means to complete his
+journey. And such help was more than once providentially afforded the
+young apostle of liberty. At New York, when he did not know how he was
+to go farther for want of means, he met a Mr. Samuel Leggett who gave
+him a pass on the "splendid steamboat _President_." It seems that this
+friend in his need had read with indignation the story of his trial. The
+bread which he had scattered from his prison on the waters of public
+sentiment had thus returned to him after many days in the timely
+assistance of a sympathetic soul. And then, again, when he was in Boston
+in sore distress for a little money, suddenly, beautifully, the desire
+of his heart was satisfied. But let him tell the incident in his own
+touching way. His face was turned toward Baltimore: "But how was I to
+return?" he asks. "I had not a dollar in my pocket, and my time was
+expired. No one understood my circumstances. I was too proud to beg, and
+ashamed to borrow. My friends were prodigal of pity, but of nothing
+else. In the extremity of my uneasiness, I went to the Boston
+post-office, and found a letter from my friend Lundy, inclosing a draft
+for $100 from a stranger and as a remuneration for my poor inefficient
+services in behalf of the slaves!" The munificent stranger was Ebenezer
+Dole, of Hallowell, Maine. Money thus acquired was a sacred trust to
+this child of Providence. "After deducting the expenses of traveling,"
+he goes on to say, "the remainder of the above-named sum was applied in
+discharging a few of the debts incurred by the unproductiveness of the
+_Genius_."
+
+Garrison returned to Baltimore, but he did not tarry long in that
+slave-ruled city. Todd's suit against him was tried after his departure,
+and the jury soothed the Newburyport merchant's wounded pride with a
+verdict for a thousand dollars. He never attempted, however, to enforce
+the payment of the same being content probably with the "vindication,"
+which his legal victory gave him.
+
+Before the reformer left Baltimore he had definitely abandoned the plans
+looking to a revival of his interest in the _Genius_. He determined
+instead to publish a sheet devoted to the abolition of slavery under his
+sole management and control. This paper he proposed to call the _Public
+Liberator_, and to issue from Washington. The prospectus of this
+journalistic project bearing date, August, 1830, declares in its opening
+sentence its "primary object" to be "the abolition of slavery, and the
+moral and intellectual elevation of our colored population." "I shall
+spare no efforts," he pledged himself, "to delineate the withering
+influence of slavery upon our national prosperity and happiness, its
+awful impiety, its rapid extension, and its inevitable consequences if
+it be suffered to exist without hindrance. It will also be my purpose to
+point out the path of safety, and a remedy for the disease." This
+comprehensive and aggressive plan of campaign signalized the rise of an
+Abolitionism wholly unlike the Abolitionism of any previous time in the
+history of the country. It did in fact date the opening of a new era in
+the slavery struggle in America.
+
+With Northern indifference and apathy on the subject of emancipation,
+Garrison's previous visit to the North had acquainted him. Their
+existence he saw interposed the main obstacle to the success of his new
+venture in journalism. "The cause of this callous state of feeling," he
+believed, "was owing to their exceeding ignorance of the horrors of
+slavery." He accordingly made up his mind to throw the light which he
+possessed into the midst of this darkness. He had written in prison
+three lectures on "Slavery and Colonization." What better could he now
+do than to deliver those lectures at the North? If the good people and
+their religious leaders knew what he knew, they would presently feel as
+he did on the question. He was loath to leave Baltimore without giving
+this testimony against slavery. But unable to procure a room for this
+purpose was finally compelled to content himself with the witness he had
+already borne in the _Genius_ and in prison in behalf of the slave. In
+Philadelphia he well-nigh failed to obtain a hall for his lectures, but
+did finally succeed in getting the Franklin Institute, where, to small
+audiences, he lifted up his voice against the iniquity of the times. He
+repeated his lectures in New York, New Haven, and Hartford. But not many
+came out to hear him. The nation, its churches, and politicians had
+thrust their fingers in their ears to every cry coming up from the
+slave. Why should they go to sup with a madman on horrors, with which as
+patriotic people they were forbidden to concern themselves. And so for
+the most part Garrison could do nothing with communities, which had
+eyes, but obstinately refused to see with them upon any subject relating
+to the abominations of slavery. In his own town of Newburyport, officers
+of Christian churches not only refused to hear his message themselves,
+but debarred others from listening to the woes and wrongs of
+fellow-creatures in bondage. As Mr. Garrison truly said at the time: "If
+I had visited Newburyport to plead the cause of twenty white men in
+chains, every hall and every meeting-house would have been thrown open,
+and the fervor of my discourses anticipated and exceeded by my
+fellow-townsmen. The fact that two millions of colored beings are
+groaning in bondage, in this land of liberty, excites no interest nor
+pity." If these damning facts are remembered sixty years after their
+occurrence to the shame of the trustees of the two churches, viz., the
+Presbyterian Church on Harris street and the Second Congregational
+Church, it is also remembered to the honor of the two pastors, Rev. Dr.
+Daniel Dana, and the Rev. Dr. Luther F. Dimmick, that they had thrown
+open to the prophet the doors of their meeting-houses, which the
+trustees afterward slammed in his face.
+
+In Boston the same hard luck followed him. In all that city of Christian
+churches he could not obtain the use of a single meeting-house, "in
+which to vindicate the rights of TWO MILLIONS of American citizens, who
+are now groaning in servile chains in this boasted land of liberty; and
+also to propose just, benevolent, and constitutional measures for their
+relief." So ran an advertisement in the Boston _Courier_ of the sorely
+tried soul. For two weeks he had gone up and down the town in search of
+a room free of cost, in which to deliver his message. The door of every
+sanctuary was locked against his cause. It was then, as a final
+recourse, that he turned to the _Courier_, and made his last appeal to
+the Christian charity of the city. The prayer of the prophet was
+answered from an unexpected quarter. It was that ecclesiastical dragon
+of the times, Abner Kneeland, and his society of "blasphemers," who
+proved afresh the truth of that scripture which says: "Not every one
+that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;
+but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." It was they
+that gave to liberty a hearing, to the prophet of righteousness a chance
+to deliver his message. It was in their meeting-house, in Julian Hall,
+that Garrison gave his lectures, giving the first one on the evening of
+October 15, 1830.
+
+Samuel J. May, who was present, has preserved his impressions of the
+lecture and lecturer. "Never before," he records many years afterward,
+"was I so affected by the speech of man. When he had ceased speaking I
+said to those around me: 'That is a providential man; he is a prophet;
+he will shake our nation to its center, but he will shake slavery out of
+it. We ought to know him, we ought to help him. Come, let us go and give
+him our hands.' Mr. Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up with me and we
+introduced each other. I said to him, 'Mr. Garrison, I am not sure that
+I can indorse all you have said this evening. Much of it requires
+careful consideration. But I am prepared to embrace you. I am sure you
+are called to a great work, and I mean to help you.' Mr. Sewall
+cordially assured him of his readiness also to cooperate with him. Mr.
+Alcott invited him to his home. He went and we sat with him until twelve
+that night, listening to his discourse, in which he showed plainly that
+_immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation, was the
+right of every slave, and could not be withheld by his master an hour
+without sin_. That night my soul was baptised in his spirit, and ever
+since I have been a disciple and fellow-laborer of William Lloyd
+Garrison." A new force had arisen in our history, and a new epoch had
+broken bolts for humanity.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+
+THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
+
+
+The providential man was not yet twenty-five. In personal appearance he
+was quite the reverse of his friend Lundy. Garrison was gifted with a
+body that matched his mind, strong, straight, sound in every part, and
+proportioned in every member. As he stood he was much above the medium
+height. His dark hair had already partially left the crown of the high
+dome-shaped head. His forehead combined height with breadth, which,
+taken in connection with the brown eyes covered with the now habitual
+glasses, lent to his countenance a striking air of moral serenity and
+elevation. Force, firmness, no ordinary self-reliance and courage found
+masterly expression in the rest of the face. There was through the whole
+physical man a nice blending of strength and delicacy of structure. The
+impression of fineness and finish was perhaps mainly owing to the
+woman-like purity and freshness of skin and color, which overspread the
+virile lines and features of the face from brow to chin. What one saw in
+that face was the quality of justice made flesh, good-will to men
+personified.
+
+This characterization of the reformer's countenance may be considered
+absurd by some readers. But absurd it is not. People who had read his
+stern denunciations of slave-holding and slaveholders, and who had
+formed their image of the man from his "hard language" and their own
+prejudices could not recognize the original when they met him. His
+manner was peculiarly winning and attractive, and in personal
+intercourse almost instantly disarmed hostility. The even gentleness of
+his rich voice, his unfailing courtesy and good temper, his quick eye
+for harmless pleasantries, his hearty laugh, the Quaker-like calmness,
+deliberateness, and meekness, with which he would meet objections and
+argue the righteousness of his cause, his sweet reasonableness and
+companionableness were in strange contrast to popular misconceptions and
+caricatures of him. No one needed to be persuaded, who had once
+conversed with him, that there was no hatred or vindictiveness in his
+severities of language toward slaveholders. That he was no Jacobin, no
+enemy of society, was perceived the moment one looked into his grave,
+kind face, or caught the warm accents of his pacific tones, or listened
+to the sedate intensity, and humanity of his discourses on the enormity
+of American slavery as they fell from him in conversations between man
+and man. Here is a case in point, a typical incident in the life of the
+reformer; it occurred, it is true, when he was twenty-seven, but it
+might have occurred at twenty-five quite as well; it is narrated by
+Samuel J. May in his recollections of the anti-slavery conflict: On his
+way from New York to Philadelphia with Garrison, Mr. May fell into a
+discussion with a pro-slavery passenger on the vexed question of the
+day. There was the common pro-slavery reasoning, which May answered as
+well as he was able. Presently Mr. Garrison drew near the disputants,
+whereupon May took the opportunity to shift the anti-slavery burden of
+the contention to his leader's shoulders. All of his most radical and
+unpopular Abolition doctrines Garrison immediately proceeded to expound
+to his opponent. "After a long conversation," says Mr. May, "which
+attracted as many as could get within hearing, the gentleman said,
+courteously: 'I have been much interested, sir, in what you have said,
+and in the exceedingly frank and temperate manner in which you have
+treated the subject. If all Abolitionists were like you, there would be
+much less opposition to your enterprise. But, sir, depend upon it, that
+hair-brained, reckless, violent fanatic, Garrison, will damage, if he
+does not shipwreck, any cause.' Stepping forward, I replied, 'Allow me,
+sir, to introduce you to Mr. Garrison, of whom you entertain so bad an
+opinion. The gentleman you have been talking with is he.'"
+
+Or take Harriet Martineau's first impressions on seeing him. "His aspect
+put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in
+me. I was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance glowing with
+health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation and gentleness. I did
+not wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop
+window without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it as the
+most saintlike of countenances."
+
+The appearance of such a man on the stage of our history as a nation, at
+this hour, was providential. His coming was in the fulness of time. A
+rapid review of events anterior to the advent of Garrison will serve to
+place this matter more clearly before the general reader. To begin,
+then, at the beginning we have two ships off the American coast, the one
+casting anchor in Plymouth harbor, the other discharging its cargo at
+Jamestown. They were both freighted with human souls. But how different!
+Despotism landed at Jamestown, democracy at Plymouth. Here in the germ
+was the Southern idea, slave labor, slave institutions; and here also
+was the Northern idea, free labor, free institutions. Once planted they
+grew, each seed idea multiplying after its kind. In course of time there
+arose on one side an industrial system in which the plantation
+principle, race-rule and race-slavery, were organic centers; and, on the
+other, a social system in which the principle of popular power and
+government, the town meeting, and the common school were the ganglia of
+social expansion. Contrary ideas beget naturally enough contrary
+interests and institutions. So it is no matter for surprise that the
+local interests and institutions of the thirteen revolted colonies
+lacked homogeneity and identity. What was calculated to promote the
+general welfare of the Northern one, it was quite possible might work a
+totally opposite result in the Southern. For, indeed, while there were
+slaves in them all, the slave system had taken root in Southern soil
+only; and while on the other hand the spirit of freedom was existent in
+each, free labor had rooted itself in Northern ground solely.
+
+As the war of the Revolution was an uprising against arbitrary power,
+and for the establishment of political liberty, it pushed easily into
+the foreground the larger subject of human rights. Most of the leading
+actors felt the inconsistency of keeping some men in bondage, when they
+were fighting to rid themselves of a tyranny which, in comparison to the
+other, was a state of honorable freedom. Their humanity condemned
+African slavery, and they earnestly desired its extinction. The
+Declaration of Independence proves to how high a level the tide of
+freedom rose in the colonies. The grand truths by it proclaimed the
+signers of that instrument did not restrict in their application to some
+men to the exclusion of other men. They wrote "All men," and they meant
+exactly what they wrote. Too simply honest and great they were to mean
+less than their solemn and deliberate words.
+
+On political as well as on moral grounds they desired emancipation. But
+there was a difficulty which at the time proved insuperable. The
+nation-making principle, the idea of country, was just emerging out of
+the nebulous civil conditions and relations of the ante-Revolutionary
+epoch. There was no existent central authority to reach the evil within
+the States except the local governments of the States respectively. And
+States in revolt against the central authority of the mother country
+would hardly be disposed to divest themselves of any part of their newly
+asserted right to govern themselves for the purpose of conferring the
+same upon any other political body. To each State, then, the question
+was necessarily left for settlement.
+
+The war, during its continuance, absorbed the united resources and
+energies of the people and their leaders. The anti-slavery movement made
+accordingly but small progress. Reforms thrive only when they get a
+hearing. Public attention is the food on which they thrive. But precious
+little of this food was the Abolition cause able to snatch in those
+bitter years. It could not grow. It remained in the gristle--hardly more
+than a sentiment. But the sentiment was a seed, the promise and potency
+of kindlier times. With the close of the long struggle other questions
+arose; got the people's ears; fixed the attention of the leaders. Scant
+notice could emancipation extort from men who had to repair the ravages
+of an exhausting war, reconstruct shattered fortunes, restore civil
+society in parts tumbling into ruinous disorder. The instinct of
+self-preservation was altogether too masterful for the moral starveling.
+It succumbed to circumstances, content to obtain an occasional sermon,
+an annual address, a few scattered societies to keep a human glow in the
+bosom of the infant Confederacy.
+
+The Confederation failed. The formation of a more perfect union was
+demanded and undertaken. This transcendent task straightway thrust into
+the background every other enterprise and interest. The feeble activity
+of the freedom-making principle was checked, for the time being, by the
+energy of the nation-making power. They were not antagonistic
+forces--only in the natural order of things, the earliest stages in the
+evolution of the former had to come after the first steps were taken in
+the development of the latter. Before there could start a general
+movement against American slavery there must needs be an American
+nation. An American nation was, in the year 1787, in process of
+successful development. With the adoption of the Constitution, the
+national principle entered on a period of marvelous expansion and
+activity.
+
+Let it not, however, be hastily concluded that freedom meanwhile was in
+total eclipse, that the anti-slavery sentiment was absolutely without
+influence. For it unquestionably inspired the Ordinance of 1787. The
+Northwest Territory, out of which were subsequently organized the States
+of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was thereby,
+forever secured to the Northern idea, and free labor. Supplementary to
+this grand act was the Constitutional prohibition of the African
+slave-trade after the year 1808. Together they were intended to
+discourage the growth of slavery--the first by restricting its
+territorial extension, the second, by arresting its numerical increase.
+And without doubt they would have placed the evil in the way of ultimate
+extinction had other and far reaching causes not intervened to produce
+adverse social and political conditions.
+
+The first of these causes, in point of time, were certain labor-saving
+inventions in England, which vastly enhanced the demand for raw cotton.
+Arkwright's invention of the spinning machine about twenty years prior
+to the adoption of the Constitution, perfected by the spinning-jenny of
+Hargreaves, and the mule of Crompton, "turned Lancashire," the historian
+Green says, "into a hive of industry." The then rapid demand for cotton
+operated in time as a stimulus to its production in America. Increased
+productivity raised the value of slave property and slave soil. But the
+slow and tedious hand method of separating the fiber of the cotton bulb
+from the seed greatly limited the ability of the Cotton States to meet
+and satisfy the fast growing demand of the English manufacturers, until
+Eli Whitney, in 1793, by an ingenious invention solved the problem of
+supply for these States. The cotton gin was not long in proving itself
+the other half--the other hand of the spinning machine.
+
+From that year the slave interests of the South rose in market value,
+and its industrial system assumed unexpected importance in the economic
+world. The increased production of cotton led directly to increased
+demand for slave labor and slave soil. The increased demand for slave
+labor the Constitutional provision relating to the African slave trade
+operated in part to satisfy. The increased demand for slave soil was
+likewise satisfied by the cession to the United States by Georgia and
+North Carolina of the Southwest Territory, with provisos practically
+securing it to slavery. Out of this new national territory were
+subsequently carved the slave States of Tennessee, Mississippi, and
+Alabama.
+
+Slave soil unlike free soil, is incapable of sustaining a dense
+population. Slave labor calls for large spaces within which to multiply
+and prosper. The purchase of Louisiana and the acquisition of Florida
+met this agrarian necessity on the part of the South. Immense, unsettled
+areas thus fell to the lot of the slave system at the crisis of its
+material expansion and prosperity. The domestic slave-trade under the
+impetus of settling these vast regions according to the plantation
+principle, became an enormous and spreading industry. The crop of slaves
+was not less profitable than the crop of cotton. A Southern white man
+had but to buy a score of slaves and a few hundred acres to get "rich
+beyond the dreams of avarice." So at least calculated the average
+Southern man.
+
+This revival of slavery disappointed the humane expectation of its
+decline and ultimate extinction entertained by the founders of the
+republic. It built up instead a growing and formidable slave class, and
+interest in the Union. With the rise of giant slave interests, there
+followed the rise of a power devoted to their encouragement and
+protection.
+
+Three far-reaching concessions the slave States obtained in the
+convention of 1787, viz., the right to import slaves from Africa until
+1808; the rendition of fugitive slaves escaping into the free States,
+and the three-fifths slave representation clause of the
+Constitution--all of which added vastly to the security and value of
+this species of property, and as a consequence contributed to the slave
+revival.
+
+The equality of the States in the upper branch of the National
+Legislature, taken in connection with the right of the slave States to
+count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of
+representatives to the lower House of Congress, gave the Southern
+section an almost immediate ascendency in the Federal Government. To the
+South was thus opened by an unexpected combination of circumstances a
+wide avenue for the acquisition of fabulous wealth, and to Southern
+public men an incomparable arena for the exercise of political abilities
+and leadership. An institution, which thus ministered to two of the
+strongest passions of mankind--avarice and ambition--was certain to
+excite the most intense attachment. Its safety naturally, therefore,
+became among the slave class an object of prime importance. Southern
+jealousy in this regard ultimated inevitably in Southern narrowness,
+Southern sectionalism, which early manifested themselves in the
+exclusion from lead in national affairs of Northern public men, reputed
+to be unfriendly to slavery. Webster as late as 1830, protested warmly
+against this intolerance. Like begets like. And the proscribing of
+anti-slavery politicians by the South, created in turn not a little
+sectional feeling at the North, and helped to stimulate there a
+consciousness of sectional differences, of antagonism of interests
+between the two halves of the Union.
+
+Discontent with the original basis of the Union, which had given the
+South its political coign of vantage, broke out first in New England.
+The occasion, though not the cause, of this discontent was, perhaps, the
+downfall of the Federal party, whose stronghold was in the East. The
+commercial and industrial crisis brought on by the embargo, and which
+beggared, on the authority of Webster, "thousands of families and
+hundreds of thousands of individuals" fanned this Eastern
+dissatisfaction into almost open disaffection towards a government
+dominated by Southern influence, and directed by Southern statesmanship.
+To the preponderance of this Southern element in national legislation
+New England traced her misfortunes. She was opposed to the War of 1812,
+but was overruled to her hurt by the South. In these circumstances New
+England went for correcting the inequalities of the original basis of
+the Union, which gave to the South its undue preponderance in shaping
+national laws and policies. This was the purpose of the Hartford
+Convention, which proposed the abrogation of the slave representation
+clause of the Constitution, and the imposition of a check upon the
+admission of new States into the Union. The second proposition did not
+say "new slave States," but new slave States was, nevertheless, intended
+by the Convention. Here in point of time and magnitude, was the first
+distinct collision of the two sets of ideas and interests of the
+Republic.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ghent other and imperious questions engaged the
+public attention--questions of the tariff, of finance, internal
+improvements, national defence, a new navy, forts and fortifications.
+Hard times, too, engrossed an enormous share of this attention. The
+immediate needs and problems of the hour pushed into the background all
+less pressing ones. The slavery question amidst the clamor and babel of
+emergent and material interests, lost something of its sectional heat
+and character. But its fires were not extinguished, only banked as
+events were speedily to reveal.
+
+The application of Missouri for admission into the Union as a slave
+State four years after the Hartford Convention blew to a blaze the
+covered embers of strife between the sections. The North was violently
+agitated. For the admission of a new slave State meant two more slave
+votes in the Senate, and an increase on the old inequitable basis of
+slave representation in the lower House of Congress. It meant to the
+Northern section indefinite Southern ascendency, prolonged Southern lead
+in national legislation. All the smouldering passions of the earlier
+period, of embargo, and non-intercourse, and the war of 1812, flamed
+suddenly and fiercely in the heart of the free States.
+
+The length and bitterness of that controversy excited the gravest
+apprehensions for the stability of the Union. The dread of disunion led
+to mutual concessions, to the Missouri Compromise. The slave-holding
+section got its immediate claim allowed, and the free States secured the
+erection of a line to the north of which slavery was forever prohibited.
+And besides this, the admission of Maine was supposed to neutralize
+whatever political advantages, which would accrue to the South from the
+admission of Missouri as a slave State. Both sections were content, and
+the slavery question was thought to be permanently settled. With this
+final disposition of an ugly problem, the peace and permanence of the
+Union were viewed universally as fixed facts. Still, considering the
+gravity of the case, a little precaution would not go amiss. The slavery
+question had shaken men's faith in the durability of the republic. It
+was therefore adjudged a highly dangerous subject. The political
+physicians with one accord prescribed on the ounce-of-prevention
+principle, _quiet_, SILENCE, and OBLIVION, to be administered in large
+and increasing doses to both sections. Mum was the word, and mum the
+country solemnly and suddenly became from Maine to Georgia. But, alas!
+beneath the ashes of this Missouri business, deep below the unnatural
+silence and quiet, inextinguishable fires were burning and working again
+to the surface of politics. In such circumstances a fresh outbreak of
+old animosities must occur as soon as the subterranean heat should reach
+the point of highest combustibility in the federal system. The tariff
+proved to be that point of highest combustibility.
+
+Alexander Hamilton inaugurated the policy of giving governmental aid to
+infant manufactures. The wisdom of diversifying the industries of the
+young nation was acquiesced in by the leading statesmen of both
+sections. Beset as the republic then was by international forces hostile
+to democratic institutions, it was natural enough that the great men who
+presided over its early years should seek by Federal legislation to
+render it, as speedily and completely as possible, industrially
+self-dependent and self-supporting. The war of 1812 enforced anew upon
+the attention of statesmen the importance of industrial independence.
+The war debt, together with certain governmental enterprises and
+expenditures growing out of the war, was largely, if not wholly,
+responsible for the tariff of 1816. This act dates the rise of our
+American system of protection. It is curious to note that Southern men
+were the leaders of this new departure in the national fiscal policy.
+Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes were the guiding spirits of that period of
+industrial ferment and activity. They little dreamt what economic evils
+were to fall in consequence upon the South. That section was not slow to
+feel the unequal action of the protective principle. The character of
+its labor incapacitated the South from dividing the benefits of the new
+revenue policy with its free rival. The South of necessity was
+restricted to a single industry, the tillage of the earth. Slave labor
+did not possess the intelligence, the skill, the patience, the
+mechanical versatility to embark successfully in manufacturing
+enterprises. Free labor monopolised the protected industries, and
+Northern capital caught all the golden showers of fiscal legislation.
+What the South needed, from an economic point of view, was unrestricted
+access to the markets of the world for her products, and the freest
+competition of the world in her own markets. The limitations imposed
+upon the slave States by their industrial system was in itself a
+tremendous handicap in their struggle for an advantageous place in the
+New World of the nineteenth century; in their struggle with their free
+sisters for political leadership in the Union. But with the development
+of the protective principle those States fell into sore financial
+distress, were ground between the upper millstone of the protective
+system and the nether millstone of their own industrial system.
+Prosperity and plenty did presently disappear from that section and
+settled in the North. In 1828 Benton drew this dark picture of the state
+of the South:
+
+"In place of wealth, a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough
+for common expenses; the price of all property down; the country
+drooping and languishing; towns and cities decaying, and the frugal
+habits of the people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial for
+the preservation of their family estates."
+
+He did not hesitate to charge to Federal legislation the responsibility
+for all this poverty and distress, for he proceeds to remark that:
+
+"Under this legislation the exports of the South have been made the
+basis of the Federal revenue. The twenty odd millions annually levied
+upon imported goods are deducted out of the price of their cotton, rice,
+and tobacco, either in the diminished prices which they receive for
+those staples in foreign ports, or in the increased price which they pay
+for the articles they have to consume at home."
+
+A suffering people are not apt to reason clearly or justly on the causes
+which have brought them to indigence. They feel their wretchedness and
+reach out for a victim. And the law-making power usually happens to be
+that victim. As the distress of the South increased, the belief that
+Federal legislation was responsible for it increased likewise. The
+spread and deepening of this conviction in the Southern States
+precipitated among them an ominous crisis in their attachment to the
+Union. Nullification and an embittered sectionalism was the hateful
+legacy bequeathed to the republic by the tariff controversy. It left the
+South in a hyper-sensitive state in all matters relating to her domestic
+interests. It left the North in a hyper-sensitive condition on all
+matters touching the peace and stability of the Union. The silence and
+oblivion policy on the subject of slavery was renewed with tenfold
+intensity. Ulysses-like the free States bound themselves, their right of
+free speech, and their freedom of the press on this subject, for fear of
+the Siren voices which came thrilling on every breeze from the South.
+Quiet was the word, and quiet the leaders in Church and State sought to
+enforce upon the people, to the end that the vision of "States
+dissevered, discordant, belligerent, of a land rent with civil feuds, or
+drenched it may be, in fraternal blood," might not come to pass for
+their "glorious Union."
+
+The increasing friction and heat between the sections during twenty-five
+years, had effected every portion of the Federal system, and created
+conditions favorable to a violent explosion. Sectional differences of a
+political and industrial complexion, forty years had sufficed to
+develop. Sectional differences of a moral and social character forty
+years had also sufficed to generate. To kindle all those differences,
+all that mass of combustible feelings and forces into a general
+conflagration a spark only was wanted. And out of the glowing humanity
+of one man the spark was suddenly struck.
+
+It is curious to note that in the year 1829, the very year in which
+William Lloyd Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began the editorship of
+_The Genius of Universal Emancipation_, the American Convention, or
+national assembly of the old State societies for the abolition of
+slavery, fell into desuetude. It was as if Providence was clearing the
+debris of an old dispensation out of the way of the new one which his
+prophet was beginning to herald, as if guarding against all possibility
+of having the new wine, then soon to be pressed from the moral vintage
+of the nation, put into old bottles. The Hour for a new movement against
+slavery had come, and with its arrival the Man to hail it had also come.
+
+Other men had spoken and written against slavery, and labored for the
+freedom of the slave before Garrison had thought upon the subject at
+all. Washington and Jefferson, Franklin, Jay, and Hamilton had been
+Abolitionists before he was born, but theirs was a divided interest. The
+establishment of a more perfect union was the paramount object of their
+lives. John Wesley had denounced slavery in language quite as harsh as
+Garrison's, but his, too, was a divided interest, the religious revival
+of the eighteenth century being his distinctive mission. Benezet,
+Woolman, and Lundy were saints, who had yearned with unspeakable
+sympathy for the black bondmen, and were indefatigable in good works in
+his behalf, but they had not that stern and iron quality without which
+reforms cannot be launched upon the attention of mankind. What his
+predecessors lacked, Garrison possessed to a marvelous degree--the
+undivided interest, the supremacy of a single purpose, the stern stuff
+out of which the moral reformer is made, and in which he is panoplied.
+They were all his, but there was another besides--immediatism. This
+element distinguished the movement against slavery, started by him, from
+all other movements begun before he arrived on the stage, for the
+emancipation of the slaves in the Union.
+
+This doctrine of immediate as opposed to gradual emancipation, was not
+original with Garrison, nor was he the first to enunciate it. More than
+a dozen years before he was converted to it, Rev. George Bourne, in "The
+Book and Slavery Irreconcilable," had shown that "the system (of
+slavery) is so entirely corrupt that it admits of no cure but by a
+_total and immediate abolition_. For a gradual emancipation is a virtual
+recognition of the right, and establishes the rectitude of the practice.
+If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be
+inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated." In 1824, eight years
+after the publication of Bourne's book, and five years before Garrison
+announced the doctrine in the _Genius_, the Rev. James Duncan maintained
+it, in his "Treatise on Slavery," with no uncertainty of sense or
+conviction. But neither Bourne nor Duncan had been able to effect an
+incarnation of the doctrine, without which the good which it aimed at
+could not be achieved. What they failed to effect, it is the glory of
+Garrison that he achieved in his own person. He was "_total and
+immediate Abolition_" personified. "Truth is mighty and will prevail,"
+is a wise saying and worthy of acceptation. But this ultimate prevailing
+of TRUTH depends mainly upon individual effort, applied not
+intermittently, but steadily to a particular segment of the circle of
+conduct. It is the long, strong, never-ending pull and tug upon the
+wheels of conduct, which marks the great reformer. He finds his age or
+country stuck in some Serbonian bog of iniquity. He prays, but he prays
+with his shoulders braced strenuously against the body of society, and
+he does not cease his endeavors until a revolution in conduct places his
+age or country on firm ground beyond its Serbonian bog. The coming of
+such a man is no accident. When the Hour is ready and the Man comes, a
+new epoch in the life of a people arises from the conjunction. Of such
+vast consequence verily was the coming into American history of William
+Lloyd Garrison.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
+
+
+After leaving Baltimore, Garrison clung pathetically to the belief that,
+if he told what he had seen of the barbarism of slavery to the North, he
+would be certain to enlist the sympathy and aid of its leaders,
+political and ecclesiastical, in the cause of emancipation. The sequel
+to his efforts in this regard proved that he was never more mistaken in
+his life. He addressed letters to men like Webster, Jeremiah Mason,
+Lyman Beecher, and Dr. Channing, "holding up to their view the
+tremendous iniquity of the land, and begging them, ere it should be too
+late, to interpose their great power in the Church and State, to save
+our country from the terrible calamities which the sin of slavery was
+bringing upon us." But there is no evidence that this appeal produced
+the feeblest ripple in the lives of the two first; and upon the two last
+it was equally barren of result. Dr. Channing, indeed, did not take the
+trouble to hear any one of the three lectures of the young
+philanthropist. Dr. Beecher, however, was at the pains to be present at
+the first lecture given at Julien Hall. But he betrayed no real interest
+in the subject. He had no time to devote to anti-slavery, had, in fine,
+too many irons in the fire already. To this impotent apology of the
+great preacher of immediatism in his dealing with all kinds of sin,
+except the sin of slave-holding, for not espousing the cause of the
+slave, Mr. Garrison made his famous retort:
+
+
+    "Then you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your
+    duty to the slave."
+
+
+What more did this poor and friendless man, with his one idea and his
+harsh language, know of duties and dangers than Daniel Webster, who was
+busy saving the Union; than Lyman Beecher, who was not less busy saving
+souls; or than Dr. Channing, who was quite as busy saving liberalism in
+matters of religion? What folly and presumption it must have seemed to
+these mighty men this attempt of Garrison to impress upon them a proper
+sense of their obligations to their country.
+
+"Your zeal," said Dr. Beecher to him, with unlimited condescension of
+tone--"your zeal is commendable, but you are misguided. If you will give
+up your fanatical notions and be guided by us (the clergy) we will make
+you the Wilberforce of America."
+
+And so what was the young man, burning up with his one idea, to do in
+presence of such a failure to win these men to the leadership of the
+anti-slavery movement? He could not hold his peace; his message he was
+compelled to deliver in the ears of the nation whether its leaders would
+hear or forbear. Perhaps the common people would hearken to what the
+wise and powerful had rejected. At any rate they should hear what was
+resting upon his soul with the weight of a great woe, the force of a
+supreme command. But how was he, penniless and friendless, to roll from
+his bosom the burden which was crushing it; to pause long enough in the
+battle for bread to fight the battle of the slave? Ah, if he had money!
+but no money did he have, not a dollar in his pocket! Oh, if he had rich
+friends who would dedicate their riches to the preaching of the gospel
+of freedom! but alas! rich friends there were none. Oh, if he could cry
+to the Church for help in this hour of his need! but it was slowly
+dawning on him that not from the Church would help come to his cause;
+for a grievous thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon sat
+staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits to stone, turning also to
+stone the hearts of the people.
+
+Undismayed by the difficulties which were closing in around him,
+Garrison resolutely set himself to accomplish his purpose touching the
+establishment of a weekly paper devoted to the abolition of slavery. He
+had promised in his _Prospectus_ to issue the first number of the
+_Public Liberator_ "as soon as subscriptions thereto may authorize the
+attempt." But had he waited for the fulfillment of this condition, the
+experiment could never have been tried. When subscribers did not come
+in, the paper, he determined should go forth all the same. But there are
+some things in the publication of a paper which no man can dispense
+with, which indispensable somethings are: types, a press, an office, and
+an assistant. All these requisites were wanting to the man whose sole
+possession seemed an indomitable will, a faith in himself, and in the
+righteousness of his cause, which nothing could shake, nor
+disappointment nor difficulty, however great, was able to daunt or
+deter. To such an unconquerable will, to such an invincible faith
+obstacles vanish; the impossible becomes the attainable. As Garrison
+burned to be about his work, help came to him from a man quite as
+penniless and friendless as himself. The man was Isaac Knapp, an old
+companion of his in Newburyport, who had also worked with him in the
+office of the _Genius_, in Baltimore. He was a practical printer, and
+was precisely the sort of assistant that the young reformer needed at
+this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a man like himself
+acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited capacity for the endurance of
+unlimited hardships. Together they worked out the financial problems
+which blocked the way to the publication of the paper. The partners took
+an office in Merchants' Hall building, then standing on the corner of
+Congress and Water streets, Boston, which gave their joint enterprise a
+local habitation. It had already a name. They obtained the use of types
+in the printing office of the _Christian Examiner_, situated in the same
+building. The foreman, Stephen Foster, through his ardent interest in
+Abolition, made the three first numbers of the paper possible. The
+publishers paid for the use of the types by working during the day at
+the case in the _Examiner's_ office. They got the use of a press from
+another foreman with Abolition sympathies, viz., James B. Yerrington,
+then the printer of the Boston _Daily Advocate_. Thus were obtained the
+four indispensables to the publication of the _Liberator_--types, a
+press, an office, and an assistant.
+
+When at length the offspring of such labor and sacrifices made its
+appearance in the world, which was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point
+of size, insignificant enough. It did not look as if its voice would
+ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it saw the light.
+Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet with four columns to the page,
+measuring fourteen inches one way and nine and a quarter the other, and
+you will get an idea of the diminutiveness of the _Liberator_ on the day
+of its birth. The very paper on which it was printed was procured on
+credit. To the ordinary observer it must have seemed such a weakling as
+was certain to perish from inanition in the first few months of its
+struggle for existence in the world of journalism. It was domiciled
+during successive periods in four different rooms of the Merchant's Hall
+building, until it reached No. 11, "under the eaves," whence it issued
+weekly for many years to call the nation to repentance. A photographic
+impression of this cradle-room of the anti-slavery movement has been
+left by Oliver Johnson, an eye-witness. Says Mr. Johnson: "The dingy
+walls; the small windows, bespattered with printer's ink; the press
+standing in one corner; the composing-stands opposite; the long
+editorial and mailing table, covered with newspapers; the bed of the
+editor and publisher on the floor--all these make a picture never to be
+forgotten." For the first eighteen months the partners toiled fourteen
+hours a day, and subsisted "chiefly upon bread and milk, a few cakes,
+and a little fruit, obtained from a baker's shop opposite, and a petty
+cake and fruit shop in the basement," and, alas, "were on short commons
+even at that." Amid such hard and grinding poverty was the _Liberator_
+born. But the great end of the reformer glorified the mean surroundings:
+
+  "O truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born
+  In the rude stable, in the manger nursed;
+  What humble hands unbar those gates of morn
+  Through which the splendors of the New Day burst."
+
+
+About the brow of this "infant crying in the night," shone aureole-like
+the sunlit legend: _Our country is the world--our countrymen are
+mankind._ The difference between this motto of the _Liberator_ and that
+of the _Free Press_: _Our country, our whole country, and nothing but
+our country_--measures the greatness of the revolution which had taken
+place in the young editor. The grand lesson he had learned, than which
+there is none greater, that beneath diversities of race, color, creed,
+language, there is the one human principle, which makes all men kin. He
+had learned at the age of twenty-five to know the mark of brotherhood
+made by the Deity Himself: "Behold! my brother is man, not because he is
+American or Anglo-Saxon, or white or black, but because he is a
+fellow-man," is the simple, sublime acknowledgment, which thenceforth he
+was to make in his word and life.
+
+It was Mr. Garrison's original design, as we have seen, to publish the
+_Liberator_ from Washington. Lundy had, since the issue of the
+_Prospectus_ for the new paper, removed the _Genius_ to the capital of
+the nation. This move of Lundy rendered the establishment of a second
+paper devoted to the abolition of slavery in the same place, of doubtful
+utility, but, weighty as was this consideration from a mere business
+point of view, in determining Garrison to locate the _Liberator_ in
+another quarter, it was not decisive. Just what was the decisive
+consideration, he reveals in his salutatory address in the _Liberator_.
+Here it is:
+
+"During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the
+people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery," he confides
+to the reader, "every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the
+fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected
+in the free States--_and particularly in New England_--than at the
+South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction
+more relentless; prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than
+among slaveowners themselves. Of course there were individual exceptions
+to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten
+me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of
+emancipation in the eyes of the nation, _within sight of Bunker Hill,
+and in the birthplace of liberty_." This final choice of Boston as a
+base from which to operate against slavery was sagacious, and of the
+greatest moment to the success of the experiment and to its effective
+service to the cause.
+
+If the reformer changed his original intention respecting the place of
+publication for his paper, he made no alteration of his position on the
+subject of slavery. "I shall strenuously contend," he declares in the
+salutatory, "for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population."
+"In Park Street Church," he goes on to add, "on the Fourth of July,
+1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular
+but pernicious doctrine of _gradual_ abolition. I seize this opportunity
+to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask
+pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves,
+for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and
+absurdity."
+
+To those who find fault with his harsh language he makes reply: "I
+_will_ be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this
+subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.
+No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell
+him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell
+the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it
+has fallen--but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the
+present. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I
+will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD." Martin Luther's
+"Here I take my stand," was not braver or grander than the "I will be
+heard," of the American reformer. It did not seem possible that a young
+man, without influence, without money, standing almost alone, could ever
+make good those courageous words. The country, in Church and State, had
+decreed silence on the subject of slavery; the patriotism of the North,
+its commerce, its piety, its labor and capital had all joined hands to
+smother agitation, and stifle the discussion of a question that
+imperilled the peace and durability of Webster's glorious Union. But one
+man, tearing the gag from his lips, defying all these, cried, "Silence,
+there shall not be!" and forthwith the whole land began to talk on the
+forbidden theme:
+
+  "O small beginnings ye are great and strong,
+  Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!
+  Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong.
+  Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+
+THE HEAVY WORLD IS MOVED.
+
+
+Archimedes with his lever desired a place to stand that he might move
+the world of matter. Garrison with his paper, having found a place for
+his feet, demonstrated speedily his ability to push from its solid base
+the world of mind. His plan was very simple, viz., to reveal slavery as
+it then existed in its naked enormity, to the conscience of the North,
+to be "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." And so, week
+after week, he packed in the columns of the _Liberator_ facts, the most
+damning facts, against slaveholders, their cruelty and tyranny. He
+painted the woes of the slaves as if he, too, had been a slave. For the
+first time the masters found a man who rebuked them as not before had
+they been rebuked. Others may have equivocated, but this man called
+things by their proper names, a spade, a spade, and sin, sin. Others may
+have contented themselves with denunciations of the sins and with
+excuses for the sinner, as a creature of circumstances, the victim of
+ancestral transgressions, but this man offered no excuses for the
+slave-holding sinner. Him and his sin he denounced in language, which
+the Eternal puts only into the mouths of His prophets. It was, as he had
+said, "On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with
+moderation." The strength and resources of his mother-tongue seemed to
+him wholly inadequate for his needs, to express the transcendent
+wickedness of slave-holding. All the harsh, the stern, the terrible and
+tremendous energies of the English speech he drew upon, and launched at
+slaveholders. Amid all of this excess of the enthusiast there was the
+method of a calculating mind. He aimed to kindle a conflagration because
+he had icebergs to melt. "The public shall not be imposed upon," he
+replied to one of his critics, "and men and things shall be called by
+their right names. I retract nothing, I blot out nothing. My language is
+exactly such as suits me; it will displease many, I know; to displease
+them is my intention." He was philosopher enough to see that he could
+reach the national conscience only by exciting the national anger. It
+was not popular rage, which he feared but popular apathy. If he could
+goad the people to anger on the subject of slavery he would soon be rid
+of their apathy. And so week after week he piled every sort of
+combustible material, which he was able to collect on board the
+_Liberator_ and lighting it all, sent the fiery messenger blazing among
+the icebergs of the Union. Slaveholders were robbers, murderers,
+oppressors; they were guilty of all the sins of the decalogue, were in a
+word the chief of sinners. At the same moment that the reformer denied
+their right of property in the slave, he attacked their character also,
+held them up in their relation of masters to the reprobation of the
+nation and of mankind as monsters of injustice and inhumanity. The tone
+which he held toward them, steadily, without shadow of change, was the
+tone of a righteous man toward the workers of iniquity. The
+indifference, the apathy, the pro-slavery sympathy and prejudice of the
+free States rendered the people of the North hardly less culpable. They
+were working iniquity with the people of the South. This was the long,
+sharp goad, which the young editor thrust in between the bars of the
+Union and stirred the guilty sections to quick and savage outbursts of
+temper against him and the bitter truths which he preached. Almost
+directly the proofs came to him that he was HEARD at the South and at
+the North alike. Angry growls reached his ears in the first month of the
+publication of the _Liberator_ from some heartless New England editors
+in denunciation of his "violent and intemperate attacks on
+slaveholders." The _Journal_, published at Louisville, Kentucky, and
+edited by George D. Prentice, declared that, "some of his opinions with
+regard to slavery in the United States are no better than lunacy." The
+_American Spectator_ published at the seat of the National Government,
+had hoped that the good sense of the "late talented and persecuted
+junior editor" of the _Genius_, "would erelong withdraw him even from
+the side of the Abolitionists." And from farther South the growl which
+the reformer heard was unmistakably ferocious. It was from the State of
+South Carolina and the Camden _Journal_, which pronounced the
+_Liberator_ "a scandalous and incendiary budget of sedition." These were
+the beginning of the chorus of curses, which soon were to sing their
+serpent songs about his head. Profane and abusive letters from irate
+slaveholders and their Northern sympathisers began to pour into the
+sanctum of the editor. Within a few months after the first issue of the
+_Liberator_ the whole aspect of the world without had changed toward
+him. "Foes are on my right hand, and on my left," he reported to some
+friends. "The tongue of detraction is busy against me. I have no
+communion with the world--the world none with me. The timid, the
+lukewarm, the base, affect to believe that my brains are disordered, and
+my words the ravings of a maniac. Even many of my friends--they who have
+grown up with me from my childhood--are transformed into scoffers and
+enemies." The apathy of the press, and the apathy of the people were
+putting forth signs that the long winter of the land was passing away.
+
+To a colored man belongs the high honor of having been the _courier
+avant_ of the slavery agitation. This man was David Walker, who lived in
+Boston, and who published in 1829 a religio-political discussion of the
+status of the negroes of the United States in four articles. The
+wretchedness of the blacks in consequence of slavery he depicted in dark
+and bitter language. Theodore Parker, many years afterward, said that
+the negro was deficient in vengeance, the lowest form of justice.
+"Walker's Appeal" evinced no deficiency in this respect in its author.
+The pamphlet found its way South, and was the cause of no little
+commotion among the master-class. It was looked upon as an instigation
+to servile insurrection. The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put
+upon the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the sanguinary
+character of the book. For he himself was the very reverse of Walker.
+Garrison was a full believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance
+as enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical collisions of
+every description, as wicked and inhuman. He sang to the slave:
+
+  "Not by the sword shall your deliverance be;
+  Not by the shedding of your master's blood,
+  Not by rebellion--or foul treachery,
+  Upspringing suddenly, like swelling flood;
+  Revenge and rapine ne'er did bring forth good.
+  God's _time is best_!--nor will it long delay;
+  Even now your barren cause begins to bud,
+  And glorious shall the fruit be!--watch and pray,
+  For lo! the kindling dawn that ushers in the day."
+
+
+He considered "Walker's Appeal" "a most injudicious publication, yet
+warranted by the creed of an independent people." He saw in our
+Fourth-of-July demonstrations, in our glorification of force as an
+instrument for achieving liberty, a constant incentive to the slaves to
+go and do likewise. If it was right for the men of 1776 to rise in
+rebellion against their mother-country, it surely could not be wrong
+were the slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and strike for their
+freedom. It certainly did not lie in the mouth of a people, who
+apotheosized force, to condemn them. What was sauce for the white man's
+goose was sauce for the black man's gander.
+
+The South could not distinguish between this sort of reasoning, and an
+express and positive appeal to the slaves to cut the throats of their
+masters. The contents of the _Liberator_ were quite as likely to produce
+a slave insurrection as was "Walker's Appeal," if the paper was allowed
+to circulate freely among the slave population. It was, in fact, more
+dangerous to the lives and interests of slaveholders by virtue of the
+pictorial representation of the barbarism and abomination of the
+peculiar institution, introduced as a feature of the _Liberator_ in its
+seventeenth number, in the shape of a slave auction, where the slaves
+are chattels, and classed with "horses and other cattle," and where the
+tortures of the whipping-post are in vigorous operation. Here was a
+message, which every slave, however ignorant and illiterate could read.
+His instinct would tell him, wherever he saw the pictured horror, that a
+friend, not an enemy, had drawn it, but for what purpose? What was the
+secret meaning, which he was to extract from a portrayal of his woes at
+once so real and terrible. Was it to be a man, to seize the knife, the
+torch, to slay and burn his way to the rights and estate of a man?
+Garrison had put no such bloody import into the cut. It was designed not
+to appeal to the passions of the slaves, but to the conscience of the
+North. But the South did not so read it, was incapable, in fact, of so
+reading it. What it saw was a shockingly realistic representation of the
+wrongs of the slaves, the immediate and inevitable effect of which upon
+the slaves would be to incite them to sedition, to acts of revenge.
+Living as the slaveholders were over mines of powder and dynamite, it is
+not to be marveled at that the first flash of danger filled them with
+apprehension and terror. The awful memories of San Domingo flamed red
+and dreadful against the dark background of every Southern plantation
+and slave community. In the "belly" of the _Liberator's_ picture were
+many San Domingos. Extreme fear is the beginning of madness; it is,
+indeed, a kind of madness. The South was suddenly plunged into a state
+of extreme fear toward which the _Liberator_ and "Walker's Appeal" were
+hurrying it, by one of those strange accidents or coincidences of
+history.
+
+This extraordinary circumstance was the slave insurrection in
+Southampton, Virginia, in the month of August, 1831. The leader of the
+uprising was the now famous Nat Turner. Brooding over the wrongs of his
+race for several years, he conceived that he was the divinely appointed
+agent to redress them. He was cast in the mould of those rude heroes,
+who spring out of the sides of oppression as isolated trees will
+sometimes grow out of clefts in a mountain. With his yearning to deliver
+his people, there mingled not a little religious frenzy and
+superstition. Getting his command from Heaven to arise against the
+masters, he awaited the sign from this same source of the moment for
+beginning the work of destruction. It came at last and on the night of
+August 21st; he and his confederates made a beginning by massacring
+first his own master, Mr. Joseph Travis, and his entire family. Turner's
+policy was remorseless enough. It was to spare no member of the white
+race, whether man, woman, or child, the very infant at the mother's
+breast was doomed to the knife, until he was able to collect such an
+assured force as would secure the success of the enterprise. This
+purpose was executed with terrible severity and exactness. All that
+night the work of extermination went on as the slave leader and his
+followers passed like fate from house to house, and plantation to
+plantation, leaving a wide swathe of death in their track. Terror filled
+the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the
+bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable, horrible. James McDowell, one of
+the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and
+sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke
+out in the Virginia Legislature, during the winter afterward. One of the
+legislators, joined to his idol, and who now, that the peril had passed,
+laughed at the uprising as a "petty affair." McDowell retorted--"Was
+that a 'petty affair,' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of
+the State into a military camp, which outlawed from pity the unfortunate
+beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated
+every bosom with fear or suspicion, which so banished every sense of
+security from every man's dwelling, that let but a hoof or horn break
+upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to
+the heart? The husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would
+shudder and weep upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his
+deluded, drunken handful of followers which produced such effects? Was
+it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of
+Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir, it
+was the _suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,_--a
+suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family, that the same
+bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place, that the
+materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for
+a like explosion."
+
+Sixty one whites and more than a hundred blacks perished in this
+catastrophe. The news produced a profound sensation in the Union.
+Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings. Eight
+months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and
+caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy:
+
+  "Wo, if it come with storm, and blood, and fire,
+  When midnight darkness veils the earth and sky!
+  Wo to the innocent babe--the guilty sire--
+  Mother and daughter--friends of kindred tie!
+  _Stranger and citizen alike shall die!_
+  Red-handed slaughter his revenge shall feed,
+  And havoc yell his ominous death-cry,
+  And wild despair in vain for mercy plead--
+  While hell itself shall shrink and sicken at the deed!"
+
+
+After the Southampton insurrection the slavery agitation increased
+apace, and the _Liberator_ and its editor became instantly objects of
+dangerous notoriety in it. The eyes of the country were irresistibly
+drawn to them. They were at the bottom of the uprising, they were
+instigating the slaves to similar outbreaks. The savage growlings of a
+storm came thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful
+mutterings against the agitator and his paper grew thenceforth more
+distinct and threatening throughout the free States. October 15, 1831,
+Garrison records in the _Liberator_ that he "is constantly receiving
+from the slave States letters filled with the most diabolical threats
+and indecent language." In the same month Georgetown, S.C., in a panic
+made it unlawful for a free colored person to take the _Liberator_ from
+the post-office. In the same month the Charleston _Mercury_ announced
+that "gentlemen of the first respectability" at Columbia had offered a
+reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction of any
+white person circulating the _Liberator_, Walker's pamphlet, "or any
+other publication of seditious tendency." In Georgia the same symptoms
+of fright were exhibited. In the same month the grand jury at Raleigh,
+N.C., indicted William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp for circulating
+the _Liberator_ in that county. It was even confidently expected that a
+requisition would be made by the Executive of the State upon the
+Governor of Massachusetts for their arrest, when they would be tried
+under a law, which made their action felony. "Whipping and imprisonment
+for the first offence, and death, without benefit of clergy, for the
+second." Governor Floyd said in his message to the Virginia Legislature
+in December that there was good cause to suspect that the plans of the
+Southampton massacre were "designed and matured by unrestrained fanatics
+in some of the neighboring States." Governor Hamilton sent to the South
+Carolina Legislature in the same month an excited message on the
+situation. He was in entire accord with the Virginia Executive as to the
+primary and potent agencies which led to the slave uprising in Virginia.
+They were "incendiary newspapers and other publications put forth in the
+non-slave-holding States, and freely circulated within the limits of
+Virginia." As specimens of "incendiary newspapers and other
+publications, put forth in the non-slave-holding States," the South
+Carolina official sent along with his message, copies of the _Liberator_
+and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of Color," for the
+enlightenment of the members of the Legislature. But it remained for
+Georgia to cap the climax of madness when her Legislature resolved:
+
+
+    "That the sum of five thousand dollars be, and the same is
+    hereby appropriated, to be paid to any person or persons who
+    shall arrest, bring to trial and prosecute to conviction, under
+    the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain
+    paper called the _Liberator_, published in the town of Boston
+    and State of Massachusetts; or who shall arrest and bring to
+    trial and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of this State,
+    any other person or persons who shall utter, publish, or
+    circulate within the limits of this State said paper called the
+    _Liberator_, or any other paper, circular, pamphlet, letter, or
+    address of a seditious character."
+
+
+This extraordinary resolve was signed Dec. 26, 1831, by "Wilson Lumpkin,
+Governor." The whole South was in a state of terror. In its insane
+fright it would have made short shrift of the editor of the _Liberator,_
+had he by accident, force, or fraud have fallen into the clutches of its
+laws. The Georgia reward of five thousand dollars was as Mr. Garrison
+put it, "a bribe to kidnappers." The Southern method of dealing with the
+agitation within the slave States was violent and effective. There could
+be no agitation after the agitators were abolished. And the Southern
+method was to abolish the agitators.
+
+The suppression of Abolitionism within the slave States was no difficult
+matter, but its suppression at the North was a problem of a wholly
+different nature, as the South was not long in finding out. It would not
+understand why its violent treatment of the disease within its
+jurisdiction could not be prescribed as a remedy by the
+non-slave-holding half of the Union within its borders. And so the South
+began to call loudly and fiercely for the suppression of a movement
+calculated to incite the slaves to insubordination and rebellion. This
+demand of the South had its influence at the North. Such newspapers as
+the _National Intelligencer,_ and the Boston _Courier_ suggested
+amendments to the laws whereby the publication of incendiary writings in
+the free States might be prohibited. The latter journal allowed that
+under the criminal code of Massachusetts "every man has a right to
+advocate Abolition, or conspiracy, or murder; for he may do all these
+without breaking our laws, although in any Southern State public justice
+and public safety would require his punishment." "But," the editor goes
+on to remark, "if we have no laws upon the subject, it is because the
+exigency was not anticipated.... Penal statutes against treasonable and
+seditious publications are necessary in all communities. We have them
+for our own protection; if they should include provisions for the
+protection of our neighbors it would be no additional encroachment upon
+the liberty of the press." The Governors of Virginia and Georgia
+remonstrated with Harrison Gray Otis, who was Mayor of Boston in the
+memorable year of 1831, "against an incendiary newspaper published in
+Boston, and, as they alleged, thrown broadcast among their plantations,
+inciting to insurrection and its horrid results." As a lawyer Mayor
+Otis, however, "perceived the intrinsic, if not insuperable obstacles to
+legislative enactments made to prevent crimes from being consummated
+beyond the local jurisdiction." But the South was not seeking a legal
+opinion as to what it could or could not do. It demanded, legal or
+illegal, that Garrison and the _Liberator_ be suppressed. To the Boston
+mayor the excitement over the editor and his paper seemed like much ado
+about nothing. The cause appeared to his supercilious mind altogether
+inadequate to the effect. And so he set to work to reduce the panic by
+exposing the vulgarity and insignificance of the object, which produced
+it. That he might give the Southern bugaboo its _quietus_, he directed
+one of his deputies to inquire into a publication, of which "no member
+of the city government, nor any person," of his honor's acquaintance,
+"had ever heard." The result of this inquiry Mayor Otis reported to the
+Southern functionaries.
+
+"Some time afterward," he wrote, "it was reported to me by the city
+officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his
+office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and
+his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors."
+
+With this bare bodkin Harrison Gray Otis thought to puncture the
+Southern panic. But the slaveholders had correcter notions of the nature
+and tendency of the Abolition enterprise than had the Boston mayor. They
+had a strange, an obstinate presentiment of disaster from the first
+instant that the _Liberator_ loomed upon their horizon. It was a battery
+whose guns, unless silenced, would play havoc with Southern interests
+and the slave system; _ergo_, the paper must be suppressed; _ergo_, its
+editor must be silenced or destroyed. And so when Otis, from his serene
+height, assured them of his "belief that the new fanaticism had not
+made, nor was likely to make, proselytes among the respectable classes
+of our people," they continued to listen to their fears, and to cry the
+louder for the suppression of the "incendiary newspaper published in
+Boston."
+
+The editor of that paper never flinched before the storm of malignity
+which was gathering about his head. He pursued the even tenor of his
+way, laboring at the case more than fourteen hours every day, except
+Sundays, upon the paper, renewing, week after week, his assaults upon
+the citadel of the great iniquity, giving no quarter to slave-holding
+sinners, but carrying aloft the banner of IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL
+EMANCIPATION. Otis had looked to numbers and respectability as his
+political barometer and cue; but when, after diligent search with
+official microscopes, he failed to observe the presence of either in
+connection with this "new fanaticism," wise man that he was, he turned
+over and renewed his slumbers on the edge of a volcano whose ominous
+rumbling the Southern heart had heard and interpreted aright. He was too
+near to catch the true import of the detonations of those subterranean
+forces which were sounding, week after week, in the columns of the
+_Liberator_. They seemed trivial, harmless, contemptible, like the toy
+artillery of children bombarding Fort Independence. Garrison's moral
+earnestness and enthusiasm seemed to the Boston mayor like the impotent
+rage of a man nursing memories of personal injuries suffered at the
+South.
+
+If there was panic in the South, there was none in the office of the
+_Liberator_. Unterrified by the commotion which his composing-stick was
+producing near and far, he laughed to scorn the abuse and threats of his
+enemies. When the news of the reward of the State of Georgia "for the
+abduction of his person" reached him, he did not quail, great as was his
+peril, but boldly replied:
+
+"Of one thing we are sure: all Southern threats and rewards will be
+insufficient to deter us from pursuing the work of emancipation. As
+citizens of the United States we know our rights and dare maintain them.
+We have committed no crime, but are expending our health, comfort, and
+means for the salvation of our country, and for the interests and
+security of infatuated slaveholders, as well as for the relief of the
+poor slaves."
+
+Archimedes with his lever had moved the world. Archimedes "in a small
+chamber, unfurnitured and mean," had set a world of pro-slavery passions
+and prejudices spinning away into space:
+
+  "Such earnest natures are the fiery pith,
+  The compact nucleus, 'round which systems grow;
+  Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith,
+  And whirls impregnate with the central glow."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MASTER STROKES.
+
+
+"Help came but slowly" to the reformer. With a single instrument he had
+stirred the nation, as no other man had done, on the slavery question.
+He had thrown the South into widespread excitement, and thawed the
+apathy of the North into widespread attention. He had won an almost
+instant hearing for his cause. But he knew that this was not enough.
+Effective as he had shown the weapon of the press to be, it alone was
+unequal to the conduct of prolonged agitation. And prolonged agitation
+Garrison clearly apprehended was to be the price of abolition. Back of
+him and the _Liberator_ he needed an organized force, coadjutors like
+Aaron and Hur to hold up his arms during the mighty conflict on which he
+had now entered with the slave interests of the country. Those interests
+were organized, and because they were organized they were powerful. The
+sentiment of freedom he determined to organize and to render it thereby
+invincible. To organized wrong he designed to oppose organized right,
+confident that organized right would prevail in the end. He had
+knowledge of the utility of temperance societies in advancing the cause
+of sobriety among the people. He had learned from Lundy how much he had
+relied upon the union of men as anti-slavery helps. Garrison determined
+to summon to his side the powerful agency of an anti-slavery society
+devoted to immediate and unconditional emancipation. He had already made
+converts; he had already a small following. At Julien Hall, on the
+occasion of his first lecture on the subject of slavery, he had secured
+three remarkable men to the movement, viz., Rev. Samuel J. May, then a
+young Unitarian minister, Samuel E. Sewall, a young member of the Bar,
+and A. Bronson Alcott, a sage even in his early manhood. They had all
+promised him aid and comfort in the great task which he had undertaken.
+A little later two others, quite as remarkable as those first three were
+drawn to the reformer's side, and abetted him in the treason to
+iniquity, which he was prosecuting through the columns of the
+_Liberator_ with unrivaled zeal and devotion. These disciples were Ellis
+Grey Loring and David Lee Child. They were a goodly company, were these
+five conspirators, men of intellect and conscience, of high family and
+social connections, of brilliant attainments and splendid promises for
+the future. To this number must be added a sixth, Oliver Johnson, who
+was at the time editing _The Christian Soldier_, disciple of Garrison
+then, and ever after his devoted friend. The early promises of this
+noble half dozen friends of the slave were more than fulfilled in after
+years. Often to the dingy room "under the eaves" in Merchants' Hall they
+climbed to carry aid and comfort to "one poor, unlearned young man," and
+to sit at his feet in this cradle-room of the new movement. It was there
+in communion with the young master that suggestions looking to the
+formation of an anti-slavery society, were doubtless first thrown out.
+
+  "The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean;
+  Yet there the freedom of a race began."
+
+
+It was not all clear sailing for the editor of the _Liberator_ even with
+such choice spirits. They did not always carry aid and comfort to him,
+but differences of opinions sometimes as well. He did not sugar-coat
+enough the bitter truth which he was telling to the nation. Some of them
+would have preferred _The Safety Lamp_ to the _Liberator_ as a title
+less likely to offend the prejudices of many good people. Some again
+objected to the pictorial heading of the paper as an altogether unwise
+proceeding, and positively mischievous. He had the same experience when
+the formation of an Abolition society was under consideration. He was
+confronted with this benevolent aversion to giving offence by calling
+things by their right names. But much as he desired to have his friends
+and followers organized for associated action, where a principle was at
+stake he was with them as with slavery itself absolutely inflexible and
+uncompromising. He was for organizing on the principle of immediate
+emancipation. A few deemed that ground too radical and revolutionary,
+and were for ranging themselves under the banner of Gradualism, thinking
+to draw to their ranks a class of people, who would be repelled by
+Immediatism. But Garrison was unyielding, refused to budge an inch to
+conciliate friend or foe--not even such stanch supporters as were Sewall
+and Loring, who supplied him again and again with money needed to
+continue the publication of the _Liberator_. No, he was right and they
+were wrong, and they, not he, ought accordingly to yield. The contention
+between the leader and his disciples was not what was expedient, but
+what was right. It was on the part of the leader the assertion of a
+vital principle, and on this ground he was pledged against retreat. The
+mountain could not go to Mahomet, therefore Mahomet must needs go to the
+mountain. Garrison could not abandon his position, wherefore in due time
+Loring, Child, and Sewall surrendered theirs. Finely has Lowell
+expressed this righteous stubbornness, and steadfastness to principle in
+three stanzas of his poem entitled, "The Day of Small Things," and which
+have such an obvious lesson for our own times that I shall venture to
+quote them in this place:
+
+
+  "Who is it will not dare himself to trust?
+  Who is it hath not strength to stand alone?
+  Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST?
+  He and his works, like sand from earth are blown.
+
+
+  "Men of a thousand shifts and wiles look here!
+  See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
+  To win a world! See the obedient sphere
+  By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!
+
+
+  "Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
+  And by the Present's lips repeated still,
+  In our own single manhood to be bold,
+  Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"
+
+
+The history of the making of this first society is an interesting story.
+There were four meetings in all before it was found possible to complete
+the work of its organization. These meetings extended over a space of
+nearly three months, so obstinate were a minority against committing the
+proposed society to the principle of immediate emancipation. The very
+name which was to be given to the association provoked debate and
+disagreement. Some were for christening it "Philo-African," while
+Garrison would no such milk-and-water title, but one which expressed
+distinctly and graphically the real character of the organization, viz.,
+"New England Anti-Slavery Society." He would sail under no false or
+neutral colors, but beneath the red flag of open and determined
+hostility to slavery. It should be a sign which no one could possibly
+mistake. The first meeting was held at the office of Samuel E. Sewall,
+November 13, 1831. At the third meeting, convened New Year's evening of
+1832, which was the first anniversary of the publication of the
+_Liberator_, the work of organization was finished, with a single
+important exception, viz., the adoption of the preamble to the
+constitution. The character of the preamble would fix the character of
+the society. Therefore that which was properly first was made to come
+last. The fourth meeting took place on the night of January 6th in the
+African Baptist Church on what was then Belknap but now known as Joy
+street. The young leader and fourteen of his followers met that evening
+in the school-room for colored children, situated under the auditorium
+of the church. They could hardly have fallen upon a more obscure or
+despised place for the consummation of their enterprise in the city of
+Boston than was this selfsame negro church and school-room. The weather
+added an ever memorable night to the opprobrium of the spot. A fierce
+northeaster accompanied with "snow, rain, and hail in equal proportions"
+was roaring and careering through the city's streets. To an eye-witness,
+Oliver Johnson, "it almost seemed as if Nature was frowning upon the new
+effort to abolish slavery; but," he added, "the spirits of the little
+company rose superior to all external circumstances."
+
+If there was strife of the elements without, neither was there sweet
+accord within among brethren. "The spirits of the little company" may
+have risen superior to the weather, but they did not rise superior to
+the preamble, with the principle of immediatism incorporated in it.
+Eleven stood by the leader and made it the chief of the corner of the
+new society, while three, Messrs. Loring, Sewall, and Child, refused to
+sign the Constitution and parted sorrowfully from the small band of the
+New England Anti-Slavery Society. But the separation was only temporary,
+for each returned to the side of the reformer, and proved his loyalty
+and valor in the trying years which followed.
+
+The preamble which was the bone of so much contention declared that:
+"We, the undersigned, hold that every person, of full age and sane mind,
+has a right to immediate freedom from personal bondage of whatsoever
+kind, unless imposed by the sentence of the law for the commission of
+some crime. We hold that man cannot, consistently with reason, religion,
+and the eternal and immutable principles of justice, be the property of
+man. We hold that whoever retains his fellow-man in bondage is guilty of
+a grievous wrong. We hold that a mere difference of complexion is no
+reason why any man should be deprived of any of his natural rights, or
+subjected to any political disability. While we advance these opinions
+as the principles on which we intend to act, we declare that we will not
+operate on the existing relations of society by other than peaceful and
+lawful means, and that we will give no countenance to violence or
+insurrection."
+
+Twelve, the apostolic number, affixed to the preamble and constitution
+their names, and thus formed the first Garrisonian Society for the
+abolition of slavery in the United States. The names of these apostolic
+men it is well to keep in mind. They are William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver
+Johnson, Robert B. Hall, Arnold Buffum, William J. Snelling, John E.
+Fuller, Moses Thatcher, Joshua Coffin, Stillman B. Newcomb, Benjamin C.
+Bacon, Isaac Knapp, and Henry K. Stockton. The band of reformers, their
+work done, had risen to pass out of the low, rude room into the dark
+night. The storm was still raging. They themselves had perchance been
+sobered by the experiences of the evening. They had gone in fifteen,
+they were returning twelve. And, after all, what had they accomplished?
+What could they a mere handful do to abolish slavery entrenched as it
+was in Church and State? It is possible that some such dim
+discouragement, some such vague misgiving of the futility of the
+evening's labor, was in the hearts of those wearied men, and that their
+leader divined as much, for the spirit of prophecy fell upon Garrison
+just as they "were stepping out into the storm and darkness." "We have
+met to-night," he said, "in this obscure school-house; our numbers are
+few and our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall
+shall erelong echo with the principles we have set forth. We shall shake
+the nation by their mighty power." Then the little band dispersed "into
+the storm and darkness," carrying with them these words charged with
+hope and courage.
+
+The fruitful seed of organized agitation Garrison had securely planted
+in soil fertile and ready for its reception. Its growth constitutes one
+of the marvels of reforms. Within a few brief years it multiplied into
+hundreds and thousands of societies throughout the free States. But its
+beginnings were small and humble enough. "The objects of the society"
+were according to the second article of the constitution, "to endeavor
+by all means sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion, to effect the
+abolition of slavery in the United States, to improve the character and
+condition of the free people of color, to inform and correct public
+opinion in relation to their situation and rights, and to obtain for
+them equal civil and political rights and privileges with the whites."
+The means which were immediately adopted by the society for the
+accomplishment of these objects were mainly three, than which none
+others could have been more effective. These were petitioning Congress
+on the subject of slavery. The publication and circulation of
+anti-slavery addresses and tracts, and the employment of anti-slavery
+agents, "in obtaining or communicating intelligence, in the publication
+and distribution of tracts, books, or papers, or in the execution of any
+measure which may be adopted to promote the objects of the society."
+Such was the simple but unequaled machinery which the New England
+Anti-Slavery Society relied upon for success in the war, which it had
+declared against American slavery. The executive power of the body, and
+the operation of its machinery were lodged in a board of managers of
+which Garrison's was the leading, originating mind. The society started
+out bravely in the use of its means by memorializing Congress for the
+abolition of slavery, "in the District of Columbia and in the
+Territories of the United States under their jurisdiction," and by
+preparing and distributing an address in maintenance of the doctrine of
+immediate emancipation. The board of managers set the machinery in
+motion as far and as fast as the extremely limited pecuniary ability of
+the society would permit. The membership was not from the rich classes.
+It was Oliver Johnson who wittily remarked that not more than one or two
+of the original twelve, "could have put a hundred dollars into the
+treasury without bankrupting themselves." The remark was true, and was
+quite as applicable to any dozen of the new-comers as to the original
+twelve. The society was never deficient in zeal, but it was certainly
+sadly wanting in money. And money was even to such men and to such a
+movement an important factor in revolutionizing public opinion.
+
+The _Liberator_ was made the official organ of the society, and in this
+way was added to its other weapons that of the press. This was a capital
+arrangement, for by it both the paper and the society were placed under
+the direction of the same masterly guidance. There was still one arrow
+left in the moral quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of
+the people, and that was the appointment of an agent to spread the
+doctrines of the new propaganda of freedom. In August the board of
+managers, metaphorically speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison
+the agent of the society to lecture on the subject of slavery "for a
+period not exceeding three months." This was the first drop from a cloud
+then no bigger than a hand, but which was to grow and spread until,
+covering the North, was, at the end of a few short years, to flood the
+land with anti-slavery agents and lecturers.
+
+Our anti-slavery agent visited portions of Massachusetts, Maine, and
+Rhode Island, preaching the Abolition gospel in divers places, and to
+many people--notably at such centers of population as Worcester,
+Providence, Bangor, and Portland, making at the latter city a signal
+conversion to his cause in the person of General Samuel Fessenden,
+distinguished then as a lawyer, and later as the father of William Pitt
+Fessenden. The anti-slavery schoolmaster was abroad, and was beginning
+to turn New England and the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where
+he sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the forms.
+
+So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the society during the
+first year of its existence that it was no empty declaration or boast of
+the _Abolitionist_, the new monthly periodical of the society, that
+"probably, through its instrumentality, more public addresses on the
+subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people
+of color, have been made in New England, during the past year (1832)
+than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization."
+
+The introduction of the principle of association into the slavery
+agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an
+achievement of the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any man,
+or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense
+initiative. He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged
+the method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling of the
+anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a
+common cause, was a master stroke of moral generalship. This master
+stroke the leader followed up promptly with a second stroke not less
+masterly. That second stroke was his "Thoughts on African Colonization,"
+published in the summer succeeding the formation of the New England
+Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+Garrison's championship of the cause of the slave had started with
+strong faith in the efficacy and disinterestedness of the colonization
+scheme as an instrument of emancipation. It commanded, therefore, his
+early support. In his Park Street Church address he evinced himself in
+earnest sympathy with the friends of colonization. But after his arrival
+in Baltimore a change began to exhibit itself in this regard. He began
+to qualify his confidence in its utility; began to discern in it
+influences calculated to retard general emancipation. As these doubts
+and misgivings arose within him he expressed them frankly in the
+_Genius_. Lundy had been suspicious of the pro-slavery purposes or
+interests of the enterprise for many years. He could not reconcile
+himself to the significant or, at least, singular fact of so many
+slaveholders being in the membership and the offices of the association.
+Then, in addition to this lack of confidence on the part of Lundy in the
+scheme, Garrison became acquainted, for the first time, with the objects
+of the society's philanthropy--the class of free people of color. He
+found that these people were not at all well affected to the society;
+that they had no appreciation of its benevolent intentions in respect to
+themselves. He found, on the contrary, that they were positively
+embittered toward it and toward its designs for their removal from the
+country as toward their worst enemy. This circumstance was undoubtedly a
+poser to their young friend. How could he reconcile this deep-seated and
+widespread disbelief in the purity of the motives of the Colonization
+Society, with the simple integrity and humanity of the enterprise
+itself? Later, his acquaintance with such representatives of the free
+people of color in Philadelphia as James Forten and his son-in-law,
+Robert Purvis, served but to confirm those first impressions which he
+received in Baltimore from the Watkinses and the Greeners. It was the
+same experience in New York and New Haven, in Boston and Providence. He
+learned that from the very beginning, in the year 1817, that the free
+people of color in Richmond and Philadelphia had, by an instinctive
+knowledge of threatened wrong and danger, met and resolved against the
+society and its sinister designs upon themselves. These people did not
+wish to leave the country; they did not wish to be sent to Liberia; but
+the society, bent on doing them good against their will, did want them
+to leave the country, did want to send them to Liberia.
+
+And why did the society desire to remove the free people of color out of
+the country? Was it from motives of real philanthropy? The colored
+people were the first to detect its spurious humanity, the first to see
+through the artful disguises employed to impose upon the conscience of
+the republic. Their removal, they intuitively divined, was proposed not
+to do their race a benefit, but rather to do a service to the owners of
+slaves. These objects of the society's pseudo-philanthropy had the
+sagacity to perceive that, practically, their expatriation tended to
+strengthen the chains of their brethren then in slavery; for if the
+South could get rid of its free colored population, its slave property
+would thereby acquire additional security, and, of consequence,
+increased market value. Like cause, like effect. If the operation of the
+colonization scheme was decidedly in the interest of the masters, it was
+the part of wisdom to conclude as the free colored people did actually
+conclude that the underlying motive, the hidden purpose of the society
+was also in the interest of the masters.
+
+Garrison did not reach his conclusions as to the pro-slavery character
+and tendency of the society abruptly. The scales fell away gradually
+from his eyes. He was not completely undeceived until he had examined
+the reports of the society and found in them the most redundant evidence
+of its insincerity and guilt. It was out of its own mouth that he
+condemned it. When he saw the society in its true character, he saw what
+he must do. It was a wolf in sheep's skin running at large among the
+good shepherd's flock, and inflicting infinite hurt upon his poor sheep.
+He no longer wondered at the horror which the colonization scheme
+inspired among the free people of color. They were right. The society
+was their dangerous and determined enemy; it was the bulwark of the
+slave-holding classes. With the instinct of a great purpose he resolved
+to carry this powerful bulwark of slavery by assault. To the attack he
+returned week after week in the _Liberator_, during a year and a half.
+Then he hurled himself upon it with all his guns, facts, arguments,
+denunciations, blowing away and burning up every shred of false covering
+from the doctrines, principles, and purposes of the society, revealing
+it to mankind in its base and monstrous character.
+
+The society's one motive "to get rid of the free people of color," was
+outrageous enough, but this was not its only sin. There was another
+phase to the mischief it was working, which lifted it to the rank of a
+great sinner. It was not only harmful in its principles and purposes.
+"It imperatively and effectually seals up the lips," so Garrison accused
+it, "of a vast number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of
+giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they associate, and
+thereby leading to a dissolution of the compact, dare not expose the
+flagrant enormities of the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of
+holding human beings in bondage. They dare not lead to the onset against
+the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall
+the victory be won? I do not mean to aver that in their sermons, or
+addresses, or private conversations, they never allude to the subject of
+slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July.
+But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing
+slavery as an evil--a misfortune--a calamity which has been entailed
+upon us by former generations,--_and not as an individual_ CRIME,
+embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. _They
+do not identify the criminal_; they make no direct, pungent, earnest
+appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but
+it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced
+to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable.
+
+Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright described the baleful
+influence of the society upon the humanity and philanthropy of the
+nation. "The humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could not
+otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced into an African
+Colonization Society, whereby all slaves who had grown seditious and
+troublesome to their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous
+African coast. That this wretched and seemingly transparent humbug could
+have deluded anybody, must now seem past belief; but I must with shame
+confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it. And that fact would
+put me in doubt of my own sanity at the time if I did not know that high
+statesmen, presidents of colleges, able editors, and that most undoubted
+of firm philanthropists, Gerritt Smith, shared the same delusion. Bible
+and missionary societies fellowshipped that mean and scurvy device of
+the kidnapper, in their holy work. It was spoken of as the most glorious
+of Christian enterprises, had a monthly magazine devoted to itself, and
+taxed about every pulpit in the land for an annual sermon in its favor."
+
+Such was the Colonization Society, and its entrenched strength in the
+piety and philanthropy of the country at the moment when Garrison
+published his "Thoughts." It did not seem possible that a single arm
+however powerful, was able to start its roots; but, directly upon the
+launching of this bolt, the roots of the Bohun Upas, as Garrison
+graphically designated the society, were seen to have started, and the
+enterprise appeared blasted as by fire. The deluded intellect and
+conscience of the free States saw in the fierce light, which the
+pamphlet of the reformer threw upon the colonization scheme how
+shamefully imposed upon they had been. They had believed the society
+"the most glorious of Christian enterprises," and, lo! it stood revealed
+to them a "scurvy device of the kidnapper." The effect was
+extraordinary. The book was seized and its contents devoured by some of
+the finest minds of the North. Here is an example of the interest which
+it excited and the converts which it made: "Last Monday evening was our
+Law Club meeting, and I had the great satisfaction of hearing Judge
+Mellen, our Chief-Justice, say he had read your 'Thoughts,' was a
+thorough convert to your views, and was ready to do all in his power to
+promote them. Mr. Longfellow [father of Henry W. Longfellow] was present
+also, and with equal warmth and clearness expressed himself also in
+favor of your views. This is getting the two first men in the State for
+talents and influence in benevolent effort. I have no doubt they will
+head the list of those who will subscribe to form here an anti-slavery
+society. Mr. Greenleaf [Simon] also, will cordially come in, and I need
+not say he is one of the first [men] in the State, for his character is
+known." This quotation is made from a letter of General Samuel
+Fessenden, of Portland, Me., to Mr. Garrison, dated December 14, 1832.
+Among the remarkable minds which the "Thoughts" disillusioned in respect
+of the character and tendency of the Colonization Society were Theodore
+D. Weld, Elizur Wright, and Beriah Green, N.P. Rogers, William Goodell,
+Joshua Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Lewis Tappan, and James Miller McKim.
+
+Garrison's assertion that "the overthrow of the Colonization Society was
+the overthrow of slavery itself," was, from the standpoint of a student
+of history, an exaggerated one. We know now that the claim was not
+founded on fact, that while they did stand together they did not fall
+together. But the position was, nevertheless, the strongest possible one
+for the anti-slavery movement to occupy at the time. In the disposition
+of the pro-slavery forces on the field of the opening conflict in 1832,
+the colonization scheme commanded the important approaches to the
+citadel of the peculiar institution. It cut off the passes to public
+opinion, and to the religious and benevolent influences of the land. To
+reach these it was necessary in the first place to dislodge the society
+from its coign of vantage, its strategical point in the agitation. And
+this is precisely what "The Thoughts on African Colonization" did. It
+dislodged the society from its powerful place in the moral sentiment of
+the North. The capture of this position was like the capture of a
+drawbridge, and the precipitation of the assaulting column directly upon
+the walls of a besieged castle. Within the pamphlet was contained the
+whole tremendous enginery of demolition. The anti-slavery agent and
+lecturer thenceforth set it up wherever he spoke.
+
+To him it was not only the catapult; it furnished the missile-like facts
+and arguments for breaching the walls of this pro-slavery stronghold as
+well.
+
+The effect of the publication of "The Thoughts" in this country was
+extraordinary, but the result of their circulation in England was hardly
+less so. It produced there as here a revolution in public sentiment upon
+the subject. The philanthropy and piety of Great Britain had generally
+prior to the unmasking of the society, looked upon it as an instrument
+of Emancipation, and had accordingly given it their powerful
+countenance, and not a little material support. But from the moment that
+the pamphlet reached England a decided change in this regard became
+manifest. The society made fruitless attempts to break the force of the
+blow dealt it by Garrison in the United States. But wherever its
+emissaries traveled "The Thoughts" confronted and confounded them. So
+that Mr. Garrison was warranted in saying that "all that sophistry or
+misrepresentation could effect to overthrow its integrity has been
+attempted in vain. The work, as a whole, stands irrefutable." The
+attempts made to maintain its hold upon the British public were
+characterized by duplicity and misrepresentation beyond anything
+practiced in America. The work of deceiving the philanthropy of Great
+Britain was conducted by the emissary of the society, Elliott Cresson, a
+man perfectly fitted to perform his part with remarkable thoroughness
+and industry. Three thousand miles away from America, and practically
+secure from contradiction, he went about making outrageous statements as
+to the anti-slavery character and purpose of the colonization
+enterprise. As there was no one in England sufficiently acquainted with
+the operations and designs of the society, he was enabled to falsify
+facts, to conceal the real principles of the scheme with astonishing
+audacity and activity. He approached Wilberforce, and duped Clarkson
+into a belief in the anti-slavery aim of the society.
+
+Unmasked in America, the time had come when the interests of the
+Abolition movement on this side of the Atlantic required that it should
+be stripped of its disguises on the other side also. No better
+instrument could be selected for this purpose than the man who had torn
+the mask from its features in the United States. And so in March, 1833,
+the Board of Managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society notified
+the public of the appointment of "William Lloyd Garrison as their agent,
+and that he would proceed to England as soon as the necessary
+arrangements can be made, for the purpose of procuring funds to aid in
+the establishment of the proposed MANUAL LABOR SCHOOL FOR COLORED YOUTH,
+and of disseminating in that country the truth in relation to American
+slavery, and to its ally, the American Colonization Society." The
+managers offered in justification of their step the fact that "Elliott
+Cresson is now in England as an agent for the Colonization Society, and
+that he has procured funds to a considerable amount by representing that
+the object of the society is 'to assist in the emancipation of all the
+slaves now in the United States.' It is important that the
+philanthropists of that country should be undeceived, and that the real
+principles and designs of the Colonization Society should be there made
+known."
+
+In pursuance of this mission Garrison sailed from New York, May 2, 1833.
+Twenty days later he landed in Liverpool. His arrival was opportune, for
+all England was watching the closing scene in the drama of West India
+Emancipation. He was an eye-witness of the crowning triumph of the
+English Abolitionists, viz., the breaking by Act of Parliament of the
+fetters of eight hundred thousand slaves. He was in time to greet his
+great spiritual kinsman, William Wilberforce, and to undeceive him in
+respect of the Colonization Society, before death claimed his body, and
+to follow him to his last resting-place by the side of Pitt and Fox, in
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+A highly interesting incident of this visit is best told in Mr.
+Garrison's own words. He said:
+
+"On arriving in London I received a polite invitation by letter from Mr.
+Buxton to take breakfast with him. Presenting myself at the appointed
+time, when my name was announced, instead of coming forward promptly to
+take me by the hand, he scrutinized me from head to foot, and then
+inquired, 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Garrison, of Boston, in
+the United States?' 'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I am he; and I am here in
+accordance with your invitation.' Lifting up his hands he exclaimed,
+'Why, my dear sir, I thought you were a black man! And I have
+consequently invited this company of ladies and gentlemen to be present
+to welcome Mr. Garrison, the black advocate of emancipation, from the
+United States of America.' I have often said that that is the only
+compliment I have ever had paid to me that I care to remember or to tell
+of! For Mr. Buxton had somehow or other supposed that no white American
+could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and therefore I must be
+black!"
+
+Garrison promptly threw down his challenge to Elliott Cresson, offering
+to prove him an impostor and the Colonization Society "corrupt in its
+principles, proscriptive in its measures, and the worst enemy of the
+free colored and slave population of the United States." From the first
+it was apparent that Cresson did not mean to encounter the author of the
+"Thoughts" in public debate. Even a mouse when cornered will show fight,
+but there was no manly fight in Cresson. Garrison sent him a letter
+containing seven grave charges against his society, and dared him to a
+refutation of them in a joint discussion. This challenge was presented
+four times before the agent of colonization could be persuaded to accept
+it. Garrison was bent on a joint public discussion between himself and
+Mr. Cresson. But Mr. Cresson was bent on avoiding his opponent. He
+skulked under one pretext or another from vindicating the colonization
+scheme from the seven-headed indictment preferred against it by the
+agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. As Cresson could not be
+driven into a joint discussion with him there was nothing left to
+Garrison but to go on without him. His arraignment and exposure of the
+society in public and private was thorough and overwhelming. He was
+indefatigable in the prosecution of this part of his mission. And his
+labor was not in vain. For in less than three months after his reaching
+England he had rendered the Colonization Society as odious there as his
+"Thoughts" had made it in America. The great body of the anti-slavery
+sentiment in Great Britain promptly condemned the spirit and object of
+the American Colonization Society. Such leaders as Buxton and Cropper
+"termed its objects _diabolical_;" while Zachary Macaulay, father of the
+historian, did not doubt that "the unchristian prejudice of color (which
+alone has given birth to the Colonization Society, though varnished over
+with other more plausible pretences, and veiled under a profession of a
+Christian regard for the temporal and spiritual interests of the negro
+which is belied by the whole course of its reasonings and the spirit of
+its measures) is so detestable in itself that I think it ought not to be
+tolerated, but, on the contrary, ought to be denounced and opposed by
+all humane, and especially by all pious persons in this country."
+
+The protest against the Colonization Society "signed by Wilberforce and
+eleven of the most distinguished Abolitionists in Great Britain,"
+including Buxton, Macaulay, Cropper, and Daniel O'Connell, showed how
+thoroughly Garrison had accomplished his mission. The protest declares,
+thanks to the teachings of the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery
+Society, that the colonization scheme "takes its roots from a cruel
+prejudice and alienation in the whites of America against the colored
+people, slave or free. This being its source the effects are what might
+be expected; that it fosters and increases the spirit of caste, already
+so unhappily predominant; that it widens the breach between the two
+races--exposes the colored people to great practical persecution, in
+order to _force_ them to emigrate; and, finally, is calculated to
+swallow up and divert that feeling which America, as a Christian and
+free country, cannot but entertain, that slavery is alike incompatible
+with the law of God and with the well-being of man, whether the enslaver
+or the enslaved." The solemn conclusion of the illustrious signers of
+this mighty protest was that: "That society is, in our estimation, not
+deserving of the countenance of the British public." This powerful
+instrument fell, as Garrison wrote at the time, "like a thunderbolt upon
+the society." The damage inflicted upon it was immense, irreparable. The
+name of Thomas Clarkson was conspicuous by its absence from the protest.
+He could not be induced to take positive ground against the society.
+Garrison had visited him for this purpose. But the venerable
+philanthropist, who was then blind, had taken position on _neutral
+ground_, and could not, after an interview of four hours, be induced to
+abandon it. But, fortunately, potent as the name of Clarkson would have
+been in opposition to the society, it was not indispensable to its
+overthrow in Great Britain. Garrison had won to his side "all the
+staunch anti-slavery spirits," while Cresson was able to retain only "a
+few titled, wealthy, high-pretending individuals."
+
+The success of the mission was signal, its service to the movement
+against slavery in America manifold. Garrison writing from London to the
+board of managers, summarized the results produced by it as follows:
+"1st, awakening a general interest among the friends of emancipation in
+this country, and securing their efficient coöperation with us in the
+abolition of slavery in the United States; 2d, dispelling the mists with
+which the agent of the American Colonization Society has blinded the
+eyes of benevolent men in relation to the design and tendency of the
+society; 3d, enlisting able and eloquent advocates to plead our cause;
+4th, inducing editors of periodicals and able writers to give us the
+weight of their influence; 5th, exciting a spirit of emulation in the
+redemption of our slave population among the numerous female
+anti-slavery societies; 6th, procuring a large collection of
+anti-slavery documents, tracts, pamphlets, and volumes, which will
+furnish us with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition." These were
+indeed some of the grand results of laborious weeks. His mission was
+ended. He was profoundly grateful to the good God for its success. The
+great movement which he had started against oppression in his own
+country was awaiting his aggressive leadership. He did not tarry abroad,
+therefore, but set sail from London August 18, 1833, for New York, where
+he landed six weeks later.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+COLORPHOBIA
+
+
+Garrison's Abolitionism was of the most radical character. It went the
+whole length of the humanity of the colored race, and all that that
+implied. They were, the meanest members, whether bond or free, his
+brothers and his sisters. From the first he regarded them as bone of his
+bone and blood of his blood, as children with him of a common father.
+Poor and enslaved and despised to be sure, wronged by all men, and
+contemned by all men, but for that very reason they were deserving of
+his most devoted love and labor. He never looked down upon them as
+wanting in any essential respect the manhood which was his. They were
+men and as such entitled to immediate emancipation. They were besides
+entitled to equality of civil and political rights in the republic,
+entitled to equality and fraternity in the church, equality and
+fraternity at the North, equality and fraternity always and everywhere.
+This is what he preached, this is what he practiced. In not a single
+particular was he ever found separating himself from his brother in
+black, saying to him "thus far but no farther." He never drew the line
+in public or private between him and the people whose cause was his
+cause--not even socially. He went into their homes and was in all things
+one with them. He forgot that he was white, forgot that they were black,
+forgot the pride of race, forgot the stigma of race too in the tie of
+human kinship which bound him to them. If he had what they did not
+possess, the rights of a man, the civil and political position of a man
+in the State, the equality of a brother in the church, it could not make
+him feel better than they, it filled him instead with a righteous sense
+of wrong, a passionate sympathy, a supreme desire and determination to
+make his own rights the measure of theirs.
+
+"I lose sight of your present situation," he said in his address before
+Free People of Color, "and look at it only in futurity. I imagine myself
+surrounded by educated men of color, the Websters, and Clays, and
+Hamiltons, and Dwights, and Edwardses of the day. I listen to their
+voice as judges and representatives, and rulers of the people--the whole
+people." This glowing vision was not the handiwork of a rhetorician
+writing with an eye to its effect upon his hearers. The ardent hope of
+the reformer was rather the father of the golden dream.
+
+This practical recognition of the negro as a man and a brother was the
+exact opposite of the treatment which was his terrible lot in the
+country. Never in all history was there a race more shamefully oppressed
+by a dominant race than were the blacks by the whites of America. Held
+as slaves in the South, they were stamped as social outcasts at the
+North. There was no one, however mean or vicious, who if he possessed a
+white skin, was not treated more humanely than were they. In the most
+enlightened of the free States they were discriminated against by public
+laws and proscribed by public opinion. They were in a word pariahs of
+the republic. They were shut out from all the common rights, and
+privileges and opportunities enjoyed by the lowest of the favored race.
+They were denied equality in the public school. The principle of popular
+education had no application to a class which was not of the people, a
+class which the common sentiment of a Christian nation had placed at the
+zero point of political values, and meant to keep forever at that point.
+Entrance to the trades were barred to the blacks. What did they want
+with such things where there was no white trash so forgetful of his
+superiority as to consent to work by their side. Nowhere were they
+allowed the same traveling accommodations as white men, and they were
+everywhere excluded from public inns. Neither wealth nor refinement was
+able to procure them admission into other than "Jim Crow cars." If
+heart-sick at the outrages by every one heaped upon them they turned for
+consolation to the house of God, even there the spirit of proscription
+and caste prejudice met them, and pointed to the "negro pew" where they
+sat corraled from the congregation as if they had no equal share in the
+salvation which the pulpit preached. Everywhere the white man had the
+right of way, even on the highway to heaven! And in no place was the
+negro made to feel the prejudice against his color more gallingly than
+in churches arrogating the name of Christian. He had no rights on earth,
+he had none in trying to get into the bosom of the founder of
+Christianity, which the white sinners or saints were bound to respect.
+Even the liberty-loving Quakers of Philadelphia were not above the use
+of the "negro seat" in their meetings. Somehow they discerned that there
+was a great gulf separating in this life at least the white from the
+black believer. That God had made of one blood all nations of men, St.
+Paul had taught, but the American church had with one accord in practice
+drawn the line at the poor despised colored man. He was excluded from
+ecclesiastical equality, for he was different from other men for whom
+Christ died. The Bible declared that man was made but a little lower
+than the angels; the American people in their State and Church
+supplemented this sentiment by acts which plainly said that the negro
+was made but a little above the brute creation.
+
+Here are instances of the length to which the prejudice against color
+carried the churches in those early years of the anti-slavery movement:
+
+In 1830, a colored man, through a business transaction with a lessee of
+one of the pews in Park Street Church, came into possession of it.
+Thinking to make the best use of his opportunity to obtain religious
+instruction for himself and family from this fountain of orthodoxy, the
+black pew-holder betook him, one Sunday, to "Brimstone Corner." But he
+was never permitted to repeat the visit. "Brimstone Corner" could not
+stand him another Lord's day, and thereupon promptly expelled him and
+his family out of its midst. The good deacons displayed their capacity
+for shielding their flock from consorting with "niggers," by availing
+themselves of a technicality to relet the pew to a member who was not
+cursed with a dark skin. On another Lord's day, in another stronghold of
+Boston Christianity, Oliver Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns
+of a large number of the congregation" for daring to take a
+fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his own into his pew, to
+listen to Dr. Beecher. The good people of the old Baptist meeting-house,
+at Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing the
+heavenly calm of their religious devotions by so much as a thought of
+believers with black faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front
+and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they secured themselves
+from a sight of the obnoxious creatures, while Jehovah, who is no
+respecter of persons, was in His holy place. Incredible as it may seem,
+a church in the town of Stoughton, Mass., to rid itself of even a
+semblance of Christian fellowship and equality with a colored member,
+did actually cut the floor from under the colored member's pew!
+
+These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the churches affected
+Garrison in the most painful manner. He says:
+
+"I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren
+without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation,
+and sorrow."
+
+He had such an intimate acquaintance with members of this despised caste
+in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply
+their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt
+their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that
+beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he
+knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American
+prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to
+Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much
+of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:
+
+"I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to see what I saw, to hear
+what I heard, and to experience what I felt in associating with many
+colored families. There are colored men and women, young men and young
+ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral
+worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration
+and praise."
+
+Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits and advancement, the
+free people of color received nothing but disparagement and contempt
+from eminent divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries of the
+Colonization Society. They were "the most abandoned wretches on the face
+of the earth"; they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous";
+they were "more degraded and miserable than the slaves," and _ad
+infinitum_ through the whole gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was
+human for the American people to hate a class whom they had so deeply
+wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious
+treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said
+class. That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the
+moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.
+
+Garrison's vindication of the free people of color in Exeter Hall,
+London, on July 13, 1833, from this sort of detraction and villification
+is of historic value:
+
+"Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind
+to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people.
+Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light
+of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their
+number are in the most affluent circumstances, and distinguished for
+their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing
+churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of
+the land, embracing a large body of the truly excellent of the earth.
+They have public and private libraries. They have their temperance
+societies, their debating societies, their moral societies, their
+literary societies, their benevolent societies, their saving societies,
+and a multitude of kindred associations. They have their infant schools,
+their primary and high schools, their sabbath schools, and their Bible
+classes. They contribute to the support of foreign and domestic missions
+to Bible and tract societies, etc. In the city of Philadelphia alone
+they have more than fifty associations for moral and intellectual
+improvement. In fact, they are rising up, even with mountains of
+prejudice piled upon them, with more than Titanic strength, and
+trampling beneath their feet the slanders of their enemies. A spirit of
+virtuous emulation is pervading their ranks, from the young child to the
+gray head. Among them is taken a large number of daily and weekly
+newspapers, and of literary and scientific periodicals, from the popular
+monthlies up to the grave and erudite _North American_ and _American
+Quarterly Reviews_. I have at this moment, to my own paper, the
+_Liberator_, one thousand subscribers among this people; and, from an
+occupancy of the editorial chair for more than seven years, I can
+testify that they are more punctual in their payments than any five
+hundred white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately in
+my subscription book."
+
+There was an earnest desire on the part of the free people of color to
+raise the level of their class in the Union. At a convention held by
+them in Philadelphia, in 1831, they resolved upon a measure calculated
+to make up, to some extent, the deprivations which their children were
+suffering by being excluded from the higher schools of learning in the
+land. So they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor
+system for the education of colored youth. They appealed for aid to
+their benevolent friends, and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build
+their institution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence, "purchased
+several acres of land, in the southerly part of the city, and made
+arrangements for the erection of a suitable building, and furnishing it
+with needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city and country."
+
+The school, however, was never established owing to the violent
+hostility of the citizens, who with the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common
+Council resolved in public meeting to "_resist_ the establishment of the
+proposed college in this place by every lawful means."
+
+The free people of color were derided because of their ignorance by
+their persecutors, but when they and their friends proposed a plan to
+reduce that ignorance, their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution.
+New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied in the Colonization
+Society, were not bent on the education of this class but on its
+emigration to the coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions
+and cruelties did American prejudice against color involve American
+Christianity and humanity.
+
+This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years afterward Connecticut
+enacted altogether the most shameful crime in her history. There lived
+in the year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State, an
+accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence Crandall. Besides a
+superior education, she possessed the highest character. And this was
+well; for she was the principal of the Female Boarding School located in
+that town. The institution was, in 1833, at the beginning of its third
+year, and in a flourishing condition. While pursuing her vocation of a
+teacher, Miss Crandall made the acquaintance of the _Liberator_ through
+a "nice colored girl," who was at service in the school. Abhorring
+slavery from childhood, it is no wonder that the earnestness of the
+_Liberator_ exerted an immediate and lasting influence upon the
+sympathies of the young principal. The more she read and the more she
+thought upon the subject the more aroused she became to the wrongs of
+which her race was guilty to the colored people. She, too, would lend
+them a helping hand in their need. Presently there came to her a colored
+girl who was thirsting for an education such as the Canterbury Boarding
+School for young ladies was dispensing to white girls. This was Miss
+Crandall's opportunity to do something for the colored people, and she
+admitted the girl to her classes. But she had no sooner done so than
+there were angry objections to the girl's remaining.
+
+"The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village," Miss
+Crandall records, "told me that if I continued that colored girl in my
+school it would not be sustained."
+
+She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out of the school, and
+thereby caused a most extraordinary exhibition of Connecticut chivalry
+and Christianity.
+
+Seeing how matters stood with her in these circumstances, Prudence
+Crandall conceived the remarkable purpose of devoting her school to the
+education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her
+idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to
+the editor of the _Liberator_. She went to Boston for this purpose, and
+there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening
+of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This
+visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her
+school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was
+expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from
+well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New
+York to assure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss
+Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them
+to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated
+opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her
+townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and
+horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was
+denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a
+single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from
+an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not
+hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of
+personal violence."
+
+As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the
+holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good
+Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the
+Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence,
+punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a
+school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of
+other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of
+a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound
+over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no
+use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the
+infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied
+about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and
+her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies
+did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of
+the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest
+misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against
+Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part,
+peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our
+principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were
+circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into
+court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who
+stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town
+boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils.
+Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe
+for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse
+with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner
+capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in
+her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel
+of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like
+savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence
+the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs
+and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly
+ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the
+detestable building devoted to the higher education of "niggers."
+Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.
+
+The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's indignation to the
+highest pitch. Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony
+of soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership he wrote George
+W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, "we may as well, first as last,
+meet this proscriptive spirit, _and conquer it_. We--_i.e._, all the
+friends of the cause--must make this a common concern. The New Haven
+excitement has furnished a bad precedent--a second must not be given or
+I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner
+which their intellectual and moral necessities demand. In Boston we are
+all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and
+Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in
+from his _Liberator_ outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend
+of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready
+reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for championship,
+and to the _Liberator_ as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and
+for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace.
+Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in
+motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were
+beginning "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of a nation's
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+
+AGITATION AND REPRESSION.
+
+
+William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English mission was signalized
+by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City
+Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of
+anti-slavery mobs in the North. The news of his British successes had
+preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his
+pro-slavery countrymen. For had he not with malice prepense put down the
+"most glorious of Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country in
+the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And when O'Connell in
+Exeter Hall pointed the finger of scorn at America and made her a
+by-word and a hissing in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting
+got up to further the designs of this "misguided young gentlemen who has
+just returned from England whither he has recently been for the sole
+purpose as it would seem [to the _Commercial Advertiser_] of traducing
+the people and institutions of his own country." Had he not caught up
+and echoed back the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:--"_Shame
+on the American Slaveholders_! Base wretches should we shout in
+chorus--base wretches, how dare you profane the temple of national
+freedom, the sacred fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the
+sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"
+
+The noise of these treasons on a foreign shore, "deafening the sound of
+the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder goes," to
+borrow O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had reached the
+country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The national sensitiveness was
+naturally enough stung to the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is
+not content with disturbing the peace of the Union with his new
+fanaticism, but must needs presume to make the dear Union odious before
+the world as well. And his return, what is it to be but the signal for
+increased agitation on the slavery question. The conquering hero comes
+and his fanatical followers salute him forthwith with a new anti-slavery
+society, which means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife
+between the North and the South. "Are we tamely to look on, and see this
+most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society?"
+shrieked on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York Harbor,
+the malignant editor of the _Courier and Enquirer_.
+
+The pro-slavery and lawless elements of the city were not slow to take
+the cue given by metropolitan papers, and to do the duty of patriots
+upon their country's enemies. Arthur Tappen and his anti-slavery
+associates outwitted these patriotic gentlemen, who attended in a body
+at Clinton Hall on the evening of October 2, 1833, to perform the
+aforesaid duty of patriots, while the objects of their attention were
+convened at Chatham Street Chapel and organizing their new fanaticism.
+The mob flew wide of its mark a second time, for when later in the
+evening it began a serenade more expressive than musical before the
+entrance to the little chapel on Chatham street the members of the
+society "folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away."
+The Abolitionists accomplished their design and eluded their enemies at
+the same time. But the significance of the riotous demonstration went
+not unobserved by them and their newly arrived leader. It was plain from
+that night that if the spirit of Abolitionism had risen, the spirit of
+persecution had risen also.
+
+A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer in Boston. An
+inflammatory handbill announced to his townsmen his arrival. "The true
+American has returned, _alias_ William Lloyd Garrison, the 'Negro
+Champion,' from his disgraceful mission to the British metropolis,"
+etc., etc., and wound up its artful list of lies with the malignant
+suggestion that "He is now in your power--do not let him escape you, but
+go this evening, armed with plenty of _tar and feathers_ and administer
+to him justice at his abode at No. 9 Merchant's Hall, Congress street."
+In obedience to this summons, a reception committee in the shape of "a
+dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded a storm," did pay their
+respects to the "true American" in front of his abode at the _Liberator_
+office. Fortunately the storm passed over without breaking that evening
+on the devoted head of the "Negro Champion." But the meaning of the
+riotous demonstration it was impossible to miss. Like the mob in New
+York it clearly indicated that the country was on the outer edge of an
+area of violent disturbances on the subject of slavery.
+
+The peril which Garrison had twice escaped was indeed grave, but neither
+it nor the certainty of future persecution could flutter or depress his
+spirits. "For myself," he wrote subsequently in the _Liberator_, "I am
+ready to brave any danger even unto death. I feel no uneasiness either
+in regard to my fate or to the success of the cause of Abolition.
+Slavery must speedily be abolished; the blow that shall sever the chains
+of the slaves may shake the nation to its center--may momentarily
+disturb the pillars of the Union--but it shall redeem the character,
+extend the influence, establish the security, and increase the
+prosperity of our great republic." It was not the rage and malice of his
+enemies which the brave soul minded, but the ever-present knowledge of
+human beings in chains and slavery whom he must help. Nothing could
+separate him from his duty to them, neither dangers present nor
+persecutions to come. The uncertainty of life made him only the more
+zealous in their behalf. The necessity of doing, doing, and yet ever
+doing for the slave was plainly pressing deep like thorns into his
+thoughts. "I am more and more impressed;" he wrote a friend a few weeks
+later, "I am more and more impressed with the importance of 'working
+whilst the day lasts.' If 'we all do fade as a leaf,' if we are 'as the
+sparks that fly upward,' if the billows of time are swiftly removing the
+sandy foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the captive, and
+for our country, and for the subjugation of a hostile world, must be
+done quickly. Happily 'our light afflictions are but for a moment.'"
+
+This yearning of the leader for increased activity in the cause of
+immediate emancipation was shared by friends and disciples in different
+portions of the country. Few and scattered as were the Abolitionists,
+they so much the more needed to band together for the great conflict
+with a powerful and organized evil. This evil was organized on a
+national scale, the forces of righteousness which were rising against
+it, if they were ever to overcome it and rid the land of it, had needs
+to be organized on a national scale also. Garrison with the instinct of
+a great reformer early perceived the immense utility of a national
+anti-slavery organization for mobilizing the whole available Abolition
+sentiment of the free States in a moral agitation of national and
+tremendous proportions.
+
+He had not long to wait after his return from England before this desire
+of his soul was satisfied. It was in fact just a month afterward that a
+call for a convention for the formation of the American Anti-Slavery
+Society went out from New York to the friends of immediate emancipation
+throughout the North. As an evidence of the dangerously excited state of
+the popular mind on the subject of slavery there stands in the summons
+the significant request to delegates to regard the call as confidential.
+The place fixed upon for holding the convention was Philadelphia, and
+the time December 4, 1833.
+
+Garrison bestirred himself to obtain for the convention a full
+representation of the friends of freedom. He sent the call to George W.
+Benson, at Providence, urging him to spread the news among the
+Abolitionists of his neighborhood and to secure the election of a goodly
+number of delegates by the society in Rhode Island. He forthwith
+bethought him of Whittier on his farm in Haverhill, and enjoined his old
+friend to fail not to appear in Philadelphia. But while the young poet
+longed to go to urge upon his Quaker brethren of that city "to make
+their solemn testimony against slavery visible over the whole land--to
+urge them, by the holy memories of Woolman and Benezet and Tyson to come
+up as of old to the standard of Divine Truth, though even the fires of
+another persecution should blaze around them," he feared that he would
+not be able to do so. The spirit was surely willing but the purse was
+empty, "as thee know," he quaintly adds, "our farming business does not
+put much cash in our pockets." The cash he needed was generously
+supplied by Samuel E. Sewall, and Whittier went as a delegate to the
+convention after all. The disposition on the part of some of the poorer
+delegates was so strong to be present at the convention that not even
+the lack of money was sufficient to deter them from setting out on the
+expedition. Two of them, David T. Kimball and Daniel E. Jewett, from
+Andover, Mass., did actually supplement the deficiencies of their
+pocket-books by walking to New Haven, the aforesaid pocket-books being
+equal to the rest of the journey from that point.
+
+About sixty delegates found their way to Philadelphia and organized on
+the morning of December 4th, in Adelphi Hall, the now famous convention.
+It was a notable gathering of apostolic spirits--"mainly composed of
+comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
+period." They had come together from ten of the twelve free States,
+which fact goes to show the rapid, the almost epidemic-like spread of
+Garrisonian Abolitionism through the North. The _Liberator_ was then
+scarcely three years old, and its editor had not until the second day of
+the convention attained the great age of twenty-eight! The convention of
+1787 did not comprise more genuine patriotism and wisdom than did this
+memorable assembly of American Abolitionists. It was from beginning to
+end an example of love to God and love to men, of fearless scorn of
+injustice and fearless devotion to liberty. Not one of those three score
+souls who made up the convention, who did not take his life in his hand
+by reason of the act. It was not the love of fame surely which brought
+them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so many of them endure
+real physical privation, which drew all by a common, an irresistible
+impulse to congregate for an unpopular purpose within reach of the teeth
+and the claws of an enraged public opinion.
+
+The convention, as one man might have said with the single-minded Lundy,
+"My heart was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail
+of the captive; I felt his pang of distress; and the iron entered my
+soul." The iron of slavery had indeed entered the soul of every member
+of the convention. It was the divine pang and pity of it which collected
+from the East and from the West this remarkable body of reformers.
+
+The story of how they had to find a president illustrates the
+contemporary distrust and antagonism, which the anti-slavery movement
+aroused among the men of standing and influence. Knowing in what bad
+odor they were held by the community, and anxious only to serve their
+cause in the most effective manner, the members of the convention hit
+upon the plan of asking some individual eminent for his respectability
+to preside over their deliberations, and thereby disarm the public
+suspicions and quiet the general apprehensions felt in respect of the
+incendiary character of their intention. So in pursuance of this plan
+six of their number were dispatched on the evening of December 3d to
+seek such a man. But the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes
+proved a failure. After two attempts and two repulses the committee were
+not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have
+listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation
+by Beriah Green, who was one of the six. "If there is not timber amongst
+ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get
+along without one, or go home and stay there until we have grown up to
+be men." The next day Green was chosen, and established in a manner
+never to be forgotten by his associates that the convention did possess
+"timber big enough to make a president of."
+
+Narrow as were the circumstances of many of the members, the convention
+was by no means destitute of men of wealth and business prominence. Such
+were the Winslows, Isaac and Nathan, of Maine, Arnold Buffum, of
+Massachusetts, and John Rankin and Lewis Tappan, of New York.
+Scholarship, talents, and eloquence abounded among the delegates. Here
+there was no lack, no poverty, but extraordinary sufficiency, almost to
+redundancy. The presence of the gentler sex was not wanting to lend
+grace and picturesqueness to the occasion. The beautiful and benignant
+countenance of Lucretia Mott shed over the proceedings the soft radiance
+of a pure and regnant womanhood; while the handful of colored delegates
+with the elegant figure of Robert Purvis at their head, added pathos and
+picturesqueness to the _personnel_ of the convention. Neither was the
+element of danger wanting to complete the historic scene. Its presence
+was grimly manifest in the official intimation that evening meetings of
+the convention could not be protected, by the demonstrations of popular
+ill-will which the delegates encountered on the streets, by the
+detachment of constabulary guarding the entrance to Adelphi Hall, and by
+the thrillingly significant precaution observed by the delegates of
+sitting with locked doors. Over the assembly it impended cruel and
+menacing like fate. Once securely locked within the hall, the
+Abolitionists discreetly abstained from leaving it at noon for dinner,
+well knowing how small a spark it takes to kindle a great fire. It was
+foolhardy to show themselves unnecessarily to the excited crowds in the
+streets, and so mindful that true courage consisteth not in
+recklessness, they despatched one of their number for crackers and
+cheese, which they washed down with copious draughts of cold water. But
+they had that to eat and drink besides, whereof the spirits of mischief
+without could not conceive.
+
+The grand achievement of the convention was, of course, the formation of
+the American Anti-Slavery Society, but the crown of the whole was
+unquestionably the Declaration of Sentiments. The composition of this
+instrument has an interesting history. It seems that the delegates
+considered that the remarkable character of the movement which they were
+launching upon the wide sea of national attention demanded of them an
+expression altogether worthy of so momentous an undertaking. The
+adoption of a constitution for this purpose was felt to be inadequate. A
+constitution was indispensable, but some other expression was necessary
+to give to their work its proper proportion and importance. Such a
+manifestation it was deemed meet to make in the form of a declaration of
+sentiments. A committee was accordingly appointed to draft the
+declaration. This committee named three of its number, consisting of
+Garrison, Whittier, and Samuel J. May to draw up the document. The
+sub-committee in turn deputed Garrison to do the business.
+
+Mr. May has told in his _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_,
+how he and Whittier left their friend at ten o'clock in the evening,
+agreeing to call at eight the following morning and how on their return
+at the appointed hour they found Garrison with shutters closed and lamps
+burning, penning the last paragraph of the admirable document. He has
+told how they three read it over together two or three times, making
+some slight alterations in it, and how at nine o'clock the draft was
+laid by them before the whole committee. The author of the recollections
+has left a graphic account of its effect upon the convention. "Never in
+my life," he says, "have I seen a deeper impression made by words than
+was made by that admirable document upon all who were present. After the
+voice of the reader had ceased there was silence for several minutes.
+Our hearts were in perfect unison. There was but one thought with us
+all. Either of the members could have told what the whole convention
+felt. We felt that the word had just been uttered which would be mighty,
+through God, to the pulling down of the strongholds of slavery." Such
+was the scene at the first reading of the Declaration of Sentiments, Dr.
+Atlee, the reader. The effect at its final reading was, if possible,
+even more dramatic and eloquent. Whittier has depicted this closing and
+thrilling scene. He has described how Samuel J. May read the declaration
+for the last time. "His sweet, persuasive voice faltered with the
+intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of the
+concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston of
+Maine, rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries and affixed
+his name to the document. One after another passed up to the platform,
+signed, and retired in silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the
+occasion--the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon
+every countenance."
+
+The effects, so electrical and impressive, which followed the reading of
+the declaration were not disproportioned to its merits, for it was an
+instrument of singular power, wisdom, and eloquence. Indeed, to this
+day, more than half a century after it was written it still has virtue
+to quicken the breath and stir the pulses of a sympathetic reader out of
+their normal time. A great passion for freedom and righteousness
+irradiates like a central light the whole memorable document. It begins
+by a happy reference to an earlier convention, held some fifty-seven
+years before in the same place, and which adopted a declaration holding
+"that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
+with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and
+the pursuit of happiness;" and how at the trumpet-call of its authors
+three millions of people rushed to arms "deeming it more glorious to die
+instantly as free men, than desirable to live one hour as slaves"; and
+how, though few in number and poor in resources those same people were
+rendered invincible by the conviction that truth, justice, and right
+were on their side. But the freedom won by the men of 1776 was
+incomplete without the freedom for which the men of 1833 were striving.
+The authors of the new declaration would not be inferior to the authors
+of the old "in purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of
+purpose, intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity
+of spirit." Unlike the older actors, the younger had eschewed the sword,
+the spilling of human blood in defence of their principles. Theirs was a
+moral warfare, the grappling of truth with error, of the power of love
+with the inhumanities of the nation. Then it glances at the wrongs which
+the fathers suffered, and at the enormities which the slaves were
+enduring. The "fathers were never slaves, never bought and sold like
+cattle, never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion, never
+subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters," but all these woes and
+more, an unimaginable mountain of agony and misery, was the appalling
+lot of the slaves in the Southern States. The guilt of this nation,
+which partners such a crime against human nature, "is unequaled by any
+other on earth," and therefore it is bound to instant repentance, and to
+the immediate restitution of justice to the oppressed.
+
+The Declaration of Sentiments denies the right of man to hold property
+in a brother man, affirms the identity in principle between the African
+slave trade and American slavery, the imprescriptibility of the rights
+of the slaves to liberty, the nullity of all laws which run counter to
+human rights, and the grand doctrine of civil and political equality in
+the Republic, regardless of race and complexional differences. It boldly
+rejects the principle of compensated emancipation, because it involves a
+surrender of the position that man cannot hold property in man; because
+slavery is a crime, and the master is not wronged by emancipation but
+the slaves righted, restored to themselves; because immediate and
+general emancipation would only destroy nominal, not real, property, the
+labor of the slaves would still remain to the masters and doubled by the
+new motives which freedom infuses into the breasts of her children; and,
+finally because, if compensation is to be given at all it ought to be
+given to those who have been plundered of their rights. It spurns in one
+compact paragraph the pretensions of the colonization humbug as
+"delusive, cruel, and dangerous."
+
+But lofty and uncompromising as were the moral principles and positions
+of the declaration, it nevertheless recognized with perspicuity of
+vision the Constitutional limitations of the Federal Government in
+relation to slavery. It frankly conceded that Congress had no right to
+meddle with the evil in any of the States. But wherever the national
+jurisdiction reached the general government was bound to interfere and
+suppress the traffic in human flesh. It was the duty of Congress,
+inasmuch as it possessed the power, to abolish slavery in the District
+of Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast and between the
+States. The free States are the _particeps criminis_ of the slave
+States. They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical
+force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the
+South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the
+Constitution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves. This
+relationship is criminal, "is full of danger, IT MUST BE BROKEN UP."
+
+So much for the views and principles of the declaration, now for the
+designs and measures as enumerated therein: "We shall organize
+anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city, town and village in
+our land.
+
+"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of
+warning, of entreaty, and of rebuke.
+
+"We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively, anti-slavery tracts
+and periodicals.
+
+"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
+and the dumb.
+
+"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation
+in the guilt of slavery.
+
+"We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by
+giving a preference to their productions; and
+
+"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
+speedy repentance."
+
+The instrument closes by pledging the utmost of its signers to the
+overthrow of slavery--"come what may to our persons, our interests, or
+our reputations--whether we live to witness the triumph of Liberty,
+Justice, and Humanity, or perish untimely as martyrs in this great,
+benevolent, and holy cause." Twin pledge it was to that ancestral,
+historic one made in 1776: "And for the support of this declaration,
+with a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually
+pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
+
+Whittier has predicted for the Declaration of Sentiments an enduring
+fame: "It will live," he declares, "as long as our national history."
+Samuel J. May was equally confident that this "Declaration of the Rights
+of Man," as he proudly cherished it, would "live a perpetual, impressive
+protest against every form of oppression, until it shall have given
+place to that brotherly kindness which all the children of the common
+Father owe to one another." As a particular act and parchment-roll of
+high thoughts and resolves, highly expressed, it will not, I think,
+attain to the immortality predicted for it. For as such it has in less
+than two generations passed almost entirely out of the knowledge and
+recollection of Americans. But in another sense it is destined to
+realize all that has been foreshadowed for it by its friends. Like
+elemental fire its influence will glow and flame at the center of our
+national life long after as a separate and sovereign entity it shall
+have been forgotten by the descendants of its illustrious author and
+signers.
+
+The convention was in session three days, and its proceedings were
+filled with good resolutions and effective work. Arthur Tappan was
+elected President of the national organization, and William Green, Jr.,
+Treasurer. Elizur Wright, Jr., was chosen Secretary of Domestic
+Correspondence, William Lloyd Garrison Secretary of Foreign
+Correspondence, and Abraham L. Cox Recording Secretary. Besides these
+officers there were a Board of Management and a number of
+Vice-Presidents selected. For three days the hearts of the delegates
+burned within them toward white-browed Duty and the master, Justice, who
+stood in their midst and talked with divine accents to their spirits of
+how men were enslaved and cruelly oppressed by men, their own brothers,
+and how the cry of these bondmen came up to them for help. And with one
+accord there fell upon the delegates a pang and pity, an uplifting,
+impelling sense of 'woe unto us' if we withhold from our brethren in
+bonds the help required of us. This rising tide of emotion and
+enthusiasm gathering mass at each sitting of the convention, culminated
+during the several readings of the Declaration of Sentiments. And when
+on the third day Beriah Green brought the congress to a close in a
+valedictory address of apostolic power and grandeur, and with a prayer
+so sweet, so fervent, and strong as to melt all hearts, the pent-up
+waters of the reform was ready to hurl themselves into an agitation the
+like of which had never before, nor has since, been seen or felt in the
+Union. Thenceforth freedom's little ones were not without great allies,
+who were "exultations, agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind."
+
+Everywhere the flood of Abolitionism burst upon the land, everywhere the
+moral deluge spread through the free States. Anti-slavery societies rose
+as it were, out of the ground, so rapid, so astonishing were their
+growth during the year following the formation of the national society.
+In nearly every free State they had appeared doubling and quadrupling in
+number, until new societies reached in that first year to upwards of
+forty. Anti-slavery agents and lecturers kept pace with the anti-slavery
+societies. They began to preach, to remonstrate, to warn, entreat, and
+rebuke until their voices sounded like the roar of many waters in the
+ears of the people. Wherever there was a school-house, a hall, or a
+church, there they were, ubiquitous, irrepressible, a cry in the
+wilderness of a nation's iniquity. Anti-slavery tracts and periodicals
+multiplied and started from New York and Boston in swarms, and clouds,
+the thunder of their wings were as the thunder of falling avalanches to
+the guilty conscience of the country. There was no State, city, town, or
+village in the Republic where their voice was not heard.
+
+The Rev. Amos A Phelp's "Lectures on Slavery and Its Remedy;" "the Rev.
+J.D. Paxton's 'Letters on Slavery'; the Rev. S.J. May's letters to
+Andrew T. Judson, 'The Rights of Colored People to Education
+Vindicated'; Prof. Elizur Wright, Jr.'s, 'Sin of Slavery and Its
+Remedy'; Whittier's 'Justice and Expediency'; and, above all, Mrs. Lydia
+Maria Child's startling 'Appeal in favor of that class of Americans
+called Africans' were the more potent of the new crop of writings
+betokening the vigor of Mr. Garrison's Propagandism," says that
+storehouse of anti-slavery facts the "Life of Garrison" by his children.
+Swift poured the flood, widespread the inundation of anti-slavery
+publications. Money, although not commensurate with the vast wants of
+the crusade, came in copious and generous streams. A marvelous
+munificence characterized the charity of wealthy Abolitionists. The poor
+gave freely of their mite, and the rich as freely of their thousands.
+Something of the state of simplicity and community of goods which marked
+the early disciples of Christianity seemed to have revived in the hearts
+of this band of American reformers. A spirit of renunciation, of
+self-sacrifice, of brotherly kindness, of passionate love of
+righteousness, of passionate hatred of wrong, of self-consecration to
+truth and of martyrdom lifted the reform to as high a moral level as had
+risen any movement for the betterment of mankind in any age of the
+world.
+
+The resolutions of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiment, to
+enlist the pulpit in the cause of the suffering and dumb, and to attempt
+the purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of
+slavery, encountered determined opposition from the pulpits and the
+churches themselves. The Abolitionists were grieved and indignant at the
+pro-slavery spirit which pulpits and churches displayed. But what
+happened was as we now look back at those proceedings, an inevitable
+occurrence, a foregone conclusion. The pulpits were only representative
+of the religion of the pews, and the pews were occupied by the same sort
+of humanity that toil and spin and haggle over dollars and cents six out
+of every seven days. They have their selfish and invested interests,
+fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices, which an episode
+like Sunday, churches, and sermons do not seriously affect. Indeed,
+Sunday, churches, and sermons constitute an institution of modern
+civilization highly conservative of invested interests, fixed social
+notions, relationships, and prejudices. Who advances a new idea, a
+reformatory movement, disturbs the _status quo_, stirs up the human bees
+in that great hive called society, and that lesser one called the
+church, and he must needs expect to have the swarm about his head.
+
+This was precisely what happened in the case of the anti-slavery
+movement. It threatened the then _status quo_ of property rights, it
+attacked the fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices of the
+South and of the North alike. The revolution which this new idea
+involved in the slave States, was of the most radical character, going
+down to a complete reconstruction of their entire social system. At once
+the human hornets were aroused, and in these circumstances, the innocent
+and the guilty were furiously beset. Because the new idea which
+disturbed the South had originated in the North, the wrath of the South
+rose hot against not the authors of the new idea alone but against the
+people of that section as well. But this sectional unpleasantness
+endangered the stability of the Union, and menaced with obstructions and
+diversions the golden stream of Northern traffic, dollars, and
+dividends. This was intolerable, and forthwith the Apiarian brotherhood
+of the free States put together their heads with those of the slave
+States to attack, sting, and utterly abolish the new idea, and the new
+idea's supporters. The Northern churches were, of course, in the
+Northern brotherhood. And when the new fanaticism threatened the
+financial stability of the pews, the pulpits instead of exerting
+themselves in behalf of the suffering and dumb slaves, exerted
+themselves to preserve the prosperity of the pews by frowning down the
+friends of the slaves. They were among the first to stone the new idea
+and its fiery prophets. "Away with them!" shouted in chorus pulpit and
+pews. Sad? yes, but alas! natural, too. These men were not better nor
+worse than the average man. They were the average men of their
+generation, selfish, narrow, material, encrusted in their prejudices
+like snails in their shells, struggling upward at a snail's pace to the
+larger life, with its added sweetness and humanities, but experiencing
+many a discomfiture by the way from those foul and triple fiends, the
+World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
+
+Nowhere in the churches was their opposition to the Abolition movement
+more persistent and illiberal than in the theological seminaries, whence
+the pulpits drew their supplies of preachers. Like master, like servant,
+these institutions were indentured to the public, and reflected as in a
+mirror the body and pressure of its life and sentiment. That a stream
+cannot rise higher than its source, although a theological stream, found
+remarkable demonstration in the case of Lane Seminary. Here after the
+publication of the "Thoughts on Colonization," and the formation of the
+National Society, an earnest spirit of inquiry broke out among the
+students on the subject of slavery. It was at first encouraged by the
+President, Lyman Beecher, who offered to go in and discuss the question
+with his "boys." That eminent man did not long remain in this mind. The
+discussions which he so lightly allowed swept through the institution
+with the force of a great moral awakening. They were continued during
+nine evenings and turned the seminary at their close, so far as the
+students went, into an anti-slavery society. This is not the place to go
+at length into the history of that anti-slavery debate, which, in its
+consequences, proved one of the events of the anti-slavery conflict. Its
+leader was Theodore D. Weld, who was until Wendell Phillips appeared
+upon the scene, the great orator of the agitation.
+
+Dr. Beecher had no notion of raising such a ghost when he said, "Go
+ahead, boys, I'll go in and discuss with you." It was such an apparition
+of independence and righteousness as neither the power of the trustees
+nor the authority of the faculty was ever able to dismiss. The virtue of
+a gag rule was tried to suppress Abolition among the students, but
+instead of suppressing Abolition, it well-nigh suppressed the seminary;
+for, rather than wear a gag on the obnoxious subject, the students--to
+between seventy and eighty, comprising nearly the whole muster-roll of
+the school--withdrew from an institution where the exercise of the right
+of free inquiry and free speech on a great moral question was denied and
+repressed. The same spirit of repression arose later in the Theological
+School at Andover, Mass. There the gag was effectively applied by the
+faculty, and all inquiry and discussion relating to slavery disappeared
+among the students. But the attempt to impose silence upon the students
+of Phillips's Academy near-by was followed by the secession of forty or
+fifty of the students.
+
+Ah! the Abolitionists had undertaken to achieve the impossible, when
+they undertook to enlist the pulpit in the cause of the slaves, and to
+purify the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery. For
+the average man, whether within or without the church, is not controlled
+in his conduct toward his brother man by the principles and precepts of
+Jesus, but by the laws of social and individual selfishness. These
+selfish forces may at epochal moments align themselves with justice and
+liberty, and they not infrequently do, otherwise human progress must be
+at an end. In advancing themselves, they perforce advance justice and
+liberty. Thus do men love their neighbors as themselves, and move
+forward to fraternity and equality in kingdoms and commonwealths. The
+special province of moral reformers, like Garrison and the
+Abolitionists, seems to be to set these egoistic and altruistic elements
+of human society at war, the one against the other, thereby compelling
+its members and classes, willy nilly, to choose between the
+belligerents. Some will enlist on one side, some on the other, but in
+the furnace heat of the passions which ensues, an ancient evil, or a bad
+custom or institution, gets the vitality burned out of it, which in due
+time falls as slag out of the new order that arises at the close of the
+conflict.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+
+BETWEEN THE ACTS.
+
+
+Mr. Garrison, in a private letter to a friend under date of September
+12, 1834, summarises the doings of the preceding twelve months of his
+life, and makes mention of a fact which lends peculiar interest to that
+time: "It has been the most eventful year," he remarks, "in my history.
+I have been the occasion of many uproars, and a continual disturber of
+the public peace. As soon as I landed I turned the city of New York
+upside down. Five thousand people turned out to see me tarred and
+feathered, but were disappointed. There was also a small hubbub in
+Boston on my arrival. The excitement passed away, but invective and
+calumny still followed me. By dint of some industry and much persuasion,
+I succeeded in inducing the Abolitionists in New York to join our little
+band in Boston, in calling a national convention at Philadelphia. We
+met, and such a body of men, for zeal, firmness, integrity, benevolence,
+and moral greatness, the world has rarely seen in a single assembly.
+Inscribed upon a declaration which it was my exalted privilege to write,
+their names can perish only with the knowledge of the history of our
+times. A National Anti-Slavery Society was formed, which astonished the
+country by its novelty, and awed it by its boldness. In five months its
+first annual meeting was held in the identical city in which, only seven
+antecedent months, Abolitionists were in peril of their lives. In
+ability, interest, and solemnity it took precedence of all the great
+religious celebrations which took place at the same time. During the
+same month, a New England anti-slavery convention was held in Boston,
+and so judicious were its measures, so eloquent its appeals, so
+unequivocal its resolutions, that it at once gave shape and character to
+the anti-slavery cause in this section of the Union. In the midst of all
+these mighty movements, I have wooed "a fair ladye," and won her, have
+thrown aside celibacy, and jumped body and soul into matrimony, have
+sunk the character of bachelor in that of husband, have settled down
+into domestic quietude, and repudiated all my roving desires, and have
+found that which I have long been yearning to find, a home, a wife, and
+a beautiful retreat from a turbulent city."
+
+Garrison does not exaggerate the importance of the initiatives and
+achievements of the year, or the part played by him in its history. His
+activity was indeed phenomenal, and the service rendered by him to the
+reform, was unrivaled. He was in incessant motion, originating,
+directing, inspiring the agitation in all portions of the North. What
+strikes one strongly in studying the pioneer is his sleeplessness, his
+indefatigableness, his persistency in pursuit of his object. Others may
+rest after a labor, may have done one, two, or three distinct tasks, but
+between Garrison's acts there is no hiatus, each follows each, and is
+joined to all like links in a chain. He never closed his eyes, nor
+folded his arms, but went forward from work to work with the
+consecutiveness of a law of nature.
+
+But amid labors so strenuous and uninterrupted the leader found
+opportunity to woo and win "a fair ladye." She was a daughter of a
+veteran Abolitionist, George Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn., who with his
+sons George W. and Henry E. Benson, were among the stanchest of the
+reformer's followers and supporters. The young wife, before her
+marriage, was not less devoted to the cause than they. She was in
+closest sympathy with her husband's anti-slavery interests and purposes.
+Never had husband found wife better fitted to his needs, and the needs
+of his life work. So that it might be truly said that Garrison even when
+he went a-wooing forgot not his cause and that when he took a wife, he
+made at the same time a grand contribution to its ultimate triumph.
+
+How did Helen Eliza Garrison serve the great cause? One who knew shall
+tell. He has told it in his own unequaled way. "That home," he says,
+"was a great help. Her husband's word and pen scattered his purpose far
+and wide; but the comrades that his ideas brought to his side her
+welcome melted into friends. No matter how various and discordant they
+were in many things--no matter how much there was to bear and
+overlook--her patience and her thanks for their sympathy in the great
+idea were always sufficient for the work also.... In that group of
+remarkable men and women which the anti-slavery movement drew together,
+she had her own niche--which no one else could have filled so perfectly
+or unconsciously as she did.... She forgot, omitted nothing. How much we
+all owe her!" These were words spoken by a friend, whose name will
+appear later on in this story; words spoken by him at the close of her
+beautiful life, as she lay dead in her coffin.
+
+And here is another account of her written by the husband on the first
+anniversary of their marriage: "I did not marry her," he confides to her
+brother George, "expecting that she would assume a prominent station in
+the anti-slavery cause, but for domestic quietude and happiness. So
+completely absorbed am I in that cause, that it was undoubtedly wise in
+me to select as a partner one who, while her benevolent feelings were in
+union with mine, was less immediately and entirely connected with it. I
+knew she was naturally diffident, and distrustful of her own ability to
+do all that her heart might prompt. She is one of those who prefer to
+toil unseen--to give by stealth--and to sacrifice in seclusion. By her
+unwearied attention to my wants, her sympathetic regards, her perfect
+equanimity of mind, and her sweet and endearing manners; she is no
+trifling support to Abolitionism, inasmuch as she lightens my labors,
+and enables me to find exquisite delight in the family circle, as an
+offset to public adversity."
+
+And here is a lovely bit of self-revelation made to her betrothed
+several months before they were wedded. "I am aware of the
+responsibility that will devolve upon me," she writes, "and how much my
+example will be copied among that class you have so long labored to
+elevate and enlighten. I have been considering how the colored people
+think of dress, and how much of their profits are expended for useless
+ornaments that foolishly tend to make a show and parade. As much stress
+will, of course, be laid on Garrison's _wife_ by that class, it behooves
+me to be very circumspect in all things, when called upon to fill so
+important a station."
+
+The marriage occurred September 4, 1834, and the next day the pair set
+up housekeeping in "Freedom's Cottage," on Bower street, Roxbury. The
+young housekeepers were rich in every good thing except money; and of
+that commodity there was precious little that found its way into the
+family till. And money was indispensable even to a philanthropist, who
+cared as little for it as did Garrison. He had never in his twenty-eight
+years experienced the sensation which a bank account, however small,
+gives its possessor. He had been toiling during the last three years in
+a state of chronic self-forgetfulness, and of consequence in a state of
+chronic inpecuniosity. He had never been careful of what he got--was
+careful only of what he gave. For himself he was ready to subsist on
+bread and water and to labor more than fourteen hours at the case to
+make the issue of the _Liberator_ possible. But surely he could not put
+"a fair ladye" on such limited commons even for the sake of his cause.
+The laborer is worthy of his hire, and an unworldly minded reformer
+ought to be supplied with the wherewithal needful to feed, clothe, and
+house himself and those dependent upon him. Some such thought shaped
+itself in Garrison's mind as his circumstances grew more and more
+straitened, and his future as the head of a family looked more and more
+ominous. Anxiety for the morrow pressed heavily upon him as his
+responsibilities as a breadwinner hugged closer and closer his everyday
+life. Poverty ceased to be the ordinary enemy of former years, whom he
+from the lookouts of the unconquerable mind used to laugh to scorn; it
+had become instead a cruel foe who worried as by fire the peace of his
+soul.
+
+There was the _Liberator_? The _Liberator_ as a moral engine was a
+marvelous success; but the _Liberator_ as a money-maker was a most
+dismal failure. If its owners had possessed only common aptitude for
+business the failure need not have been so complete, indeed the
+enterprise might have been crowned with a moderate degree of success.
+But never were two men more entirely lacking in the methods, which
+should enter into ventures of that character, than were Garrison and
+Knapp. Garrison was unfortunate in this respect but it seems that Knapp
+was more so. Neither took to book-keeping, and neither overcame his
+serious deficiency in this regard. The consequence was that the books
+kept themselves, and confusion grew upon confusion until the partners
+were quite confounded. Garrison naïvely confesses this fault of the firm
+to his brother-in-law thus: "Brother Knapp, you know, resembles me very
+closely in his habits of procrastination. Indeed I think he is rather
+worse than I am in this respect!"
+
+The paper was issued originally without a single subscriber. At the end
+of the first volume the subscription list numbered five hundred names.
+In the course of the next two volumes this number was more than doubled,
+almost tripled, in fact. The subscription price was two dollars. The
+property would have begun from this point to make returns to its owners
+had they possessed the business training and instinct requisite to its
+successful management. But they were reformers, not money-getters, and
+instead of enjoying the profits they proceeded to use them up
+incontinently in their first enlargement of the paper. But while they
+had added to the cost of publication, they took no thought to augment
+the cost of subscription. The publishers gave more and the subscribers
+received more for the sum of two dollars. The pecuniary embarrassments
+of the _Liberator_ increased, and so the partners' "bondage to penury"
+increased also. This growing pressure was finally relieved by "several
+generous donations," made for the support of the paper. At the beginning
+of the fourth volume, the publishers wisely or other-wisely, again
+enlarged their darling, and again neglected to raise the subscription
+rates at the same time.
+
+Misfortunes never come without company, but alight in flocks, and a
+whole flock of misfortunes it was to the _Liberator_ when Joshua Coffin,
+"that huge personification of good humor," was appointed canvassing
+agent for the paper. He was as wanting in business methods as his
+employers were. Confusion now gathered upon confusion around the devoted
+heads of the partners, was accelerated and became daily more and more
+portentous and inextricable. The delinquencies of subscribers grew more
+and more grave. On the three first volumes they were two thousand
+dollars in arrears to the paper. This was a large, a disastrous loss,
+but traceable, to no inconsiderable extent, doubtless, to the loose
+business methods of the reformer and his partner. The _Liberator_ at the
+beginning of its fourth year was struggling in a deep hole of financial
+helplessness and chaos. Would it ever get out alive, or "SHALL THE
+_LIBERATOR_ DIE?" burst in a cry of anguish, almost despair, from its
+editor, so weak in thought of self, so supreme in thought of others.
+
+This carelessness of what appertained to the things which concerned
+self, and devotion to the things which concerned his cause, finds apt
+and pathetic illustration in this letter to Samuel J. May in the summer
+of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and burdens were never harder
+to carry:
+
+"In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my partner joins with me in
+consenting to print an edition of Miss Crandall's [defence] as large as
+the one proposed by you, at our own risk. As to the profits that may
+arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do not expect to make any; on
+the contrary, we shall probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the
+difficulty of disposing of any publication, however interesting or
+valuable in itself. But a trial so important as Miss C.'s, involving
+such momentous consequences to a large portion of our countrymen,
+implicating so deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to
+go unpublished, and _shall_ not while we have the necessary materials
+for printing it."
+
+It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation of the
+_Liberator_, in the spring of 1834, was twenty-three hundred copies, and
+that this number was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred; in New
+York, three hundred: in Boston, two hundred; in other parts of the free
+States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half
+was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half
+were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies
+for gratuitous distribution. The colored subscribers to the paper were
+to the whites as three to one.
+
+There were several suggestions by sundry friends looking to the release
+of the _Liberator_ from its embarrassments, and, to the relief of its
+unselfish publishers, from the grinding poverty which its issue imposed
+upon them. The most hopeful and feasible of them was the scheme of which
+Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834: "I am happy to say," he
+pours into her ears, "that it is probable the managers of the New
+England Anti-Slavery Society will determine, to-morrow afternoon, to
+take all the pecuniary liabilities of the _Liberator_ hereafter, and
+give me a regular salary for editing it, and friend Knapp a fair price
+for printing it. My salary will not be less than $800 per annum, and
+perhaps it will be fixed at a $1,000.... The new arrangement will go
+into effect on the 1st of July." But alas; the managers took no such
+action on the morrow, nor went the "new arrangement" into effect at the
+time anticipated. The editor was married in September, and two months
+later the eagerly expected relief was still delayed. This hope deferred
+must have caused the young husband meanwhile no little anxiety and heart
+sickness.
+
+Love in a cottage is very pretty and romantic in novels, but love in a
+cottage actually thriving on "bread and water," was a sweet reality in
+the home of the young couple in Roxbury. "All the world loves a lover,"
+says Emerson, but alas! there are exceptions to all rules, and all the
+world loved not Garrison in his newly found felicity as shall presently
+appear.
+
+The pledge made by the reformer in the initial number of the _Liberator_
+to be "as harsh as truth," had been kept to the letter. To some minds
+there is nothing more difficult to understand and tolerate than is the
+use of harsh language toward individual wrongdoers. They appear to be
+much more solicitous to turn away the wrath of the wicked than to do
+away with their wickedness. Multitudes of such minds were offended at
+the tremendous severities of Garrison's speech. They were for peace at
+any cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These pro-slavery
+critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or
+lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause. But the feelings and
+the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that
+terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation of such people
+exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity
+in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and
+habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked no indignation,
+provoked instead unbounded charity for the willing victims of ancestral
+transgressions. Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of
+circumstances, these people expended all their sympathy while upon the
+Southern slave, who were to their view _the circumstances_, they looked
+with increasing disapprobation. Garrison's harsh language greatly
+shocked this class--excited their unbounded indignation against the
+reformer.
+
+Besides this class there was another, composed of friends, whom
+Garrison's denunciatory style offended. To Charles Pollen and Charles
+Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the
+great agitator was a sore trial. To them and to others, too, his
+language seemed grossly intemperate and vituperative, and was deemed
+productive of harm to the movement. But Garrison defended his harsh
+language by pointing to the state of the country on the subject of
+slavery before he began to use it, and to the state of the country
+afterward. How utterly and morally dead the nation was before, how
+keenly and marvelously alive it became afterward. The blast which he had
+blown had jarred upon the senses of his slumbering countrymen he
+admitted, but he should not be blamed for that. What to his critics
+sounded harsh and abusive, was to him the trump of God. For, at the
+thunder-peal which the Almighty blew from the mouth of his servant, how,
+as by a miracle, the dead soul of the nation awoke to righteousness. He
+does not arrogate to himself infallibility, indeed he is sure that his
+language is not always happily chosen. Such errors, however, appear to
+him trivial, in view of indisputable and extraordinary results produced
+by the _Liberator_. He believes in marrying masculine truths to
+masculine words. He protests against his condemnation by comparison.
+"Every writer's style is his own--it may be smooth or rough, plain or
+obscure, simple or grand, feeble or strong," he contends, "but
+_principles_ are immutable." By his principles, therefore he would, be
+judged. "Whittier, for instance," he continues, "is highly poetical,
+exuberant, and beautiful. Stuart is solemn, pungent, and severe. Wright
+is a thorough logician, dextrous, transparent, straightforward. Beriah
+Green is manly, eloquent, vigorous, devotional. May is persuasive,
+zealous, overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Cox is diffusive,
+sanguine, magnificent, grand. Bourne thunders and lightens. Phelps is
+one great, clear, infallible argument--demonstration itself. Jocelyn is
+full of heavenly-mindedness, and feels and speaks and acts with a zeal
+according to knowledge. Follen is chaste, profound, and elaborately
+polished. Goodell is perceptive, analytical, expert, and solid. Child
+(David L.) is generously indignant, courageous, and demonstrative; his
+lady combines strength with beauty, argumentation with persuasiveness,
+greatness with humility. Birney is collected, courteous,
+dispassionate--his fearlessness excites admiration, his
+conscientiousness commands respect." Of these writers, which is
+acceptable to slaveholders or their apologists? Some have been cruelly
+treated and all been calumniated as "fanatics, disorganizers, and
+madmen." And why? "Certainly not for the _phraseology_ which they use,
+but for the _principles_ which they adopt."
+
+From another quarter came presently notes of discord, aroused by
+Garrison's _hard language_. Sundry of the Unitarian clergy, under the
+lead of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., took it into their heads that the editor
+of the _Liberator_ and some others were outrageously abusing the
+Abolition cause, "mismanaging it by their unreasonable violence" of
+language. Wherefore those gentlemen interposed to rescue the great cause
+from harm by a brilliant scheme designed to secure moderation in this
+regard. This brilliant scheme was nothing less absurd than the
+establishment of a censorship over the _Liberator_. But as these
+solicitous souls had reckoned without their host, their amiable plan
+came to naught; but not, however, before adding a new element to the
+universal discord then fast swelling to a roar. To the storm of censure
+gathering about his head the reformer bowed not--neither swerved he to
+the right hand nor to the left--all the while deeming it, "with the
+apostle, a small thing to be judged by man's judgment." "I solicit no
+man's praise," he sternly replies to his critics, "I fear no men's
+censure."
+
+There was still another cause of offence given by Garrison to his
+countrymen. It was not his _hard language_, but a circumstance less
+tolerable, if that was possible, than even that rock of offence. It
+seems that when the editor of the _Liberator_ was in England, and dining
+with Thomas Powell Buxton, he was asked by the latter in what way the
+English Abolitionists could best assist the anti-slavery movement in
+America, and he had replied, "_By giving us George Thompson_." This
+unexpected answer of the American appeared without doubt to the
+Englishman at the time somewhat extraordinary. He had his misgivings as
+to the wisdom, to say nothing of the propriety, of an international act
+of such importance and delicacy as the sending of George Thompson to
+America. He questioned whether the national self-love of the American
+people would not resent the arrival of an Englishman on such a mission
+among them and refuse him a fair hearing in consequence. But Garrison
+was confident that while Thompson's advent would stir up the pro-slavery
+bile of the North and all that, he would not be put to much if any
+greater disadvantage as a foreigner in speaking in New England on the
+subject of slavery, than were those Abolitionists who were to the manner
+born. As to his friend's personal safety in the East, Garrison was
+extremely optimistic, had not apparently the slightest apprehensions for
+him in this regard.
+
+Well, after due deliberation, George Thompson consented to undertake the
+mission to America, and the English reformers to send him, though not
+all of them. For some there were like James Cropper, who were indisposed
+to promoting such a mission, or "paying agents to travel in the United
+States." It was natural enough for Mr. Garrison to prefer such a request
+after hearing George Thompson speak. For he was one of those electric
+speakers, who do with popular audiences what they will. In figure and
+voice and action, he was a born orator. His eloquence was graphic,
+picturesque, thrilling, and over English audiences it was irresistible.
+Garrison fancied that such eloquence would prove equally attractive to
+and irresistible over American audiences as well. But in this he was
+somewhat mistaken, for Thompson had to deal with an element in American
+audiences of which he had had no experience in England. What that
+element was he had occasion to surmise directly he arrived upon these
+shores. He reached New York just sixteen days after the marriage of his
+friend, the editor of the _Liberator_ to be immediately threatened with
+mob violence by the metropolitan press in case he ventured to "lecture
+in favor of immediate Abolition," and to be warned that: "If our people
+will not suffer our own citizens to tamper with the question of slavery,
+it is not to be supposed that they will tolerate the officious
+intermeddling of a foreign fanatic." Then as if by way of giving him a
+taste of the beak and talons of the American _amour propre_, he and his
+family were put out of the Atlantic Hotel in deference to the wish of an
+irate Southerner. Thus introduced the English orator advanced speedily
+thereafter into closer acquaintance with the American public. He
+lectured in many parts of New England where that new element of rowdyism
+and virulence of which his English audiences had given him no previous
+experience, manifested its presence first in one way and then in others,
+putting him again and again in jeopardy of life and limb. At Augusta,
+Maine, his windows were broken, and he was warned out of the town. At
+Concord, New Hampshire, his speech was punctuated with missiles. At
+Lowell, Massachusetts, he narrowly escaped being struck on the head and
+killed by a brickbat. Indeed it was grimly apparent that the master of
+Freedom's Cottage would be obliged to revise his views as to the hazard,
+which his friend ran in speaking upon the subject of slavery in New
+England. To do so was weekly becoming for that friend an enterprise of
+great personal peril. But it added also to the fierce hatred with which
+the public now regarded Garrison. He was the author of all the mischief,
+the slavery agitation, the foreign emissary. He had even dared to inject
+the poison of Abolitionism into the politics of Boston and
+Massachusetts. This attempt on the part of the _Liberator_ to establish
+an anti-slavery test of office was only another proof of the dangerous
+character of the new fanaticism and the Jacobinical designs of the
+Garrisonian fanatics, ergo, the importance of suppressing the
+incendiaries. Down with Thompson! Garrison must be destroyed! The
+Union--it must and shall be preserved! All these the public excitement,
+which had risen everywhere to a tempest, had come more and more to mean.
+A tremendous crisis had come in the life of Garrison, and a great peril,
+eagle-like, with the stirred-up hate of a nation, was swooping upon him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+
+MISCHIEF LET LOOSE.
+
+
+A wild-cat-like creature was abroad. To it the Abolitionists were to be
+thrown. It was to destroy Garrison, make an end of Thompson, and
+suppress between its enormous jaws the grandest moral movement of the
+century. Besides doing up this modest little programme, the beast, O
+wonderful to say, was also to crown its performances by "saving" the
+Union. Rejoicing in the possession of such a conservative institution,
+the politicians, the press, and public opinion uncaged the monster,
+while from secure seats they watched the frightful scenes of fury and
+destruction enacted by it in the national arena.
+
+These scenes began in the summer of 1834, and in the city of New York.
+They were ushered in by the breaking up of an anti-slavery celebration
+on the Fourth of July by the clack and roar of several hundred young
+rowdies, gathered for the purpose. Their success but whetted the
+appetite of the spirit of mischief for other ventures against the
+Abolitionists. As a consequence New York was in a more or less disturbed
+state from the fourth to the ninth of the month. The press of the city,
+with but a single exception (_The Evening Post_) meanwhile goaded the
+populace on by false and inflammatory representations touching the
+negroes and their friends, to the rioting which began in earnest on the
+evening of the ninth. That night a mob attacked Lewis Tappan's house on
+Rose street, breaking in the door, smashing blinds and windows, and
+playing havoc generally with the furniture. On the following evening the
+rioters assailed the store of Arthur Tappan, on Pearl street,
+demolishing almost every pane of glass in the front of the building. On
+the same evening the mob paid its respects to Rev. Dr. Cox, by breaking
+windows both at his house and at his church. The negro quarters in the
+neighborhood of Five Points, and their houses in other parts of the
+city, were raided on the night of the 11th, and much damage done by the
+lawless hordes which for nearly a week wreaked their wrath upon the
+property of the negroes and their anti-slavery friends.
+
+After this brave beginning, the wild-cat-like spirit continued, these
+ferocious demonstrations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan,
+Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire. The slavery agitation had
+increased apace. It had broken out in Congress on the presentation of
+anti-slavery petitions. The fire thus kindled spread through the
+country. Southern excitement became intense, amounted almost to panic.
+The activity of the anti-slavery press, the stream of anti-slavery
+publications, which had, indeed, increased with singular rapidity, was
+exaggerated by the Southern imagination, struck it with a sort of
+terror. There were meetings held in many parts of the South, tremendous
+scenes enacted there. In Charleston, South Carolina, the post-office was
+broken open by an aristocratic mob, under the lead of the famous Robert
+Y. Hayne, and a bonfire made of the Abolition mail-matter which it
+contained. As this Southern excitement advanced, a passionate fear for
+the stability of the Union arose in the heart of the North. Abolition
+and the Abolitionists had produced these sectional disturbances.
+Abolition and the Abolitionists were, therefore, enemies of the
+"glorious Union." Northern excitement kept pace with Southern excitement
+until, in the summer of 1835, a reign of terror was widely established
+over both sections. To Garrison, from his _Liberator_ outlook, all
+seemed "Consternation and perplexity, for perilous times have come."
+They had, indeed, come in New York, as witness this from the pen of
+Lydia Maria Child, who was at the time (August 15) in Brooklyn. Says
+she:
+
+
+    "I have not ventured into the city, nor does one of us dare to
+    go to church to-day, so great is the excitement here. You can
+    form no conception of it. 'Tis like the time of the French
+    Revolution, when no man dared trust his neighbor. Private
+    assassins from New Orleans are lurking at the corners of the
+    streets to stab Arthur Tappan, and very large sums are offered
+    for any one who will convey Mr. Thompson into the slave
+    States.... There are several thousand Southerners now in the
+    city, and I am afraid there are not seven hundred among them who
+    have the slightest fear of God before their eyes. Mr. Wright
+    [Elizur] was yesterday barricading his doors and windows with
+    strong bars and planks an inch thick. Violence in some form
+    seems to be generally expected."
+
+
+Great meetings to put the Abolitionists down afforded vents during this
+memorable year to the pent-up excitement of the free States. New York
+had had its great meeting, and had put the Abolitionists down with
+pro-slavery resolutions and torrents of pro-slavery eloquence. Boston,
+too, had to have her great meeting and her cataracts of pro-slavery
+oratory to reassure the South of the sympathy and support of "the great
+body of the people of the Northern States." The toils seemed everywhere
+closing around the Abolitionists. The huge head of the asp of public
+opinion, the press of the land was everywhere busy, day and night,
+smearing with a thick and virulent saliva of lies the brave little band
+and its leader. Anti-slavery publications, calculated to inflame the
+minds of the slaves against their masters, and intended to instigate the
+slaves to servile insurrections, had been distributed broadcast through
+the South by the emissaries of anti-slavery societies. The Abolitionists
+advocated the emancipation of the slaves in the South by Congress,
+intermarriages between the two races, the dissolution of the Union, etc.
+All of which outrageous misrepresentations were designed to render the
+movement utterly odious to the public, and the public so much the more
+furious for its suppression.
+
+It was in the midst of such intense and widespread excitement that
+Boston called its meeting to abolish the Abolitionists. It was the month
+of August, and the heat of men's passions was as great as the heat of
+the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the city was so charged with
+inflammable gases that the slightest spark would have sufficed to
+produce an explosion. The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves
+the while with unusual circumspection. They deemed it prudent to publish
+an address to neutralize the falsehoods with which they were assailed by
+their enemies. The address drawn up by Garrison for the purpose was
+thought "too fiery for the present time," by his more cautious followers
+and was rejected. The _Liberator_ office had already been threatened in
+consequence of a fiery article by the editor, denouncing the use of
+Faneuil Hall for the approaching pro-slavery meeting. It seemed to the
+unawed and indignant champion of liberty that it were "better that the
+winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole earth--better that
+an earthquake should engulf it--than that it should be used for so
+unhallowed and detestable a purpose!" The anti-abolition feeling of the
+town had become so bitter and intense that Henry E. Benson, then clerk
+in the anti-slavery office, writing on the 19th of the month, believed
+that there were persons in Boston, who would assassinate George Thompson
+in broad daylight, and doubted whether Garrison or Samuel J. May would
+be safe in Faneuil Hall on the day of the meeting, and what seemed still
+more significant of the inflamed state of the public mind, was the
+confidence with which he predicted that a mob would follow the meeting.
+The wild-cat-like spirit was in the air--in the seething heart of the
+populace.
+
+The meeting was held August 21st, in the old cradle of liberty. To its
+call alone fifteen hundred names were appended. It was a Boston audience
+both as to character and numbers, an altogether imposing affair, over
+whom the mayor of the city presided and before whom two of the most
+consummate orators of the commonwealth fulmined against the
+Abolitionists. One of their hearers, a young attorney of twenty-four,
+who listened to Peleg Sprague and Harrison Gray Otis that day, described
+sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on
+that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how "'Abolitionist'
+was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the
+charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw
+around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually
+ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something,
+if one must die, to die by such a hand--a hand somewhat worthy and able
+to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The orator was worthy of
+the gigantic task attempted; and thousands crowded before him, every one
+of their hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts
+had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty years."
+
+Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which the wild-cat-like spirit
+of the city got from the orators. It is taken from the speech of Peleg
+Sprague. The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson, "an
+avowed _emissary_" "_a professed agitator_," who "comes here from the
+dark and corrupt institutions of Europe to enlighten _us_ upon the
+rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition. Received by our
+hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and
+hurls firebrands, arrows, and death into the habitations of our
+neighbors and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a
+conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over our land, he has only
+to embark for his own country, and there look serenely back with
+indifference or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which _our_
+cities are wrapt in flames, and _our_ garments rolled in blood."
+
+The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but not so its effects.
+The echoes of Otis and Sprague did not cease at its close. They thrilled
+in the air, they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people.
+When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into the streets of the
+city with them. Wherever afterward they gathered Mischief made one in
+their midst. Mischief was let loose, Mischief was afoot in the town. The
+old town was no place for the foreign emissary, neither was it a safe
+place for the arch-agitator. On the day after the meeting, Garrison and
+his young wife accordingly retreated to her father's home at Brooklyn,
+Conn., where the husband needed not to be jostling elbows with Mistress
+Mischief, and her _pals_.
+
+Garrison's answer to the speeches of Otis and Sprague was in his
+sternest vein. He is sure after reading them that, "there is more guilt
+attaching to the people of the free States from the continuance of
+slavery, than those in the slave States." At least he is ready to affirm
+upon the authority of Orator Sprague, "that New England is as really a
+slave-holding section of the republic as Georgia or South Carolina."
+Sprague, he finds, "in amicable companionship and popular repute with
+thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and
+slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the
+robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and
+lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and
+liberties of New England citizens."
+
+To Otis who was then nearly seventy years of age Garrison addressed his
+rebuke in tones of singular solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged
+statesman had transgressed against liberty "under circumstances of
+peculiar criminality." "Yet at this solemn period," the reprobation of
+the prophet ran, "you have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious,
+to lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication of all
+imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great system of crime and
+blood--to pander to the lusts and desires of the robbers of God and his
+poor--to consign over to the tender mercies of cruel taskmasters,
+multitudes of guiltless men, women, and children--and to denounce as an
+'unlawful and dangerous association' a society whose only object is to
+bring this nation to repentance, through the truth as it is in Jesus."
+
+These audacious and iconoclastic performances of the reformer were not
+exactly adapted to turn from him the wrath of the idol worshipers. They
+more likely added fuel to the hot anger burning in Boston against him.
+Three weeks passed after his departure from the city, and his friends
+did not deem it safe for him to return. Toward the end of the fourth
+week of his enforced absence, against which he was chafing not a little,
+an incident happened in Boston which warned him to let patience have its
+perfect work. It was on the night of September 17th that the
+dispositions of the city toward him found grim expression in a gallows
+erected in front of his house at 23 Brighton street. This ghastly
+reminder that the fellow-citizens of the editor of the _Liberator_
+continued to take a lively interest in him, "was made in real
+workmanship style, of _maple joist_ five inches through, eight or nine
+feet high, for the accommodation of two persons." Garrison and Thompson
+were the two persons for whom these brave accommodations were prepared.
+But as neither they nor their friends were in a mood to have trial made
+of them, the intended occupants consented to give Boston a wide berth,
+and to be somewhat particular that they did not turn in with her while
+the homicidal fit lasted.
+
+This editing his paper at long range, and this thought of life and
+safety Garrison did not at all relish. They grew more and more irksome
+to his fearless and earnest spirit. For his was a "pine-and-fagot"
+Abolitionism that knew not the fear of men or their wrath. But now he
+must needs have a care for the peace of mind of his young wife, who was,
+within a few months, to give birth to a child. And her anxiety for him
+was very great. Neither was the anxiety of devoted friends and followers
+to be lightly disregarded. All of which detained the leader in Brooklyn
+until the 25th of the month, when the danger signals seemed to have
+disappeared. Whereupon he set out immediately for his post in Boston to
+be at the head of his forces. He found the city in one of those strange
+pauses of popular excitement, which might signify the ebb of the tide or
+only the retreat of the billows. He was not inclined to let the
+anti-Abolition agitation subside so soon, before it had carried on its
+flood Abolition principles to wider fields and more abundant harvests in
+the republic. Anxious lest the cat-like temper of the populace was
+falling into indifference and apathy, he and his disciples took occasion
+to prod it into renewed wakefulness and activity. The instruments used
+for this purpose were anti-slavery meetings and the sharp goad of his
+_Liberator_ editorials. The city was possessed with the demon of
+slavery, and its foaming at the mouth was the best of all signs that the
+Abolition exorcism was working effectively. So, in between the
+glittering teeth and the terrible paws was thrust the maddening goad,
+and up sprang the mighty beast horrible to behold.
+
+One of these meetings was the anniversary of the formation of the Boston
+Female Anti-Slavery Society which fell on October 14th. The ladies
+issued their notice, engaged a hall, and invited George Thompson to
+address them. Now the foreign emissary was particularly exasperating to
+Boston sensibility on the subject of slavery. He was the veritable red
+rag to the pro-slavery bull. The public announcement, therefore, that he
+was to speak in the city threw the public mind into violent agitation.
+The _Gazette_ and the _Courier_ augmented the excitement by the
+recklessness with which they denounced the proposed meeting, the former
+promising to Thompson a lynching, while the latter endeavored to involve
+his associates who were to the "manner born" in the popular outbreak,
+which was confidently predicted in case the "foreign vagrant" wagged his
+tongue at the time appointed.
+
+Notwithstanding the rage of press and people the meeting was postponed
+through no willingness on the part of the ladies, but because of the
+panic of the owners of the hall lest their property should be damaged or
+destroyed in case of a riot. The ladies, thereupon, appointed three
+o'clock in the afternoon of October 21st as the time, and the hall
+adjoining the Anti-Slavery Office, at 46 Washington street, as the place
+where they would hold their adjourned meeting. This time they made no
+mention of Mr. Thompson's addressing them, merely announcing several
+addresses. In fact, an address from Mr. Thompson, in view of the squally
+outlook, was not deemed expedient. To provide against accidents and
+disasters, he left the city on the day before the meeting. But this his
+enemies did not know. They confidently expected that he was to be one of
+the speakers. An inflammatory handbill distributed on the streets at
+noon of the 21st seemed to leave no doubt of this circumstance in the
+pro-slavery portion of the city.
+
+The handbill referred to ran as follows:
+
+
+    THOMPSON,
+
+    THE ABOLITIONIST!
+
+    That infamous foreign scoundrel, THOMPSON, will hold forth _this
+    afternoon_ at the _Liberator_ office. No. 48 Washington street.
+    The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union
+    to _snake Thompson out_! It will be a contest between the
+    Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has
+    been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the
+    individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so
+    that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of
+    the Union, be vigilant!
+
+    _Boston, Wednesday, 12 o'clock._
+
+
+That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the anti-slavery office,
+little dreaming of the peril which was to overtake him in that very spot
+in the afternoon. He went home to an early dinner, since his wife was a
+member of the society, and he himself was set down for an address. As he
+wended his way homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing
+the aforesaid handbills "in the insurance offices, the reading-rooms,
+all along State street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.," and scattering
+it "among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it."
+Garrison returned about a half hour before the time appointed for the
+meeting. He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals collected
+in front of the building where the hall was situated, and on ascending
+to the hall more of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the access
+to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed his way through them with
+difficulty. As he entered the place of meeting and took his seat among
+the ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young rowdies
+recognized him and evinced this by the exclamation: "That's Garrison!"
+The full significance of the crowd just without the hall did not seem to
+have occurred to the man whom they had identified. He did not know that
+they were the foam blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment
+filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building where he sat
+with such serenity of spirit. His wife who had followed him from their
+home saw what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred had swelled
+to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular cross, jammed in between the
+buildings on Washington street, the head lowering in front of the
+anti-slavery office, the foot reaching to the site where stood Joy
+building, now occupied by the Rogers, the right arm stretching along
+Court street to the Court House, and the left encircling the old State
+House, City Hall and Post-office then, in a gigantic embrace. All hope
+of urging her way through that dense mass was abandoned by Mrs.
+Garrison, and a friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home,
+where she passed the night.
+
+Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast
+approaching storm. The noises ominously increased on the landing just
+outside. The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance
+filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to
+these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to
+the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a
+characteristic bit of pleasantry: "Gentlemen," said he, "perhaps you are
+not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston _Female_ Anti-Slavery
+Society, called and intended exclusively for _ladies_, and those only
+who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will
+not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this
+meeting." But he added, "If, _gentlemen_, any of you are _ladies_ in
+disguise--why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I
+will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among
+them accordingly." The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few
+moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly
+from bad to worse. "The tumult continually increased," says an
+eye-witness, "with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally
+shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding
+their fury, but mounted on each other's shoulders, so that a row of
+hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of
+the wall which divides the society's rooms from the landing place. We
+requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide
+as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and
+shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges."
+
+Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits
+and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further
+molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society
+to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain. She did not
+wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of
+the meeting but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the hall
+meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way
+of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, and
+did what seemed the next best thing, entered the anti-slavery office,
+separated from the hall by a board partition. Charles C. Burleigh
+accompanied him within this retreat. The door between the hall and the
+office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of
+mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing
+to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next
+room.
+
+The tempest had begun in the streets also. The mob from its five
+thousand throats were howling "Thompson! Thompson!" The mayor of the
+city, Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and announced to the
+gentlemen of property and standing, who were thus exercising their vocal
+organs, that Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the city.
+But the mayor was a modern Canute before the sea of human passion, which
+was rushing in over law and authority. He besought the rioters to
+disperse, but he might as well have besought the waves breaking on
+Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer,
+fiercer waxed the multitude; more and more frightful became the uproar.
+The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists
+had broken loose at last and the deluge had come. The mayor tossed upon
+the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for
+the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also.
+
+Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as
+powerless as the mayor and the police below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the
+president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises. She has
+called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some passages from the
+Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and
+Merciful One "for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies
+and revilers." It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian
+heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the
+rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But
+now the rioters have thrown themselves against the partition between the
+landing-place and the hall. They are trying to break it down; now, they
+have partially succeeded. In another moment they have thrown themselves
+against the door of the office where Garrison is locked. The lower panel
+is dashed in. Through the opening they have caught sight of their
+object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk. "There he is! That's
+Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!" and other such words of recognition
+and execration, burst from one and another of the mob. The shattering of
+the partition, the noise of splitting and ripping boards, the sharp
+crash caused by the shivering of the office door, the loud and angry
+outcries of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the office that his
+position has become one of extreme peril. But he does not become
+excited. His composure does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to
+escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with the words, "You
+may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst." But
+fortunately, Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant mood.
+
+The advent of the mayor and the constables upon the scene at this point
+rescued Garrison from immediately falling into the hands of the mob, who
+were cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the voice of the
+mayor was heard urging the ladies to go home as it was dangerous to
+remain; and now the voice of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: "If this is
+the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere." The
+ladies finally decided to retire, and their exit diverted, while the
+operation lasted, the attention of the huge, cat-like creature from
+their object in the anti-slavery office. When the passing of the ladies
+had ceased, the old fury of the mob against Garrison returned. "Out with
+him!" "Lynch him!" rose in wild uproar from thousands in the streets.
+But again the attention of the huge, cat-like creature was diverted from
+its object in the second story of the building before which it was
+lashing itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery sign which
+hung from the rooms of the society over the sidewalk. The mob had caught
+sight of it, and directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter
+helplessness in the presence of the multitude seemed at this juncture to
+return to the chief magistrate of the city. It was impossible to control
+the cataract-like passions of the rioters. He heard their awful roar for
+the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions. The thought of what
+might happen next appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the sign
+with brickbats, and from the sign pass to the building, and from the
+building to the constables, and then--but the mayor glanced not beyond,
+for he had determined to appease the fury of the mob by throwing down to
+it the hateful sign. A constable detached it, and hurled it down to the
+rioters in the street. But by the act the mayor had signified that the
+rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the mob had really begun.
+When the rioters had wreaked their wrath upon the emblem of freedom,
+they were in the mood for more violence. The appetite for destruction,
+it was seen, had not been glutted; only whetted. Garrison's situation
+was now extremely critical. He could no longer remain where he was, for
+the mob would invade the building and hunt him like hounds from cellar
+to garret. He must leave the building without delay. To escape from the
+front was out of the question. A way of escape must, therefore, be found
+in the rear. All of these considerations the mayor and Garrison's
+friends urged upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel, and,
+with a faithful friend, proceeded to the rear of the building, where
+from a window he dropped to a shed, but in doing so was very nearly
+precipitated to the ground. After picking himself up he passed into a
+carpenter's shop, meaning to let himself down into Wilson's Lane, now
+Devonshire street, but the myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every
+portion of the building for their game, espied him at this point, and
+with that set up a great shout. The workmen came to the aid of the
+fugitive by closing the door of the carpenter's shop in the face of his
+pursuers. The situation seemed desperate. Retreat from the front was cut
+off; escape from the rear anticipated and foiled. Garrison perceived the
+futility of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed in his
+calm way to deliver himself up to them. But his faithful Achates, John
+Reid Campbell, advised him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long
+as it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made a final effort to
+get away. He retreated up stairs, where his friend and a lad got him
+into a corner of the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by piling
+some boards in front of him. But, by that time, the rioters had entered
+the building, and within a few moments had broken into the room where
+Garrison was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded of him where
+Garrison was. But Reid firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a
+window, and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane, advising them that it
+was not Garrison, but Garrison's and Thompson's friend, who knows where
+Garrison is, but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation from
+below greeted this announcement. Almost immediately afterward, Garrison
+was discovered and dragged furiously to the window, with the intention
+of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the rioters were for
+doing this, while others were for milder measures. "Don't let us kill
+him outright!" they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a rope
+around his body instead, and bade him descend to the street. The great
+man was never greater than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness
+and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street. From the window he
+bowed to the multitude who were thirsting for his destruction,
+requesting them to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then he
+stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for the purpose, and into the
+seething sea of human passion.
+
+Garrison must now have been speedily torn to pieces had he not been
+quickly seized by two or three powerful men, who were determined to save
+him from falling into the hands of the mob. They were men of great
+muscular strength, but the muscular strength of two or three giants
+would have proven utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison's
+deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed their powerful
+arms, they also employed stratagem as well to effect their purpose. They
+shouted anon as they fought their way through the excited throng, "He is
+an American! He shan't be hurt!" and other such words which divided the
+mind of the mob, arousing among some sympathy for the good man. By this
+means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson's lane into State street,
+in the rear of the old State House. The champion was now on historic
+ground, ground consecrated by the blood of Crispus Attucks and his
+fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His hat was lost, much of his
+clothing was stripped from his body, he was without his customary
+glasses, and was therefore practically blind. He could hear the awful
+clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he could not distinguish them
+one from another, friend from foe. Nevertheless he "walked with head
+erect, calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going to the stake,
+full of faith and manly hope" according to the testimony of an
+eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind
+during the ordeal. "The promises of God," he afterward remembered,
+sustained his soul, "so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready
+to sing aloud for joy."
+
+The news now reached the ears of the mayor that Garrison was in the
+hands of the mob. Thereupon the feeble but kindly magistrate began to
+act afresh the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and his
+constables struggled helplessly in the human current rushing and raging
+around City Hall, the head and seat of municipal law and authority.
+Without the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably have
+perished in the commotions which presently reached their climax in
+violence and terror. He was in the rear of City Hall when the mayor
+caught up to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived the
+extremity of the situation, and said to the Faneuil Hall giants who had
+hold of Garrison, "Take him into my office," which was altogether more
+easily said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry "to the Frog
+Pond with him!" Which order will be carried out, that of the magistrate
+or that of the mob?
+
+These were horrible moments while the two hung trembling in the balance.
+But other private citizens coming to the assistance of the mayor struck
+the scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was finally
+hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall
+and carried up to the mayor's room. But the mob had immediately effected
+an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the
+lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his
+feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain
+the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was
+ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve
+order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a
+similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the
+secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property
+and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a
+wolfish rabble.
+
+The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what
+advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was
+only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more
+perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of
+violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It
+seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their
+frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one
+building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed
+could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail.
+To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the
+powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison's life.
+But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in
+the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy
+had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for
+legal forms asserted itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must
+forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from
+his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the
+peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the
+Universal history of mobs?
+
+Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and
+therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the
+perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of
+civilized society. But enough--the municipal wiseacres having put their
+heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet
+as a disturber of the peace, immediately set about its execution, which
+developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a
+more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison's life could not
+well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building
+and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it.
+First then by disguising his identity by sundry changes in his apparel.
+He obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a
+coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was
+summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up
+and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in
+readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse
+to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of
+the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the
+plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into
+the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which
+defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce
+it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: "Cut the
+traces! Cut the reins!" They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon
+the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their
+heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously
+on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe
+was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at
+break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it
+with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race
+for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street
+to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less
+swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that
+the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by
+a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob
+pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals
+of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of
+the _Liberator_, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical
+phrase but by the skin of his teeth.
+
+Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell;
+and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary
+cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious
+friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully
+accosted thus: "You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot
+ask you to spend the night with me." That night in his prison cell, and
+on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and
+long:
+
+  "When peace within the bosom reigns,
+  And conscience gives th' approving voice;
+  Though bound the human form in chains.
+  Yet can the soul aloud rejoice.
+
+
+  "'Tis true, my footsteps are confined--
+  I cannot range beyond this cell--
+  But what can circumscribe my mind,
+  To chain the winds attempt as well!"
+
+
+The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on the walls of his cell.
+Besides this one he made two other inscriptions there, to stand as
+memorabilia of the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon of
+October 21, 1835.
+
+After being put through the solemn farce of an examination in a court,
+extemporized in the jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a
+disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of
+the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few
+days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving him to Canton, where he
+boarded the train from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and
+together they went thence to her father's at Brooklyn, Conn. The
+apprehensions of the authorities in respect of the danger of a fresh
+attack upon him were unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent
+search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages and cars from the
+city that morning.
+
+In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate into _works_
+her sympathy for the South.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+
+FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
+
+
+The results of the storm became immediately manifest in several ways.
+Such a commotion did not leave things in precisely the state in which
+they were on the morning of the memorable day on which it struck the
+city. The moral landscape and geography of the community had sensibly
+changed at its close. The full extent of the alteration wrought could
+not at once be seen, nor was it at once felt. But that there were deep
+and abiding changes made by it in the court of public opinion in Boston
+and Massachusetts on the subject of slavery there is little doubt. It
+disgusted and alarmed many individuals who had hitherto acted in unison
+with the social, business, and political elements, which were at the
+bottom of the riot. Francis Jackson, for instance, had been one of the
+fifteen hundred signers of the call for the great Faneuil Hall meeting
+of the 21st of August. But on the afternoon of the 21st of October he
+threw his house open to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, after
+its meeting had been broken up by the mob. It seemed to him then that it
+was no longer a mere struggle for the freedom of the slave, but for the
+right of free speech and free discussion as well. Dr. Henry I. Bowditch,
+a young man, in 1835, eminent professor and physician subsequently,
+dates from that afternoon of mob violence his conversion to
+Abolitionism. In that selfsame hour seeds of resistance to slavery were
+sown in two minds of the first order in the city and State. Wendell
+Phillips was a spectator in the streets that day, and the father of
+Charles Sumner, the sheriff at the time, fought bravely to save Garrison
+from falling into the hands of the mob. The great riot gave those young
+men their first summons to enter the service of freedom. It was not long
+afterward probably that they both began to read the _Liberator_. From
+that event many intelligent and conservative people associated slavery
+with lynch law and outrage upon the rights of free speech and popular
+assembly.
+
+This anti-slavery reaction of the community received practical
+demonstration in the immediate increase of subscribers to the
+_Liberator_. Twelve new names were added to the subscription list in one
+day. It received significant illustration also in Garrison's nomination
+to the legislature. In this way did between seventy and eighty citizens
+testify their sympathy for him and their reprobation of mob rule. In yet
+another way was its influence felt, and this was in the renewed zeal and
+activity which it instantly produced on the part of the Abolitionists
+themselves. It operated upon the movement as a powerful stimulus to
+fresh sacrifices and unwearied exertions. George W. Benson, Garrison's
+brother-in-law, led off bravely in this respect, as the following
+extract from a letter written by him in Boston, two days after the riot,
+to Garrison, at Brooklyn, well illustrates. He had come up to the city
+from Providence the night before, in quest of his sister and her
+husband. Not finding them, he turned to the cause which had been so
+ruthlessly attacked, and this is the sort of care which he bestowed upon
+it. He got Burleigh to write a general relation of the mob for
+publication in the _Liberator_, and Whittier to indite another, with an
+appeal to the public, the same to be published immediately, and of which
+he ordered three thousand copies for himself.
+
+"I further ordered," he writes, "one thousand copies of A. Grimké's
+letter, with your introductory remarks, and your address published in
+the _Liberator_ several weeks since, with your name appended, and
+Whittier's poetry on the times, in a pamphlet form. I urged all our
+friends to redouble their exertions. They seemed well disposed to accept
+the advice, as nothing will now avail but thorough measures. _Liberty or
+Death_!"
+
+This is a fair specimen of the indomitable, indefatigable spirit which
+was born of the attempt to put Abolitionism down by lawlessness and
+violence. Indeed, the "Broad-Cloth Mob," viewed in the light of the
+important consequences which followed it, was equal to a hundred
+anti-slavery meetings, or a dozen issues of the _Liberator_.
+
+It is a curious and remarkable circumstance that, on the very day of the
+Boston mob, there occurred one in Utica, N.Y., which was followed by
+somewhat similar results. An anti-slavery convention was attacked and
+broken up by a mob of "gentlemen of property and standing in the
+community," under the active leadership of a member of Congress. Here
+there was an apparent defeat for the Abolitionists, but the consequences
+which followed the outrage proved it a blessing in disguise. For the
+cause made many gains thereby, and conspicuously among them was Gerritt
+Smith, ever afterward one of its most eloquent and munificent
+supporters. If anti-slavery meetings made converts by tens, anti-slavery
+mobs made them by hundreds. The enemies of freedom builded better than
+they knew or intended, and Garrison had the weightiest of reasons for
+feeling thankful to them for the involuntary, yet vast aid and comfort
+which their pro-slavery virulence and violence were bringing him and the
+anti-slavery movement throughout the free States. Example: in 1835-36,
+the great mob year, as many as three hundred and twenty-eight societies
+were organized in the North for the immediate abolition of slavery.
+
+The mob did likewise help towards a satisfactory solution of the riddle
+propounded by Garrison: "Shall the _Liberator_ die?" The fresh access of
+anti-slavery strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers, begotten by
+it, exerted no slight influence on the longevity of the _Liberator_.
+Poor the paper continued, and embarrassed the editor for many a month
+thereafter, but as an anti-slavery instrument its survival may be said
+from that proceeding to have become a necessity. To allow the
+_Liberator_ to die at this juncture would have been such a confession of
+having been put down, such an ignominious surrender to the mobocrats as
+the Abolitionists of Boston would have scorned to make. "I trust," wrote
+Samuel E. Sewall, "there will not be even one week's interruption in the
+publication of the _Liberator._" _Ex uno disce omnes_. He but voiced the
+sentiment of the editor's disciples and associates in the city, in the
+State, and in New England as well.
+
+Besides these larger consequences there were others of a more personal
+and less welcome character. The individual suffers but the cause goes
+forward. Property-holders in Boston after the riot were not at all
+disposed to incur the risk of renting property to such disturbers of the
+peace as Garrison and the _Liberator_. The owner of his home on Brighton
+street was thrown into such alarm for the safety of his property, if
+Garrison continued to occupy it, that he requested the cancellation of
+the lease and the vacation of the premises. Garrison and his friends,
+all things considered, decided that it was the part of wisdom to accede
+to the request--although this breaking up of his home was a sore trial
+to the young husband in more ways than one.
+
+The landlord of the building where was located the _Liberator_ office
+promptly notified the publishers to remove the paper not many mornings
+after the mob. This was particularly hard luck, inasmuch as the most
+dilligent quest for another local habitation for the paper, failed of
+success. No one was willing to imperil his property by letting a part of
+it to such a popularly odious enterprise. So that not only had the
+household furniture of the editor to be stored, but the office effects
+of the paper as well. The inextinguishable pluck and zeal of Garrison
+and his Boston coadjutors never showed to better advantage than when
+without a place to print the _Liberator_, the paper was "set up in
+driblets" in other offices at extraordinary expense, and sent out week
+after week to tell the tale of the mob, and to preach with undiminished
+power the gospel of universal emancipation.
+
+But more afflictive to the feelings of the reformer than the loss of his
+home, or that of the office of the _Liberator_, was the loss of his
+friend, George Thompson. It seemed to him when the English orator
+departed that "the paragon of modern eloquence," and "the benefactor of
+two nations," had left these shores. Garrison's grief was as poignant as
+his humiliation was painful. George Thompson had come hither only as a
+friend of America, and America had pursued him with the most relentless
+malice. The greatest precautions were taken after the "Broadcloth Mob"
+to ensure his safety. The place of his concealment was kept a secret and
+committed only to a few tried friends. There is no doubt that had these
+precautions not been observed and his hiding place been discovered by
+the ruffians of the city, his life would have been attempted. Indeed it
+is almost as certain that had he ventured to show himself in public he
+would have been murdered in broad daylight in any of the large towns and
+cities of Massachusetts. His mission was clearly at an end unless he was
+determined to invite martyrdom. In these circumstances there was nothing
+to do but to smuggle him out of the country at the first opportunity. On
+Sunday, November 8, the anxiously looked-for moment came when George
+Thompson was put upon a packet, in which he sailed for St. Johns, New
+Brunswick, whence he subsequently took passage for England. Garrison was
+inconsolable. "Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public," he
+sadly asked, "with subtle sophists and insolent scoffers?" little
+dreaming that there was then approaching him out of the all-hail
+hereafter a greater in these identical respects than George Thompson,
+indisputably great as he was.
+
+It was a blessed refuge to Garrison, the Benson homestead of Brooklyn,
+termed Friendship's Valley. Hunted as a partridge by his enemies here he
+found the quiet, and sympathy, and the right royal welcome and affection
+for which his heart panted amidst the dust, and din, and dangers of the
+crusade against slavery. But grateful as were the domestic sweets of
+Friendship's Valley, his was altogether too militant and masterful a
+spirit to yield himself without a struggle to the repose which it
+offered. He did not at all relish the idea of being a forced exile from
+Boston, of being obliged to edit the _Liberator_ at such long range. But
+his friends urged him to submit to the one, and do the other, both on
+grounds of economy and common prudence. He was almost super-anxious lest
+it be said that the fear of the mob drove him out of Boston, and that
+the fear of it kept him out. This super-anxiety in that regard his
+friends to a certain degree shared with him. It was a phase of Abolition
+grit. Danger attracted this new species of reformers as a magnet draws
+iron. Instead of running away from it, they were, with one accord,
+forever rushing into it. And the leader in Brooklyn was for rushing back
+to Boston, where, if one chanced to sow the wind in the morning, he
+might be morally certain of reaping the whirlwind in the afternoon.
+
+Two weeks after he had been secretly conveyed to Canton by Deputy
+Sheriff Parkman, being the day of his discharge from Leverett street
+jail, he was back again in Boston. The popular excitement had subsided.
+He showed himself freely in the streets and was nowhere molested. One
+day, however, while at the anti-slavery office on Washington street, he
+witnessed what was perhaps a final manifestation of the cat-like spirit
+of the great mob. A procession passed by with band and music, bearing
+aloft a large board on which were represented George Thompson and a
+black woman with this significant allusion to the riot, made as if
+addressed to himself by his dusky companion in disgrace: "When are we
+going to have another meeting, Brother Thompson?" The cat-like creature
+had lapsed into a playful mood, but its playfulness would have quickly
+given place to an altogether different fit did it but know that Garrison
+was watching it from the window of the very room where a few weeks
+before he had nearly fallen into its clutches.
+
+Garrison remained in Boston two weeks, going about the city, wherever
+and whenever business or duty called him in a perfectly fearless way. He
+left on the afternoon of November 18th. On that same afternoon the
+Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society held a memorable meeting at the house
+of Francis Jackson. It was then that Harriet Martineau, another foreign
+emissary, avowed her entire agreement with the principles of the
+Abolitionists, which subjected her to social ostracism, and to unlimited
+abuse from the pro-slavery press of the city.
+
+The new hatred of slavery which the mob had aroused in Boston found
+heroic expression in a letter of Francis Jackson's replying to a vote of
+thanks of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to him for his
+hospitality to the ladies after their meeting was broken up by the mob.
+Mr. Jackson in his answer points with emphasis to the fact that his
+hospitality had a double aim, one was the accommodation of the ladies,
+the other the preservation of the right of free discussion. In his
+regard a foundation principle of free institutions had been assailed.
+"Happily," he shrewdly observed, "one point seems already to be gaining
+universal assent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion.
+Hence the efforts of the friends, and apologists of slavery to break
+down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of
+slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in its preservation. The
+contest is, therefore, substantially between liberty and slavery.
+
+"As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty
+breathe without it. Losing this, we, too, shall be no longer free men
+indeed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we now seek to
+emancipate." This apprehension and spirit of resistance, voiced by
+Francis Jackson, was Garrison's new ally, which, phoenix-like, was born
+out of the ashes of that terrific attempt of his enemies to effect his
+destruction, known as the "Broad-Cloth Mob."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+
+THE BAROMETER CONTINUES TO FALL.
+
+
+Having made trial of the strong arm of the mob as an instrument for
+putting down the Abolitionists, and been quite confounded by its
+unexpected energy and unmanageableness, Boston was well disposed to lay
+the weapon aside as much too dangerous for use. For the wild-cat-like
+creature might take it into its head, when once it had got a taste of
+blood, to suppress some other isms in the community besides
+Abolitionism. No, no, the gentlemen of property and standing in the
+community had too much at stake to expose their property and their
+persons to the perils of any further experiments in that direction, even
+for the sake of expressing their sympathy for their dear brethren in the
+South, or of saving the dear Union into the bargain. Another method more
+in accord with the genius of their high state of civilization, they
+opined, might be invented to put the agitation and the agitators of the
+slavery question down. The politicians thereupon proceeded to make this
+perfectly wonderful invention. Not the strong arm of the mob, quoth
+these wiseacres, but the strong arm of the law it shall be. And the
+strong arm of the law they forthwith determined to make it.
+
+Massachusetts was hearkening with a sort of fascination to the song of
+the slave syren. And no wonder. For the song of the slave syren was
+swelling and clashing the while with passionate and imperious energy.
+South Carolina had led off in this kind of music. In December following
+the Boston mob Governor McDuffie, pitched the key of the Southern
+concert in his message to the legislature descriptive of anti-slavery
+publications, and denunciatory of the anti-slavery agitation. The
+Abolitionists were, to his mind, "enemies of the human race," and the
+movement for immediate emancipation ought to be made a felony punishable
+"by death without benefit of clergy." He boldly denied that slavery was
+a political evil, and vaunted it instead as "_the corner stone of our
+republican edifice_." The legislature upon the receipt of this
+extraordinary message proceeded to demand of the free States the
+suppression, by effective legislation, of anti-slavery societies and
+their incendiary publications. The burden of this demand was directly
+caught up by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia. But there
+were some things which even a pro-slavery North could not do to oblige
+the South. Neither party, much as both desired it, dared to undertake
+the violation by law of the great right of free speech and of the
+freedom of the press. Not so, however, was it with sundry party leaders,
+notably the governors of New York and Massachusetts, who were for trying
+the strong arm of the law as an instrument for suppressing Abolitionism.
+Edward Everett was so affected by the increasing Southern excitement and
+his fears for the safety of the dear Union that he must needs deliver
+himself in his annual message upon the Abolition agitation. He was of
+the opinion that the Abolitionists were guilty of an offence against
+Massachusetts which might be "prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common
+law." He evidently did not consider that in the then present state of
+political parties and of public opinion any repressive legislation upon
+the subject could be got through the legislature, and hence the immense
+utility of the old machinery of the common law, as an instrument for
+putting down the agitation. But in order to get this machinery into
+operation, careful preparation was necessary. Proof must not be wanting
+as to the dangerous and unpatriotic character and tendency of the
+movement to be repressed. There should be the most authoritative
+utterance upon this point to warrant the effective intervention of the
+Courts and Grand Juries of the commonwealth in the prosecution of the
+Abolitionists, as disturbers of the peace. Ergo the Governor's
+deliverance in his annual message against them. Now, if the legislature
+could be brought to deliver itself in tones not less certain, the third
+coördinate branch of the State government might catch its cue and act
+with energy in suppressing the disturbers of the peace of the
+commonwealth and of the dear Union as well. This was the scheme, the
+conspiracy which was in a state of incubation in Massachusetts in the
+year 1836. The pro-slavery portion of Governor Everett's message,
+together with the Southern demands for repressive legislation against
+the Abolitionists were referred to a joint legislative committee for
+consideration and report. The chairman of the committee was George Lunt,
+of Newburyport, a bitter pro-slavery politician, who saw no sign,
+received no light which did not come out of the South.
+
+The Abolitionists perceived the gravity of the new danger which
+threatened them, and rallied promptly to avert it. They shrewdly guessed
+that the object of the committee would not be the enactment of any new
+law against themselves but the adoption of condemnatory resolutions
+instead. This course they rightly dreaded more than the other, and to
+defeat it the managers of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society
+requested a public hearing of the committee, which was granted. On March
+4th Garrison and many of the anti-slavery leaders appeared before the
+committee, with a carefully planned programme of procedure. To each of
+the selected speakers was assigned a distinct phase of the great subject
+of discussion before the committee. Samuel J. May was appointed to open
+with an exposition of the anti-slavery movement and of the object and
+motives of its founders; Garrison to follow with an exhibition of the
+pacific character of the agitation as contained in official publications
+whereby forgiveness, submission, and non-resistance were steadily
+inculcated; Ellis Gray Loring was next to demonstrate the perfectly
+constitutional character of the agitation. The Abolitionists had in no
+wise contravened the National or the State Constitution, either in
+letter or spirit, and so on through the programme. It was thus that the
+Abolitionists dexterously killed two birds with one stone; for at the
+same time that they made their defence before the committee, they
+managed to present their cause to the attention of the public as well.
+Appearing before the committee to prevent hostile action on the part of
+the legislature against their movement, they skillfully turned the
+occasion into the most notable meeting for agitating the subject of
+slavery in the State during the year.
+
+The pro-slavery malignity of the chairman helped not a little to bring
+this result to pass. He again and again interrupted the speakers with
+the greatest insolence of behavior. Garrison, for a wonder, was allowed
+to finish his remarks without interruption. Here is a specimen of the
+way in which Paul addressed himself to King Agrippa's master--public
+opinion:
+
+"Sir," spoke he to the committee, "we loudly boast of our free country,
+and of the union of these States, yet I have no country! As a New
+Englander and as an Abolitionist I am excluded by a bloody proscription
+from one-half of the national territory, and so is every man who is
+known to regard slavery with abhorrence. Where is our Union? ... The
+right of free and safe locomotion from one part of the land to the other
+is denied to us, except on peril of our lives.... Therefore it is, I
+assert, that the Union is now virtually dissolved.... Look at McDuffie's
+sanguinary message! Read Calhoun's Report to the U.S. Senate,
+authorizing every postmaster in the South to plunder the mail of such
+Northern letters or newspapers as he may choose to think incendiary!
+Sir, the alternative presented to the people of New England is this:
+they must either submit to be gagged and fettered by Southern
+taskmasters, or labor unceasingly for the removal of slavery from our
+country."
+
+This was a capital stroke, a bold and brilliant adaptation of the
+history of the times to the advancement of the anti-slavery movement in
+New England. Missing Garrison, the anger of the chairman fell upon
+Goodell and Prof. Follen, like a tiger's whelp. Follen was remarking
+upon the Faneuil Hall meeting, how it had rendered the Abolitionists
+odious in Boston, and how, in consequence, the mob had followed the
+meeting.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," the great scholar continued, "may we most reasonably
+anticipate that similar consequences would follow the expression by the
+legislature of a similar condemnation? Would not the mob again undertake
+to execute the informal sentence of the General Court? Would it not let
+loose again its bloodhounds upon us?"
+
+At this point Mr. Lunt peremptorily stopped the speaker, exclaiming:
+
+"Stop, sir! You may not pursue this course of remark. It is insulting to
+this committee and the legislature which they represent."
+
+The Abolitionists, after this insult, determined to withdraw from the
+hearing, and appeal to the legislature to be heard, not as a favor but
+of right. A new hearing was, therefore, ordered, and the reformers
+appeared a second time before the committee. But the scenes of the first
+were repeated at the second hearing. The chairman was intolerably
+insolent to the speakers. His violent behavior to William Goodell, who
+was paying his respects to the Southern documents lying on the table of
+the committee, terminated the second hearing. These documents Mr.
+Goodell described as fetters for Northern freemen, and boldly
+interrogated the chairman in respect of them thus:
+
+"Mr. Chairman, are you prepared to attempt putting them on?" But the
+chairman was in no mood to listen to the question. His insolence reached
+a climax as he exclaimed passionately to Mr. Goodell, "Stop, sir! Sit
+down, sir! The committee will hear no more of this." But the temper of
+the Abolitionists had risen also, as had also risen the temper of the
+great audience of citizens who were present at the hearing which was had
+in the hall of the House of Representatives. "Freemen we came," retorted
+Goodell, "and as freemen we shall go away." Scarcely had these words
+died upon the ears when there rose sharply from the auditory, the stern
+protest "Let us go quickly, lest we be made slaves."
+
+The attempt to suppress the Abolitionists was a failure. It but
+stimulated the agitation and deepened the popular interest in the
+subject. Strong allies within and without the legislature were enlisted
+on the side of freedom. The turning of the tide of public sentiment in
+the grand old State had come. Slowly did it rise for awhile, but from
+that event it never ceased to flow in and with increasing volume. The
+condemnatory report of the insolent chairman proved as innocuous as the
+baying of dogs at the moon. The legislature refused to indorse it and
+the pro-slavery resolutions attached to it. They were both ignominiously
+laid upon the table, and what is more to the purpose as a straw to show
+the drift of popular opinion on the slavery question in Massachusetts,
+their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the hands of his
+dissatisfied constituents.
+
+The conflict was raging not alone in Massachusetts but all through the
+free States. In Congress the battle was assuming an intensely bitter
+character. Here the South was the agitator. Here she kept the political
+waters in a state of violent ebullition. As the discord grew,
+sectionalism threw darkening and portentous shadows over the face of the
+Union. The South was insisting in all stages of passion that the tide of
+Abolition be checked in the North, that the flood of incendiary
+publications be suppressed at their sources in the free States. The
+Southern slave-holding President had suggested the suppression of these
+by Congress. He would "prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation
+in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications
+intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." But when Webster and
+a few Northern leaders objected to such a proceeding as unconstitutional
+and in derogation of the freedom of the press, the South treated the
+objection as inimical to Southern interest and security. Thereupon the
+Southern excitement increased all the faster. The slave-power was not
+disposed to accept anything short of complete submission on the part of
+the North. And this the North could not well yield. While the
+slave-holding States were clamoring for the suppression of Abolitionism
+in the free States, Abolitionism was giving evidences of extraordinary
+expansion, and activity. It had risen well above the zero point in
+politics. It was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes. A new element
+had appeared at the polls and both of the old parties began to exhibit a
+certain degree of impressibility to the latest attraction. The
+slave-power with quick instinct recognized in the new comer a dangerous
+rival, and schemed for its destruction. Southern jealousy took on the
+character of insanity. Neither Northern Whigs nor Northern Democrats
+were permitted to show any regard for the rival. They were to snub and
+utterly abolish her, otherwise they should be snubbed and utterly
+abolished by the slave-power. They could not with impunity give to
+Abolitionism the scantiest attention or courtesy. Not even a gallant
+like John Quincy Adams, who was able to see nothing attractive in the
+little band of reformers. They seemed to him, in fact, "a small,
+shallow, and enthusiastic party preaching the abolition of slavery upon
+the principles of extreme democracy." If Mr. Adams had little love for
+the South, he had none whatever for the Abolitionists. By no stretch of
+the imagination could he have been suspected of any sentimental
+attachment to the Abolition movement. For his unvarying attitude towards
+it was one of grim contempt. But if the old Roman had no love for the
+Abolitionists, he did have a deep-seated attachment and reverence for
+certain ancient rights appertaining to free institutions, which nothing
+was able to shake. Among these was the great right of petition, viewed
+by the ex-President as a right of human nature. For a dozen years he
+stood in Congress its sleepless sentinel. And herein did he perform for
+freedom most valiant service. It made no difference to the dauntless old
+man whether he approved of the prayer of a petition or not, if it was
+sent to him he presented it to the House all the same. He presented
+petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and
+one, at least, against it, petitions from black and white, bond and
+free, with superb fidelity to the precious right which he championed.
+
+This characteristic of the aged statesman kept the Southern members in a
+state of chronic apprehension and excitement. They bullied him, they
+raged like so many wild animals against him, they attempted to crush him
+with votes of censure and expulsion all to no purpose. Then they applied
+the gag: "That all petitions, memorials, and papers touching the
+abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring slaves, in
+any State, or district, or territory of the United States, be laid on
+the table without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no
+action be taken thereon." Mr. Adam's denunciation of this action as a
+violation of the Constitution, of the right of the people to petition,
+and of the right to freedom of speech in Congress, found wide echo
+through the North. The violence, intolerence, and tyranny of the South
+were disgusting many of the most intelligent and influential minds in
+the non-slave-holding States, and driving them into more or less close
+affiliation with the anti-slavery movement.
+
+And so it was wherever one turned there were conflict and uproar.
+Everywhere contrary ideas, interests, institutions, tendencies, were
+colliding with inextinguishable rage. All the opposites and
+irreconcilables in a people's life had risen and clashed together in a
+death struggle for mastery. Freedom and slavery, civilization and
+barbarism had found an Armageddon in the moral consciousness of the
+Republic. Now the combatants rallied and the battle thickened at one
+point, now around another. At Washington the tide rolls in with
+resounding fury about the right of petition and the freedom of debate,
+then through the free States it surges and beats around the right of
+free speech and the freedom of the press. Storm clouds are flying from
+the East and from the West, flying out of the North and out of the
+South. Everywhere the chaos of the winds has burst, and the anarchy of
+the "live thunder."
+
+Benton with his customary optimism from a Southern standpoint, rejoiced
+in the year 1836 that the people of the Northern States had "chased off
+the foreign emissaries, silenced the gabbling tongues of female dupes,
+and dispersed the assemblies, whether fanatical, visionary, or
+incendiary, of all that congregated to preach against evils that
+afflicted others, not them, and to propose remedies to aggravate the
+disease which they pretended to cure." Calhoun's pessimism was clearer
+eyed. The great nullifier perceived at once the insuppressible nature of
+the Abolition movement and early predicted that the spirit then abroad
+in the North would not "die away of itself without a shock or
+convulsion." Yes, it was as he had prophesied, the anti-slavery reform
+was, at the very moment of Benton's groundless jubilation, rising and
+spreading with astonishing progress through the free States. It was
+gaining footholds in the pulpit, the school, and the press. It was a
+stalwart sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over the fields of the
+then coming generation truths and antipathies of social principles,
+which were to make peace impossible between the slave-holding and the
+non-slave-holding halves of the Union.
+
+In the year 1836 the anti-slavery leaven or residuum for instance, was
+sufficiently potent to preserve the statutes of the free States, free
+from repressive laws directed against the Abolitionists. This was much
+but there was undoubtedly another phase of the agitation, a phase which
+struck the shallow eye of Benton, and led him into false conclusions. It
+was not clear sailing for the reform. It was truly a period of stress
+and storm. Sometimes the reform was in a trough of the sea of public
+opinion, sometimes on the crest of a billow, and then again on the bosom
+of a giant ground swell. In Boston in this selfsame year which witnessed
+Benton's exultation over the fall of Abolitionism, the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society was not able to obtain the use of hall or church
+for its annual meeting, and was in consequence forced into insufficient
+accommodations at its rooms on Washington street. The succeeding year
+the society was obliged, from inability to obtain the use of either hall
+or church in the city, to occupy for its annual meeting the loft over
+the stable connected with the Marlborough Hotel. It is a long way from
+this rude meeting-house to the hall of the House of Representatives, but
+in this storm and stress period the distance was traversed in a few
+brief hours. The society applied in its exigency for the use of the hall
+for an evening meeting, and the application was granted by the members.
+It was a _jeu d'esprit_ of Henry B. Stanton, "That when Boston votes we
+go into a stable, but when the State votes we go into the State House."
+It was even so, for the incident served to reveal what was true
+everywhere through the free States that the anti-slavery reform was
+making fastest progress among people away from the great centres of
+population. It found ready access to the simple American folk in
+villages, in the smaller towns, and in the rural districts of New
+England and the North. And already from these independent and
+uncorrupted sons and daughters of freedom had started the deep ground
+swell which was to lift the level of Northern public opinion on the
+question of slavery.
+
+This Walpurgis period of the movement culminated on November 7, 1837, in
+a terrible tragedy. The place was a little Illinois town, Alton, just
+over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, and the victim was Elijah P.
+Lovejoy. He was a minister of the Presbyterian Church, and the editor of
+a weekly religious newspaper, first published in St. Louis and removed
+by him later to Alton. His sin was that he did not hold his peace on the
+subject of slavery in the columns of his paper. He was warned "to pass
+over in silence everything connected" with that question. But he had no
+choice, he had to cry aloud against iniquities, which, as a Christian
+minister and a Christian editor, he dared not ignore. His troubles with
+the people of St. Louis took in the spring of 1836 a sanguinary turn,
+when he denounced the lynching of a negro by a St. Louis mob,
+perpetrated under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. In consequence of
+his outspoken condemnation of the horror, his office was broken into and
+destroyed by a mob. Lovejoy thereupon removed his paper to Alton, but
+the wild-cat-like spirit pursued him across the river and destroyed his
+press. He replaced his broken press with a new one, only to have his
+property a second time destroyed. He replaced the second with a third
+press, but a third time the mob destroyed his property. Then he bought a
+fourth press, and resolved to defend it with his life. Pierced by
+bullets he fell, resisting the attack of a mob bent on the destruction
+of his rights. Lovejoy died a martyr to free speech and the freedom of
+the press.
+
+The tidings of this tragedy stirred the free States to unwonted depths.
+The murder of an able and singularly noble man by a mob was indeed
+horrible enough, but the blow which took his life was aimed at the right
+of free speech and the freedom of the press. He was struck down in the
+exercise of his liberties as a citizen of the town where he met death,
+and of the State and country to which he belonged. What brave man and
+good in the North who might not meet a similar fate for daring to
+denounce evils approved by the community in which his lot was cast? Who
+was safe? Whose turn would it be next to pay with his life for attempts
+to vindicate the birthright of his citizenship? What had Lovejoy done,
+what had he written, that thousands of people who did not agree with
+Garrison would not have done and have written under like circumstances?
+He was not a disciple of Garrison, he did not accept the doctrine of
+immediate emancipation, and yet a pro-slavery mob had murdered him. Yes,
+who was safe? Who was to be the next? A great horror transfixed the
+North, and bitter uncertainty, and tremendous dread of approaching
+perils to its liberties.
+
+Ah! had not Garrison spoken much plain truth at the public hearing of
+the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society before the insolent chairman and
+his committee when he said: "The liberties of the people of the free
+States are identified with those of the slave population. If it were not
+so, there would be no hope, in my breast, of peaceful deliverance of the
+latter class from their bondage. Our liberties are bound together by a
+ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese twins. The blow which
+cuts them asunder, will inevitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of
+speech and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and the nation itself
+will be in bondage; let it remain untrammeled, and Southern slavery must
+speedily come to an end." The tragedy at Alton afforded startling
+illustration of the soundness of this remark. Classes like individuals
+gain wisdom only by experience; and the murder of Lovejoy was one of
+those terrific experiences which furrow themselves in the soul of a
+people in frightful memories and apprehensions which do not disappear
+but remain after long lapse of years.
+
+Twelve days after the murder--it was before the development of the
+telegraph and rapid postal facilities--the news reached Boston. It
+produced the most profound sensation. Many of the leading citizens felt
+straightway that if the rights assailed in the person of Lovejoy were to
+be preserved to themselves and their section, immediate action was
+required. A great meeting was proposed, and Faneuil Hall applied for.
+The application was denied by the municipal authorities on the plea that
+its use for such a purpose might provoke a mob. The city was, however,
+dealing now not with the despised Abolitionists, but with men of
+property and standing in the community and was soon brought to its
+senses by the indignant eloquence of Dr. Channing, appealing to the
+better self of Boston in this strain: "Has it come to this? Has Boston
+fallen so low? May not its citizens be trusted to come together to
+express the great principles of liberty for which their forefathers
+died? Are our fellow-citizens to be murdered in the act of defending
+their property and of assuming the right of free discussion? And is it
+unsafe in this metropolis to express abhorrence of the deed?"
+
+A second application for the hall was granted, and a meeting, which is
+an historical event in the annals of the old town, was held December 8,
+1837--a meeting memorable as an uprising, not of the Abolitionists, but
+of the conservatism and respectability of the city in behalf of the
+outraged liberties of white men. Ever memorable, too, for that marvelous
+speech of Wendell Phillips, which placed him instantly in the front rank
+of minds with a genius for eloquence, lifted him at once as an
+anti-slavery instrument and leader close beside William Lloyd Garrison.
+The wild-cat-like spirit which had hunted Thompson out of the country
+and Lovejoy to death, had more than made good the immense deficit of
+services thus created through the introduction upon the national stage
+of the reform of this consummate and incomparable orator.
+
+The assassination of Lovejoy was an imposing object lesson to the North,
+but it was not the last. Other and terrible illustrations of the triumph
+of mobs followed it, notably the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in
+Philadelphia on the evening of May 17, 1838. As the murder of Lovejoy
+formed the culmination of outrages directed against the rights of
+person, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall furnished the climax of
+outrages committed against the rights of property. The friends of the
+slave and of free discussion in Philadelphia feeling the need of a place
+where they might assemble for the exercise of the right of free speech
+in a city which denied to them the use of its halls and meeting-houses,
+determined to erect for themselves such a place. At a cost of forty
+thousand dollars they built Pennsylvania Hall and devoted it to "Free
+Discussion, Virtue, Liberty, and Independence."
+
+Two days after the dedicatory exercises were had the hall was occupied
+by the annual convention of American Anti-Slavery Women. On the evening
+of May 16th, Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman, Angelina Grimké Weld and
+others addressed the convention in the new temple of freedom. The scenes
+of that evening have been graphically described by the first speaker as
+follows: "The floor of the hall was densely crowded with women, some of
+the noblest specimens of our race, a large proportion of whom were
+Quakers. The side aisles and spacious galleries were as thickly filled
+with men. Nearly three thousand people were in the hall. There seemed to
+be no visible symptoms of a riot. When I rose to speak I was greeted
+with applause by the immense assembly, and also several times in the
+course of my remarks. As soon, however, as I had concluded my address, a
+furious mob broke into the hall, yelling and shouting as if the very
+fiends of the pit had suddenly broken loose. The audience rose in some
+confusion, and would undoubtedly have been broken up, had it not been
+for the admirable self-possession of some individuals, particularly the
+women. The mobocrats finding that they could not succeed in their
+purpose, retreated into the streets, and, surrounding the building,
+began to dash in the windows with stones and brick-bats. It was under
+these appalling circumstances that Mrs. Chapman rose for the first time
+in her life, to address a promiscuous assembly of men and women--and she
+acquitted herself nobly. She spoke about ten minutes, and was succeeded
+by A.E.G. Weld, who occupied nearly an hour. As the tumult from without
+increased, and the brick-bats fell thick and fast (no one, however,
+being injured) her eloquence kindled, her eye flashed, and her cheeks
+glowed, as she devoutly thanked the Lord that the stupid repose of that
+city had at length been disturbed by the force of truth. When she sat
+down, Esther Moore (a Friend) made a few remarks, then Lucretia Mott,
+and finally Abby Kelley, a noble young woman from Lynn.
+
+"The meeting broke up about 10 o'clock, and we all got safely home. The
+next day the street was thronged with profane ruffians and curious
+spectators--the women, however, holding their meetings in the hall all
+day, till towards evening. It was given out by the mob that the hall
+would be burnt to the ground that night. We were to have a meeting in
+the evening, but it was impossible to execute our purpose. The mayor
+induced the manager to give the keys of the building into his hands. He
+then locked the doors, and made a brief speech to the mob, assuring them
+that he had the keys, and that there would be no meeting, and requesting
+them to retire. He then went home, but the mob were bent on the
+destruction of the hall. They had now increased to several thousands,
+and soon got into the hall by dashing open the doors with their axes.
+They then set fire to this huge building, and in the course of an hour
+it was a solid mass of flame. The bells of the city were rung, and
+several engines rallied; but no water was permitted to be thrown upon
+the building. The light of the fire must have been seen a great
+distance."
+
+At midnight Garrison was spirited out of the city, and conveyed in a
+covered carriage by a friend to Bristol, about twenty miles, where in
+the morning he took the steamboat for Boston. The light of that fire was
+visible a great distance in more senses than one. The burning of
+Pennsylvania Hall proved a public enlightener. After that occurrence the
+gentlemen of property scattered through the free States devoted
+themselves less to the violent suppression of Abolitionism and more to
+the forcible suppression, upon occasion, of the alarming manifestations
+of popular lawlessness, which found significant demonstration just a
+week later in the city of Boston.
+
+Mr. Garrison has preserved for us an instructive account of this affair,
+too, and here is the story as told by him to his brother-in-law, George
+W. Benson, in a letter dated May 25th: "The spirit of mobocracy, like
+the pestilence, is contagious; and Boston is once more ready to reënact
+the riotous scenes of 1835. The Marlboro' Chapel, having just been
+completed, and standing in relation to our cause just as did
+Pennsylvania Hall, is an object of pro-slavery malevolence. Ever since
+my return, threats have been given out that the chapel should share the
+fate of the hall. Last evening was the time for its dedication; and, so
+threatening was the aspect of things, four companies of light infantry
+were ordered to be in readiness, each being provided with 100 _ball_
+cartridges, to rush to the scene of riot on the tolling of the bells.
+The Lancers, a powerful body of horsemen, were also in readiness. During
+the day placards were posted at the corners of the streets, denouncing
+the Abolitionists, and calling upon the citizens to rally at the chapel
+in the evening, in order to put them down. An immense concourse of
+people assembled, a large proportion doubtless from motives of
+curiosity, and not a few of them with evil designs; but owing to the
+strong military preparations, the multitude refrained entirely from any
+overt acts of violence. They did not disperse till after 10 o'clock, and
+during the evening shouted and yelled like a troop of wild savages. Some
+ten or twelve were seized and carried to the watch-house, and this
+morning fined for their disorderly conduct."
+
+The frightful excesses of the Walpurgis period of the agitation reacted
+through the free States to an extraordinary extent in favor of
+Abolition. The greater the horror committed by the wild-cat-like spirit,
+the greater the help which the reform derived therefrom. The destruction
+of property, and the destruction of life instead of putting down the
+hated Abolitionists aroused in the public mind apprehensions and
+antagonisms in respect of mobs, which proved, immediately and
+ultimately, of immense advantage to freedom. This revulsion on the part
+of the North from lawless attempts to abolish Abolitionism, affected
+almost unavoidably, and in the beginning of it almost unconsciously, the
+friendly dispositions of that section toward slavery, the root and
+mainspring of these attempts. Blows aimed at the agent were sure,
+regardless of the actor's intention, to glance and strike the principal.
+In spite of mobs then, and to a remarkable degree because of mobs,
+Abolitionism had become a powerful motor in revolutionizing public
+opinion in the free States on the subject of slavery.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+
+BROTHERLY LOVE FAILS, AND IDEAS ABOUND.
+
+
+During those strenuous, unresting years, included between 1829 and 1836,
+Garrison had leaned on his health as upon a strong staff. It sustained
+him without a break through that period, great as was the strain to
+which it was subjected. But early in the latter year the prop gave way,
+and the pioneer was prostrated by a severe fit of sickness. It lasted
+off and on for quite two years. His activity the first year was
+seriously crippled, though at no time, owing to his indomitable will,
+could he be said to have been rendered completely _hors de combat_.
+Almost the whole of 1836 he spent with his wife's family in Brooklyn,
+where his first child was born. This new mouth brought with it fresh
+cares of a domestic character. He experienced losses also. Death removed
+his aged father-in-law in the last month of 1836, and four weeks later
+Henry E. Benson, his brother-in-law. Their taking off was a sad blow to
+the reformer and to the reform. That of the younger man cast a gloom
+over anti-slavery circles in New England; for at the time of his death
+he was the secretary and general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and
+although not twenty-three, had displayed uncommon capacity for affairs.
+The business ability which he brought into his office was of the
+greatest value where there was such a distinct deficiency in that
+respect among his coadjutors, and the loss of it seemed irreparable.
+
+Afflicted as he was, the leader was nevertheless cheered by the
+extraordinary progress of the movement started by him. The growth and
+activity of Abolitionism were indeed altogether phenomenal. In February,
+1837, Ellis Gray Loring estimated that there were then eight hundred
+anti-slavery societies in the United States, that an anti-slavery
+society had been formed in the North every day for the last two years,
+and that in the single State of Ohio there were three hundred societies,
+one of which had a membership of four thousand names. The moral
+agitation was at its height. The National Society had hit upon a capital
+device for increasing the effectiveness of its agents and lecturers.
+This was to bring them together in New York for a few weeks' study of
+the slavery question under the direction of such masters as Theodore D.
+Weld, Beriah Green, Charles Stuart, and others. All possible phases of
+the great subject, such as, What is slavery? What is immediate
+emancipation? The consequences of emancipation to the South, etc., etc.,
+pro-slavery objections and arguments were stated and answered. The
+agents and lecturers went forth from the convention bristling with
+facts, and glowing with enthusiasm to renew the crusade against slavery.
+Garrison, broken in health as he was, went on from Boston to attend this
+school of his disciples. He spoke briefly but repeatedly to them upon
+the all-absorbing topic which had brought them together. "It was a happy
+circumstance, too," he wrote, "that I was present with them, and that
+they had an opportunity to become _personally_ acquainted with me; for,
+as I am a great stumbling-block in the way of the people, or, rather, of
+some people, it would be somewhat disastrous to our cause if any of our
+agents, through the influence of popular sentiment, should be led to
+cherish prejudices against me."
+
+In February, 1837, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society came to the
+rescue of the _Liberator_ from its financial embarrassments and
+hand-to-mouth existence by assuming the responsibility of its
+publication. The arrangement did not in any respect compromise Mr.
+Garrison's editorial independence, but lifted from him and his friend
+Knapp in his own language, "a heavy burden, which has long crushed us to
+the earth." The arrangement, nevertheless, continued but a year when it
+was voluntarily set aside by Mr. Garrison for causes of which we must
+now give an account.
+
+In the letter from which we have quoted above, touching his visit to the
+Convention of Anti-Slavery Agents, Garrison alludes to one of these
+causes. He says: "I was most kindly received by all, and treated as a
+brother, notwithstanding the wide difference of opinion between us on
+some religious points, _especially the Sabbath question_." The italics
+are our own. Until within a few years he had been one of the strictest
+of Sabbath observers. Although never formally connected with any church,
+he had been a narrow and even an intolerant believer in the creed and
+observances of New England orthodoxy. Words failed him in 1828 to
+express his abhorrence of a meeting of professed infidels: "It is
+impossible," he exclaimed with the ardor of a bigot, "to estimate the
+depravity and wickedness of those who, at the present day, reject the
+Gospel of Jesus Christ," etc. A year and a half later while editing the
+_Genius_ in Baltimore, he held uncompromisingly to the stern Sabbatical
+notions of the Puritans. A fête given to Lafayette in France on Sunday
+seemed to him an act of sheer religious desecration. The carrying of
+passengers and the mails on the Sabbath provoked his energetic
+reprobation. He was in all points of New England Puritanism, orthodox of
+the orthodox.
+
+Subsequently he began to see things in a different light. As the area of
+his experience extended it came to him that living was more than
+believing, that it was not every one who professed faith in Jesus had
+love for him in the heart; and that there were many whom his own
+illiberalism had rated as depraved and wicked on mere points of
+doctrine, who, nevertheless, shamed by the blamelessness and nobility of
+their conduct multitudes of ardent Christians of the lip-service sort.
+Indeed this contradiction between creed and conduct struck him with
+considerable force in the midst of his harsh judgments against unbelief
+and unbelievers. "There are, in fact," he had remarked a year or two
+after he had attained his majority, "few _reasoning_ Christians; the
+majority of them are swayed more by the usages of the world than by any
+definite perception of what constitutes duty--so far, we mean, as
+relates to the subjugation of vices which are incorporated, as it were,
+into the existence of society; else why is it that intemperance, and
+slavery, and war, have not ere this in a measure been driven from our
+land?"
+
+As the months of his earnest young life passed him by, they showed him
+as they went how horrible a thing was faith without works. "By their
+fruits ye shall know them," the Master had said, and more and more as he
+saw how many and great were the social evils to be reformed, and in what
+dire need stood his country of righteous action, did he come to put
+increasing emphasis on conduct, as the one thing needful to rid the land
+of the triple curse of slavery, intemperance, and war. As he mused upon
+these giant evils, and the desolation which they were singly and
+together causing in the world, and upon the universal apathy of the
+churches in respect of them, it seemed to him that the current religion
+was an offence and an abomination. And in his prophetic rage he
+denounced it as "a religion which quadrates with the natural depravity
+of the heart, giving license to sin, restraining no lust, mortifying not
+the body, engendering selfishness, and cruelty!--a religion which walks
+in silver slippers, on a carpeted floor, having thrown off the burden of
+the cross and changed the garments of humiliation for the splendid
+vestments of pride! a religion which has no courage, no faithfulness, no
+self-denial, deeming it better to give heed unto men than unto God!"
+This was in the autumn of 1829, but though he was thus violently
+denunciatory of contemporary religion, the severity of his judgment
+against the skepticism of the times had not been materially modified. He
+still regarded the unbeliever with narrow distrust and dislike. When,
+after his discharge from Baltimore jail, he was engaged in delivering
+his message on the subject of slavery, and was seeking an opportunity to
+make what he knew known to the people of Boston, he was forced, after
+vainly advertising for a hall or meeting-house in which to give his
+three lectures, to accept the offer of Abner Kneeland's Society of
+Infidels of the use of their hall for that purpose. The spirit of these
+people, branded by the community as blasphemers, and by himself, too, in
+all probability, Garrison saw to be as admirable as the spirit displayed
+by the churches of the city toward him and his cause was unworthy and
+sinful. But, grateful as he was for the hospitality of the infidels, he,
+nevertheless, rather bluntly informed them that he had no sympathy with
+their religious notions, and that he looked for the abolition of slavery
+to evangelicism, and to it alone.
+
+A few years in the university of experience, where he learned that
+conduct is better than creeds, and living more than believing, served to
+emancipate him from illiberal prejudices and narrow sectarianism. He
+came to see, "that in Christ Jesus all stated observances are so many
+self-imposed and unnecessary yokes; and that prayer and worship are all
+embodied in that pure, meek, child-like state of heart which
+affectionately and reverently breathes but one petition--'Thy will be
+done on earth as it is in heaven.' Religion ... is nothing but
+love--perfect love toward God and toward man--without formality, without
+hypocrisy, without partiality--depending upon no outward form to
+preserve its vitality or prove its existence."
+
+This important change in Mr. Garrison's religious convictions became
+widely known in the summer of 1836 through certain editorial strictures
+of his upon a speech of Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Pittsburgh, on the subject
+of the Sabbath. The good doctor was cold enough on the question of
+slavery, which involved not only the desecration of the Sabbath, but of
+the souls and bodies of millions of human beings. If Christianity was
+truly of divine origin, and Garrison devoutly believed that it was, it
+would approve its divinity by its manner of dealing with the vices and
+evils which were dragging and chaining the feet of men to the gates of
+hell. If it parleyed with iniquity, if it passed its victims by on the
+other side, if it did not war incessantly and energetically to put down
+sin, to destroy wickedness, it was of the earth, earthy, and its
+expounders were dumb dogs where they should bark the loudest and bite
+the hardest; and Dr. Beecher appeared to him one of these dumb dogs,
+who, when he opened his mouth at all, was almost sure to open it at the
+men who were trying through evil report and good to express in their
+lives the spirit of Him who so loved the world that He gave His Son to
+die to redeem it. He bayed loud enough at the Abolitionists but not at
+the abomination which they were attacking. He was content to leave it to
+the tender mercies of two hundred years. No such liberal disposition of
+the question of the Sabbath was he willing to allow. He waxed eloquent
+in its behalf. His enthusiasm took to itself wings and made a great
+display of ecclesiastical zeal beautiful to behold. "The Sabbath," quoth
+the teacher who endeavored to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on
+the subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his prophetic soul
+quiescently committed to the operation of two centuries; "the Sabbath,"
+quoth he, "is the _great sun of the moral world_." Out upon you, said
+Garrison, the LORD GOD is the _great sun of the moral world_, not the
+Sabbath. It is not one, but every day of the week which is His, and
+which men should be taught to observe as holy days. It is not regard for
+the forms of religion but for the spirit, which is essential to
+righteousness. What is the command, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
+holy,' but one of ten commandments? Is the violation of the fourth any
+worse than the violation of the third or fifth, or sixth? Nowhere is it
+so taught in the Bible. Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and treading
+down of the whole ten, what but a vast system of adultery, robbery, and
+murder, the daily and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone
+of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?
+
+Mr. Garrison then passed to criticisms of a more special character
+touching the observance of the day thus: "These remarks are made not to
+encourage men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious
+and superstitious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that
+extraordinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon
+certain transgressors (of the Sabbath particularly and almost
+exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the
+prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious
+observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must
+necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its
+sanctity." This pious but rational handling of the Sabbath question gave
+instant offence to the orthodox readers of the _Liberator_. For it was
+enough in those days to convict the editor of rank heresy. From one and
+another of his subscribers remonstrances came pouring in upon him. A
+young theological student at Yale ordered his paper stopped in
+consequence of the anti-Sabbatarian views of the editor. A Unitarian
+minister at Harvard, Mass., was greatly cut up by reason thereof, and
+suddenly saw what before he did not suspect. "I had supposed you," he
+wrote in his new estate, "a very pious person, and that a large
+proportion of the Abolitionists were religious persons.... I have
+thought of you as another Wilberforce--but would Wilberforce have spoken
+thus of the day on which the Son of God rose from the dead?" Garrison's
+query in reply--"Would Wilberforce have denied the identity of Christ
+with the Father?"--was a palpable hit. But as he himself justly
+remarked, "Such questions are not arguments, but fallacies unworthy of a
+liberal mind." Nevertheless, so long as men are attached to the leading
+strings of sentiment rather than to those of reason, such questions will
+possess tremendous destructive force, as Mr. Garrison, in his own case,
+presently perceived. He understood the importance of not arousing
+against him "denominational feelings or peculiarities," and so had
+steered the _Liberator_ clear of the rocks of sectarianism. But when he
+took up in its columns the Sabbath question he ran his paper directly
+among the breakers of a religious controversy. He saw how it was with
+him at once, saw that he had stirred up against him all that religious
+feeling which was crystallized around the first day of the week, and
+that he could not hope to escape without serious losses in one way or
+another. "It is pretty certain," he writes Samuel J. May in September,
+1836, "that the _Liberator_ will sustain a serious loss in its
+subscriptions at the close of the present volume; and all appeals for
+aid in its behalf will be less likely to prevail than formerly. I am
+conscious that a mighty sectarian conspiracy is forming to crush me, and
+it will probably succeed to some extent."
+
+This controversy over the Sabbath proved the thin edge of differences
+and dissensions, which, as they went deeper and deeper, were finally to
+rend asunder the erstwhile united Abolition movement. The period was
+remarkable for the variety and force of new ideas, which were coming
+into being, or passing into general circulation. And to all of them it
+seems that Garrison was peculiarly receptive. He took them all in and
+planted them in soil of extraordinary fertility. It was immediately
+observed that it was not only one unpopular notion which he had adopted,
+but a whole headful of them. And every one of these new ideas was a sort
+of rebel-reformer, a genuine man of war. They had come as a protest
+against the then existing beliefs and order of things, come as their
+enemies and destroyers. Each one of them was in a sense a stirrer-up of
+sedition against old and regnant relations and facts, political, moral,
+and religious. Whoever espoused them as his own, espoused as his own
+also the antagonisms, political, moral, and religious which they would
+excite in the public mind. All of which was directly illustrated in the
+experience of the editor of the _Liberator_. Each of these new notions
+presently appeared in the paper along with Abolitionism. What was his
+intention timid people began to inquire? Did he design to carry them
+along with the Abolition movement? Suspicious minds fancied they saw "in
+Mr. Garrison, a decided wish, nay, a firm resolve, in laboring to
+overthrow slavery, to overthrow the Christian Sabbath and the Christian
+ministry. His doctrine is that every day is a Sabbath, and every man his
+own minister. There are no Christian ordinances, there is no visible
+church." His no-government and non-resistant ideas excited yet further
+the apprehensions of some of his associates for the safety of that
+portion of the present order to which they clung. As developed by
+Garrison they seemed to deny the right of the people "to frame a
+government of laws to protect themselves against those who would injure
+them, and that man can apply physical force to man rightfully under no
+circumstances, and not even the parent can apply the rod to the child,
+and not be, in the sight of God, a trespasser and a tyrant."
+
+Garrison embraced besides Perfectionism, a sort of political, moral, and
+religious Come-outerism, and faith in "universal emancipation from sin."
+His description of himself about this time as "an Ishmaelitish editor"
+is not bad, nor his quotation of "Woe is me my mother! for I was born a
+man of strife" as applicable to the growing belligerency of his
+relations with the anti-slavery brethren in consequence of the new ideas
+and isms, which were taking possession of his mind and occupying the
+columns of the _Liberator_.
+
+Among the strife-producers during this period of the anti-slavery
+agitation, the woman's question played a principal part. Upon this as
+upon the Sabbath question, Garrison's early position was one of extreme
+conservatism. As late as 1830, he shared the common opinions in regard
+to woman's sphere, and was strongly opposed to her stepping outside of
+it into that occupied by man. A petition of seven hundred women of
+Pittsburgh, Pa., to Congress in behalf of the Indians gave his masculine
+prejudices a great shock. "This is, in our opinion," he declared, "an
+uncalled for interference, though made with holiest intentions. We
+should be sorry to have this practice become general. There would then
+be no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and
+contrariant opinions of the softer sex." This top-lofty sentiment
+accorded well with the customary assumption and swagger of one of the
+lords of creation. For the young reformer was evidently a firm believer
+in the divine right of his sex to rule in the world of politics. But as
+he grew taller and broader the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere
+embraced every duty, responsibility, and right for which her gifts and
+education fitted her. The hard and fast lines of sex disappeared from
+his geography of the soul. He perceived for a truth that in humanity
+there was neither male nor female, but that man and woman were one in
+work and destiny--equals in bearing the world's burden, equals in
+building the world's glory. He heard in his heart the injunction of the
+eternal wisdom saying: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put
+asunder;" and straightway disposed his opinions and prejudices, his
+thoughts and purposes in cordial obedience therewith. He saw at once the
+immense value of woman's influence in the temperance movement, he saw no
+less quickly her importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had
+appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she had justified his
+appeal and proven herself the most devoted of coadjutors.
+
+In the beginning of the movement against slavery the line of demarcation
+between the sexes was strictly observed in the formation of societies.
+The men had theirs, the women theirs. Each, sexually considered, were
+very exclusive affairs. It did not seem to have occurred to the founders
+of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, or of the national organization
+to admit women to membership in them, nor did it seem to enter the mind
+of any woman to prefer a request to be admitted into them. Anti-slavery
+women organized themselves into female anti-slavery societies, did their
+work apart from the men, who plainly regarded themselves as the
+principals in the contest, and women as their moral seconds. The first
+shock, which this arrangement, so accordant with the oak-and-ivy notion
+of the masculine half of mankind, received, came when representatives of
+the gentler sex dropped the secondary role assigned women in the
+conflict, and began to enact that of a star. The advent of the sisters
+Grimké upon the anti-slavery stage as public speakers, marked the advent
+of the idea of women's rights, of their equality with men in the
+struggle with slavery.
+
+At the start these ladies delivered their message to women only, but
+by-and-bye as the fame of their eloquence spread men began to appear
+among their auditories. Soon they were thrilling packed halls and
+meeting-houses in different parts of the country, comprised of men and
+women. The lesson which their triumph enforced of women's fitness to
+enact the rôle of principals in the conflict with slavery was not lost
+upon the sex. Women went, saw, and conquered their prejudices against
+the idea of equality; likewise, many men. The good seed of universal
+liberty and equality fell into fruitful soil and germinated in due time
+within the heart of the moral movement against slavery.
+
+The more that Sarah and Angelina Grimké reflected upon the sorry
+position to which men had assigned women in Church and State the more
+keenly did they feel its injustice and degradation. They beat with their
+revolutionary idea of equality against the iron bars of the cage-like
+sphere in which they were born, and within which they were doomed to
+live and die by the law of masculine might. At heart they were rebels
+against the foundation principle of masculine supremacy on which society
+and government rested. While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the
+sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters rose up before them
+and revealed itself in bitter questionings. "Are we aliens," asked
+Angelina, "because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we
+are the _mothers, wives, and daughters_ of a mighty people? Have _women_
+no country--no interests staked on the public weal--no partnership in a
+nation's guilt or shame?" This discontent with the existing social
+establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic responses
+from many friends to whom the sisters communicated the contagion of
+their unrest and dissatisfaction. Angelina records that, "At friend
+Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the
+brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment
+prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken. L.M. Child and Maria
+Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed very many seem to think a
+new order of things is very desirable in this respect."
+
+This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women's rights, which
+Angelina observed in Mrs. Chapman's parlors possessed no general
+significence. For true to the character of new ideas, this particular
+new idea did not bring peace but a sword. It set Abolition brethren
+against Abolition brethren, and blew into a flame the differences of
+leaders among themselves. But the first irruption of strife which it
+caused proceeded from without, came from the church or rather from the
+clergy of the Orthodox Congregational churches of Massachusetts. This
+clerical opposition to the idea of women's rights found expression in
+the celebrated "Pastoral Letter," issued by the General Association of
+Ministers of that denomination to the churches of the same in the summer
+of 1837. This ecclesiastical bull had two distinct purposes to
+accomplish; first, to discourage the agitation of the slavery question
+by excluding anti-slavery agents from lecturing upon that subject in the
+churches; and, second, to suppress the agitation of the woman's question
+by setting the seal of the disapproval of the clergy to the appearance
+of women in their new and revolutionary rôle of public speakers and
+teachers on the burning subjects of the times. The reverend authors
+threw up their hands and eyes in holy horror at the "widespread and
+permanent injury" which seemed to them to threaten "the female
+character." They scorned the new-fangled notion of woman's independence,
+and asked for nothing better than the Pauline definition of her
+"appropriate duties and influence." "The power of women," quoth they,
+"is in her dependence.... When she assumes the place and tone of man as
+a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we
+put ourselves in self-defence against her, she yields the power which
+God has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural!"
+
+These Congregational ministers were not the only representatives of the
+lordly sex to whom the idea of women's equality was repellent.
+Anti-slavery brethren, too, were flinging themselves into all postures
+of self-defence against the dangerous innovation, which the sisters
+Grimké were letting into the social establishment, by itinerating "in
+the character of public lecturers and teachers." Amos A. Phelps was
+quite as strongly opposed to women preachers, to women assuming the
+"place and tone of man as a public reformer," as Nehemiah Adams himself.
+He remonstrated, with them against their continued assumption of the
+character of public lecturers and teachers, but to no purpose. Sarah and
+Angelina were uncompromising, refused to yield one iota of their rights
+as "moral and responsible beings." They firmly declined to make their
+Quakerism and not their womenhood their warrant for "exercising the
+rights and performing the duties" of rational and responsible beings,
+for the sake of quieting tender consciences, like that of Phelps, among
+the anti-slavery brethren. They were in earnest and demanded to know
+"whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and
+female duties." Angelina writes: "My opinion is that there is no
+difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin
+over the whole field of morality. My idea is that whatever is morally
+right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no
+rights but human rights.... I am persuaded that woman is not to be, as
+she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen
+world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this
+glorious work."
+
+The debate on the subject threatened for a short season to push the
+woman's question to the level of the slavery question. The contention
+became acrimonious, and the alienation of friendships was widespread.
+John G. Whittier and Theodore D. Weld, who were both avowed believers in
+the idea of women's rights, nevertheless, felt that the agitation of the
+subject, under the circumstances, was a grave blunder. "No moral
+enterprise, when prosecuted with ability and any sort of energy, _ever_
+failed under heaven," wrote Weld to Sarah and Angelina, "so long as its
+conductors pushed the _main_ principle, and did not strike off until
+they reached the summit level. On the other hand, every reform that ever
+foundered in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty side-winds."
+Both Weld and Whittier endeavored to dissuade the sisters from mooting
+the question of women's rights at all, and to urge them to devote their
+voice and pen to the "_main_ principle" exclusively. But Angelina
+confesses that "our judgment is not convinced, and we hardly know what
+to do about it, for we have just as high an opinion of Brother
+Garrison's views, and _he_ says '_go on_.'" The influence of Weld and
+Whittier finally prevailed with "Carolina's high-souled daughters," and
+they refrained from further agitation of the subject of Women's rights
+lest they should thereby injure the cause of the slave.
+
+But the leaven of equality was not so effectually disposed of. It had
+secured permanent lodgment in the anti-slavery body, and the
+fermentation started by it, went briskly on. Such progress did the
+principle of women's rights make among the Eastern Abolitionists,
+especially among those of Massachusetts, that in the spring of 1838 the
+New England Anti-Slavery Society voted to admit women to equal
+membership with men. This radical action was followed by a clerical
+secession from the society, which made a stir at the time. For among the
+seceding members was no less a personage than Amos A. Phelps, who was
+the general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and therefore one of
+Garrison's stanchest supporters. The reform instituted by the New
+England Society, in respect of the character of its membership, was
+quickly adopted by the Massachusetts Society and by several local
+organizations, all of which set the ball of discord spinning among the
+brethren at a great rate. But by this time all the new ideas,
+Sabbatical, no-government, perfectionist, non-resistance, as well as
+women's rights, were within the anti-slavery arena, and fencing and
+fighting for a chance to live, with the old ideas and the old order.
+
+Garrison championed all of the new ideas, and in doing so arrayed
+against himself all of the special champions of the existing
+establishments. In his reduced physical state, the reformer was not
+equal to the tremendous concussions of this "era of activity," as
+Emerson named it. At moments he appeared bewildered amid the loud,
+fierce clamor of contending ideas, each asserting in turn its moral
+primacy. For an instant the vision of the great soul grew dim, the great
+heart seemed to have lost its bearings. All of the new ideas thawed and
+melted into each other, dissolved into one vague and grand solidarity of
+reforms. The voice of the whole was urging him amid the gathering moral
+confusion to declare himself for all truth, and he hearkened irresolute,
+with divided mind. "I feel somewhat at a loss to know what to do"--he
+confesses at this juncture to George W. Benson, "whether to go into all
+the principles of holy reform and make the Abolition cause subordinate,
+or whether still to persevere in the _one_ beaten track as hitherto.
+Circumstances hereafter must determine this matter." That was written in
+August, 1837; a couple of months later circumstances had not determined
+the matter, it would seem, from the following extract from a letter to
+his brother-in-law: "It is not my intention at present to alter either
+the general character or course of the _Liberator_. My work in the
+anti-slavery cause is not wholly done; as soon as it is, I shall know
+it, and shall be prepared, I trust, to enter upon a mightier work of
+reform."
+
+Meanwhile the relations between the editor of the _Liberator_ and the
+managers of the national organization were becoming decidedly strained.
+For it seemed to them that Garrison had changed the anti-slavery
+character of his paper by the course which he had taken in regard to the
+new ideas which were finding their way into its columns to the manifest
+harm of the main principle of immediate emancipation. This incipient
+estrangement between the pioneer and the executive committee of the
+national society was greatly aggravated by an occurrence, which, at the
+time, was elevated to an importance that it did not deserve. This
+occurrence was what is known in anti-slavery annals as the "Clerical
+Appeal." Five clergymen, who were obviously unfriendly to Garrison, and
+distrustful of the religious and social heresies which they either saw
+or fancied that they saw in the _Liberator_, and withal jealous lest the
+severities of the paper against particular pro-slavery ministers should
+diminish the influence and sacred character of their order, published,
+in August of 1837, in the _New England Spectator_ an acrid arraignment
+of editor and paper, upon five several charges, designed to bring
+Garrisonism to the block and speedy death. This document was followed by
+two other appeals by way of supplement and rejoinder from the same
+source, an "Andover Appeal" from kindred spirits and a bitter, personal
+letter from one of the "seventy agents," all of them having a common
+motive and purpose, viz., sectarian distrust and dislike of Garrison,
+and desire to reduce his anti-slavery influence to a nullity.
+
+In his diseased and suffering bodily condition, Garrison naturally
+enough fell into the error of exaggerating the gravity of these attacks
+upon himself. Insignificant in an historical sense, they really were an
+episode, an unpleasant one to be sure for the time being, but no more.
+To Garrison, however, they appeared in a wholly different light. It
+seemed a rebellion on a pretty grand scale, which called for all his
+strength, all the batteries of the friends of freedom, all his terrible
+and unsparing severities of speech to quell it. All his artillery he
+posted promptly in positions commanding the camp of the mutineers, and
+began to pour, as only he could, broadside after broadside into the
+works of the wretched little camp of rebels. He could hardly have
+expended more energy and ammunition in attacking a strategical point of
+Southern slavery, than was expended in punishing a handful of deserters
+and insurgents. But, alas! he was not satisfied to draw upon his own
+resources for crushing the clerical sedition, he demanded reinforcements
+from the central authorities in New York as well. And then began a
+contention between him and the Executive Committee of the National
+Society, which issued only in ill.
+
+Garrison considered it the duty of the Executive Committee to disapprove
+officially of the action of the Massachusetts recalcitrants, and also
+the duty of its organ, the _Emancipator_, to rebuke the authors of the
+"appeals." Not so, replied Lewis Tappan and Elizur Wright, your request
+is unreasonable. If you choose to make a mountain out of a molehill, you
+choose to make a mistake which the Executive Committee will not repeat.
+Your troubles are wholly local, of no general importance whatever.
+"What! Shall a whole army stop its aggressive movements into the
+territories of its enemies to charge bayonets on five soldiers,
+subalterns, company, or even staff officers, because they stray into a
+field to pick berries, throw stones or write an 'appeal?' To be frank
+with you we shall make bold to say that we do not approve of the appeal,
+it is very censurable, its spirit is bad, but neither do we approve of
+your action in the premises, it is also very censurable and its spirit
+is bad. What then? shall the Executive Committee condemn the authors of
+the appeal and not condemn the editor of the _Liberator_ also? If strict
+military justice were done should not both parties be cashiered? Let the
+Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood alone for the
+present." "I could have wished, yes, I have wished from the bottom of my
+soul," it is Wright who now holds the pen, "that you could conduct that
+dear paper, the _Liberator_, in the singleness of purpose of its first
+years, without traveling off from the ground of our true, noble,
+heart-stirring Declaration of Sentiments--without breathing sentiments
+which are novel and shocking to the community, and which seem to me to
+have no logical sequence from the principles on which we are associated
+as Abolitionists. I cannot but regard the taking hold of one great moral
+enterprise while another is in hand and but half achieved, as an outrage
+upon commonsense, somewhat like that of the dog crossing the river with
+his meat. But you have seen fit to introduce to the public some novel
+views--I refer especially to your sentiments on government and religious
+perfection--and they have produced the effect which was to have been
+expected. And now considering what stuff human nature is made of, is it
+to be wondered at that some honest-hearted, thorough-going Abolitionists
+should have lost their equanimity? As you well know I am comparatively
+no bigot to any creed, political or theological, yet to tell the plain
+truth, I look upon your notions of government and religious perfection
+as downright fanaticism--as harmless as they are absurd. I would not
+care a pin's head if they were preached to all Christendom; for it is
+not in the human mind (except in a peculiar and, as I think, diseased
+state) to believe them."
+
+Barring the extreme plainness of speech with which Wright and Tappan
+gave their advice to Mr. Garrison, it was in the main singularly sound
+and wise. But the pioneer did not so regard it. He was possessed with
+his idea of the importance of chastising the clerical critics, and of
+the duty of the Executive Committee and of the _Emancipator_ to back him
+in the undertaking. His temper was, under all circumstances, masterful
+and peremptory. It was never more masterful and peremptory than in its
+management of this business. The very reasonable course of the Board at
+New York suggested to his mind a predominance of "sectarianism at
+headquarters," seemed to him "criminal and extraordinary." As the
+Executive Committee and its organ would not rebuke the schismatics, he
+was moved to rebuke the Executive Committee and its organ for their
+"blind and temporizing policy." And so matters within the movement
+against slavery went, with increasing momentum, from bad to worse.
+
+The break in the anti-slavery ranks widened as new causes of controversy
+arose between the management in Boston and the management at New York.
+The Massachusetts Abolitionists had stood stanchly by Garrison against
+the clerical schismatics. They also inclined to his side in his trouble
+with the national board. Instead of one common center of activity and
+leadership the anti-slavery reform began now to develop two centers of
+activity and leadership. Garrison and the _Liberator_ formed the moral
+nucleus at one end, the Executive Committee and the _Emancipator_ the
+moral nucleus at the other. Much of the energies of the two sides were
+in those circumstances, absorbed in stimulating and completing the
+processes which were to ultimate in the organic division of the body of
+the movement against slavery. When men once begin to quarrel they will
+not stop for lack of subjects to dispute over. There will be no lack,
+for before one disputed point is settled another has arisen. It is the
+old story of the box of evils. Beginnings must be avoided, else if one
+evil escapes, others will follow. The anti-slavery Pandora had let out
+one little imp of discord and many big and little imps were
+incontinently following.
+
+Against all of the new ideas except one, viz., the idea of anti-slavery
+political action, the New York leadership, speaking broadly, had opposed
+itself. But as if by some strange perversity of fate, this particular
+new idea was the only one of the new ideas to which the Boston
+leadership did not take kindly. It became in time as the very apple of
+the eye to the management of the National Society. And the more ardently
+it was cherished by them, the more hateful did it become with the Boston
+Board. It was the only one of the new ideas which had any logical
+sequence from the Abolition cause. In a country where the principle of
+popular suffrage obtains, all successful moral movements must sometime
+ultimate in political action. There is no other way of fixing in laws
+the changes in public sentiment wrought during this period of agitation.
+The idea of political action was therefore a perfectly natural growth
+from the moral movement against slavery. The only reasonable objection
+to it would be one which went to show that it had arrived out of due
+course, that its appearance at any given time was marked by prematurity
+in respect of the reasons, so to speak, of the reform. For every
+movement against a great social wrong as was the anti-slavery movement
+must have its John-the-Baptist stage, its period of popular awakening to
+the nature and enormity of sin and the duty of immediate repentance.
+
+The anti-slavery enterprise was at the time of the controversy between
+the New York and the Boston Boards in this first stage of its growth. It
+had not yet progressed naturally out of it into its next phase of
+political agitation. True there were tendencies more or less strong to
+enter the second stage of its development, but they seem irregular,
+personal, and forced. The time had not come for the adoption of the
+principle of associated political action against slavery. But the deep
+underlying motive of the advocates of the third-party idea was none the
+less a grand one, viz., "to have a free Northern nucleus," as Elizur
+Wright put it, "a standard flung to the breeze--something around which
+to rally." Garrison probed to the quick the question in a passage of an
+address to the Abolitionists, which is here given: "Abolitionists! you
+are now feared and respected by all political parties, not because of
+the number of votes you can throw, so much as in view of the moral
+integrity and sacred regard to principle which you have exhibited to the
+country. It is the religious aspect of your enterprise which impresses
+and overawes men of every sect and party. Hitherto you have seemed to be
+actuated by no hope of preferment or love of power, and therefore have
+established, even in the minds of your enemies, confidence in your
+disinterestedness. If you shall now array yourselves as a political
+party, and hold out mercenary rewards to induce men to rally under your
+standard, there is reason to fear that you will be regarded as those who
+have made the anti-slavery cause a hobby to ride into office, however
+plausible or sound may be your pretexts for such a course. You cannot,
+you ought not, to expect that the political action of the State will
+move faster than the religious action of the Church, in favor of the
+abolition of slavery; and it is a fact not less encouraging than
+undeniable, that both the Whig and Democratic parties have consulted the
+wishes of Abolitionists even beyond the measure of their real political
+strength. More you cannot expect under any circumstances."
+
+Hotly around this point raged the strife among brethren. Actuated by the
+noblest motives were both sides in the main, yet, both sides displayed
+in the maintenance of their respective positions an amount of weak human
+nature, which proves that perfection is not attainable even by the most
+disinterested of men. Harsh and abusive language good men uttered
+against good men. Distrust, suspicion, anger, and alienation took
+possession of the thoughts of the grandest souls. Saints and heroes
+beseemed themselves like very ordinary folk, who, when they come to
+differences, come directly afterward to high words and thumping blows.
+The love of David and Jonathan which once united Garrison and Phelps,
+has died. Garrison and Stanton meet and only exchange civilities. They,
+too, have become completely alienated, and so on down the long list of
+the "goodliest fellowship ... whereof this land holds record." To a
+sweet and gentle spirit like Samuel J. May, the acrimony and scenes of
+strife among his old associates was unspeakably painful. Writing to
+Garrison from South Scituate, May 1, 1839, he touches thus upon this
+head: "I now think I shall not go to New York next week. In the first
+place, I cannot afford the expense.... But I confess, I do not lament my
+inability to go so much as I should do if the prospect of an agreeable
+meeting was fairer. I am apprehensive that it will be not so much an
+anti-slavery as anti-Garrison and anti-Phelps meeting, or
+anti-board-of-managers and anti-executive committee meeting. Division
+has done its work, I fear, effectually. The two parties seem to me to
+misunderstand, and therefore sadly misrepresent one another. I am not
+satisfied with the course you and your partisans have pursued. It
+appears to me not consistent with the non-resistant, patient,
+long-suffering spirit of the Gospel. And I do not believe that either
+the cause of the slave, or the cause of peace and righteousness has been
+advanced."
+
+The situation was further complicated by the discovery of a fresh bone
+of contention. As if to give just a shade of sordidness to the strife
+there must needs arise a money difficulty between the two rival boards
+of leaders. This is how our recent band of brothers happened to stumble
+upon their new apple of discord. Soon after the formation of the
+National Society an arrangement was made with each of the State
+societies whereby they agreed to operate financially their respective
+territories and to turn into the national treasury the several sums
+which at the annual meeting they obligated themselves to contribute to
+the general work. This arrangement was intended to avoid the expense,
+conflict, and confusion consequent upon the employment of two sets of
+agents to work the same territory. Matters went on quite smoothly under
+this plan between the Massachusetts Board and the National Board until
+the beginning of the year 1839, when the former fell into arrears in the
+payment of its instalments to the latter. Money from one cause or
+another, was hard to get at by the Massachusetts Board, and the treasury
+in New York was in an extremely low state. The relations between the two
+boards were, as we have seen, much strained and neither side was in the
+mood to cover with charity the shortcomings of the other. Perhaps the
+board at New York was too exacting, perhaps the board at Boston was not
+sufficiently zealous, under the circumstances. But what were the real
+irritating causes which kept the two boards at loggerheads over the
+matter need not here be determined. This fact is clear that the
+arrangement was rescinded by the New York management, and their agents
+thrown into Massachusetts. This action only added fuel to a fire which
+was fast assuming the proportions of a conflagration. All the
+anti-Garrisonians formed themselves into a new anti-slavery society, and
+the National Board, as if to burn its bridges, and to make
+reconciliation impossible, established a new paper in Boston in
+opposition to the _Liberator_. The work of division was ended. There was
+no longer any vital connection between the two warring members of the
+anti-slavery reform. To tear the dead tissues asunder which still joined
+them, all that was wanted was another sharp shock, and this came at the
+annual meeting of the National Society in 1840 over the woman's
+question. The issue, "Shall a woman serve with men on a committee?" was
+precipitated upon the convention by the appointment of that brilliant
+young Quakeress, Abby Kelley, on the business committee with ten men.
+The convention confirmed her appointment by about a hundred majority in
+a total vote of 1,008. Whereupon those opposed to this determination of
+the question, withdrew from the convention and organized the American
+and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison had triumphed and he was
+immensely elated with his victory. His moral leadership was definitely
+established, never again to be disputed by his disciples and followers.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+
+RANDOM SHOTS.
+
+
+The division of the anti-slavery organization into two distinct
+societies did not immediately terminate the war between them. From New
+York and the American society the contest over the woman's question was
+almost directly shifted after the triumph of the Garrisonians in the
+convention, to London and the World's Convention, which was held in the
+month of June of the year 1840. To this anti-slavery congress both of
+the rival anti-slavery organizations in America elected delegates. These
+delegates, chosen by the older society and by its auxiliaries of the
+States of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, were composed of women and
+men. Lucretia Mott was not only chosen by the National Society, but by
+the Pennsylvania Society as well. The Massachusetts Society selected
+Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston Chapman, and Ann Green Phillips together
+with their husbands among its list of delegates. England at this time
+was much more conservative on the woman's question than America. The
+managers of the World's Convention did not take kindly to the notion of
+women members, and signified to the American societies who had placed
+women among their delegates that the company of the women was not
+expected. Those societies, however, made no alteration in deference to
+this notice, in the character of their delegations, but stood stoutly by
+their principle of "the EQUAL BROTHERHOOD of the entire HUMAN FAMILY
+without distinction of color, sex, or clime."
+
+A contest over the admission of women to membership in the World's
+Convention was therefore a foregone conclusion. The convention,
+notwithstanding a brilliant fight under the lead of Wendell Phillips in
+behalf of their admission, refused to admit the women delegates. The
+women delegates instead of having seats on the floor were forced in
+consequence of this decision to look on from the galleries. Garrison,
+who with Charles Lenox Remond, Nathaniel P. Rogers, and William Adams,
+was late in arriving in England, finding, on reaching London the women
+excluded from the convention and sitting as spectators in the galleries,
+determined to take his place among them, deeming that the act of the
+convention which discredited the credentials of Lucretia Mott and her
+sister delegates, had discredited his own also. Remond, Rogers, and
+Adams followed his example and took their places with the rejected women
+delegates likewise. The convention was scandalized at such proceedings,
+and did its best to draw Garrison and his associates from the ladies in
+the galleries to the men on the floor, but without avail. There they
+remained an eloquent protest against the masculine narrowness of the
+convention. Defeated in New York, the delegates of the new American and
+Foreign Anti-Slavery Society triumphed over their victors in London. But
+their achievements in the World's Convention, in this regard, was not of
+a sort to entitle them to point with any special pride in after years;
+and, as a matter of fact, not one of them would have probably cared to
+have their success alluded to in any sketch of their lives for the
+perusal of posterity.
+
+Garrison and his associates were the recipients of the most cordial and
+flattering attention from the English Abolitionists. He was quite
+lionized, in fact, at breakfasts, fêtes, and soirées. The Duchess of
+Sunderland paid him marked attention and desired his portrait, which was
+done for Her Grace by the celebrated artist, Benjamin Robert Haydon, who
+executed besides a large painting of the convention, in which he grouped
+the most distinguished members with reference to the seats actually
+occupied by them during its sessions. Of course to leave Garrison out of
+such a picture would almost seem like the play of "Hamlet" with _Hamlet_
+omitted, a blunder which the artist was by no means disposed to make.
+Garrison was accordingly invited to sit to him for his portrait. Haydon,
+who it seems was a student of human nature as well as of the human form,
+made the discovery of a fact which at first surprised and angered him.
+In making his groupings of heads he decided to place together the Rev.
+John Scoble, George Thompson and Charles Lenox Remond. When Scoble sat
+to him, Haydon told him of his design in this regard. But, remarked
+Haydon, Scoble "sophisticated immediately on the propriety of placing
+the negro in the distance, as it would have much greater effect." The
+painter now applied his test to Thompson who "saw no objection."
+Thompson did not bear the test to Haydon's satisfaction, who observed
+that "A man who wishes to place the negro on a level must no longer
+regard him as having been a slave, and feel annoyed at sitting by his
+side." But when the artist approached Garrison on the subject it was
+wholly different. "I asked him," Haydon records with obvious pleasure,
+"and he met me at once directly."
+
+Thompson was not altogether satisfactory to Garrison either during this
+visit as the following extract from one of his letters to his wife
+evinces: "Dear Thompson has not been strengthened to do battle for us,
+as I had confidently hoped he would be. He is placed in a difficult
+position, and seems disposed to take the ground of non-committal,
+publicly, respecting the controversy which is going on in the United
+States."
+
+Garrison, Rogers, and Remond in the company of Thompson made a
+delightful trip into Scotland at this time. Everywhere the American
+Abolitionists were met with distinguished attentions. "Though I like
+England much, on many accounts," Garrison writes home in high spirits,
+"I can truly say that I like Scotland better." An instance, which may be
+coupled with that one furnished by Haydon, occurred during this Scottish
+tour, and illustrates strongly the kind of stuff of which he was made.
+On his way to the great public reception tendered the American delegates
+by the Glasgow Emancipation Society, a placard with the caption, _"Have
+we no white slaves?"_ was put into his hands. Upon acquainting himself
+with its contents he determined to read it to the meeting, and to make
+it the text of remarks when he was called upon to address the meeting.
+He was presently announced and the immense audience greeted him with
+every manifestation of pleasure and enthusiasm, with loud cheering and
+waving of handkerchiefs. Nevertheless he held to his purpose to speak
+upon the subject of the placard, unwelcome though it should prove to his
+hearers. "After reading the interrogation, I said in reply: 'No--broad
+as is the empire, and extensive as are the possessions of Great Britain,
+not a single _white_ SLAVE can be found in them all;' and I then went on
+to show the wide difference that exists between the condition of human
+beings who are held and treated as chattels personal, and that of those
+who are only suffering from certain forms of political injustice or
+governmental oppression.... 'But,' I said, 'although it is not true that
+England has any _white_ slaves, either at home or abroad, is it not true
+that there are thousands of her population, both at home and abroad, who
+are deprived of their just rights, who are grievously oppressed, who are
+dying even in the midst of abundance, of actual starvation? YES!' and I
+expressly called upon British Abolitionists to prove themselves the true
+friends of suffering humanity abroad, by showing that they were the best
+friend of suffering humanity at home." Truth, justice, duty, always
+overrode with him the proprieties, however sacredly esteemed by others.
+Of a piece with this fact of the placard of the _white slave_ was his
+custom in refusing the wine proffered by some of his British friends to
+their guests. He was not content with a simple refusal and the implied
+rebuke which it involved, he must needs couple his declaration with an
+express rebuke to host and hostess for tempting men into the downward
+way to drunkenness.
+
+While in attendance upon the sessions of the World's Convention Garrison
+received tidings, of the birth of his third child. The second, whom he
+named for himself, was born in 1838. The third, who was also a son, the
+fond father named after Wendell Phillips. Three children and a wife did
+not tend to a solution of the always difficult problem of family
+maintenance. The pressure of their needs upon the husband sometimes,
+simple as indeed they were owing to the good sense and prudence of Mrs.
+Garrison, seemed to exceed the weight of the atmospheric column to the
+square inch. The fight for bread was one of the bitterest battles of the
+reformer's life. The arrangement made in 1837, whereby the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society assumed the responsibility of the publication of
+the _Liberator_, Garrison rescinded at the beginning of 1838, for the
+sake of giving himself greater freedom in the advocacy in its columns of
+the several other reforms in which he had enlisted, besides
+Abolitionism. But Garrison and the paper were now widely recognized as
+anti-slavery essentials and indispensables. Many of the leaders of the
+movement perceived, as Gerritt Smith expressed it in a letter enclosing
+fifty dollars for the editor, that "Among the many things in which the
+Abolitionists of our country should be agreed, are the two following:
+(1) The _Liberator_ must be sustained; (2) its editor must be kept above
+want; not only, nor mainly, for his own or his family's happiness; but
+that, having his own mind unembarrassed by the cares of griping poverty,
+he may be a more effective advocate of the cause of the Saviour's
+enslaved poor." A new arrangement, in accordance with this suggestion
+for the support of the paper and the preservation of the editor from
+want, was made in 1839, and its performance taken in charge by a
+committee of gentlemen, who undertook to raise the necessary funds for
+those objects. Thus it was that Garrison, through the wise and generous
+provision of friends, was enabled to augment the happiness of an
+increasing family, and at the same time add to his own effectiveness as
+an anti-slavery instrument.
+
+Garrison found occasion soon after his return from the World's
+Convention for the employment of all his added effectiveness for
+continuing the moral movement against slavery. For what with the strife
+and schism in the anti-slavery ranks, followed by the excitements of the
+long Presidential canvass of 1840, wherein the great body of the
+Abolitionists developed an uncontrollable impulse to political action,
+some through the medium of the new Liberty party which had nominated
+James G. Birney for the Presidency, while others reverted to the two old
+parties with which they had formerly acted--what with all these causes
+the pure moral movement started by Garrison was in grave danger of
+getting abolished or at least of being reduced to a nullity in its
+influence upon public opinion. John A. Collins, the able and resourceful
+general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, wrote in the
+deepest anxiety to Garrison from New Bedford, September 1, 1840, on this
+head. Says he: "I really wish you understood perfectly the exact
+position the friends of the old organization hold to the two great
+political parties, and how generally they have been caught up in the
+whirlwind of political enthusiasm. Could you but go where I have been,
+and have seen and heard what I have seen and heard; could you see
+men--aye, and women, too--who have been and still are your warmest
+advocates, who have eschewed sectarianism, and lost their caste in the
+circle in which they moved, for their strong adherence to your views and
+measures, declare that they would sooner forego their Abolitionism than
+their party.... Now, these are not the views of here and there a
+straggling Abolitionist, but of seven-tenths of all the voting
+Abolitionists of the State.... They are entirely unconscious of the
+demoralizing influence of their course. They need light, warning,
+entreaty, and rebuke." Besides this demoralization of the Abolitionists,
+as described by Collins, the parent society at New York fell into bad
+financial straits. It was absolutely without funds, and without any
+means of supplying the lack. What should it do in its extremity but
+appeal to the Massachusetts Society which was already heavily burdened
+by its own load, the _Liberator_. The new organ of the national
+organization, _The Anti-Slavery Standard_, surely must not be allowed to
+fail for want of funds in this emergency. The Boston management rose to
+the occasion. Collins was sent to England in quest of contributions from
+the Abolitionists of Great Britain. But, great as was the need of money,
+the relief which it might afford would only prove temporary unless there
+could be effected a thorough anti-slavery revival. This was vital. And
+therefore to this end Garrison now bent his remarkable energies.
+
+Agents, during this period when money was scarce, were necessarily few.
+But the pioneer proved a host in himself. Resigning the editorial charge
+of the _Liberator_ into the capable hands of Edmund Quincy, Garrison
+itinerated in the rôle of an anti-slavery lecturer in Massachusetts,
+Connecticut, and New Hampshire, reviving everywhere the languishing
+interest of his disciples. On the return of Collins in the summer of
+1841, revival meetings and conventions started up with increased
+activity, the fruits of which were of a most cheering character. At
+Nantucket, Garrison made a big catch in his anti-slavery net. It was
+Frederick Douglass, young, callow, and awkward, but with his splendid
+and inimitable gifts flashing through all as he, for the first time in
+his life, addressed an audience of white people. Garrison, with the
+instinct of leadership, saw at once the value of the runaway slave's
+oratorical possibilities in their relations to the anti-slavery
+movement. It was at his instance that Collins added Douglass to the band
+of anti-slavery agents. The new agent has preserved his recollections of
+the pioneer's speech on that eventful evening in Nantucket. Says he:
+"Mr. Garrison followed me, taking me as his text; and now, whether I had
+made an eloquent plea in behalf of freedom or not, his was one never to
+be forgotten. Those who had heard him oftenest, and had known him
+longest, were astonished at his masterly effort. For the time he
+possessed that almost fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom
+attained, in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a
+single individuality, the orator swaying a thousand heads and hearts at
+once, and by the simple majesty of his all-controlling thought,
+converting his hearers into the express image of his own soul. That
+night there were, at least, a thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket!"
+
+Here is another picture of Garrison in the lecture-field. It is from the
+pen of N.P. Rogers, with whom he was making a week's tour among the
+White Mountains, interspersing the same with anti-slavery meetings. At
+Plymouth, failing to procure the use of a church for their purpose, they
+fell back upon the temple not made with hands.
+
+"Semi-circular seats, backed against a line of magnificent trees to
+accommodate, we should judge, from two to three hundred," Rogers
+narrates, "were filled, principally with women, and the men who could
+not find seats stood on the green sward on either hand; and, at length,
+when wearied with standing, seated themselves on the ground. Garrison,
+mounted on a rude platform in front, lifted up his voice and spoke to
+them in prophet tones and surpassing eloquence, from half-past three
+till I saw the rays of the setting sun playing through the trees on his
+head.... They (the auditory) heeded it not any more than he, but
+remained till he ended, apparently indisposed to move, though some came
+from six, eight, and even twelve miles distance." So bravely prospered
+the revival agitation, under the vigorous preaching of the indomitable
+pioneer.
+
+In the midst of the growing activities of the revival season of the
+anti-slavery movement, Garrison had some personal experiences of a
+distressing nature. One of these was the case of his quondam friend and
+partner in the publication of the _Liberator_, Isaac Knapp. He, poor
+fellow, was no longer the publisher of the paper. His wretched business
+management of his department tended to keep the _Liberator_ in a state
+of chronic financial embarrassment. When the committee, who assumed
+charge of the finances of the paper, took hold of the problem, they
+determined to let Knapp go. He was paid $150 or $175 as a _quid pro quo_
+for his interest in the _Liberator_. Unfortunate in the business of a
+publisher, he was yet more unfortunate in another respect. He had become
+a victim of intemperance. His inebriety increased upon him, accelerated,
+no doubt, by his business failure. Notwithstanding Garrison's strong and
+tender friendship for Knapp, the broken man came to regard him as an
+enemy, and showed in many ways his jealousy and hatred of his old friend
+and partner. Very painful was this experience to the pioneer.
+
+An experience which touched Garrison more nearly arose out of the sad
+case of his brother James, who, the reader will recall, ran away from
+his mother in Baltimore and went to sea. He ultimately enlisted in the
+United States Navy, and what with the brutalities which he suffered at
+the hands of his superiors, by way of discipline, and with those of his
+own uncontrolled passions and appetites, he was, when recovered by his
+brother William, a total moral and physical wreck. But the prodigal was
+gathered to the reformer's heart, and taken to his home where in memory
+of a mother long dead, whose darling was James, he was nursed and
+watched over with deep and pious love. There were sad lapses of the
+profligate man even in the sanctuary of his brother's home. The craving
+for liquor was omnipotent in the wretched creature, and he was attacked
+by uncontrollable desire for drink. But William's patience was infinite,
+and his yearning and pity at such times were as sweet and strong as a
+mother's. Death rung the curtain down in the fall of 1842, on this
+miserable life with its sorry and pathetic scenes.
+
+About this time a trial of a different sort fell to the lot of Garrison
+to endure. The tongue of detraction was never more busy with his alleged
+infidel doctrines or to more damaging effect. Collins, in England,
+seeking to obtain contributions for the support of the agitation in
+America found Garrison's infidelity the _great lion_ in the way of
+success. Even the good dispositions of the venerable Clarkson were
+affected by the injurious reports in this regard, circulated in England
+mainly by Nathaniel Colver, a narrow and violent sectary of the Baptist
+denomination of the United States. It was, of course, painful to
+Garrison to feel that he had become a rock of offence in the path of the
+great movement, which he had started and to which he was devoting
+himself so energetically. To Elizabeth Pease, one of the noblest of the
+English Abolitionists, and one of his stanchest transatlantic friends,
+he defended himself against the false and cruel statements touching his
+religious beliefs. "I esteem the Holy Scriptures," he wrote her, "above
+all other books in the universe, and always appeal to 'the law and the
+testimony' to prove all my peculiar doctrines." His religious sentiments
+and Sabbatical views are almost if not quite identical with those held
+by the Quakers. "I believe in an indwelling Christ," he goes on to
+furnish a summary of his confession of faith, "and in His righteousness
+alone; I glory in nothing here below, save in Christ and in Him
+crucified; I believe all the works of the devil are to be destroyed, and
+Our Lord is to reign from sea to sea, even to the ends of the earth; and
+I profess to have passed from death unto life, and know by happy
+experience, that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ
+Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." These were
+the pioneer's articles of faith. Their extreme simplicity and
+theological conservatism it would seem ought to have satisfied the
+evangelicals of all denominations. They were in essentials thoroughly
+orthodox. But in the composition of the shibboleths of beliefs
+non-essentials as well as essentials enter, the former to the latter in
+the proportion of two to one. It is not surprising, therefore, that
+Garrison's essentials proved unequal to the test set up by sectarianism,
+inasmuch as his spiritual life dropped the aspirate of the
+non-essentials of religious forms and observances.
+
+But the good man had his compensation as well as his trials. Such of a
+very noble kind was the great Irish address brought over from Ireland by
+Remond in December 1841. It was signed by Daniel O'Connell, Father
+Mathew, and sixty thousand Roman Catholics of Ireland, who called upon
+the Irish Roman Catholics of America to make the cause of the slaves of
+the United States their cause. Large expectations of Irish assistance in
+the anti-slavery agitation were excited in the bosoms of Abolitionists
+by this imposing appeal. Garrison shared the high hopes of its
+beneficent influence upon the Ireland of America, with many others.
+Alas! for the "best laid schemes of mice and men," for the new Ireland
+was not populated with saints, but a fiercely human race who had come to
+their new home to better their own condition, not that of the negro.
+Hardly had they touched these shores before they were Americanized in
+the colorphobia sense, out-Heroded Herod in hatred of the colored people
+and their anti-slavery friends. Indeed, it was quite one thing to preach
+Abolitionism with three thousand miles of sea-wall between one and his
+audience, and quite another to rise and do the preaching with no
+sea-wall to guard the preacher from the popular consequences of his
+preaching, as Father Mathew quickly perceived and reduced to practice
+eight years later, when he made his memorable visit to this country. In
+vain was the monster document unrolled in Faneuil Hall, and many
+Abolitionists with Irish blood were put forward to sweep the chords of
+Erin's heart, and to conjure by their eloquence the disciples of St.
+Patrick to rally under the banner of freedom. There was no response,
+except the response of bitter foes. Erin's harp vibrated to no breeze
+which did not come out of the South. The slave-power had been erected
+into patron saint by the new Ireland in America, and the new Ireland in
+America was very well content with his saintship's patronage and
+service. Thus it happened that the great expectations, which were
+excited by the Irish address, were never realized. But the pioneer had
+other fish in his net, had, in fact, meanwhile, got himself in readiness
+for a launch into a new and startling agitation. As to just what this
+new and startling agitation was we must refer the reader to the next
+chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+
+THE PIONEER MAKES A NEW AND STARTLING DEPARTURE.
+
+
+When Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate emancipation he was
+over-confident of success through the instrumentality of the church. It
+did not enter his heart to conceive that after he had delivered his
+message touching the barbarism of slavery that a church calling itself
+Christian, or that a ministry arrogating to itself the character of the
+Christ, could possibly say him nay. But he learned sadly enough the
+utter folly of such expectations. For from pew and pulpit the first
+stones were hurled against him, and the most cruel and persistent
+opposition and persecution issued. Then as the movement which he had
+started advanced, he saw how it was, why the church had played him false
+and the cause of freedom. It was because the poison of slavery which the
+evil one had injected into the nation's arteries had corrupted the
+springs of justice and mercy in that body. The Church was not free, it,
+too, was in bonds to slavery, how then could it help to free the slaves?
+That was the reason that pulpit and pew cried out against him and
+persecuted him. It was not they but the slave despotism, which ruled
+them, which wrought its fell purpose within them.
+
+If the reformer cast his eyes about him for other help it was the same;
+the slime of the serpent was upon State as well as Church. Both of the
+two great political parties were bound hands and feet, and given over to
+the will of the slave tyranny. In all departments of Government, State
+and National, the positive, all-powerful principle was slavery. Its
+dread _nolo me tangere_ had forced Congress into the denial of the right
+of petition, and into the imposition of a gag upon its own freedom of
+debate. It was the grand President-maker, and the judiciary bent without
+a blush to do its service. What, then, in these circumstances could the
+friends of freedom hope to achieve? The nation had been caught in the
+snare of slavery, and was in Church and State helpless in the vast
+spider-like web of wrong. The more the reformer pondered the problem,
+the more hopeless did success look under a Constitution which united
+right and wrong, freedom and slavery. As his reflections deepened, the
+conviction forced its way into his mind that the Union was the strong
+tower of the slave-power, which could never be destroyed until the
+fortress which protected it was first utterly demolished. In the spring
+of 1842 the pioneer was prepared to strike into this new path to effect
+his purpose.
+
+"We must dissolve all connection with those murderers of fathers," he
+wrote his brother-in-law, "and murderers of mothers, and murderers of
+liberty, and traffickers of human flesh, and blasphemers against the
+Almighty at the South. What have we in common with them? What have we
+gained? What have we not lost by our alliance with them? Are not their
+principles, their pursuits, their policies, their interests, their
+designs, their feelings, utterly diverse from ours? Why, then, be
+subject to their dominion? Why not have the Union dissolved in form as
+it is in fact, especially if the form gives ample protection to the
+slave system, by securing for it all the physical force of the North? It
+is not treason against the cause of liberty to cry, "Down with every
+slave-holding Union!" Therefore, I raise that cry. And O that I had a
+voice louder than a thousand thunders, that it might shake the land and
+electrify the dead--the dead in sin, I mean--those slain by the hand of
+slavery."
+
+A few weeks later the first peal of this thunder broke upon the startled
+ears of the country through the columns of the _Liberator_. The May
+meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was drawing near, and the
+reformer, now entirely ready to enter upon an agitation looking to the
+dissolution of the Union, suggested "the duty of making the REPEAL OF
+THE UNION between the North and the South the grand rallying point until
+it be accomplished, or slavery cease to pollute our soil. We are for
+throwing all the means, energies, actions, purposes, and appliances of
+the genuine friends of liberty and republicanism into this one channel,"
+he goes on to announce, "and for measuring the humanity, patriotism, and
+piety of every man by this one standard. This question can no longer be
+avoided, and a right decision of it will settle the controversy between
+freedom and slavery." The stern message of Isaiah to the Jews,
+beginning, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men that rule this
+people. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with DEATH and
+with HELL are we at agreement," seemed to the American Isaiah to
+describe exactly the character of the National Constitution. "Slavery is
+a combination of DEATH and HELL," he declares, with righteous wrath,
+"and with it the North have made a covenant, and are at agreement. As an
+element of the Government it is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. As
+a component part of the Union, it is necessarily a national interest.
+Divorced from Northern protection, it dies; with that protection it
+enlarges its boundaries, multiplies its victims, and extends its
+ravages."
+
+The announcement of this new radicalism caused a sensation. Many genuine
+Garrisonian Abolitionists recoiled from a policy of disunion. Lydia
+Maria Child and James S. Gibbon of the Executive Committee of the
+National Society hastened to disavow for the society all responsibility
+for the disunion sentiment of the editor of the _Liberator_. His new
+departure seemed to them "foreign to the purpose for which it was
+organized." Like all new ideas, it was a sword-bearer, and proved a
+decided disturber of the peace. The Union-loving portion of the free
+States had never taken to the Abolition movement, for the reason that it
+tended to disturb the stability of their idol. But now the popular
+hatred of Abolitionism was intensified by the avowal of a distinct
+purpose on the part of its leader to labor for the separation of the
+sections. The press of the North made the most of this design to render
+altogether odious the small band of moral reformers, to reduce to a
+nullity their influence upon public opinion.
+
+Notwithstanding its rejection by James Gibbons and Lydia Maria Child the
+new idea of the dissolution of the Union, as an anti-slavery object,
+found instant favor with many of the leading Abolitionists, like Wendell
+Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Parker Pillsbury, Stephen S. Foster and Abby
+Kelley. At the anniversary meeting of the American Society in 1842, the
+subject was mooted, and, although there was no official action taken,
+yet it was apparent that a majority of the delegates were favorable to
+its adoption as the sentiment of the society.
+
+The ultimate object of Garrison was the abolition of slavery. Disunion
+led directly to this goal, therefore he planted his feet in that way.
+But while he shot the agitation at a distant mark, he did not mean to
+miss less remote results. There was remarkable method in his madness. He
+agitated the question of the dissolution of the Union "in order that the
+people of the North might be induced to reflect upon their debasement,
+guilt, and danger in continuing in partnership with heaven-daring
+oppressors, and thus be led to repentance."
+
+The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting in January,
+1843 "dissolved the Union," wrote Quincy to R.D. Webb, "by a handsome
+vote, after a warm debate. The question was afterward reconsidered and
+passed in another shape, being wrapped up by Garrison in some of his
+favorite Old Testament Hebraisms by way of vehicle, as the apothecaries
+say." This is the final shape which Garrison's "favorite Old Testament
+Hebraisms" gave to the action of the society:
+
+"_Resolved_, That the compact which exists between the North and the
+South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell--involving
+both parties in atrocious criminality--and should be immediately
+annulled."
+
+At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American Society resolved
+likewise that there should be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of
+the same year the New England Society voted by a large majority to
+dissolve the 'covenant with death, and the agreement with hell.' Almost
+the whole number of the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time
+placed upon their banner of immediate emancipation the revolutionary
+legend "No Union with slaveholders." _Cathago est delenda_ were now ever
+on the lips of the pioneer. 'The Union it must and shall be destroyed'
+became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his utterances on
+the slavery question.
+
+The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the Government which
+they were seeking to overthrow was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in
+a letter returning to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission as a
+justice of the peace. Says he, "To me it appears that the vices of
+slavery, introduced into the constitution of our body politic by a few
+slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of
+our National Government that literally there is no health in it. The
+only remedy that I can see for the disease is to be found in the
+_dissolution of the patient_.... Henceforth it (the Constitution) is
+dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it,
+and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays
+upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear
+patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly
+declaring that, while I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no
+compact which helps to rob any other man of his."
+
+The Abolition agitation for the dissolution of the Union was assisted
+not a little by sundry occurrences of national importance. The
+increasing arrogance and violence of the South in Congress on all
+matters relating to the subject of slavery was one of these occurrences.
+Freedom of debate and the right of petition, Southern intolerance had
+rendered well nigh worthless in the National Legislature. In this way
+the North, during several months in every year, was forced to look at
+the reverse and the obverse faces, of the Union. These object-lessons
+taught many minds, no doubt, to count the cost which the preservation of
+the Union entailed upon the free States--"to reflect upon their
+debasement, guilt, and danger" in their partnership with slaveholders.
+Another circumstance which induced to this kind of reflection was the
+case of George Latimer, who was seized as a fugitive slave in Boston in
+the autumn of 1842. From beginning to end the Latimer case revealed how
+completely had Massachusetts tied her own hands as a party to the
+original compact with slavery whose will was the supreme law of the
+land. In obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused to the
+captive the writ of _habeas corpus_, and Judge Story granted the owner
+possession of the fugitive, and time to procure evidence of his
+ownership. But worse still Massachusetts officials and one of her jails
+were employed to aid in the return of a man to slavery. This degradation
+aroused the greatest indignation in the State and led to the enactment
+of a law prohibiting its officials from taking part in the return of
+fugitive slaves, and the use of its jails and prisons for their
+detention. The passage of this personal liberty measure served to
+increase the activity of the anti-Union working forces in the South.
+
+Then, again, the serious difficulty between Massachusetts and two of the
+slave States in regard to their treatment of her colored seamen aided
+Garrison in his agitation for the dissolution of the Union by the keen
+sense of insult and injury which the trouble begat and left upon the
+popular mind. Colored men in Massachusetts enjoyed a fair degree of
+equality before her laws, were endowed with the right to vote, and were,
+barring the prejudice against color, treated by the commonwealth as
+citizens. They were employed in the merchant service of her interstate
+trade. But at two of the Southern ports where her vessels entered, the
+colored seamen were seized by the local police and confined in houses of
+detention until the vessels to which they belonged were ready to depart,
+when they were released and allowed to join the vessels. This was a most
+outrageous proceeding, outrageous to the colored men who were thus
+deprived of their liberty, outrageous also to the owners of the vessels
+who were deprived of the service of their employés. Of what avail was
+the constitutional guaranty that "the citizens of each State shall be
+entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
+States", many men began to question? The South was evidently disposed to
+support only that portion of the national compact which sustained the
+slave system, all the rest upon occasion it trampled on and nullified.
+This lesson was enforced anew upon Massachusetts by the affair of her
+colored seamen. Unable to obtain redress of the wrong done her citizens,
+the State appointed agents to go to Charleston and New Orleans and test
+the constitutionality of the State laws under which the local
+authorities had acted. But South Carolina and Louisiana, especially the
+former, to whom Samuel Hoar was accredited, evinced themselves quite
+equal to the exigency to which the presence of the Massachusetts agents
+gave rise. To cut a long story short, these gentlemen, honored citizens
+of a sister State, and covered with the ægis of the Constitution, found
+that they could make no success of the business which they had in hand,
+found indeed that as soon as that business was made public that they
+stood in imminent peril of their lives. Whereupon, wisely conceiving
+discretion to be the better part of valor, they beat a hasty retreat
+back to their native air. The Massachusetts agents were driven out of
+Charleston and New Orleans. Where was the sacred and glorious union
+between Massachusetts and South Carolina and Louisiana that such things
+were possible--were constantly occurring? The circumstance made a strong
+impression on the State whose rights were thus grossly violated. It
+helped to convert Massachusetts to its later opposition to slavery, and
+to make its public sentiment more tolerant of the Garrisonian opposition
+to the covenant with death and the agreement with hell. To the agitation
+growing out of the scheme for the annexation of Texas must, however, be
+ascribed the premium among all the anti-Union working facts and forces
+of the first few years after Garrison and his coadjutors had raised the
+cry of "No union with slaveholders." This agitation renewed the
+intensity and sectionalism of the then almost forgotten struggle over
+the admission of Missouri nearly a quarter of a century before, and
+which was concluded by the Missouri compromise. This settlement was at
+the time considered quite satisfactory to the South. But Calhoun took an
+altogether different view of the matter twenty years later. The
+arrangement by which the South was excluded from the upper portion of
+the Louisiana Territory he came to regard as a cardinal blunder on the
+part of his section. The fact is that within those two decades the
+slave-holding had been completely outstripped by the non-slave-holding
+States in wealth, population, and social growth. The latter had obtained
+over the former States an indisputable supremacy in those respects.
+Would not the political balance settle also in the natural order of
+things in the Northern half of the Union unless it could be kept where
+it then was to the south of Mason and Dixon's line by an artificial
+political make-weight. This artificial political make-weight was nothing
+less than the acquisition of new slave territory to supply the demand
+for new slave States. Texas, with the territorial dimensions of an
+empire, answered the agrarian needs of the slave system. And the South,
+under the leadership of Calhoun, determined to make good their fancied
+loss in the settlement of the Missouri controversy by annexing Texas.
+
+But all the smouldering dread of slave domination, all the passionate
+opposition to the extension of slavery, to the acquisition of new slave
+territory and the admission of new slave States, awoke hotly in the
+heart of the North. "No more slave territory." "No more slave States,"
+resounded during this crisis, through the free States. "Texas or
+disunion," was the counter cry which reverberated through the slave
+States. Even Dr. Channing, who had no love for Garrison or his
+anti-slavery ultraism, was so wrought upon by the scheme for the
+annexation of Texas as to profess his preference for the dissolution of
+the Union, "rather than receive Texas into the Confederacy." "This
+measure, besides entailing on us evils of all sorts," the doctor boldly
+pointed out, "would have for its chief end to bring the whole country
+under the slave-power, to make the general Government the agent of
+slavery; and this we are bound to resist at all hazards. The free States
+should declare that the very act of admitting Texas will be construed as
+a dissolution of the Union."
+
+The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an unwonted defiance of
+consequences, a fierce contempt of ancient political bugaboos marked the
+utterances of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions relating
+to slavery. In the anti-Texas convention held in Faneuil Hall January
+29, 1845, all this timidity disappeared in the presence of the new
+peril. It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison was a
+member, but of politicians, mostly of the Whig party. "The anti-slavery
+spirit of the convention," wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D. Webb, "was
+surprising. The address and the speeches of the gentlemen, not
+Abolitionists, were such as caused Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago,
+and such as we thought thorough three or four years ago. There were no
+qualifications, or excuses, or _twaddle_."
+
+Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement with all his
+customary force and fire. Elected a delegate to the Faneuil Hall
+Convention by the influence of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part
+in its proceedings, "created the most stir in the whole matter," Wendell
+Phillips thought. Charles Sumner, who heard him speak for the first
+time, was struck with his "natural eloquence," and described his words
+as falling "in fiery rain." Again at a mass meeting for Middlesex
+County, held at Concord, to consider the aggressions of the slave-power,
+did the words of the pioneer fall "in fiery rain." Apprehensive that the
+performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency arose, would fall far
+short of her protestations, he exclaimed, "I have nothing to say, sir,
+nothing. I am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things said, where
+there is no heart to carry them out. When we are prepared to state the
+whole truth, and die for it, if necessary--when, like our fathers, we
+are prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it, counting not
+our lives dear unto us--when we are prepared to let all earthly hopes go
+back to the board--_then_ let us say so; _till_ then, the less we say
+the better, in such an emergency as this. 'But who are we, will men
+ask.' that talk of such things? 'Are we enough to make a revolution?'
+No, sir; but we are enough to _begin_ one, and, once begun, it never can
+be turned back. I am for revolution were I utterly alone. I am there
+because I _must_ be there. I _must_ cleave to the right. I cannot choose
+but obey the voice of God.
+
+" ... Do not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have
+been one. We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and
+deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on
+the floor of Congress! The moment we say no to this, the Union
+ceases--the Government falls."
+
+The Texan struggle terminated in the usual way, in the triumph of the
+slave-power. Texas was annexed and admitted into the sisterhood of
+States, giving to the Southern section increased slave representation in
+both branches of Congress, and thereby aiding to fasten, what at the
+moment appeared to be its permanent domination in national affairs. As
+Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the North fell far short of
+its protestations when the crisis came. It swallowed all its brave
+words, and collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to its
+jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The whole North except the
+small and irrepressible band of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down
+by the revulsive wave of this disastrous event. Writing to his friend
+Webb, Garrison discourses thus upon the great defeat: "Apparently the
+slave-holding power has never been so strong, has never seemed to be so
+invincible, has never held such complete mastery over the whole, has
+never so successfully hurled defiance at the Eternal and Just One, as at
+the present time; and yet never has it in reality been so weak, never
+has it had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it been so
+filled with doubt and consternation, never has it been so near its
+downfall, as at this moment. Upon the face of it, this statement looks
+absurdly paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are groping in
+thick darkness; but it is that darkest hour which is said to precede the
+dawn of day."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+
+AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.
+
+
+Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the most earnest of men. It
+was almost next to impossible for him to understand that his way was not
+the only way to attain a given end. A position reached by him, he was
+curiously apt to look upon as a sort of _ultima thule_ of human endeavor
+in that direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances
+of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung around his
+personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer.
+His was not a tolerant mind. Differences with him he was prone to treat
+as gross departures from principle, as evidences of faithlessness to
+freedom. He fell upon the men who did not see eye to eye with him with
+tomahawk and scalping knife. He was strangely deficient in a sense of
+proportion in such matters. His terrible severities of speech, he
+visited upon the slave-power and the Liberty party alike. And although a
+non-resistent, in that he eschewed the use of physical force, yet there
+never was born among the sons of men a more militant soul in the use of
+moral force, in the quickness with which he would whip out the rapiers,
+or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother tongue at opponents. The
+pioneer must have been an unconscious believer in the annihilation of
+the wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer in the
+wickedness of all opposition to his idea of right and duty. This, of
+course, must be taken only as a broad description of the reformer's
+character. He was a man, one of the grandest America has given to the
+world, but still a man with his tendon of Achilles, like the rest of his
+kind.
+
+His narrow intolerance of the idea of anti-slavery political action, and
+his fierce and unjust censure of the champions of that idea, well
+illustrate the trait in point. Birney and Whittier, and Wright and
+Gerritt Smith, and Joshua Leavitt, he apparently quite forgot, were
+actuated by motives singularly noble, were in their way as true to their
+convictions as he was to his. No, there was but one right way, and in
+that way stood the feet of the pioneer. His way led directly,
+unerringly, to the land of freedom. All other ways, and especially the
+Liberty party way, twisted, doubled upon themselves, branched into
+labyrinths of folly and self-seeking. "Ho! all ye that desire the
+freedom of the slave, who would labor for liberty, follow me and I will
+show you the only true way," was the tone which the editor of the
+_Liberator_ held to men, who were battering with might and main to
+breach the walls of the Southern Bastile. They were plainly not against
+the slave, although opposed to Mr. Garrison, narrowly, unjustly opposed
+to him, without doubt, but working strenuously according to their lights
+for the destruction of a common enemy and tyrant. This was the test,
+which Garrison should have taken as conclusive. The leaders of the
+Liberty party, though personally opposed to him and to his line of
+action, were, nevertheless, friends of the slaves, and ought to have
+been so accounted and treated by the man who more than any other was
+devoted to the abolition of slavery.
+
+But the whole mental and moral frame of the man precluded such
+liberality of treatment of opponents. They had rejected his way, which
+was the only true way, and were, therefore, anathema maranatha. When a
+moral idea which has been the subject of widespread agitation, and has
+thereby gained a numerous following, reaches out, as reach out it must,
+sooner or later, for incorporation into law, it will, in a republic like
+ours, do so naturally and necessarily through political action--along
+the lines of an organized party movement. The Liberty party formation
+was the product of this strong tendency in America. Premature it
+possibly was, but none the less perfectly natural. Now every political
+party, that is worthy of the name, is a compound rather than a simple
+fact, consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties
+depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest
+but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions.
+One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and
+multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks
+to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. There
+will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, that
+will dominate the organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon
+which the party throws itself upon the country, but the secondary ideas
+or interests must be there all the same to give strength and support to
+the main idea and interest.
+
+Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political
+parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and
+that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power.
+Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe
+strictly these limitations in its aims and issues. Accordingly when the
+moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea
+of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by
+the National Constitution. Slavery within the States lay outside of the
+political boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within the
+States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders
+placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national
+issues. But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia,
+in the national territories, under the national flag on the high seas,
+for it lay within the constitutional reach of the federal political
+power, and its abolition was demanded in the Third party platform. These
+leaders were confident that the existence of slavery depended upon its
+connection with the National Government. Their aim was to destroy the
+evil by cutting this connection through which it drew its blood and
+nerve supplies. They planted themselves upon the anti-slavery character
+of the Constitution, believing that it "does not sanction nor
+nationalize slavery but condemns and localizes it."
+
+This last position of the Liberty party leaders struck Garrison as a
+kind of mental and moral enormity. At it and its authors, the
+anti-slavery Jupiter, launched his bolts, fast and furious. Here is a
+specimen of his chain lightning: "We have a very poor opinion of the
+intelligence of any man, and very great distrust of his candor or
+honesty, who tries to make it appear that no pro-slavery compromise was
+made between the North and the South, at the adoption of the
+Constitution. We cherish feelings of profound contempt for the quibbling
+spirit of criticism which is endeavoring to explain away the meaning of
+language, the design of which as a matter of practice, and the adoption
+of which as a matter of bargain, were intelligently and clearly
+understood by the contracting parties. The truth is the misnamed
+'Liberty party' is under the control of as ambitious, unprincipled, and
+crafty leaders as is either the Whig or Democratic party; and no other
+proof of this assertion is needed than their unblushing denial of the
+great object of the national compact, namely, union at the sacrifice of
+the colored population of the United States. Their new interpretations
+of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the facts of history, and a
+gross insult to the intelligence of the age, and certainly never can be
+carried into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a civil
+war." All the same, the pioneer to the contrary notwithstanding, many of
+these very Liberty party leaders were men of the most undoubted candor
+and honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.
+
+Garrison was never able to see the Liberty party, and for that matter
+Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, and others of the old organization
+leaders could not either, except through the darkened glass of personal
+antagonisms growing out of the schism of 1840. It was always, under all
+circumstances, to borrow a phrase of Phillips, "Our old enemy, Liberty
+party." And, as Quincy naïvely confesses in an article in the
+_Liberator_ pointing out the reasons why Abolitionists should give to
+the Free-soil party incidental aid and comfort, which were forbidden to
+their "old enemy, Liberty party," the significant and amusing fact that
+the latter was "officered by deserters." Ay, there was indeed the rub!
+The military principle of the great leader forbade him to recognize
+deserters as allies. Discipline must be maintained, and so he proceeded
+to maintain the anti-slavery discipline of his army by keeping up a
+constant fusillade into the ranks of the deserter band, who, in turn,
+were every whit as blinded by the old quarrel and separation, and who
+slyly cherished the modest conviction that, when they seceded, the salt
+of old organization lost its savor, and was thenceforth fit only to be
+trampled under the Liberty party's feet. Without doubt, those old
+Abolitionists and Liberty party people belonged to the category of
+"humans."
+
+The scales of the old grudge dropped from Garrison's eyes directly the
+Free-Soil party loomed upon the political horizon. He recognized at once
+that, if it was not against the slave, it was for the slave; apprehended
+clearly that, in so far as the new party, which, by the way, was only
+the second stage in the development of the central idea of his old
+enemy, Liberty party, as the then future Republican party was to be its
+third and final expression, apprehended clearly I say that, in so far as
+the new party resisted the aggressions and pretensions of the
+slave-power, it was fighting for Abolition--was an ally of Abolitionism.
+
+In the summer of 1848, from Northampton, whither he had gone to take the
+water cure, Garrison counseled Quincy, who was filling the editorial
+chair, in the interim, at the _Liberator_ office, in this sage fashion:
+"As for the Free-Soil movement, I feel that great care is demanded of us
+disunionists, both in the _Standard_ and the _Liberator_, in giving
+credit to whom credit is due, and yet in no case even seeming to be
+satisfied with it." In the winter of 1848 in a letter to Samuel May,
+Jr., he is more explicit on this head. "As for the Free-Soil movement,"
+he observes, "I am for hailing it as a cheering sign of the times, and
+an unmistakable proof of the progress we have made, under God, in
+changing public sentiment. Those who have left the Whig and Democratic
+parties for conscience's sake, and joined the movement, deserve our
+commendation and sympathy; at the same time, it is our duty to show
+them, and all others, that there is a higher position to be attained by
+them or they will have the blood of the slave staining their garments.
+This can be done charitably yet faithfully. On the two old parties,
+especially the Whig-Taylor party, I would expend--_pro tempore_, at
+least--our heaviest ammunition." This is as it should be, the tone of
+wise and vigilant leadership, the application of the true test to the
+circumstances, viz., for freedom if against slavery; not to be
+satisfied, to be sure, with any thing less than the whole but disposed
+to give credit to whom it was due, whether much or little. Pity that the
+pioneer could not have placed himself in this just and discriminating
+point of view in respect of his old enemy, Liberty party, praising in it
+what he found praiseworthy, while blaming it for what he felt was
+blameworthy. But perfection weak human nature doth not attain to in this
+terrestrial garden of the passions, and so very likely the magnanimity
+which we have desired of Garrison is not for that garden to grow but
+another and a heavenly.
+
+Garrison ill brooked opposition, came it from friends or foes. He was so
+confident in his own positions that he could not but distrust their
+opposites. Of course, if his were right, and of that doubt in his mind
+there was apparently none, then the positions of all others had to be
+wrong. This masterful quality of the man was constantly betrayed in the
+acts of his life and felt by his closest friends and associates in the
+anti-slavery movement. Quincy, writing to Richard Webb, narrates how, at
+the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843,
+Garrison was for removing it to Boston, but that he and Wendell Phillips
+were for keeping it where it then was in New York, giving at the same
+time sundry good and sufficient reasons for the faith that was in them,
+and how, thereupon, "Garrison dilated his nostrils like a war-horse, and
+snuffed indignation at us." "If the Boston friends were unwilling to
+take the trouble and responsibility," were the petulant, accusative
+words put by Quincy into his chief's mouth on the occasion, "then there
+was nothing more to be said; we must try to get along as well as we
+could in the old way." And how they disclaimed "any unwillingness to
+take trouble and responsibility," while affirming "the necessity of
+their acting on their own idea."
+
+Another characteristic of the pioneer is touched upon by the same writer
+in a relation which he was making to Webb of Garrison's election to the
+presidency of the parent society. Says Quincy: "Garrison makes an
+excellent president at a public meeting where the order of speakers is
+in some measure arranged, as he has great felicity in introducing and
+interlocuting remarks; but at a meeting for debate he does not answer so
+well, as he is rather too apt, with all the innocence and simplicity in
+the world, to do all the talking himself."
+
+The same friendly critic has left his judgment of other traits of the
+leader, traits not so much of the man as of the editor. It is delivered
+in a private letter of Quincy to Garrison on resigning the temporary
+editorship of the _Liberator_ to "its legitimate possessor." who had
+been for several months health-hunting at Northampton in the beautiful
+Connecticut Valley. Quincy made bold to beard the Abolition lion in his
+lair, and twist his tail in an extremely lively manner. "Now, my dear
+friend," wrote the disciple to the master, "you must know that to the
+microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic eyes of
+its enemies, _the_ _Liberator_ _has faults_, these they keep to themselves
+as much as they honestly may, but they are not the less sensible of
+them, and are all the more desirous to see them immediately abolished.
+Luckily, they are not faults of principle--neither moral nor
+intellectual deficiencies--but faults the cure of which rests solely
+with yourself.
+
+"I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are that we find with it,
+lest you should think them none at all, or else unavoidable. But no
+matter, of that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen to our
+opinion. We think the paper often bears the mark of haste and
+carelessness in its getting up; that the matter seems to be hastily
+selected and put in _higgledy-piggledy_, without any very apparent
+reason why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the place
+where it is. I suppose this is often caused by your selecting articles
+with a view to connect remarks of your own with them, which afterward in
+your haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper is not so nearly a
+complete work in itself as it might be made, but that things are often
+left at loose ends, and important matters broken off in the middle. I
+assure you, that Brother Harriman is not the only one of the friends of
+the _Liberator_ who grieves over your 'more anon' and 'more next
+week'--which 'anon' and 'next week' never arrive.
+
+"Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else
+such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to
+see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often
+either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important
+moments like the present neglected....
+
+"We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by
+the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by
+conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends
+and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the
+_Liberator_ a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is,
+powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It
+is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the
+_Liberator_ and _Emancipator_ with regard to the manner of getting it
+up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them--and we knowing all the
+time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a
+good newspaper that Leavitt has, with as much more, intellectual ability
+as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me)
+industry, application, and method."
+
+Garrison, to his honor, did not allow the exceeding candor of his mentor
+to disturb their friendship. The pioneer was not wholly without defence
+to the impeachment. He might have pleaded ill health, of which he had
+had _quantum suf._ since 1836 for himself and family. He might have
+pleaded also the dissipation of too much of his energies in consequence
+of more or less pecuniary embarrassments from which he was never wholly
+freed; but, above all, he might have pleaded his increasing activity as
+an anti-slavery lecturer. His contributions to the movement against
+slavery were of a notable character in this direction, both in respect
+of quantity and quality. He was not alone the editor of the _Liberator_,
+he was unquestionably besides one of the most effective and interesting
+of the anti-slavery speakers--indeed in the judgment of so competent an
+authority as James Russell Lowell, he was regarded as the most effective
+of the anti-slavery speakers. Still, after all is placed to his credit
+that can possibly be, Quincy's complaints would be supported by an
+altogether too solid basis of fact. The pioneer was much given to
+procrastination. What was not urgent he was strongly tempted to put off
+for a more convenient time. His work accumulated. He labored hard and he
+accomplished much, but because of this habit of postponing for to-morrow
+what need not be done to-day, he was necessarily forced to leave undone
+many things which he ought to have done and which he might have
+accomplished had he been given to putting off for to-morrow nothing
+which might be finished to-day.
+
+The pioneer was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but never
+was he wholly cast down by his misfortunes. His cheerful and bouyant
+spirit kept him afloat above his sorrows, above his griefs. The organ of
+mirthfulness in him was very large. He was an optimist in the best sense
+of that word, viz., that all things work together for good to them that
+love goodness. In the darkest moments which the Abolition cause
+encountered his own countenance was full of light, his own heart pierced
+through the gloom and communicated its glow to those about him, his own
+voice rang bugle-like through reverse and disaster.
+
+In his family the reformer was seen at his best. His wife was his friend
+and equal, his children his playfellows and companions. The dust of the
+great conflict he never carried with him into his home to choke the love
+which burned ever brightly on its hearth and in the hearts which it
+contained. What he professed in the _Liberator_, what he preached in the
+world, of non-resistance, woman's rights, perfectionism, he practiced in
+his home, he embodied as father, and husband, and host. Never lived
+reformer who more completely realized his own ideals to those nearest
+and dearest to him than William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+He had seven children, five boys and two girls. The last, Francis
+Jackson, was born to him in the year 1848. Two of them died in
+childhood, a boy and a girl. The loss of the boy, whom the father had
+"named admiringly, gratefully, reverently," Charles Pollen, was a
+terrible blow to the reformer, and a life-long grief to the mother. He
+seemed to have been a singularly beautiful, winning, and affectionate
+little man and to have inspired sweet hopes of future "usefulness and
+excellence" in the breasts of his parents. "He seemed born to take a
+century on his shoulders, without stooping; his eyes were large,
+lustrous, and charged with electric light; his voice was clear as a
+bugle, melodious, and ever ringing in our ears, from the dawn of day to
+the ushering in of night, so that since it has been stilled, our
+dwelling has seemed to be almost without an occupant," lamented the
+stricken father to Elizabeth Pease, of Darlington, England.
+
+"Death itself to me is not terrible, is not repulsive," poured the
+heartbroken pioneer into the ears of his English friend, "is not to be
+deplored. I see in it as clear an evidence of Divine wisdom and
+beneficence as I do in the birth of a child, in the works of creation,
+in all the arrangements and operations of nature. I neither fear nor
+regret its power. I neither expect nor supplicate to be exempted from
+its legitimate action. It is not to be chronicled among calamities; it
+is not to be styled "a mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence"; it
+is scarcely rational to talk of being resigned to it. For what is more
+rational, what more universal, what more impartial, what more
+serviceable, what more desirable, in God's own time, hastened neither by
+our ignorance or folly?...
+
+"When, therefore, my dear friend, I tell you that the loss of my dear
+boy has overwhelmed me with sadness, has affected my peace by day and my
+repose by night, has been a staggering blow, from the shock of which I
+find it very difficult to recover, you will not understand me as
+referring to anything pertaining to another state of existence, or as
+gloomily affected by a change inevitable to all; far from it. Where the
+cherished one who has been snatched from us is, what is his situation,
+or what his employment, I know not, of course; and it gives me no
+anxiety whatever. Until I join him at least my responsibility to him as
+his guardian and protector has ceased; he does not need my aid, he
+cannot be benefited by my counsel. That he will still be kindly cared
+for by Him who numbers the very hairs of our heads, and without whose
+notice a sparrow cannot fall to the ground; that he is still living,
+having thrown aside his mortal drapery, and occupying a higher sphere of
+existence, I do not entertain a doubt. My grief arises mainly from the
+conviction that his death was premature; that he was actually defrauded
+of his life through unskillful treatment; that he might have been saved,
+if we had not been so unfortunately situated at that time. This to be
+sure, is not certain; and not being certain, it is only an ingredient of
+consolation that we find in our cup of bitterness."
+
+The pioneer was one of the most generous of givers. Poor indeed he was,
+much beyond the common allotment of men of his intelligence and
+abilities, but he was never too indigent to answer the appeals of
+poverty. If the asker's needs were greater than his own he divided with
+him the little which he had. To his home all sorts of people were
+attracted, Abolitionists, peace men, temperance reformers,
+perfectionists, homoeopathists, hydropathists, mesmerists,
+spiritualists, Grahamites, clairvoyants, whom he received with unfailing
+hospitality, giving welcome and sympathy to the new ideas, food and
+shelter for the material sustenance of the fleshly vehicles of the new
+ideas. He evidently was strongly of the opinion that there are "more
+things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in the philosophy of any
+particular period in the intellectual development of man. No age knows
+it all. It was almost a lo, here, and a lo, there, with him, so large
+was his bump of wonder, so unlimited was his appetite for the incredible
+and the improbable in the domain of human knowledge and speculation.
+Great was the man's faith, great was his hope, great was his charity.
+
+He was one of the most observant of men in all matters affecting the
+rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters
+appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual
+knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was
+amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out
+an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury
+of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out
+of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones for
+future use. His wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic
+business, determined, without consulting him, the morning when the new
+trousers should be donned. She made the necessary changes when her lord
+was in bed, putting the new in the place of the old. Garrison wore for
+several days the new trousers, thinking all the time that they were his
+old ones until his illusions in this regard were dispelled by an
+incident which cost him the former. Some poor wretch of a tramp,
+knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer's door and asking for clothes,
+decided the magnificent possessor of two pairs of trousers, to don his
+new ones and to pass the old ones on to the tramp. But when he
+communicated the transaction to his wife, she hoped, with a good deal of
+emphasis, that he had not given away the pair of breeches which he was
+wearing, for if he had she would beg to inform him that he had given
+away his best ones! But the pioneer's splendid indifference to _meum_
+and _tuum_ where his own possessions were concerned was equal to the
+occasion. He got his compensation in the thought that his loss was
+another's gain. That, indeed, was not to be accounted loss which had
+gone to a brother-man whose needs were greater than his own.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+
+THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE.
+
+
+Garrison's forecast of the future, directly after the annexation of
+Texas, proved singularly correct. Never, as at that moment, had the
+slave-power seemed so secure in its ascendency, yet never, at any
+previous period, was it so near its downfall. Freedom had reached that
+darkest hour just before dawn; and this, events were speedily to make
+clear. If the South could have trammeled up the consequences of
+annexation, secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held its
+political supremacy in America? But omnipotent as was the slave-power in
+the Government, it was not equal to this labor. In the great game, in
+which Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into the seat
+between the gamesters with hands full of loaded dice. At the first throw
+the South got Texas, at the second the war with Mexico fell out, and at
+the third new national territory lay piled upon the boards.
+
+Calhoun, the arch-annexationist, struggled desperately to avert the war.
+He saw as no other Southern leader saw its tremendous significance in
+the conflict between the two halves of the Union for the political
+balance. The admission of Texas had made an adjustment of this balance
+in favor of the South. Calhoun's plan was to conciliate Mexico, to sweep
+with our diplomatic broom the gathering war-clouds from the national
+firmament. War, he knew, would imperil the freshly fortified position of
+his section--war which meant at its close the acquisition of new
+national territory, with which the North would insist upon retrieving
+its reverse in the controversy over Texas. War, therefore, the great
+nullifier resolved against. He cried halt to his army, but the army
+heard not his voice, heeded not his orders, in the wild uproar and
+clamor which arose at the sight of helpless Mexico, and the temptation
+of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her
+spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities
+between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes
+the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of
+the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable
+with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to
+postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy of
+"masterly inactivity" whereby time might be gained for his side to
+prepare to meet the blow when it fell. But his "masterly inactivity"
+policy was swept aside by the momentum of the national passion which the
+war had aroused.
+
+California and New Mexico became the strategic points of the slavery
+struggle at the close of the war. To open both to the immigration of
+slave-labor was thenceforth the grand design of the South. Over Oregon
+occurred a fierce preliminary trial of strength between the sections.
+The South was thrown in the contest, and the anti-slavery principle of
+the Ordinance of 1787 applied to the Territory. Calhoun, who was
+apparently of the mind that as Oregon went so would go California and
+New Mexico, was violently agitated by this reverse. "The great strife
+between the North and the South is ended," he passionately declared.
+Immediately the charge was made and widely circulated through the slave
+States that the stronger was oppressing the weaker section, wresting
+from it its just share in the common fruits of common victories. For had
+not California and New Mexico been won by the bravery and blood of the
+South as of the North, and how then was the North to deprive the South
+of its joint ownership of them without destroying the federal equality
+of the two halves of the Union? What was it but to subvert the Union
+existing among the States?
+
+Disunion sentiment was thenceforth ladled out to the slave States in
+increasing quantities. The turning of the long lane in the domination of
+the slave-power was visibly near. With Garrison at one end and Calhoun
+at the other the work of dissolution advanced apace. The latter
+announced, in 1848, that the separation of the two sections was
+complete. Ten years before, Garrison had made proclamation that the
+Union, though not in form, was, nevertheless, in fact dissolved. And
+possibly they were right. The line of cleavage had at the date of
+Calhoun's announcement passed entirely through the grand strata of
+national life, industrial, moral, political, and religious. There
+remained indeed but a single bond of connection between the
+slave-holding and the non-slave-holding States, viz., fealty to party.
+But in 1848 not even this slender link was intact.
+
+The anti-slavery uprising was a fast growing factor in the politics of
+the free States. This was evinced by the aggressiveness of anti-slavery
+legislation, the repeal of slave sojournment laws, the enactment of
+personal liberty laws, the increasing preference manifested by Whig and
+by Democratic electors for anti-slavery Whig, and anti-slavery
+Democratic leaders. Seward and Chase, and Hale and Hamlin, Thaddeus
+Stevens and Joshua R. Giddings, were all in Congress in 1849. A
+revolution was working in the North; a revolution was working in the
+South. New and bolder spirits were rising to leadership in both
+sections. On the Southern stage were Jefferson Davis, Barnwell Rhett,
+David Atchison, Howell Cobb, Robert Toombs, and James M. Mason. The
+outlook was portentous, tempestuous.
+
+The tide of excitement culminated in the crisis of 1850. The
+extraordinary activity of the under-ground railroad system, and its
+failure to open the national Territories to slave immigration had
+transported the South to the verge of disunion. California, fought over
+by the two foes, was in the act of withdrawing herself from the field of
+contention to a position of independent Statehood. It was her rap for
+admission into the Union as a free State which precipitated upon the
+country the last of the compromises between freedom and slavery. It
+sounded the opening of the final act of Southern domination in the
+republic.
+
+The compromise of 1850, a series of five acts, three of which it took to
+conciliate the South, while two were considered sufficient to satisfy
+the North, was, after prolonged and stormy debate, adopted to save
+Webster's glorious Union. These five acts were, in the agonized accents
+of Clay, to heal "the five fire gaping wounds" of the country. But the
+wounds were immedicable, as events were soon to prove. Besides, two at
+least of the remedies failed to operate as emollients. They irritated
+and inflamed the national ulcers and provoked fresh paroxysms of the
+disease. The admission of California as a free State was a sort of
+perpetual _memento mori_ to the slave-power. It hung forever over the
+South the Damoclean blade of Northern political ascendency in the Union.
+The fugitive slave law on the other hand produced results undreamt of by
+its authors. Who would have ventured to predict the spontaneous,
+irresistible insurrection of the humane forces and passions of the North
+which broke out on the passage of the infamous bill? Who could have
+foretold the moral and political consequences of its execution, for
+instance, in Boston, which fifteen years before had mobbed anti-slavery
+women and dragged Garrison through its streets? The moral indignation
+aroused by the law in Massachusetts swept Webster and the Whigs from
+power, carried Sumner to the Senate and crowned Liberty on Beacon Hill.
+It worked a revolution in Massachusetts, it wrought changes of the
+greatest magnitude in the free States.
+
+From this time the reign of discord became universal. The conflict
+between the sections increased in virulence. At the door of every man
+sat the fierce figure of strife. It fulmined from the pulpit and frowned
+from the pews. The platforms of the free States resounded with the
+thunder of tongues. The press exploded with the hot passions of the
+hour. Parties warred against each other. Factions arose within parties
+and fought among themselves with no less bitterness. Wrath is infectious
+and the wrathful temper of the nation became epidemic. The Ishmaelitish
+impulse to strike something or someone, was irresistible. The bonds
+which had bound men to one another seemed everywhere loosening, and
+people in masses were slipping away from old to enter into new
+combinations of political activity. It was a period of tumultuous
+transition and confusion. The times were topsy-turvy and old Night and
+Chaos were the angels who sat by the bubbling abysses of the revolution.
+
+In the midst of this universal and violent agitation of the public mind
+the old dread of disunion returned to torment the American
+_bourgeoisie_, who through their presses, especially those of the
+metropolis of the Union, turned fiercely upon the Abolitionists. While
+the compromise measures were the subject of excited debate before
+Congress, the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society
+fell due. But the New York journals, the _Herald_ in particular, had no
+mind to allow the meeting to take place without renewing the reign of
+terror of fifteen years before. Garrison was depicted as worse than
+Robespierre, with an insatiable appetite for the destruction of
+established institutions, both human and divine. The dissolution of the
+Union, the "overthrow of the churches, the Sabbath, and the Bible," all
+were required to glut his malevolent passion. "Will the men of sense
+allow meetings to be held in this city which are calculated to make our
+country the arena of blood and murder," roared the _Herald_, "and render
+our city an object of horror to the whole South?... Public opinion
+should be regulated. These Abolitionists should not be allowed to
+misrepresent New York." In order to suppress the Abolitionists that
+paper did not blink at any means, however extreme or revolutionary, but
+declared boldly in favor of throttling free discussion. "When free
+discussion does not promote the public good," argued the editor, "it has
+no more right to exist than a bad government that is dangerous and
+oppressive to the common weal. It should be overthrown." The mob thus
+invoked came forward on the opening of the convention to overthrow free
+discussion.
+
+The storm which the New York press was at so much labor to brew,
+Garrison did not doubt would break over the convention. He went to it in
+a truly apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. "Not knowing the things that
+shall befall me there, saving that bonds and afflictions abide with me
+in every city," he wrote his wife an hour before the commencement of the
+convention. His prevision of violence was quickly fulfilled. He had
+called Francis Jackson to the chair during the delivery of the opening
+speech which fell to the pioneer to make as the president of the
+society. His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which he was
+paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian fashion. Belief in Jesus in
+the United States had no vital influence on conduct or character. The
+chief religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery, they had
+uttered no protest against the national sin. There was the Roman
+Catholic Church whose "priests and members held slaves without incurring
+the rebuke of the Church." At this point the orator was interrupted by
+one of those monstrous products of the slums of the American metropolis,
+compounded of the bully, the blackleg, and the demagogue in about equal
+proportions. It was the notorious Captain Isaiah Rynders, perched with
+his band of blackguards in the organ loft of the tabernacle and ready to
+do the will of the metropolitan journals by over-throwing the right of
+free discussion. He was not disposed to permit Mr. Garrison's censure of
+the Roman Catholic Church to pass unchallenged, so he begged to ask
+"whether there are no other churches as well as the Catholic Church,
+whose clergy and lay members hold slaves?" To which the anti-slavery
+leader replied with the utmost composure, not inclined to let even
+Captain Rynders interrupt the even and orderly progression of his
+discourse: "Will the friend wait for a moment, and I will answer him in
+reference to other churches?" "The friend" thereupon resumed his seat in
+the organ loft, and Garrison proceeded with his indictment of the
+churches. There was the Episcopal Church, whose clergy and laity dealt
+with impunity in human flesh, and the Presbyterians, whose ministers and
+members did likewise without apparently any compunctious visitings of
+conscience, ditto the Baptist, ditto the Methodist. In fact "all the
+sects are combined," the orator sternly continued, "to prevent that
+jubilee which it is the will of God should come."
+
+But the bully in the organ loft, who was not content for long to play
+the part of Patience on a monument, interrupted the speaker with a
+second question which he looked upon, doubtless, as a hard nut to crack.
+"Are you aware," inquired the blackleg "that the slaves in the South
+have their prayer-meetings in honor of Christ?" The nut was quickly
+crushed between the sharp teeth of the orator's scathing retort. Mr.
+Garrison--"Not a slave-holding or a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.)
+The slaves believe in a Jesus that strikes off chains. In this country
+Jesus has become obsolete. A profession in him is no longer a test. Who
+objects to his course in Judæa? The old Pharisees are extinct, and may
+safely be denounced. Jesus is the most respectable person in the United
+States. (Great sensation and murmurs of disapprobation.) Jesus sits in
+the President's chair of the United States. (A thrill of horror here
+seemed to run through the assembly.) Zachary Taylor sits there, which is
+the same thing, for he believes in Jesus. He believes in war, and the
+Jesus that 'gave the Mexicans hell.'" (Sensation, uproar, and
+confusion.)
+
+This rather sulphurous allusion to the President of the glorious Union,
+albeit in language used by himself in a famous order during the Mexican
+War, acted as a red rag upon the human bull in the organ loft, who, now
+beside himself with passion, plunged madly down to the platform with his
+howling mob at his heels. "I will not allow you to assail the President
+of the United States. You shan't do it!" bellowed the blackguard,
+shaking his fist at Mr. Garrison. But Mr. Garrison, with that
+extraordinary serenity of manner which was all his own, parleyed with
+the ruffian, as if he was no ruffian and had no mob at his back. "You
+ought not to interrupt us," he remonstrated with gentle dignity. "We go
+upon the principle of hearing everybody. If you wish to speak, I will
+keep order, and you shall be heard." Rynders was finally quieted by the
+offer of Francis Jackson to give him a hearing as soon as Mr. Garrison
+had brought his address to an end.
+
+Rev. W.H. Furness, of Philadelphia, who was a member of the convention
+and also one of the speakers, has preserved for us the contrasts of the
+occasion. "The close of Mr. Garrison's address," says he, "brought down
+Rynders again, who vociferated and harangued at one time on the
+platform, and then pushing down into the aisles, like a madman followed
+by his keepers. Through the whole, nothing could be more patient and
+serene than the bearing of Mr. Garrison. I have always revered Mr.
+Garrison for his devoted, uncompromising fidelity to his great cause.
+Today I was touched to the heart by his calm and gentle manners. There
+was no agitation, no scorn, no heat, but the quietness of a man engaged
+in simple duties."
+
+The madman and his keepers were quite vanquished on the first day of the
+convention by the wit, repartee, and eloquence of Frederick Douglass,
+Dr. Furness, and Rev. Samuel R. Ward, whom Wendell Phillips described as
+so black that "when he shut his eyes you could not see him." But it was
+otherwise on the second day when public opinion was "regulated," and
+free discussion overthrown by Captain Rynders and his villainous gang,
+who were resolved, with the authors of the compromise, that the Union as
+it was should be preserved.
+
+But, notwithstanding the high authority and achievements of this noble
+band of patriots and brothers, Garrison's detestation of the Union but
+increased, and his cry for its dissolution grew deeper and louder. And
+no wonder. For never had the compact between freedom and slavery seemed
+more hateful than after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. The
+state of panic which it created among the colored people in the free
+States will form, if ever written down, one of the most heartrending
+chapters in human history. Hundreds and thousands fled from their homes
+into the jaws of a Canadian winter to escape the jaws of the
+slave-hounds, whose fierce baying began presently to fill the land from
+Massachusetts to Ohio. It made no difference whether these miserable
+people had been always free or were fugitives from slavery, the terror
+spread among them all the same. The aged and the young turned their
+backs upon their homes and hurried precipitately into a strange country.
+Fathers with wives and children dependant upon them for their daily
+bread, were forced by the dread of being captured and returned to
+bondage to abandon their homes and loved ones, sometimes without so much
+as a touch of their hands or a tone of their voices in token of
+farewell. Perhaps on his way to work in the morning some husband or son
+has caught a glimpse among the faces on the street of one face, the
+remembrance of which to the day of death, he can never lose, a face he
+had known in some far away Southern town or plantation, and with which
+are connected in the poor fellow's brain the most frightful sufferings
+and associations. Crazed at the sight, with no thought of home, of the
+labors which are awaiting him, oblivious of everything but the abject
+terror which has suddenly taken possession of him, he hastens away to
+hide and fly, fly and hide, until he reaches a land where slave-hounds
+enter not, and panting fugitives find freedom. Wendell Phillips tells of
+an old woman of seventy who asked his advice about flying, though
+originally free, and fearful only of being caught up by mistake. The
+distress everywhere was awful, the excitement indescribable. From Boston
+alone in the brief space of three weeks after the rescue of Shadrach,
+nearly a hundred of these panic stricken creatures had fled. The whole
+number escaping into Canada Charles Sumner placed as high as six
+thousand souls. But in addition to this large band of fugitives, others
+emigrated to the interior of New England away from the seaboard centers
+of trade and commerce where the men-hunters abounded.
+
+The excitement and the perils of this period were not confined to the
+colored people. Their white friends shared both with them. We are
+indebted to Mr. Phillips for the following graphic account of these
+excitements and perils in Boston in March, 1851. He has been describing
+the situation in the city, in respect of the execution of the infamous
+law, to Elizabeth Pease, and goes on thus: "I need not enlarge on this;
+but the long evening sessions--debates about secret escapes--plans to
+evade where we can't resist--the door watched that no spy may enter--the
+whispering consultations of the morning--some putting property out of
+their hands, planning to incur penalties, and planning also that, in
+case of conviction, the Government may get nothing from them--the doing,
+and answering no questions--intimates forbearing to ask the knowledge
+which it may be dangerous to have--all remind one of those foreign
+scenes which have hitherto been known to us, transatlantic republicans,
+only in books."
+
+On the passage of the Black Bill, as the Abolitionists stigmatised the
+law, it was not believed that the moral sentiment of Boston would
+execute it, so horrified did the community seem. But it was soon
+apparent to the venerable Josiah Quincy that "The Boston of 1851 is not
+the Boston of 1775. Boston," the sage goes on to remark, "has now become
+a mere shop--a place for buying and selling goods; and, I suppose, also
+of _buying and selling men_." The great idol of her shopkeepers, Daniel
+Webster, having striven mightily for the enactment of the hateful bill
+while Senator of the United States, had gone into Millard Fillmore's
+Cabinet, to labor yet more mightily for its enforcement. The rescue of
+Shadrach, which Mr. Secretary of State characterized "as a case of
+treason," set him to thundering for the Union as it was, and against the
+"fanatics," who were stirring up the people of the free States to resist
+the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. But he was no longer "the
+God-like" Webster, for he appeared to the editor of the _Liberator_ as
+"an ordinary-looking, poor, decrepit old man, whose limbs could scarce
+support him; lank with age; whose sluggish legs were somewhat concealed
+by an over-shadowing abdomen; with head downcast and arms shriveled, and
+dangling almost helpless by his side, and incapable of being magnetized
+for the use of the orator." The voice and the front of "the God-like"
+had preceded the "poor decrepit old man" to the grave. Garrison dealt no
+less roughly and irreverently with another of the authors of the wicked
+law and another of the superannuated divinities of a shopkeeping North,
+Henry Clay. "HENRY CLAY, with one foot in the grave," exclaimed the
+reformer, "and just ready to have both body and soul cast into hell, as
+if eager to make his damnation doubly sure, rises in the United States
+Senate and proposes an inquiry into the expediency of passing yet
+another law, by which every one who shall dare peep or mutter against
+the execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill shall have his life crushed
+out."
+
+In those trial times words from the mouth or the pen of Abolitionists
+had the force of deadly missiles. Incapacitated as Garrison was to
+resort to physical resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law by his
+non-resistant doctrine, it seemed that all the energy and belligerency
+of the man went into the most tremendous verbal expressions. They were
+like adamantine projectiles flung with the savage strength of a catapult
+against the walls of slavery. The big sinners, like Webster and Clay, he
+singled out for condign punishment, were objects of his utmost
+severities of speech. It was thus that he essayed to breach the iron
+dungeon in which the national iniquity had shut the national conscience.
+Saturated was the reformer's mind with the thought of the Bible, its
+solemn and awful imagery, its fiery and prophetic abhorrence and
+denunciations of national sins, all of which furnished him an unfailing
+magazine whence were drawn the bolts which he launched against the giant
+sin and the giant sinners of his time. And so Clay had not only "one
+foot in the grave," but was "just ready to have both body and soul cast
+into hell."
+
+While physical resistance of the Slave Law was wholly out of the
+question with Garrison, he, nevertheless, refused to condemn the men
+with whom it was otherwise. Here he was anything but a fanatic. All that
+he required was that each should be consistent with his principles. If
+those principles bade him resist the enforcement of the Black Bill, the
+apostle of non-resistance was sorry enough, but in this emergency,
+though he possessed the gentleness of the dove, he also practised the
+wisdom of the serpent. That truth moves with men upon lower as well as
+higher planes he well knew. It is always partial and many-colored,
+refracted as it is through the prisms of human passion and prejudice. If
+it appear unto some minds in the red bar of strife and blood, so be it.
+Each must follow the light which it is given him to discern, whether the
+blue of love or the red of war. Great coadjutors, like Wendell Phillips,
+Theodore Parker, and Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, were for forcible resistance
+to the execution of the law. So were the colored people. Preparations to
+this end went on vigorously in Boston under the direction of the
+Vigilance Committee. The Crafts escaped the clutches of the
+slave-hunters, so did Shadrach escape them, but Sims and Burns fell into
+them and were returned to bondage.
+
+From this time on Wendell Phillips became in Boston and in the North
+more distinctly the leader of the Abolition sentiment. The period of
+pure moral agitation ended with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.
+That act opened a new era in the movement, an era in which
+non-resistance had no place, an era in which a resort to physical force
+in settlement of sectional differences, the whole trend of things were
+making inevitable. Fighting, the Anglo-Saxon method, as Theodore Parker
+characterized it, of making a final settlement of just such
+controversies as was the slavery question, was in the air, had become
+without any general consciousness of it at the time appearing in the
+popular mind, a foregone conclusion, from the moment that the South
+wrested from the National Government the right to defy and override the
+moral sentiment of free State communities. With this advance of the
+anti-slavery agitation a stage nearer the end, when fighting would
+supersede all other methods, the fighters gravitated naturally to the
+front of the conflict, and the apostle of non-resistance fell somewhat
+into the background of the great movement started by him.
+
+Garrison had begun, indeed, to recognize that there were other ways
+besides his way of abolishing slavery--had begun to see that these with
+his led to Rome, to the ultimate extinction of the evil, to which
+anti-slavery unionists and disunionists were alike devoted. His innate
+sagacity and strong sense of justice lifted the reformer to larger
+toleration of mind. At a dinner given in Boston in May, 1853, by the
+Free Democracy to John P. Hale, he was not only present to testify his
+appreciation of the courage and services of Mr. Hale to the common
+cause, but while there was able to speak thus tolerantly--tolerantly for
+him certainly--of a Union dear to the company about the table yet
+hateful beyond measure to himself: "Sir, you will pardon me," spoke the
+arch anti-slavery disunionist, "for the reference. I have heard
+something here about our Union, about the value of the Union, and the
+importance of preserving the Union, Gentlemen, if you have been so
+fortunate as to find a Union worth preserving, I heartily congratulate
+you. Cling to it with all your souls!" For himself, he has not been so
+fortunate. With a price set on his head in one of the Southern States,
+and outlawed in all of them, he begs to be pardoned if found lacking in
+loyalty to the existing Union, which to him, alas: "is but another name
+for the iron reign of the slave-power. We have no common country as yet.
+God grant we may have. We shall have it when the jubilee comes--and not
+till then," he declared, mindful of the convictions of others, yet
+bravely true to his own. The seeds of liberty, of hatred of the
+slave-power, planted by Garrison were springing up in a splendid crop
+through the North. Much of the political anti-slavery of the times were
+the fruit of his endeavor. Wendell Phillips has pointed out how the
+Liberty party was benefited by the meetings and speeches of Garrisonian
+Abolitionists. What was true of the Liberty party was equally true of
+Free Soil and Free Democracy. Although the little band remained small,
+it was potent in swelling, year after year, the anti-slavery membership
+of all the parties, Whig and Democratic, as well as of those already
+mentioned. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" might fairly be classed among the large
+indirect results produced by Garrison. "But," as Phillips justly
+remarked, "'Uncle Tom' would never have been written had not Garrison
+developed the facts; and never would have succeeded had he not created
+readers and purchasers." Garrisonism had become an influence, a power
+that made for liberty and against slavery in the United States. It had
+become such also in Great Britain. George Thompson, writing the pioneer
+of the marvelous sale of "Uncle Tom" in England, and of the
+unprecedented demand for anti-slavery literature, traced their source to
+his friend: "Behold the fruit of your labors," he exclaimed, "and
+rejoice."
+
+Mr. Garrison's pungent characterization of the "Union" at the dinner of
+the Free Democracy as "but another name for the iron reign of the
+slave-power," found almost instant illustration of its truth in the
+startling demand of that power for the repeal of the Missouri
+Compromise. In 1850 the South lost California, but it received at the
+time an advantage of far-reaching consequence, viz., the admission of
+the principle of federal non-intervention upon the subject of slavery in
+the national Territories into the bill organizing Territorial
+Governments for New Mexico and Utah. The train which was to blow down
+the slave wall of 1820 and open to slave immigration the northern half
+of the Louisiana Territory, was laid in the compromise measures of 1850.
+
+Calhoun, strongly dissatisfied as he was with the Missouri settlement,
+recoiled from countenancing any agitation on the part of the South
+looking to its repeal on the ground that such action was calculated to
+disturb "the peace and harmony of the Union." But four years after the
+death of the great nullifier, his disciples and followers dared to
+consummate a crime, the consequences of which he shrank from inviting.
+The political conditions four years had indeed modified in one important
+particular at least. In Calhoun's lifetime, there was no Northern leader
+bold enough to undertake to engineer an act of abrogation through
+Congress. If the North were willing, possessed sufficient magnanimity,
+to surrender, in the interest of brotherly love between the sections,
+the benefits which inured to it under the Missouri Compromise, neither
+Calhoun nor the South would have declined the proffered sacrifice. The
+selection of Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 as the leader of the movement
+for repeal put a new face on the business, which was thereby made to
+appear to proceed from the free, not from the slave States. This was
+adroit, the fixing upon the losing section the initiative and the
+responsibility of the act of abrogation.
+
+Besides this element, there was another not less specious which lent to
+the scheme an air of fairness, and that was the application to the
+Territories of the American principle of local self-government, in other
+words, the leaving to the people of the Territories the right to vote
+slavery up or vote it down, as they might elect. The game was a deep
+one, worthy of the machinations of its Northern and Southern authors.
+But, like other elaborate schemes of mice and men, it went to pieces
+under the fatal stroke of an unexpected circumstance. The act which
+abrogated the Missouri Compromise broke the much-enduring back of
+Northern patience at the same time. In the struggle for the repeal
+Southern Whigs and Southern Democrats forgot their traditionary party
+differences in battling for Southern interests, which was not more or
+less than the extension to the national Territories of the peculiar
+institution. The final recognition of this ugly fact on the part of the
+free States, raised a popular flood in them big enough to whelm the Whig
+party and to float a great political organization, devoted to
+uncompromising opposition to the farther extension of slavery. The
+sectionalism of slavery was at last met by the sectionalism of freedom.
+From that moment the old Union, with its slave compromises, was doomed.
+In the conflict then impending its dissolution was merely a matter of
+time, unless indeed the North should prove strong enough to preserve it
+by the might of its arms, seeing that the North still clung passionately
+to the idea of national unity.
+
+Not so, however, was it with Garrison. Sharper and sterner rose his
+voice against any union with Slaveholders. On the Fourth of July
+following the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the reformer at
+Framingham, Mass., gave a fresh and startling sign of his hatred of the
+Union by burning publicly the Constitution of the United States. Before
+doing so however, he consigned to the flames a copy of the _Fugitive
+Slave Law_, next the decision of Judge Loring remanding Anthony Burns to
+slavery, also the charge of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis to the Grand Jury
+touching the assault upon the court-house for the rescue of Burns. Then
+holding up the United States Constitution, he branded it as the source
+and parent of all the other atrocities--a covenant with death and an
+agreement with hell--and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming,
+"So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say,
+Amen!" This dramatic act and the "tremendous shout" which "went up to
+heaven in ratification of the deed" from the assembled multitude, what
+were they but the prophecy of a fiercer fire already burning in the
+land, soon to blaze about the pillars of the Union, of a more tremendous
+shout soon to burst with the wrath of a divided people over that
+
+  "perfidious bark
+  Built i' th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+
+FACE TO FACE.
+
+
+Face to face at last were freedom and slavery. The final struggle
+between them for mastery had come. Narrow, indeed, was the issue that
+divided the combatants, slavery extension on the one side, and slavery
+restriction on the other, not total and immediate emancipation, but it
+was none the less vital and supreme to the two enemies. Back of the
+Southern demand for "More slave soil" stood a solid South, back of the
+Northern position, "No more slave soil" was rallying a fast uniting
+North. The political revolution, produced by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
+advanced apace through the free States from Maine to Michigan. A
+flood-tide of Northern resistance had suddenly risen against the
+slave-power.
+
+Higher than anywhere else rose this flood-tide in Massachusetts. The
+judge who remanded Anthony Burns to slavery was removed from office, and
+a Personal Liberty Law, with provisions as bold as they were thorough,
+enacted for the protection of fugitive slaves. Mr. Garrison sat beside
+the President of the State Senate when that body voted to remove Judge
+Loring from his office. Such was Massachusetts's answer to the
+abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, and a triumphant slave-power. Its
+instant effect was to accelerate in the South the action of the disunion
+working forces there, to hurry the inevitable moment when the two
+sections would rush together in a death-grapple within or without
+Webster's once glorious Union.
+
+Indeed the foes had already closed in a frightful wrestle for the
+possession of Kansas. When the National Government adopted the popular
+sovereignty doctrine in solution of the Territorial problem between the
+two halves of the Union, freedom and slavery thereupon precipitated
+their forces upon the debatable land, and, for the first time, the men
+of the North and the men of the South came into actual physical
+collision in defence of their respective ideas and institutions. The
+possession of land is nine points of the law among Anglo-Saxons, and for
+this immense advantage both sides flung themselves into Kansas--the
+North by means of emigrant aid societies, the South by means of bands of
+Border ruffians under the direction of a United States Senator. It was
+distinctly understood and ordained in connection with the repeal of the
+compromise of 1820, that final possession of the Territories then thrown
+open to slave labor should be determined by the people inhabiting the
+same. In the contest for peopling Kansas the superior colonizing
+resources of the free States was presently made manifest. They, in any
+fair contest with ballots, had a majority of the polls, and were,
+therefore, able to vote slavery down. Worsted as the South clearly was
+in a show of heads, it threw itself back upon fraud and force to decide
+the issue in its favor. The cartridge-box took the place of the
+ballot-box in bleeding Kansas, and violence and anarchy, as a
+consequence, reigned therein for the space of several years.
+
+This is no place to depict those scenes of slave-holding outrages,
+supported as they were by a Northern President with Southern principles.
+The sight of them rapidly changed the pacific character of the free
+States. Many a peace man dropped his peace principles before this bloody
+duel between the civilization of the South and that of the North.
+Ministers and churches took up collections to send, not Bibles, but
+Sharp's rifles to their brethren in Kansas. The South had appealed to
+the sword, and the North had sternly accepted the challenge. War was in
+the air, and the Northern temper, without there being any general
+consciousness of it, was fast mounting to the war point in the
+thermometer of the passions, thanks to the perfidy and ruffianism of the
+slave-power in Congress and Kansas.
+
+This trend and strong undertow of the nation toward a civil outbreak and
+commotion, though unnoted by the multitude, was yet, nevertheless, seen
+and felt by many thoughtful and far-seeing minds; and by no one more
+clearly than by T.W. Higginson, who at the twentieth anniversary of the
+Boston mob, discoursed thus on this head: "Mr. Phillips told us that on
+this day, twenty years ago, the military could not protect the meeting,
+because the guns were outside in the mob--or the men who should have
+carried them! There has been a time since when the men were on the
+outside and the guns too; and as surely as this earth turns on its axis,
+that time will come again! And it is for you, men, who hear me, to think
+what you will do when that time comes; and it is for you, women, who
+hear me, to think what you will do, and what you are willing--I will not
+say, to _consent_ that those you love should do, but what you are
+willing to _urge_ them to do, and to send them from your homes, knowing
+that they will do it, whether they live or die." The murderous assault
+upon Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber at Washington by Preston S.
+Brooks, served to intensify the increasing belligerency of the Northern
+temper, to deepen the spreading conviction that the irrepressible
+conflict would be settled not with the pen through any more fruitless
+compromises, but in Anglo-Saxon fashion by blood and iron.
+
+Amid this general access of the fighting propensity, Garrison preserved
+the integrity of his non-resistant principles, his aversion to the use
+of physical force as an anti-slavery weapon. Men like Charles Stearns
+talked of shouldering their Sharp's rifles against the Border ruffians
+as they would against wild beasts. For himself, he could not class any
+of his fellow-creatures, however vicious and wicked, on the same level
+with wild beasts. Those wretches were, he granted, as bad and brutal as
+they were represented by the free State men of Kansas, but to him they
+were less blameworthy than were their employers and indorsers, the
+pro-slavery President and his Cabinet, pro-slavery Congressmen, and
+judges, and doctors of divinity, and editors. Incomparably guilty as
+these "colossal conspirators against the liberty, peace, happiness, and
+safety of the republic" were; and, though his moral indignation "against
+their treasonable course" burned like fire, he, nevertheless, wished
+them no harm. He shrank from the idea of the physical collision of man
+with a brother man, and with him all mankind were brothers. No one is
+able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member of the human family,
+"in a Christian state of mind." He held to Jesus, who condemned
+violence, forbade the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory
+feelings and the use of retaliatory weapons. When Jesus said "Love your
+enemies," he did not mean, "Kill them if they go too far."
+
+Garrison's moral radicalism and political sagacity were never exhibited
+to better advantage than during these tremendous years of the crisis. He
+saw the sudden rise of a great political organization opposed to the
+farther extension of slavery to national territory. It was by no means a
+party after his heart, and for total and immediate emancipation, and the
+dissolution of the Union, yet he perceived that while this was true, it
+was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose, battling against the
+slave-power, fighting the slave system, and to this extent was worthy of
+the commendation of Abolitionists. "It helps to disseminate no small
+amount of light and knowledge," the reformer acutely observed, "in
+regard to the nature and workings of the slave system, being
+necessitated to do this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time
+being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right direction, though
+with no purpose to aid us in the specific work we are striving to
+accomplish, namely, the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of
+slavery throughout the land." While bating no jot of his anti-slavery
+principles, he all the same put in practice the apostolic injunction to
+give credit to whom credit is due, by cordially commending what he found
+worthy of commendation in the purpose and policy of the Republican
+party, and by urging a like conduct upon his followers. In the
+Presidential canvass of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with Frémont
+as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although his Abolition principles
+precluded him from voting for the Republican candidate or from urging
+his disciples to vote for him. But, barring this moral barrier, had he
+"a million votes to bestow" he "would cast them all for Frémont ... not
+because he is an Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is for
+the non-extension of slavery, in common with the great body of the
+people of the North, whose attachment to the Union amounts to idolatry."
+
+When the election was over the motto of the _Liberator_ was still "No
+union with slaveholders," and would have remained the same though
+Frémont instead of Buchanan had triumphed at the polls, until indeed the
+domination of the slave-power had ended, and the North and the National
+Constitution had been divorced from all criminal connection with
+slavery. The anti-slavery agitation for the dissolution of the Union
+went on with increased zeal. A State convention, called by T.W.
+Higginson and others, "to consider the practicability, probability, and
+expediency of a separation between the free and slave States, and to
+take such other measures as the condition of the times may require," met
+at Worcester, Mass., January 15, 1857, with Frank W. Bird in the chair,
+and William Lloyd Garrison among the vice-presidents. The pioneer's
+speech on the occasion was a characteristic and noteworthy utterance.
+Its tone throughout was grave and argumentative. Here is a specimen of
+it, and of the way in which he met the most serious objection to the
+Abolition movement for disunion: "The air is filled with objections to a
+movement of this kind. I am neither surprised nor disquieted at this.
+One of these is of a very singular nature, and it is gravely urged that
+it is conclusive against disunion. It is to this effect: We must remain
+in the Union because it would be inhuman in us to turn our backs upon
+millions of slaves in the Southern States, and to leave them to their
+fate! Men who have never been heard of in the anti-slavery ranks, or who
+are ever submitting to a compromise of principle, have their bowels
+wonderfully moved all at once with sympathy for the suffering slave!
+Even our esteemed friend, Theodore Parker (who deals in no cant) says,
+in his letter, that he cannot consent to cut himself off from the slave
+population. Now, we who are engaged in this movement claim to be equally
+concerned for the liberation of the slave. If we have not yet proved our
+willingness to suffer the loss of all things, rather than turn and flee,
+God knows that we are prepared to bear any new cross that He, in His
+Providence, may be disposed to lay upon us. For one, I make no parade of
+my anxiety for the deliverance of those in bondage; but I do say that it
+strikes me as remarkable that those who, for a quarter of a century,
+have borne the heat and burden of the day, should have the imputation
+cast upon them of intending to leave four millions of slaves in their
+chains, by seeking the overthrow of this Union!...
+
+" ... I declare that this talk of leaving the slave to his fate is not a
+true representation of the case; and it indicates a strange dullness of
+comprehension with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is it to
+forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his
+master? What! When the North is pressing down upon four millions of
+slaves like an avalanche, and we say to her, 'Take off that
+pressure--stand aside--give the slave a chance to regain his feet and
+assert his freedom!' is that turning our backs upon him? Here, for
+example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, and another man is acting
+as an accessory, without whose aid the robber cannot succeed. In saying
+to the accomplice. 'Hands off! Don't aid the villain!' shall I be told
+that this is enabling the highwayman to rob with impunity? What an
+absurdity! Are we not trying to save the pockets of all travelers from
+being picked in seeking to break up all connection with highway
+robbery?"
+
+The convention projected a general convention of the free States to
+consider the subject, and "_Resolved_, That the sooner the separation
+takes place, the more peaceful it will be; but that peace or war is _a
+secondary consideration_ in view of our present perils. Slavery must be
+conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." The projected
+general convention, owing to the monetary crisis of 1857, did not take
+place; but the extraordinary public excitement on the slavery question
+increased rather than diminished during the year. The increasing menace
+to the domination of the slave-power from this source had become so
+great that it was deemed prudent on the part of the upholders of that
+power to allay it by means of an authoritative utterance upon the vexed
+question of slavery in the national Territories from the highest
+judicial tribunal in the Land. The Northern respect for the opinion of
+the Supreme Court, the South and her allies in the free States counted
+upon as the vehicle of the quieting medicament. For, if the Missouri
+Compromise were pronounced by that Court unconstitutional and,
+therefore, _ab initio_, null and void, no wrong was done the North
+through its formal repeal by Congress. The act of abrogation, in this
+view, added nothing to the South which did not belong to it as well
+before as after its passage, detracted nothing from the North which was
+justly its due in the premises. In pursuance of this cunningly devised
+scheme the Supreme Court delivered itself of an opinion in the famous
+"Dred Scott Case." So abhorrent it was to the intelligence and moral
+sense of the free States, that it produced results altogether opposed to
+those designed by the men who invoked it. Instead of checking, the
+execrated judgment augmented enormously the existing excitement.
+Garrison's bitter taunt that "the Union is but another name for the iron
+reign of the slave-power," was driven home to the North, by the Dred
+Scott decision, with the logic of another unanswerable fact. Confidence
+in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court was seriously
+shaken, and widespread suspicion struck root at the North touching the
+subserviency of that tribunal to the interests and designs of the
+slave-power.
+
+The popular agitation at this fresh and alarming evidence of the purpose
+and power of the South upset the machinations of the schemers, swelled
+the numerical strength of the new Northern party opposed to the
+Territorial aggressions and pretensions of the slave section. So rapid
+was the growth of the Republican party that the slave leaders
+anticipated its accession to power at the then next Presidential
+election. So certain were they in their forebodings of defeat that they
+set about in dead earnest to put their side of the divided house in
+order for the impending struggle for Southern independence. Military
+preparations went forward with a vengeance, arms and munitions of war
+which were the property of the General Government began to move
+southward, to Southern military depots and posts for the defence of the
+United States South, when at last the word "DISUNION" should be
+pronounced over the Republic. The Lincoln-Douglass debate augmented
+everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty numbers of the new
+party. More and more the public consciousness and conviction were
+squaring with Mr. Lincoln's oracular words in respect that the Union
+could not "endure permanently half slave and half free."
+
+The darkness and tumult of the rising tempest were advancing apace, when
+suddenly there burst from the national firmament the first warning peal
+of thunder, and over Virginia there sped the first bolt of the storm.
+John Brown with his brave little band, at Harper's Ferry, had struck for
+the freedom of the slave. Tired of words, the believer in blood and iron
+as a deliverer, had crossed from Pennsylvania into Virginia on the
+evening of October 16, 1859, and seized the United States Armory at
+Harper's Ferry. Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and hanged
+for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had builded better than he
+knew. For the blow struck by him then and there ended almost abruptly
+the period of argument and ushered in the period of arms. The jar from
+that battle-ax at the roots of the slave system hurled together in a
+death struggle right and wrong, freedom and slavery, in the republic.
+
+This attempt on the part of John Brown to liberate the slaves seemed to
+Garrison "misguided, wild, and apparently insane, though disinterested
+and well-intended." On non-resistant grounds he deplored this use of the
+sword to effect emancipation, and condemned the leader. But, judging him
+according to the standard of Bunker Hill and the men of 1776, he did not
+doubt that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable
+remembrance to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the deeds
+of a Wallace or Tell, a Washington or Warren."
+
+The raid of Brown and his subsequent execution, and their reception at
+the North revealed how vast was the revolution in public sentiment on
+the slavery question which had taken place there, since the murder of
+Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy died defending the right of free
+speech and the liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of
+Massachusetts declared that "he died as the fool dieth." Brown died in
+an invasion of a slave State, and in an effort to emancipate the slaves
+with a band of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one end of
+the free States to the other, hero and martyr. Mr. Garrison commenting
+on this immensely significant fact, acutely and justly observed that:
+"The sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him, prove how
+marvelous has been the change affected in public opinion during the
+thirty years of moral agitation--a change so great indeed, that whereas,
+ten years since, there were thousands who could not endure my lightest
+word of rebuke of the South, they can now easily swallow John Brown
+whole and his rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has merely
+told us what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God!"
+
+But there is another circumstance hardly less significant of another
+change at the North even more momentous than the one just noted.
+
+On December 2d, the day on which Brown was hung, solemn funeral
+observances were held throughout the North by Abolitionists. At the
+great meeting in Boston, held in Tremont Temple, and presided over by
+Samuel E. Sewall, Garrison inquired as to the number of non-resistants
+who were present. To this question there came a solitary reply. There
+was but one non-resistant beside himself in the hall. Where were his
+followers? Why had they forsaken their principles? The tide of Northern
+belligerency, which was everywhere rising to its flood, everywhere
+rushing and mounting to the tops of those dams which separate war and
+peace had swept away his followers, had caused them to forsake their
+principles. True to their Anglo-Saxon instinct, they had reverted to the
+more human, if less Christian method of cutting the Gordian knot of the
+republic with the sword.
+
+The irresistible drift of the North toward the point where peace ends
+and war begins, which that solitary "I" at the John Brown meeting
+denoted, was still further indicated by what appeared not wholly unlike
+a change in Mr. Garrison's attitude on the same subject. His
+non-resistant position was the same, but somehow his face seemed to turn
+warward too, with the rest of the nation, in the following passage taken
+from his address at that John Brown meeting:
+
+"Nevertheless, I am a non-resistant," said he, speaking to that solitary
+confession of non-resistance principles, "and I not only desire, but
+have labored unremittingly to effect the peaceful abolition of slavery,
+by an appeal to the reason and conscience of the slaveholder; yet, as a
+peace man, an ultra peace man, I am prepared to say: Success to every
+slave insurrection at the South, and in every slave country. And I do
+not see how I compromise or stain my peace profession in making that
+declaration. Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the
+oppressor, the weapons being equal between the parties, God knows that
+my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor.
+Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave
+insurrections.... Rather than see men wearing their chains, in a
+cowardly and servile spirit, I would as an advocate of peace, much
+rather see them breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains. Give
+me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Concord, rather
+than the cowardice and servility of a Southern slave plantation."
+
+The unmistakable signs of disintegration, the swift action of the
+national tragedy, the Charleston Convention, the disruption of the
+Democratic party, the last bond between the North and the South, filled
+the heart of the pioneer with solemn joy. "Only think of it!" he exulted
+at the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, May
+8, 1860; "only think of it! the party which has for so many years cried
+out, 'There must be no agitation on this subject' is now the most
+agitated of all the parties in the country. The party which declares
+that there ought not to be any sectionalism as against slavery, has now
+been sundered geographically, and on this very question! The party which
+had said, 'Let discussions cease forever,' is busily engaged in the
+discussion, so that, possibly, the American Anti-Slavery Society might
+adjourn _sine die_, after we get through with our present meetings, and
+leave its work to be carried on in the other direction!" This was all
+true enough. The sections were at last sundered, and a day of wrath was
+rising dark and dreadful over "States dissevered, discordant,
+belligerent."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+
+THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
+
+
+The triumph of the Republican party at the polls was the signal for the
+work of dissolution to begin. Webster's terrific vision of "a land rent
+with civil feuds" became reality in the short space of six weeks after
+Lincoln's election, by the secession of South Carolina from the Union.
+Quickly other Southern States followed, until a United States South was
+organized, the chief stone in the corner of the new political edifice
+being Negro slavery. It was not six weeks after the inauguration of
+Abraham Lincoln, when the roar of cannon in Charleston Harbor announced
+to the startled country that war between the States had begun. The first
+call of the new President for troops to put down the rebellion and to
+save the Union, and the patriotic uprising which it evoked made it plain
+that the struggle thus opened was to be nothing less than a
+death-grapple between the two sections.
+
+Before the attack on Fort Sumter, Garrison was opposed to coercing the
+rebel States back into the Union. He admitted the Constitutional power
+of the National Government to employ force in maintaining the integrity
+of the Republic. "The Federal Government must not pretend to be in
+actual operation, embracing thirty-four States," the editor of the
+_Liberator_ commented, "and then allow the seceding States to trample
+upon its flag, steal its property, and defy its authority with impunity;
+for it would then be (as it is at this moment) a mockery and a
+laughing-stock. Nevertheless to think of whipping the South (for she
+will be a unit on the question of slavery) into subjection, and
+extorting allegiance from millions of people at the cannon's mouth, is
+utterly chimerical. True, it is in the power of the North to deluge her
+soil with blood, and inflict upon her the most terrible sufferings; but
+not to conquer her spirit, or change her determination."
+
+He, therefore, proposed that "the people of the North should recognize
+the fact that THE UNION IS DISSOLVED, and act accordingly. They should
+see, in the madness of the South, the hand of God, liberating them from
+'a covenant with death' and an 'agreement with hell,' made in a time of
+terrible peril, and without a conception of its inevitable consequences,
+and which has corrupted their morals, poisoned their religion, petrified
+their humanity as towards the millions in bondage, tarnished their
+character, harassed their peace, burdened them with taxation, shackled
+their prosperity, and brought them into abject vassalage."
+
+It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under the circumstances, was
+for speeding the South rather than obstructing her way out of the Union.
+For hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater peril than that
+which hung over it during the months which elapsed between Lincoln's
+election and the attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions
+to which the free States fell a prey in view of the then impending
+disruption of their glorious Union. Indeed no sacrifice of anti-slavery
+accomplishments, policy, and purpose of those States were esteemed too
+important or sacred to make, if thereby the dissolution of the Union
+might be averted. Many, Republicans as well as Democrats, were for
+repealing the Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of New Mexico
+as a State, with or without slavery, for the enforcement of the Fugitive
+State Law, for suppressing the right of free speech and the freedom of
+the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering the Northern
+position in opposition to the extension of slavery to national
+Territories, in order to placate the South and keep it in the Union.
+Nothing could have possibly been more disastrous to the anti-slavery
+movement in America than a Union saved on the terms proposed by such
+Republican leaders as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Thomas
+Corwin, and Andrew G. Curtin. The Union, under the circumstances, was
+sure death to the slave, in disunion lay his great life-giving hope.
+Therefore his tried and sagacious friend was for sacrificing the Union
+to win for him freedom.
+
+As the friends of the Union were disposed to haggle at no price to
+preserve it, so was Garrison disposed to barter the Union itself in
+exchange for the abolition of slavery. "Now, then, let there be a
+CONVENTION OF THE FREE STATES," he suggested, "called to organize an
+independent government on free and just principles; and let them say to
+the slave States: Though you are without excuse for your treasonable
+conduct, depart in peace! Though you have laid piratical hands on
+property not your own, we surrender it all in the spirit of magnanimity!
+And if nothing but the possession of the Capitol will appease you, take
+even that without a struggle! Let the line be drawn between us where
+free institutions end and slave institutions begin!"
+
+But the thunder of the rebel guns in Charleston Harbor wrought in the
+reformer a complete revolution in this regard. In the tremendous popular
+uprising which followed that insult to the national flag he perceived
+that the old order with its compromises and dispositions to agree to
+anything, to do anything for the sake of preserving the Union had passed
+away forever. When it was suggested as an objection to his change of
+base that the "Administration is endeavoring to uphold the Union, the
+Constitution, and the Laws, even as from the formation of the
+Government," he was not for a moment deceived by its apparent force, but
+replied sagely that "this is a verbal and technical view of the case."
+"Facts are more potential than words," he remarked with philosophic
+composure, "and events greater than parchment arrangements. The truth
+is, the old Union is _nan est invenius_, and its restoration, with its
+pro-slavery compromises, well-nigh impossible. The conflict is really
+between the civilization of freedom and the barbarism of
+slavery--between the principles of democracy and the doctrines of
+absolutism--between the free North and the man-imbruting South;
+therefore, to this extent hopeful for the cause of impartial liberty."
+
+With the instinct of wise leadership, he adjusted himself and his little
+band of Abolitionists, as far as he was able, to the exigencies of the
+revolution. In his madness there was always remarkable method. When the
+nation was apathetic, dead on the subject of slavery, he used every
+power which he possessed or could invent to galvanize it into life. But
+with the prodigious excitement which swept over the free States at the
+outbreak of the war, Garrison saw that the crisis demanded different
+treatment. Abolitionists and their moral machinery he felt should be
+withdrawn, for a season at least, from their conspicuous place before
+the public gaze, lest it happen that they should divert the current of
+public opinion from the South to themselves, and thus injure the cause
+of the slave. He accordingly deemed it highly expedient that the usual
+anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held in New York,
+ought, under the circumstances, to be postponed, coming as it would but
+a few weeks after the attack on Sumter, and in the midst of the
+tremendous loyal uprising against the rebels. This he did, adding, by
+way of caution, this timely counsel: "Let nothing be done at this solemn
+crisis needlessly to check or divert the mighty current of popular
+feeling which is now sweeping southward with the strength and
+impetuosity of a thousand Niagaras, in direct conflict with that haughty
+and perfidious slave-power which has so long ruled the republic with a
+rod of iron, for its own base and satanic purposes."
+
+The singular tact and sagacity of the pioneer in this emergency may be
+again seen in a letter to Oliver Johnson, who was at the time editing
+the _Anti-Slavery Standard_. Says the pioneer: "Now that civil war has
+begun, and a whirlwind of violence and excitement is to sweep through
+the country, every day increasing in interest until its bloodiest
+culmination, it is for the Abolitionists to 'stand still and see the
+salvation of God,' rather than to attempt to add anything to the general
+commotion. It is no time for minute criticism of Lincoln, Republicanism,
+or even the other parties, now that they are fusing, for a death-grapple
+with the Southern slave oligarchy; for they are instruments in the hands
+of God to carry forward and help achieve the great object of
+emancipation for which we have so long been striving.... We need great
+circumspection and consummate wisdom in regard to what we may say and do
+under these unparalleled circumstances. We are rather, for the time
+being, to note the events transpiring than seek to control them. There
+must be no needless turning of popular violence upon ourselves by any
+false step of our own."
+
+The circumspection, the tact, and sagacity which marked his conduct at
+the beginning of the rebellion characterized it to the close of the war,
+albeit at no time doing or saying aught to compromise his anti-slavery
+principle of total and immediate emancipation. On the contrary, he
+urged, early and late, upon Congress and the President the exercise of
+the war power to put an end for ever to slavery. Radical Abolitionists
+like Stephen S. Foster were for denying to the Administration
+anti-slavery support and countenance, and for continuing to heap upon
+the Government their denunciations until it placed itself "openly and
+unequivocally on the side of freedom," by issuing the edict of
+emancipation. Against this zeal without discretion Garrison warmly
+protested. "I cannot say that I do not sympathize with the Government,"
+said he, "as against Jefferson Davis and his piratical associates. There
+is not a drop of blood in my veins, both as an Abolitionist and a peace
+man, that does not flow with the Northern tide of sentiment; for I see,
+in this grand uprising of the manhood of the North, which has been so
+long groveling in the dust, a growing appreciation of the value of
+liberty and free institutions, and a willingness to make any sacrifice
+in their defence against the barbaric and tyrannical power which avows
+its purpose, if it can, to crush them entirely out of existence. When
+the Government shall succeed (if it shall succeed) in conquering a
+peace, in subjugating the South, and shall undertake to carry out the
+Constitution as of old, with all its pro-slavery compromises, then will
+be my time to criticise, reprove, and condemn; then will be the time for
+me to open all the guns that I can bring to bear upon it. But blessed be
+God that 'covenant with death' has been annulled, and that 'agreement
+with hell' no longer stands. I joyfully accept the fact, and leave all
+verbal criticism until a more suitable opportunity."
+
+But it must be confessed that at times during the struggle, Lincoln's
+timidity and apparent indifference as to the fate of slavery, in his
+anxiety to save the Union, weakened Garrison's confidence in him, and
+excited his keenest apprehensions "at the possibility of the war
+terminating without the utter extinction of slavery, by a new and more
+atrocious compromise on the part of the North than any that has yet been
+made." The pioneer therefore adjudged it prudent to get his battery into
+position and to visit upon the President for particular acts, such as
+the revocation of anti-slavery orders by sundry of his generals in the
+field, and upon particular members of his Cabinet who were understood to
+be responsible for the shuffling, hesitating action of the Government in
+its relation to slavery, an effective fire of criticism and rebuke.
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Garrison maintained toward the Government a uniform
+tone of sympathy and moderation. "I hold," said he, in reply to
+strictures of Mr. Phillips upon the President at the annual meeting of
+the Massachusetts Society in 1862; "I hold that it is not wise for us to
+be too microscopic in endeavoring to find disagreeable and annoying
+things, still less to assume that everything is waxing worse and worse,
+and that there is little or no hope." He himself was full of hope which
+no shortcomings of the Government was able to quench. He was besides
+beginning to understand the perplexities which beset the administration,
+to appreciate the problem which confronted the great statesman who was
+at the head of the nation. He was getting a clear insight into the
+workings of Lincoln's mind, and into the causes which gave to his
+political pilotage an air of timidity and indecision.
+
+"Supposing Mr. Lincoln could answer to-night," continued the pioneer in
+reply to his less patient and hopeful coadjutors, "and we should say to
+him: 'Sir, with the power in your hands, slavery being the cause of the
+rebellion beyond all controversy, why don't you put the trump of jubilee
+to your lips, and proclaim universal freedom?'--possibly he might
+answer: 'Gentlemen, I understand this matter quite as well as you do. I
+do not know that I differ in opinion from you; but will you insure me
+the support of a united North if I do as you bid me? Are all parties and
+all sects at the North so convinced and so united on this point that
+they will stand by the Government? If so, give me the evidence of it,
+and I will strike the blow. But, gentlemen, looking over the entire
+North, and seeing in all your towns and cities papers representing a
+considerable, if not a formidable portion of the people, menacing and
+bullying the Government in case it dared to liberate the slaves, even as
+a matter of self-preservation, I do not feel that the hour has yet come
+that will render it safe for the Government to take that step.' I am
+willing to believe that something of this kind weighs in the mind of the
+President and the Cabinet, and that there is some ground for hesitancy
+as a mere matter of political expediency." This admirable and
+discriminating support of the President finds another capital
+illustration in weighty words of his in answer to animadversions of
+Prof. Francis W. Newman, of England, directed against Mr. Lincoln. Says
+Garrison: "In no instance, however, have I censured him (Lincoln) for
+not acting upon the highest abstract principles of justice and humanity,
+and disregarding his Constitutional obligations. His freedom to follow
+his convictions of duty as an individual is one thing--as the President
+of the United States, it is limited by the functions of his office, for
+the people do not elect a President to play the part of reformer or
+philanthropist, nor to enforce upon the nation his own peculiar ethical
+or humanitary ideas without regard to his oath or their will."
+
+Great indeed was the joy of the pioneer when President Lincoln on
+January 1, 1863, issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The same
+sagacious and statesmanlike handling of men and things distinguished his
+conduct after the edict of freedom was made as before. When the question
+of Reconstruction was broached in an administrative initiative in
+Louisiana, the President gave great offence to the more radical members
+of his party, and to many Abolitionists by his proposal to readmit
+Louisiana to Statehood in the Union with no provision for the extension
+of the suffrage to the negro. This exhibition of the habitual caution
+and conservatism of Mr. Lincoln brought upon him a storm of criticism
+and remonstrances, but not from Garrison. There was that in him which
+appreciated and approved the evident disposition of the President to
+make haste slowly in departing from the American principle of local
+self-government even in the interest of liberty. Then, too, he had his
+misgivings in relation to the virtue of the fiat method of transforming
+chattels into citizens. "Chattels personal may be instantly translated
+from the auction-block into freemen," he remarked in defence of the
+administrative policy in the reconstruction of Louisiana, "but when were
+they ever taken at the same time to the ballot-box, and invested with
+all political rights and immunities? According to the laws of
+development and progress it is not practicable.... Besides, I doubt
+whether he has the Constitutional right to decide this matter. Ever
+since the Government was organized, the right of suffrage has been
+determined by each State in the Union for itself, so that there is no
+uniformity in regard to it.
+
+" ... In honestly seeking to preserve the Union, it is not for President
+Lincoln to seek, by a special edict applied to a particular State or
+locality, to do violence to a universal rule, accepted and acted upon
+from the beginning till now by the States in their individual
+sovereignty.... Nor, if the freed blacks were admitted to the polls by
+Presidential fiat do I see any permanent advantage likely to be secured
+by it; for, submitted to as a necessity at the outset, as soon as the
+State was organized and left to manage its own affairs, the white
+population with their superior intelligence, wealth, and power, would
+unquestionably alter the franchise in accordance with their prejudices,
+and exclude those thus summarily brought to the polls. Coercion would
+gain nothing." A very remarkable prophecy, which has since been exactly
+fulfilled in the Southern States. Garrison, however, in the subsequent
+struggle between Congress and Mr. Lincoln's successor over this selfsame
+point in its wider relation to all of the Southern States, took sides
+against Andrew Johnson and in favor of the Congressional fiat method of
+transforming chattels personal into citizens. The elimination of Abraham
+Lincoln from, and the introduction of Andrew Johnson upon the National
+stage at this juncture, did undoubtedly effect such a change of
+circumstances, as to make the Congressional fiat method a political
+necessity. It was distinctly the less of two evils which at the moment
+was thrust upon the choice of the Northern people.
+
+The same breadth and liberality of view, which marked his treatment of
+Mr. Lincoln upon the subject of emancipation and of that of
+reconstruction, marked his treatment also of other questions which the
+suppression of the rebellion presented to his consideration. Although a
+radical peace man, how just was his attitude toward the men and the
+measures of the War for the Union. Nothing that he did evinced on his
+part greater tact or toleration than his admirable behavior in this
+respect. To his eldest son, George Thompson, who was no adherent of the
+doctrine of non-resistance, and who was commissioned by Governor Andrew,
+a second lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, the
+pioneer wrote expressing his regret that the young lieutenant had not
+been able "to adopt those principles of peace which are so sacred and
+divine to my soul, yet you will bear me witness that I have not laid a
+straw in your way to prevent your acting up to your own highest
+convictions of duty." Such was precisely his attitude toward the North
+who, he believed, in waging war against the South for the maintenance of
+the Union, was acting up to her own highest convictions of duty. And not
+a straw would he place across her path, under those circumstances,
+though every step bore witness to one of the most gigantic and
+destructive wars in history.
+
+Garrison did not have to wait for posthumous appreciation from his
+countrymen. His steady and discriminating support of the Government, and
+his ardent sympathy with the arms of the North won him appreciation in
+his lifetime. Indeed, there came to him, if not popularity, something
+closely akin to it during the war. His visit to the capital in June,
+1864, well illustrates the marvelous changes which had taken place in
+the Union touching himself and his cause. On his way to Washington the
+pioneer stopped over at Baltimore, which he had not revisited for
+thirty-four years, and where the Republican Convention, which
+renominated Lincoln was in session. He watched the proceedings from the
+gallery, and witnessed with indescribable emotions the enthusiastic
+demonstrations of joy with which the whole body of delegates greeted the
+radical anti-slavery resolution of the Convention. To the reformer it
+was "a full indorsement of all the Abolition fanaticism and
+incendiarism" with which he had been branded for years. The jail where
+he had been held a prisoner for seven weeks, like the evil which he had
+denounced, was gone, and a new one stood in its place, which knew not
+Garrison. In the court-house where he was tried and sentenced he was
+received by a United States judge as an illustrious visitor. Judge Bond
+hunted up the old indictment against the junior editor of the _Genius of
+Universal Emancipation_, where it had lain for a generation, during
+which that guiltless prisoner had started a movement which had shaken
+the nation by its mighty power, and slavery out of it. "Eight or nine of
+the original jurymen who gave the verdict against Mr. Garrison are still
+living," wrote Theodore Tilton, at the time, to the _Independent_, "and
+Judge Bond jocosely threatened to summon them all into Court, that Mr.
+Garrison might forgive them in public."
+
+At Washington the pioneer's reception seemed to him like a dream. And no
+wonder. He was heartily received by President Lincoln and Secretary
+Stanton. He was accorded the most marked attentions on the floor of both
+branches of Congress. On every side there rose up witnesses to the
+vastness of the revolution which had taken place, and to the fact that
+the great Abolitionist was no longer esteemed an enemy of the Republic
+but one of its illustrious citizens. This was evinced in a signal and
+memorable manner a little later when the National Government extended to
+him an invitation to visit Fort Sumter as its guest on the occasion of
+the re-raising over it of the Stars and Stripes. He went, and so also
+went George Thompson, his lifelong friend and coadjutor, who was the
+recipient of a similar invitation from the Secretary of War.
+
+This visit of Mr. Garrison, taken in all its dramatic features, is more
+like a chapter of fiction, with its strange and improbable incidents and
+situations, than a story of real life. The pioneer entered Georgia and
+trod the streets of Savannah, whose legislature thirty-three years
+before had set a price upon his head. In Charleston he witnessed the
+vast ruin which the war had wrought, realized how tremendous had been
+the death-struggle between Freedom and Slavery, and saw everywhere he
+turned that slavery was beaten, was dead in its proud, rebellious
+center. Thousands upon thousands of the people whose wrongs he had made
+his own, whose woes he had carried in his soul for thirty-five years,
+greeted him, their deliverer, in all stages of joy and thanksgiving.
+They poured out at his feet their overflowing love and gratitude. They
+covered him with flowers, bunches of jessamines, and honeysuckles and
+roses in the streets of Charleston, hard by the grave where Calhoun lay
+buried. "'Only listen to that in Charleston streets!' exclaimed
+Garrison, on hearing the band of one of the black regiments playing the
+air of 'Old John Brown', and we both broke into tears," relates Rev.
+Theodore L. Cuyler, who stood by the side of the pioneer that April
+morning under the spire of St. Michael's church.
+
+"The Government has its hold upon the throat of the monster, slavery,"
+Mr. Garrison assured an audience of nearly four thousand freedmen, "and
+is strangling the life out of it." It was even so. Richmond had fallen,
+and Lee had surrendered. The early and total collapse of the rebellion
+was impending. The Government was, indeed, strangling the life out of it
+and out of slavery, its cause and mainspring. The monster had, however,
+a crowning horror to add to a long list of horrors before fetching its
+last gasp. The assassination of President Lincoln was the dying blow of
+slavery, aimed through him at the Union which he had maintained.
+Appalling as was the deed, it was vain, for the Union was saved, and
+liberty forever secured to the new-born nation. As Garrison remarked at
+the tomb of Calhoun, on the morning that Lincoln died, "Down into a
+deeper grave than this slavery has gone, and for it there is no
+resurrection."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+
+THE LAST.
+
+
+"Garrison," said George Thompson on the steamer which was conveying the
+Government party out of Charleston Harbor on their return trip;
+"Garrison you began your warfare at the North in the face of rotten eggs
+and brickbats. Behold you end it at Charleston on a bed of roses!" The
+period of persecution had indeed ended, the reign of missiles had
+ceased, but with the roses there came to the pioneer not a few thorns.
+Bitter was the sorrow which visited him in the winter of 1863. Without
+warning his wife was on the night of December 29th, stricken with
+paralysis, which crippled her for the rest of her life. No words can
+adequately express all that she had been to the reformer in his struggle
+with slavery. She was a providential woman raised up to be the wife and
+helpmate of her husband, the strenuous man of God. "As a wife for a
+period of more than twenty-six years," he wrote her on the completion of
+her fiftieth year, "you have left nothing undone to smooth the rugged
+pathway of my public career--to render home the all-powerful magnet of
+attraction, and the focal point of domestic enjoyment--to make my
+welfare and happiness at all times a matter of tender solicitude--and to
+demonstrate the depth and fixedness of that love which you so long ago
+plighted to me.... Whatever of human infirmity we may have seen in each
+other, I believe few have enjoyed more unalloyed bliss in wedded life
+than ourselves." For twelve years after that sad December night the
+lovely invalid was the object of her husband's most tender and assiduous
+care. And when at last she left him in January, 1876, the loneliness
+which fell upon his heart seemed more than he could bear.
+
+Differences with old associates was a grievous thorn which came to the
+pioneer during the progress of the war. The first marked disagreement
+between him and them occurred at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society not a month after his wife's prostration. The clash
+came between the leader and his great coadjutor Wendell Phillips over a
+resolution introduced by the latter, condemning the Government and
+declaring its readiness "to sacrifice the interest and honor of the
+North to secure a sham peace." Garrison objected to the severity of this
+charge. He believed that there was but one party at the North of which
+it was true, and that was the party of Copperheads. He endeavored,
+therefore, to modify the harshness of the resolution by giving it a more
+moderate tone. But the anti-Lincoln feeling of the Convention proved too
+strong for his resistance, and Mr. Phillips's resolution was finally
+adopted as the sentiment of the society.
+
+The discordant note thus struck grew sharper and louder during the year.
+The divergence of views in the ranks of the Abolitionists touching the
+Southern policy of the Administration grew wider, until the subject of
+Mr. Lincoln's renomination sundered the little band into two wings--one
+for renomination, headed by Garrison, the other against renomination,
+and led by Phillips. These differences presently developed into, if not
+positive antagonism, then something closely akin to it between the two
+wings and the two leaders. No little heat was generated from the strong,
+sharp things said on both sides. Garrison was wiser than Phillips in his
+unwillingness to have the country, in the homely speech of the
+President, "swap horses while crossing a stream."
+
+Serious differences of opinion sprang up also between the two leaders
+and the two wings in relation to the proper time for dissolving the
+anti-slavery organizations. Garrison held on one side that this time had
+come with the adoption of the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery,
+while Phillips held on the other that the societies should continue
+their operations until the negro was invested with the right to vote.
+And here it seems that Phillips was wiser than Garrison in his purpose
+not to abandon in 1865 the old machinery for influencing public
+sentiment in the negro's interest.
+
+At the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in May, 1865,
+Garrison contended for its dissolution, declaring that "Nothing is more
+clear in my own mind, nothing has ever been more clear, than that this
+is the fitting time to dissolve our organization, and to mingle with the
+millions of our fellow-countrymen in one common effort to establish
+justice and liberty throughout the land." For two days the debate upon
+this question raged in the convention, but when the vote was taken it
+was found that a large majority of the delegates agreed with Mr.
+Phillips. Mr. Garrison was, nevertheless, reëlected President, but
+declined and withdrew from the society. The controversy was renewed at
+the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in January,
+1866. But here again a large majority voted against dissolution. Warm
+words fell from both Garrison and Phillips and their respective
+supporters, which tried sorely the friendship of the two leaders.
+
+In accordance with his views touching the discontinuance of the
+anti-slavery societies, Garrison discontinued the publication of the
+_Liberator_ after the completion of its thirty-fifth volume in December,
+1865. He did not mean by this act to cease his labors for the negro. Far
+from it. For he, like Phillips, stood for his absolute equality before
+the law. But he perceived that old things had passed away, and with them
+the need of the old instruments, and that what remained to be done for
+the black man required to be done with new means. "The object," said he
+in his valedictory, "for which the _Liberator_ was commenced, the
+extermination of chattel slavery, having been gloriously consummated, it
+seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the
+historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done
+to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalites (of which
+I hope to avail myself), under new auspices, with more abundant means,
+and with millions instead of hundreds for allies."
+
+With the discontinuance of the _Liberator_ Garrison's occupation, from
+which he had derived a regular though somewhat uncertain income for the
+support of his family, was gone. He was not in destitute circumstances,
+however, thanks to the generosity of friends, who had already secured
+him the home in Roxbury, where he spent the remaining years of his life.
+He had also been one of the legatees under the will of Charles F. Hovey,
+who left about forty thousand dollars to the anti-slavery cause. But the
+age of the reformer, he was then sixty, and the state of his health,
+which was much impaired, together with the helplessness of his wife,
+made some provision for his and her support, other than the little which
+he possessed, a matter of anxious thought on the part of himself and his
+friends. He had given thirty-five years of his life to the public good.
+His services to his country and to the world were above all price, all
+money considerations. It was felt that to him who had given so much to
+the world, the world should in his need make some substantial
+acknowledgement in return.
+
+Some of his countrymen, accordingly, conceived the plan of a national
+testimonial to the philanthropist, which should ensure to him during the
+rest of his life a competence.
+
+A committee having this end in view was organized March 28, 1866, at the
+house of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch. John A. Andrew, who was its chairman,
+wrote the address to the public, to which were appended the chief names
+in the politics and literature of the land. Nearly two years afterward,
+on March 10, 1868, the committee were able to place in Mr. Garrison's
+hands the handsome sum of thirty-one thousand dollars with a promise of
+possibly one or two thousand more a little later. To the energy and
+devotedness of one man, the Rev. Samuel May, Jr., more than to any
+other, and perhaps than all others put together, this noble achievement
+was due. The pioneer was deeply moved at the high and generous character
+of the recognition accorded his labors. "Little, indeed, did I know or
+anticipate how prolonged or how virulent would be the struggle," said he
+in his reply to the committee, "when I lifted up the standard of
+immediate emancipation, and essayed to rouse the nation to a sense of
+its guilt and danger. But having put my hands to the plow, how could I
+look back? For, in a cause so righteous, I could not doubt that, having
+turned the furrows, if I sowed in tears I should one day reap in joy.
+But, whether permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery or
+not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing that was not clearly in
+accordance with justice and humanity, sometime or other, if remembered
+at all, I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen." The
+names of John Bright, John Stuart Mill, William E. Foster, and Samuel
+Morley, among the contributors to the fund, lent to the testimonial an
+international character.
+
+In May, 1867, Garrison went abroad the fourth time, and traveled in
+Great Britain and on the Continent. Everywhere that he went he was
+received as an illustrious visitor and as a benefactor of mankind. At a
+breakfast in London which "was intended to commemorate one of the
+greatest of the great triumphs of freedom, and to do honor to a most
+eminent instrument in the achievement of that freedom," and at which
+were gathered the genius, the wealth, and aristocracy of England and
+Scotland, John Bright, who presided, welcomed the illustrious guest
+"with a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for him and for his
+noble associates, both men and women," and ventured to speak a verdict
+which he believed would be sanctioned by all mankind, viz., that
+"William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow-laborers in that world's
+work--are they not
+
+  "On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed?"
+
+
+With the discontinuance of the _Liberator_ Garrison's active career came
+to a close. But his sympathetic interest in the freedmen, temperance,
+the cause of women, and in other reformatory enterprises continued
+unabated. He watched with stern and vigilant eye, and bleeding heart the
+new rebellion at the South whose purpose was the nullification of the
+civil and political rights of the blacks, and the overthrow of the
+military rule of the National Government in the Southern States. He did
+not see what time has since made clear that a genuine reconstruction of
+the South, and the ultimate solution of the Southern problem had, in
+accordance with social laws, to proceed from within, from the South
+itself, not from without and from Washington. The old fire again burned
+in his speech as tidings of the violence of the whites and the
+sufferings of the blacks reached him from the former slave section.
+Indeed, the last written words of his, addressed to the public, were
+words in defence of the race to whose freedom he had devoted his
+life--words which, trumpet-tongued raised anew the rallying-cry of
+"Liberty and equal rights for each, for all, and for ever, wherever the
+lot of man is cast within our broad domains!"
+
+True to his grand motto "My country is the world! my countrymen are all
+mankind," he espoused the cause of the Chinese, and denounced the
+National policy of excluding them on the ground of race from the
+republic but a few months before his death. The anti-Chinese movement
+appeared to him "narrow, conceited, selfish, anti-human,
+anti-Christian." "Against this hateful spirit of caste," wrote the dying
+philanthropist, "I have earnestly protested for the last fifty years,
+wherever it has developed itself, especially in the case of another
+class, for many generations still more contemned, degraded, and
+oppressed; and the time has fully come to deal with it as an offence to
+God, and a curse to the world wherever it seeks to bear sway."
+
+On the same grand principle of human fraternity Mr. Garrison dealt with
+the questions of trade and tariffs also. He believed in liberty, civil,
+religious, and commercial. He was in fact a radical free trader on moral
+and humanitary grounds. "He is the most sagacious political economist,"
+was a remark of his, "who contends for the highest justice, the most
+far-reaching equality, a close adherence to natural laws, and the
+removal of all those restrictions which foster national pride and
+selfishness." And here is another like unto it: "Believing that the
+interests of the American people in no wise materially differ from those
+of the people of any other country, and denying the rectitude or
+feasibility of building ourselves up at their expense by an exclusive
+policy, obstructing the natural flow of material exchanges, I avow
+myself to be a radical free trader, even to the extent of desiring the
+abolition of all custom-houses, as now constituted, throughout the
+world. That event is far distant, undoubtedly, but I believe it will
+come with the freedom and enlightenment of mankind. My faith is absolute
+that it will prove advantageous to every branch of industry, whether at
+home or abroad."
+
+The closing years of the reformer's life were years of great bodily
+suffering. A disease of the kidneys and a chronic catarrh of the head
+made steady inroads upon the resources of his constitution, made life at
+times a wheel on which he was racked with physical tortures, all of
+which he bore with the utmost fortitude and serenity of spirit. "The
+longer I live, the longer I desire to live," he wrote Samuel J. May,
+"and the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in
+this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all."
+One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now
+one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips,
+or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the
+little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul
+of the leader left behind, the joy of anticipation, of glad reunion
+beyond the grave. "How unspeakably pleasant it will be to greet them,
+and to be greeted by them on the other side of the line," it seemed to
+him as he, too, began to descend toward the shore of the swift, silent
+river. The deep, sweet love for his mother returned with youthful
+freshness and force to him, the man of seventy-three years, at the
+thought of coming again into her presence. A strange yearning was
+tugging at his heart for all the dear ones gone before. The fond mother,
+who had watched over his childhood, and the fond wife, who had been the
+stay of his manhood, were the first two whom he yearned to meet after
+crossing the river. The joyous thought of his approaching meeting with
+those white-souled women cheered and comforted the reformer amid
+excruciating physical sufferings. Worn out by heroic and Herculean
+labors for mankind and by a complication of diseases, he more and more
+longed for rest, to go home to beloved ones as he expressed it. To the
+question, "What do you want, Mr. Garrison?" asked by the attending
+physician on the day before his death, he replied, weariedly, "To finish
+it up!" And this he did at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Henry Villard,
+in New York, in the midst of children and grandchildren, near midnight,
+on May 24, 1879.
+
+"While that ear could listen," said Wendell Phillips over the
+illustrious champion of liberty as he lay dead in the old church in
+Roxbury; "While that ear could listen, God gave what he has rarely given
+to man, the plaudits and prayers of four millions of victims." But as he
+lay there he had, besides, the plaudits and praise of an emancipated
+nation. The plaudits and praise of an emancipated race, mingling
+melodiously with those of an emancipated nation made noble music about
+his bier. In the city, where forty-three years before he was mobbed, the
+flags floated at half-mast in his honor; and on Beacon Hill, where the
+Government once desired his destruction, the voice of appreciation was
+heard and tokens of the State's sorrow met the eye. Great in life great
+also in death was William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+
+  "Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!
+  See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
+  To win a world; see the obedient sphere
+  By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!
+
+
+  Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
+  And by the present's lips repeated still,
+  In our own single manhood to be bold,
+  Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+
+Adams, Charles Francis,                                      372.
+
+Adams, John Quincy,                                          54, 250-251.
+
+Adams, Nehemiah,                                             278.
+
+Adams, William,                                              292.
+
+Alcott, A. Bronson,                                          90, 91, 134.
+
+American Anti-Slavery Society,                               174, 311, 340,
+                                                             373, 387.
+
+Andover Seminary,                                            190.
+
+Andrew, John A.,                                             381, 389.
+
+Annexation of Texas,                                         335.
+
+_Anti-Slavery Standard_,                                     299.
+
+Atchison, David,                                             338, 374.
+
+Attucks, Crispus,                                            227.
+
+
+Bacon, Leonard W.,                                           162.
+
+Bartlett, Ezekiel,                                           18, 20.
+
+Beecher, Lyman,                                              110, 111, 161,
+                                                             189, 190, 269.
+
+Benson, George,                                              194, 263.
+
+Benson, George W.,                                           168, 178, 234,
+                                                             260, 281.
+
+Benson, Henry E.,                                            212, 263.
+
+Benton, Thomas H.,                                           105-106, 252,
+                                                             253.
+
+Bird, Frank W.,                                              361.
+
+Birney, James G.,                                            203, 298, 320.
+
+Bond, Judge,                                                 382.
+
+Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society,                          217, 233, 240.
+
+Bourne, Rev. George,                                         108, 203.
+
+Bowditch, Henry I.,                                          233, 349, 389.
+
+Bright, John,                                                390, 391.
+
+Brooks, Preston S.,                                          359.
+
+Brown, John,                                                 365-368.
+
+Buffum, Arnold,                                              139, 177.
+
+Burleigh, Charles C.,                                        221, 223, 235.
+
+Buxton, Thomas Fowell,                                       152, 154, 204.
+
+
+Calhoun, John C.,                                            246, 252, 315,
+                                                             335, 336, 337,
+                                                             352, 353, 384.
+
+Campbell, John Reid,                                         225.
+
+Channing, Dr. W.E.,                                          110, 111, 256,
+                                                             316.
+
+Chapman, Maria Weston,                                       223, 258, 259,
+                                                             277, 292.
+
+Chase, Salmon P.,                                            338.
+
+Child, David Lee,                                            134, 136, 138,
+                                                             203.
+
+Child, Lydia Maria,                                          186, 203, 210,
+                                                             277, 292, 309.
+
+Clay, Henry,                                                 339, 348.
+
+Clerical Appeal,                                             282.
+
+Clarkson, Thomas,                                            155, 303.
+
+Coffin, Joshua,                                              139, 198.
+
+Cobb, Howell,                                                338.
+
+Collier, Rev. William,                                       40.
+
+Collins, John A.,                                            298, 299, 300,
+                                                             303.
+
+Colonization Society,                                        60, 72,
+                                                             144-156, 162.
+
+Colored Seaman,                                              313-314.
+
+Colorphobia,                                                 157-169.
+
+Colver, Nathaniel,                                           303.
+
+_Commercial Advertiser_, New York,                           170.
+
+_Courier_, Boston,                                           128, 129, 217.
+
+_Courier and Enquirer_, New York,                            171.
+
+Corwin, Thomas,                                              372.
+
+Cox, Abraham L.,                                             185, 203, 209.
+
+Crandall, Prudence,                                          165-168, 199.
+
+Cresson, Elliott,                                            150, 151, 153.
+
+Cropper, James,                                              154, 205.
+
+Curtin, Andrew G.,                                           372.
+
+Curtis, Benjamin R.,                                         354.
+
+Cuyler, Rev. Theodore L.,                                    384.
+
+
+Davis, Jefferson,                                            338, 376.
+
+Disunion Convention at Worcester,                            361-363.
+
+Dole, Ebenezer,                                              86.
+
+Douglas, Stephen A.,                                         353, 365.
+
+Douglass, Frederick,                                         300, 344.
+
+Dred Scott Case,                                             364.
+
+Duncan, Rev, James,                                          108-109.
+
+_Emancipator, The_,                                          283, 285, 286,
+                                                             328.
+
+Emerson, Ralph Waldo,                                        281.
+
+_Evening Post_, New York,                                    208.
+
+Everett, Edward,                                             30, 31, 243,
+                                                             244.
+
+
+Farnham, Martha,                                             16.
+
+Fessenden, Samuel,                                           141, 148.
+
+Follen, Prof. Charles,                                       201, 203, 247.
+
+Forten, James,                                               144.
+
+Foster, Stephen S.,                                          310, 375.
+
+Foster, William E.,                                          390.
+
+Frémont, John C.,                                            361.
+
+_Free Press_,                                                27, 34.
+
+Fugitive Slave Law, effect of,                               345-347.
+
+Fugitive Slaves, The Crafts, Shadrach, Sims, Burns,          349.
+
+Fuller, John E.,                                             219.
+
+Furness, Rev. W.H.,                                          344.
+
+
+Garrison, Abijah,                                            12-15, 18.
+
+Garrison, Charles Follen,                                    331-332.
+
+Garrison, Francis Jackson,                                   330.
+
+Garrison, George Thompson,                                   381.
+
+Garrison, Helen Eliza,                                       194-196, 219,
+                                                             297, 331,
+                                                             385-386.
+
+Garrison, James,                                             19, 20,
+                                                             302-303.
+
+Garrison, Joseph,                                            11, 12.
+
+Garrison, Wendell Phillips,                                  297.
+
+Garrison, William Lloyd,
+
+  Early years,                                               11-26;
+
+  Publishes _Free Press,_                                    27-34;
+
+  seeks work in Boston,                                      35;
+
+  nominates Harrison Gray Otis for Congress,                 35-36;
+
+  temperance and the _Philanthropist_,                       39-44;
+
+  meets Lundy,                                               44;
+
+  early attitude on the slavery question,                    46-50;
+
+  on war,                                                    51;
+
+  first experience with ministers on the subject of slavery, 52;
+
+  Anti-slavery Committee of twenty,                          53;
+
+  goes to Bennington, Vt., to edit the
+    _Journal of the Times_,                                  54-55;
+
+  monster anti-slavery petition to Congress,                 55;
+
+  anticipates trouble with the South,                        56;
+
+  begins to preach freedom,                                  56-57;
+
+  agrees to help Lundy edit the _Genius of Universal
+    Emancipation_,                                           58;
+
+  Congregational Societies of Boston invite him to
+    deliver Fourth-of-July oration,                          60;
+
+  the address,                                               61-67;
+
+  goes to Baltimore,                                         69;
+
+  raises the standard of immediate emancipation,             70;
+
+  Lundy and he agree to differ,                              71;
+
+  defends Free People of Color,                              73-74;
+
+  makes acquaintance with barbarism of slavery,              74;
+
+  ship _Francis_ and Francis Todd,                           75-77;
+
+  prosecuted and imprisoned,                                 77-83;
+
+  released,                                                  83;
+
+  visits the North,                                          84;
+
+  returns to Baltimore but leaves it again for good,         87;
+
+  lectures on slavery,                                       88-91;
+
+  character,                                                 92-94;
+
+  incarnation of immediate emancipation,                     109;
+
+  Dr. Lyman Beecher,                                         110-111;
+
+  difficulties in the way of publishing the _Liberator_,     112-115;
+
+  his method of attacking slavery,                           118;
+
+  he is heard,                                               120;
+
+  Walker's appeal,                                           121-122;
+
+  Nat Turner,                                                125-126;
+
+  southern excitement,                                       127-128;
+
+  New England Anti-Slavery Society,                          137-138;
+
+  appointed agent,                                           141;
+
+  thoughts on African colonization,                          143-150;
+
+  first visit to England,                                    152-156;
+
+  Mr. Buxton's mistake,                                      152;
+
+  prejudice against color,                                   157;
+
+  Prudence Crandall,                                         166, 168;
+
+  organization of New York City Anti-Slavery Society and
+    beginning of the mob period,                             170-172;
+
+  formation of American Anti-Slavery Society,                174-185;
+
+  declaration of sentiments,                                 182-184;
+
+  increased agitation,                                       185-186;
+
+  marriage,                                                  193;
+
+  the wife,                                                  194-196;
+
+  poverty of the _Liberator_,                                197-200;
+
+  the paper displeases friends,                              201-204;
+
+  George Thompson,                                           204-206;
+
+  Faneuil Hall meeting to put the Abolitionists down,        211-215;
+
+  gallows for two,                                           215-216;
+
+  the Broad-Cloth Mob,                                       218-232;
+
+  Thompson leaves the country,                               238;
+
+  appears before a committee of Massachusetts legislature,   245-246;
+
+  Pennsylvania Hall,                                         257-260;
+
+  Marlboro Chapel,                                           260-261;
+
+  ill health,                                                263;
+
+  Educational Convention of anti-slavery agents,             264-265;
+
+  the Sabbath question,                                      265-272;
+
+  The woman's question,                                      273-280;
+
+  clerical appeal,                                           282-285;
+
+  anti-slavery political action,                             286-288;
+
+  conflict between the New York and the Boston boards,       289-291;
+
+  the World's Convention,                                    292-295;
+
+  visit to Scotland,                                         295-296;
+
+  in the lecture field,                                      300-301;
+
+  his brother James,                                         302-303;
+
+  meets charges of infidelity,                               303-304;
+
+  Irish Address,                                             304-305;
+
+  no union with slaveholders,                                306-312;
+
+  Texas agitation,                                           316-318;
+
+  dislikes Liberty party,                                    319-323;
+
+  some characteristics,                                      326-334;
+
+  the Rynders Mob,                                           340-344;
+
+  publicly burns the United States Constitution,             354;
+
+  answers objections to his disunionism,                     362-363;
+
+  Harper's Ferry,                                            365-367;
+
+  secession: first attitude to it,                           370-373;
+
+  second attitude,                                           373;
+
+  adapts himself to circumstances,                           373-381;
+
+  Lincoln and emancipation,                                  379;
+
+  visits Baltimore, Washington, Charleston,                  381-384;
+
+  illness and death of his wife,                             385-386;
+
+  differences with anti-slavery associates,                  386-388;
+
+  discontinues the _Liberator_,                              388;
+
+  national testimonial,                                      389-390;
+
+  fourth visit to England,                                   390-391;
+
+  champions cause of Southern negroes,                       391;
+
+  champions cause of Chinese,                                392;
+
+  believes in Free Trade,                                    392-393;
+
+  illness and death,                                         393-395.
+
+Garrison, William Lloyd, Jr.,                                297.
+
+_Gazette_, Boston,                                           217.
+
+_Genius of Universal Emancipation_,                          58, 69, 71-75.
+
+Gibbons, James S.,                                           309.
+
+Giddings, Joshua R.,                                         338.
+
+Goodell, William,                                            149, 203, 247,
+                                                             248.
+
+Green, William, Jr.,                                         184.
+
+Grimké, Angelina E.,                                         235, 258-259.
+
+Grimké, Sisters,                                             275-280.
+
+
+Hale, John P.,                                               338, 350.
+
+Hamilton, Alexander,                                         104.
+
+Hamlin, Hannibal,                                            338.
+
+Haydon, Benjamin Robert,                                     294, 295.
+
+Hayne, Robert Y.,                                            209.
+
+_Herald_, Newburyport,                                       21, 26.
+
+_Herald_, New York,                                          340, 341.
+
+Higginson, T.W.,                                             358-359, 361.
+
+Hoar, Samuel,                                                314.
+
+Horton, Jacob,                                               61.
+
+Hovey, Charles F.,                                           389.
+
+
+Jackson, Francis,                                            233, 240-241,
+                                                             311-312, 317,
+                                                             341, 344.
+
+Jewett, Daniel E.,                                           175.
+
+Jocelyn, Rev. Simeon Smith,                                  203.
+
+Johnson, Andrew,                                             380.
+
+Johnson, Oliver,                                             114, 134, 137,
+                                                             139, 160-161,
+                                                             374.
+
+_Journal_, Camden (S.C.),                                    128.
+
+_Journal_, Louisville (Ky.),                                 120.
+
+
+Kansas, Struggle over,                                       357-358.
+
+Kelley, Abby,                                                259, 291, 310.
+
+Kimball, David T.,                                           175.
+
+Knapp, Isaac,                                                113, 127, 139,
+                                                             197, 200, 265,
+                                                             301-302.
+
+Kneeland, Abner,                                             90, 268.
+
+
+Lane Seminary,                                               189.
+
+Latimer, George,                                             312.
+
+Leavitt, Joshua,                                             149, 320, 329.
+
+Leggett, Samuel,                                             86.
+
+_Liberator, The_,                                            111-120,
+                                                             126-129, 131,
+                                                             141, 163, 165,
+                                                             169, 176,
+                                                             197-204, 236,
+                                                             237, 265, 284,
+                                                             297, 327-329,
+                                                             388.
+
+Lincoln, Abraham,                                            365, 370, 375,
+                                                             376, 377, 378,
+                                                             379, 380, 382,
+                                                             384.
+
+Lloyd, Fanny,                                                13-20, 24-26,
+                                                             44-45.
+
+Longfellow, Stephen,                                         148.
+
+Loring, Edward Greeley,                                      354.
+
+Loring, Ellis Grey,                                          134, 135, 136,
+                                                             138, 245, 264.
+
+Lovejoy, Elijah P.,                                          254-257.
+
+Lowell, James Russell,                                       136, 329.
+
+Lumpkin, Wilson,                                             128.
+
+Lundy, Benjamin,                                             44, 45, 46,
+                                                             48-54, 57,
+                                                             58, 69, 71,
+                                                             72, 75, 108,
+                                                             133.
+
+Lunt, George,                                                244, 247, 248.
+
+Lyman, Theodore,                                             223, 224, 227,
+                                                             228.
+
+
+Macaulay, Zachary,                                           154.
+
+Malcolm, Rev. Howard,                                        52.
+
+Martineau, Harriet,                                          94, 240.
+
+Mason, James M.,                                             338.
+
+Mason, Jeremiah,                                             111.
+
+Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,                          265, 280, 297,
+                                                             310.
+
+Mathew, Father,                                              304, 305.
+
+May, Samuel, Jr.,                                            325, 389.
+
+May, Samuel J.,                                              90, 93, 94,
+                                                             134, 166, 167,
+                                                             179, 180, 186,
+                                                             199, 245, 272,
+                                                             289, 393.
+
+McDowell, James,                                             124, 125.
+
+McKim, James Miller,                                         149.
+
+McDuffie, Governor,                                          243, 246.
+
+_Mercury_, Charleston,                                       126,
+
+Mill, John Stuart,                                           390.
+
+Missouri Compromise, Repeal of,                              352-354.
+
+Moore, Esther,                                               259.
+
+Morley, Samuel,                                              390,
+
+Mott, Lucretia,                                              178, 259, 292,
+                                                             293.
+
+_National Intelligencer_,                                    128.
+
+New England Anti-Slavery Society,                            137-141, 200,
+                                                             280, 311.
+
+_New England Spectator_,                                     282.
+
+Newman, Prof. Francis W.,                                    378.
+
+
+O'Connell, Daniel,                                           154, 170, 171,
+                                                             304.
+
+Otis, Harrison Gray,                                         35, 129, 130,
+                                                             131, 213, 214,
+                                                             215.
+
+
+Palmer, Daniel,                                              11.
+
+Palmer, Mary,                                                11, 12.
+
+Parker, Mary S.,                                             222, 234.
+
+Parker, Theodore,                                            121, 349, 350,
+                                                             362.
+
+Pastoral Letter,                                             277.
+
+Paxton, Rev. J.D.,                                           186.
+
+Pease, Elizabeth,                                            303, 331, 346.
+
+Pennsylvania Hall,                                           257-260.
+
+Phelps, Amos A.,                                             149, 186, 203,
+                                                             278, 280, 288.
+
+Phillips Academy (Andover),                                  190.
+
+Phillips, Ann Green,                                         292, 293.
+
+Phillips, Wendell,                                           190, 257, 310,
+                                                             317, 323, 326,
+                                                             344, 346-347,
+                                                             349, 351, 386,
+                                                             387, 388, 393,
+                                                             394.
+
+Pillsbury, Parker,                                           310,
+
+Prentice, George D.,                                         120.
+
+Purvis, Robert,                                              144, 162, 178.
+
+
+Quincy, Edmund,                                              299, 310, 316,
+                                                             323, 324, 325,
+                                                             326, 327-329.
+
+Quincy, Josiah,                                              347.
+
+
+Rankin, John,                                                177.
+
+Remond, Charles Lenox,                                       293, 295, 304.
+
+Rhett, Barnwell,                                             338.
+
+Rogers, Nathaniel P.,                                        149, 293, 295,
+                                                             301.
+
+Rynders, Isaiah,                                             341-344.
+
+
+Scoble, Rev. John,                                           294.
+
+Sewall, Samuel E.,                                           90, 91, 134,
+                                                             135, 136, 137,
+                                                             138, 175, 236,
+                                                             367.
+
+Seward, William H.,                                          338, 372.
+
+Shaw, Chief-Justice,                                         312.
+
+Slavery, Rise and Progress of,                               95-107.
+
+Smith, Gerritt,                                              147, 236, 297,
+                                                             320.
+
+Sprague, Peleg,                                              213, 214.
+
+Stanton, Edwin M.,                                           382.
+
+Stanton, Henry B.                                            253, 288.
+
+Stearns, Charles,                                            359.
+
+Stevens, Thaddeus,                                           338.
+
+Stuart, Charles,                                             201, 202, 264.
+
+Sumner, Charles,                                             234, 317, 339,
+                                                             346, 359.
+
+
+Tappan, Arthur,                                              83, 84, 164,
+                                                             171, 184, 209,
+                                                             210.
+
+Tappan, Lewis,                                               149, 177, 201,
+                                                             209, 283, 285.
+
+Texas Agitation,                                             314-318.
+
+Thompson, George,                                            204-206, 210,
+                                                             212, 213, 216,
+                                                             217, 218, 238,
+                                                             294, 295, 351,
+                                                             383, 385.
+
+Thurston, David,                                             180.
+
+Tilton, Theodore,                                            382.
+
+Todd, Francis,                                               75, 76, 77,
+                                                             81, 82, 87.
+
+Toombs, Robert,                                              338.
+
+Travis, Joseph,                                              124.
+
+Turner, Nat.,                                                124-125.
+
+
+Uncle Tom's Cabin,                                           351-352.
+
+
+Villard, Mrs. Henry,                                         394.
+
+
+Walker, David,                                               121, 122, 123,
+                                                             126.
+
+Ward, Rev. Samuel R.,                                        344.
+
+Ware, Rev. Henry, Jr.,                                       203.
+
+Webb, Richard D.,                                            310, 316, 318,
+                                                             326.
+
+Webster, Daniel,                                             35, 101, 110,
+                                                             111, 117, 249,
+                                                             338, 339, 347,
+                                                             348, 370.
+
+Weld, Theodore D.,                                           149, 190, 264,
+                                                             279.
+
+Wesley, John,                                                70, 107.
+
+White, Nathaniel H.,                                         41.
+
+Whitney, Eli,                                                98.
+
+Whittier, John Greenleaf,                                    34, 175, 179,
+                                                             186, 202, 234,
+                                                             279, 320.
+
+Wilberforce, William,                                        152, 154.
+
+Winslow, Isaac,                                              177.
+
+Winslow, Nathan,                                             177.
+
+Wright, Elizur,                                              147, 149, 185,
+                                                             186, 202, 210,
+                                                             283-285, 287,
+                                                             320.
+
+
+Yerrington, James B.,                                        113.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's William Lloyd Garrison, by Archibald H. Grimke
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html
+  PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
+<html lang="en">
+   <head>
+      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+      <title>William Lloyd Garrison (1891)</title><style type="text/css">
+		  .newpage { display: none; }
+		  .pagenum:after {
+		     display: inline;
+		     content: "[" attr(title) "]";
+		   }
+	  </style><meta name="author" content="Grimke, Archibald H. (1849-1930)">
+      <meta name="generator" content="Text Encoding Initiative Consortium XSLT stylesheets">
+      <meta name="DC.Title" content="William Lloyd Garrison (1891)">
+      <meta name="DC.Type" content="Text">
+      <meta name="DC.Format" content="text/html">
+   </head>
+   <body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Lloyd Garrison, by Archibald H. Grimke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: William Lloyd Garrison
+       The Abolitionist
+
+Author: Archibald H. Grimke
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2005 [EBook #14555]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Amy Overmyer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+      <p><a name="TOP"></a></p>
+      <table summary="titlepage" class="header" width="100%">
+         <tr>
+            <td rowspan="3"></td>
+            <td align="left">
+               <h2 class="institution"></h2>
+            </td>
+         </tr>
+         <tr>
+            <td align="left">
+               <h1 class="maintitle">William Lloyd Garrison (1891)</h1>
+            </td>
+         </tr>
+         <tr>
+            <td>&nbsp;</td>
+            <td align="left"> By Grimke, Archibald H. (1849-1930) &nbsp; </td>
+         </tr>
+      </table>
+      <hr>
+      <div class="frontispiece">
+         <h2><a name="frontispiece"></a></h2><span class="center"><img src="images/garrison.png" alt="Wm. Lloyd Garrison"></span><p>Wm. Lloyd Garrison</p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="version">
+         <h2><a name="pubhistory"></a></h2>
+         <p>
+            Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Grimk&eacute;, Archibald Henry, 1849-1930.
+            <br><br>
+            William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Reprint of the 1891 ed. published by Funk &amp; Wagnalls,
+            New York.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            1. Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Reprinted from the edition of 1891, New York
+            First AMS edition published in 1974
+
+         </p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="dedication">
+         <h2><a name="dedication"></a></h2>
+         <p><i>To Mrs. Anna M. Day, who has been a mother to
+               my little girl, and a sister to me, this book is gratefully
+               and affectionately dedicated, by</i></p>
+         <p><i>The Author</i>.
+
+         </p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="preface">
+         <h2><a name="preface1"></a>
+            PREFACE.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            The author of this volume desires by way of
+            preface to say just two things:&#8212;firstly, that it is his
+            earnest hope that this record of a hero may be an aid
+            to brave and true living in the Republic, so that the
+            problems knocking at its door for solution may find
+            the heads, the hands, and the hearts equal to the performance
+            of the duties imposed by them upon the
+            men and women of this generation. William Lloyd
+            Garrison was brave and true. Bravery and truth
+            were the secret of his marvelous career and achievements.
+            May his countrymen and countrywomen
+            imitate his example and be brave and true, not alone
+            in emergent moments, but in everyday things as
+            well.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            So much for the author's firstly, now for his secondly,
+            which is to acknowledge his large indebtedness
+            in the preparation of this book to that storehouse
+            of anti-slavery material, the story of the life of
+            William Lloyd Garrison by his children. Out of its
+            garnered riches he has filled his sack.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            HYDE PARK, MASS., May 10, 1891.
+
+         </p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="TOC"></a>
+            CONTENTS.
+
+         </h2>
+         <table summary="TOC">
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Dedication
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="vii" id="vii" title="vii"></a><a href="#dedication" class="ref">III</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Preface
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#preface1" class="ref">V</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER I.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Father of the Man
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap1" class="ref">11</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER II.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Man Hears a Voice: Samuel, Samuel!
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap2" class="ref">38</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER III.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Man Begins his Ministry
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap3" class="ref">69</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER IV.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Hour and the Man
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap4" class="ref">92</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER V.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Day of Small Things
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap5" class="ref">110</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER VI.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Heavy World is Moved
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap6" class="ref">118</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER VII.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Master Strokes
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap7" class="ref">133</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="viii" id="viii" title="viii"></a>
+                  CHAPTER VIII.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Colorphobia
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap8" class="ref">157</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER IX.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Agitation and Repression
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap9" class="ref">170</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER X.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Between the Acts
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap10" class="ref">192</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XI.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Mischief Let Loose
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap11" class="ref">208</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XII.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Flotsam and Jetsam
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap12" class="ref">233</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XIII.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Barometer Continues to Fall
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap13" class="ref">242</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XIV.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Brotherly Love Fails, and Ideas Abound
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap14" class="ref">263</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XV.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Random Shots
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap15" class="ref">292</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XVI.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Pioneer Makes a New and Startling Departure
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap16" class="ref">306</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XVII.
+                  <br><br>
+                  As in a Looking Glass
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap17" class="ref">319</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XVIII.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Turning of a Long Lane
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap18" class="ref">335</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="ix" id="ix" title="ix"></a>
+                  CHAPTER XIX.
+                  <br><br>
+                  Face to Face
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap19" class="ref">356</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XX.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Death-Grapple
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap20" class="ref">370</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  CHAPTER XXI.
+                  <br><br>
+                  The Last
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#chap21" class="ref">385</a></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Index
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#index" class="ref">397</a><a class="newpage" name="x" id="x" title="x"></a></td>
+            </tr>
+         </table>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap1"></a>
+            WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            CHAPTER I.
+            <br><br><br><br>
+            THE FATHER OF THE MAN.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_011" id="P_011" title="P_011"></a>
+            William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport,
+            Massachusetts, December 10, 1805. Forty years
+            before, Daniel Palmer, his great-grandfather, emigrated
+            from Massachusetts and settled with three
+            sons and a daughter on the St. John River, in Nova
+            Scotia. The daughter's name was Mary, and it was
+            she who was to be the future grandmother of our
+            hero. One of the neighbors of Daniel Palmer was
+            Joseph Garrison, who was probably an Englishman.
+            He was certainly a bachelor. The Acadian solitude
+            of five hundred acres and Mary Palmer's charms
+            proved too much for the susceptible heart of
+            Joseph Garrison. He wooed and won her, and on
+            his thirtieth birthday she became his wife. The
+            bride herself was but twenty-three, a woman of
+            resources and of presence of mind, as she needed to
+            be in that primitive settlement. Children and cares
+            came apace to the young wife, and we may be sure
+            confined her more and more closely to her house.
+            But in the midst of a fast-increasing family and of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_012" id="P_012" title="P_012"></a>
+            multiplying cares a day's outing did occasionally
+            come to the busy housewife, when she would go
+            down the river to spend it at her father's farm.
+            Once, ten years after her marriage, she had a narrow
+            escape on one of those rare days. She had started
+            in a boat with her youngest child, Abijah, and a lad
+            who worked in her household. It was spring and
+            the St. John was not yet clear of ice. Higher up the
+            river the ice broke that morning and came floating
+            down with the current. The boat in which Mary
+            Garrison and her baby rode was overtaken by the
+            fragments and wrecked. The mother with her child
+            sought refuge on a piece of ice and was driven shoreward.
+            Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could
+            spare she threw him ashore. She and the lad followed
+            by the aid of an overhanging willow bough.
+            The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him
+            into a snow-bank. But the perils of the river gave
+            place to the perils of the woods. In them Mary
+            Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less
+            a personage than the father of William Lloyd Garrison,
+            until at length she found the hut of a friendly
+            Indian, who took her in and "entertained her with
+            his best words and deeds, and the next morning
+            conducted her safely to her father's."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of
+            farmers, and Joseph Garrison was a man of unusual
+            force and independence of character. The life which
+            these early settlers lived was a life lived partly
+            on the land and partly on the river. They were
+            equally at home with scythe or oar. Amid such
+            terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that
+            the children should develop a passion for the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_013" id="P_013" title="P_013"></a>
+            sea. Like ducks many of them took to the water
+            and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The
+            amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood
+            a restless, roving character. Like the element
+            which he loved he was in constant motion.
+            He was a man of gifts both of mind and body.
+            There was besides a strain of romance and adventure
+            in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life he
+            probably craved strong excitement. This craving
+            was in part appeased no doubt by travel and drink.
+            He took to the sea and he took to the cup. But he
+            was more than a creature of appetites, he was a man
+            of sentiment. Being a man of sentiment what should
+            he do but fall in love. The woman who inspired his
+            love was no ordinary woman, but a genuine Acadian
+            beauty. She was a splendid specimen of womankind.
+            Tall she was, graceful and admirably proportioned.
+            Never before had Abijah in all his wanderings
+            seen a creature of such charms of person. Her
+            face matched the attractions of her form and her mind
+            matched the beauty of her face. She possessed a
+            nature almost Puritanic in its abhorrence of sin, and
+            in the strength of its moral convictions. She feared
+            to do wrong more than she feared any man. With
+            this supremacy of the moral sense there went along
+            singular firmness of purpose and independence of
+            character. When a mere slip of a girl she was called
+            upon to choose between regard for her religious convictions
+            and regard for her family. It happened in
+            this wise. Fanny Lloyd's parents were Episcopalians,
+            who were inclined to view with contempt fellow-Christians
+            of the Baptist persuasion. To have
+            a child of theirs identify herself with this despised
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_014" id="P_014" title="P_014"></a>
+            sect was one of those crosses which they could not
+            and would not bear. But Fanny had in a fit of girlish
+            frolic entered one of the meetings of these low-caste
+            Christians. What she heard changed the current of
+            her life. She knew thenceforth that God was no
+            respecter of persons, and that the crucified Nazarene
+            looked not upon the splendor of ceremonies but upon
+            the thoughts of the heart of His disciples. Here in a
+            barn, amid vulgar folk, and uncouth, dim surroundings,
+            He had appeared, He, her Lord and Master.
+            He had touched her with that white unspeakable
+            appeal. The laughter died upon the fair girlish face
+            and prayer issued from the beautiful lips. If vulgar
+            folk, the despised Baptists, were good enough for the
+            Christ, were they not good enough for her? Among
+            them she had felt His consecrating touch and among
+            them she determined to devote herself to Him. Her
+            parents commanded and threatened but Fanny Lloyd
+            was bent on obeying the heavenly voice of duty rather
+            than father and mother. They had threatened that
+            if she allowed herself to be baptised they would turn
+            her out of doors. Fanny was baptised and her parents
+            made good the threat. Their home was no longer
+            her home. She had the courage of her conviction&#8212;ability
+            to suffer for a belief.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Such was the woman who subsequently became the
+            wife of Abijah Garrison, and the mother of one of
+            the greatest moral heroes of the century. Abijah
+            followed the sea, and she for several years with an
+            increasing family followed Abijah. First from one
+            place and then another she glided after him in her
+            early married life. He loved her and his little ones
+            but the love of travel and change was strong within
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_015" id="P_015" title="P_015"></a>
+            him. He was ever restless and changeful. During
+            one of his roving fits he emigrated with his family
+            from Nova Scotia to the United States. It was in
+            the spring of 1805 that he and they landed in Newburyport.
+            The following December his wife presented
+            him with a boy, whom they called William
+            Lloyd Garrison. Three years afterward Abijah
+            deserted his wife and children. Of the causes which
+            led to this act nothing is now known. Soon after
+            his arrival in Newburyport he had found employment.
+            He made several voyages as sailing-master in
+            1805-8 from that port. He was apparently during
+            these years successful after the manner of his craft.
+            But he was not a man to remain long in one place.
+            What was the immediate occasion of his strange
+            behavior we can only conjecture. Possibly an
+            increasing love for liquor had led to domestic differences,
+            which his pleasure-loving nature would not
+            brook. Certain it was that he was not like his wife.
+            He was not a man in whom the moral sense was
+            uppermost. He was governed by impulse and she
+            by fixed moral and religious principles. He drank
+            and she abhorred the habit. She tried first moral
+            suasion to induce him to abandon the habit, and
+            once, in a moment of wifely and motherly indignation,
+            she broke up one of his drinking parties in her
+            house by trying the efficacy of a little physical
+            suasion. She turned the company out of doors and
+            smashed the bottles of liquor. This was not the
+            kind of woman whom Abijah cared to live with as a
+            wife. He was not the sort of man whom the most
+            romantic love could attach to the apron-strings of
+            any woman. And in the matter of his cup he probably
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_016" id="P_016" title="P_016"></a>
+            saw that this was what he would be obliged to
+            do as the condition of domestic peace. The condition
+            he rejected and, rejecting it, rejected and cast-off
+            his wife and family and the legal and moral responsibilities
+            of husband and father.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Bitter days now followed and Fanny Garrison
+            became acquainted with grief and want. She had
+            the mouths of three children to fill&#8212;the youngest an
+            infant at her breast. The battle of this broken-hearted
+            woman for their daily bread was as heroic as
+            it was pathetic. She still lived in the little house on
+            School street where Lloyd was born. The owner,
+            Martha Farnham, proved herself a friend indeed to
+            the poor harassed soul. Now she kept the wolf from
+            the door by going out as a monthly nurse&#8212;"Aunt
+            Farnham" looking after the little ones in her
+            absence. She was put to all her possibles during
+            those anxious years of struggle and want. Even
+            Lloyd, wee bit of a boy, was pressed into the service.
+            She would make molasses candies and send him upon
+            the streets to sell them. But with all her industry
+            and resource what could she do with three children
+            weighing her down in the fierce struggle for existence,
+            rendered tenfold fiercer after the industrial
+            crisis preceding and following the War of 1812.
+            Then it was that she was forced to supplement her
+            scant earnings with refuse food from the table of "a
+            certain mansion on State street." It was Lloyd who
+            went for this food, and it was he who had to run the
+            gauntlet of mischievous and inquisitive children
+            whom he met and who longed for a peep into his tin
+            pail. But the future apostle of non-resistance was
+            intensely resistant, we may be sure, on such occasions.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_017" id="P_017" title="P_017"></a>
+            For, as his children have said in the story of
+            his life: "Lloyd was a thorough boy, fond of games
+            and of all boyish sport. Barefooted, he trundled his
+            hoop all over Newburyport; he swam in the Merrimac
+            in summer, and skated on it in winter; he was
+            good at sculling a boat; he played at bat and ball
+            and snowball, and sometimes led the 'Southend
+            boys' against the Northenders in the numerous conflicts
+            between the youngsters of the two sections; he
+            was expert with marbles. Once, with a playmate, he
+            swam across the river to 'Great Rock,' a distance of
+            three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against
+            the tide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life
+            by breaking through the ice on the river and reached
+            the shore only after a desperate struggle, the ice
+            yielding as often as he attempted to climb upon its
+            surface. It was favorite pastime of the boys of that
+            day to swim from one wharf to another adjacent,
+            where vessels from the West Indies discharged
+            their freight of molasses, and there to indulge in
+            stolen sweetness, extracted by a smooth stick inserted
+            through the bung-hole. When detected and chased,
+            they would plunge into the water and escape to the
+            wharf on which they had left their clothes." Such
+            was the little man with a boy's irrepressible passion
+            for frolic and fun. His passion for music was hardly
+            less pronounced, and this he inherited from his
+            mother, and exercised to his heart's content in the
+            choir of the Baptist Church. These were the bright
+            lines and spots in his strenuous young life. He
+            played and sang the gathering brood of cares out of
+            his own and his mother's heart. He needed to play
+            and he needed to sing to charm away from his spirit
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_018" id="P_018" title="P_018"></a>
+            the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever
+            over his childhood. It was able to do many hard things
+            to him, break up his home, sunder him from his
+            mother, force him at a tender age to earn his bread,
+            still there was another bird in the boy's heart, which
+            sang out of it the shadow and into it the sunshine.
+            Whatever was his lot there sang the bird within his
+            breast, and there shone the sun over his head and
+            into his soul. The boy had unconsciously drawn
+            around him a circle of sunbeams, and how could the
+            vulture of poverty strike him with its wings or stab
+            him with its beak. When he was about eight he was
+            parted from his mother, she going to Lynn, and he,
+            wee mite of a man, remaining in Newburyport. It was
+            during the War of 1812, and pinching times, when
+            Fanny Garrison was at her wit's end to keep the wolf
+            from devouring her three little ones and herself into
+            the bargain. With what tearing of the heart-strings
+            she left Lloyd and his little sister Elizabeth
+            behind we can now only imagine. She had
+            no choice, poor soul, for unless she toiled they
+            would starve. So with James, her eldest son, she
+            went forth into the world to better theirs and her
+            own condition. Lloyd went to live in Deacon Ezekiel
+            Bartlett's family. They were good to the little fellow,
+            but they, too, were poor. The Deacon, among other
+            things, sawed wood for a living, and Lloyd hardly
+            turned eight years, followed him in his peregrinations
+            from house to house doing with his tiny hands what
+            he could to help the kind old man. Soon Fanny
+            Lloyd's health, which had supported her as a magic
+            staff in all those bitter years since Abijah's desertion
+            of wife and children, began in the battle for bread in
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_019" id="P_019" title="P_019"></a>
+            Lynn, to fail her. And so, in her weakness, and with
+            a great fear in her heart for her babies, when she was
+            gone from them into the dark unknown forever, she
+            bethought her of making them as fast as possible self-supporting.
+            And what better way was there than to
+            have the boys learn some trade. James she had
+            already apprenticed to learn the mystery of shoemaking.
+            And for Lloyd she now sent and apprenticed
+            him, too, to the same trade. Oh! but it was
+            hard for the little man, the heavy lapstone and all
+            this thumping and pounding to make a shoe. Oh!
+            how the stiff waxen threads cut into his soft fingers,
+            how all his body ached with the constrained
+            position and the rough work of shoemaking. But
+            one day the little nine-year-old, who was "not much
+            bigger than a last," was able to produce a real shoe.
+            Then it was probably that a dawning consciousness
+            of power awoke within the child's mind. He himself
+            by patience and industry had created a something
+            where before was nothing. The eye of the boy
+            got for the first time a glimpse of the man, who was
+            still afar off, shadowy in the dim approaches of the
+            hereafter. But the work proved altogether beyond
+            the strength of the boy. The shoemaker's bench was
+            not his place, and the making of shoes for his kind
+            was not the mission for which he was sent into the
+            world. And now again poverty, the great scene-shifter,
+            steps upon the stage, and Fanny Lloyd and her
+            two boys are in Baltimore on that never-ending quest
+            for bread. She had gone to work in a shoe factory
+            established by an enterprising Yankee in that city.
+            The work lasted but a few months, when the proprietor
+            failed and the factory was closed. In a
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_020" id="P_020" title="P_020"></a>
+            strange city mother and children were left without
+            employment. In her anxiety and distress a new
+            trouble, the greatest and most poignant since Abijah's
+            desertion, wrung her with a supreme grief. James,
+            the light and pride of her life, had run away from
+            his master and gone to sea. Lloyd, poor little homesick
+            Lloyd, was the only consolation left the broken
+            heart. And he did not want to live in Baltimore,
+            and longed to return to Newburyport. So, mindful
+            of her child's happiness, and all unmindful of her
+            own, she sent him from her to Newburyport, which
+            he loved inexpressibly. He was now in his eleventh
+            year. Very happy he was to see once more the
+            streets and landmarks of the old town&#8212;the river,
+            and the old house where he was born, and the church
+            next door and the school-house across the way and
+            the dear friends whom he loved and who loved him.
+            He went again to live with the Bartletts, doing with
+            his might all that he could to earn his daily bread,
+            and to repay the kindness of the dear old deacon and
+            his family. It was at this time that he received his
+            last scrap of schooling. He was, as we have seen, but
+            eleven, but precious little of that brief and tender
+            time had he been able to spend in a school-house.
+            He had gone to the primary school, where, as his
+            children tell us, he did not show himself "an apt
+            scholar, being slow in mastering the alphabet, and
+            surpassed even by his little sister Elizabeth." During
+            his stay with Deacon Bartlett the first time, he was
+            sent three months to the grammar-school, and now
+            on his return to this good friend, a few more weeks
+            were added to his scant school term. They proved
+            the last of his school-days, and the boy went forth
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_021" id="P_021" title="P_021"></a>
+            from the little brick building on the Mall to finish
+            his education in the great workaday world, under those
+            stern old masters, poverty and experience. By and by
+            Lloyd was a second time apprenticed to learn a trade.
+            It was to a cabinetmaker in Haverhill, Mass. He made
+            good progress in the craft, but his young heart still
+            turned to Newburyport and yearned for the friends
+            left there. He bore up against the homesickness as
+            best he could, and when he could bear it no longer,
+            resolved to run away from the making of toy bureaus,
+            to be once more with the Bartletts. He had partly
+            executed this resolution, being several miles on the
+            road to his old home, when his master, the cabinetmaker,
+            caught up to him and returned him to Haverhill.
+            But when he heard the little fellow's story of
+            homesickness and yearning for loved places and
+            faces, he was not angry with him, but did presently
+            release him from his apprenticeship. And so the boy
+            to his great joy found himself again in Newburyport
+            and with the good old wood-sawyer. Poverty and
+            experience were teaching the child what he never
+            could have learned in a grammar-school, a certain
+            acquaintance with himself and the world around
+            him. There was growing within his breast a self-care
+            and a self-reliance. It was the autumn of 1818,
+            when, so to speak, the boy's primary education in
+            the school of experience terminated, and he entered on
+            the second stage of his training under the same rough
+            tutelage. At the age of thirteen he entered the office
+            of the Newburyport <i>Herald</i> to learn to set types.
+            At last his boy's hands had found work which his
+            boy's heart did joy to have done. He soon mastered
+            the compositor's art, became a remarkably rapid
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_022" id="P_022" title="P_022"></a>
+            composer. As he set up the thoughts of others, he
+            was not slow in discovering thoughts of his own
+            demanding utterance. The printer's apprentice felt
+            the stirrings of a new life. A passion for self-improvement
+            took possession of him. He began to read the
+            English classics, study American history, follow the
+            currents of party politics. No longer could it be
+            said of him that he was not an apt pupil. He was
+            indeed singularly apt. His intelligence quickened
+            marvelously. The maturing process was sudden
+            and swift. Almost before one knows it the boy in
+            years has become a man in judgment and character.
+            This precipitate development of the intellectual life
+            in him, produced naturally enough an appreciable
+            enlargement of the <i>ego</i>. The young eagle had
+            abruptly awakened to the knowledge that he possessed
+            wings; and wings were for use&#8212;to soar with.
+            Ambition, the desire to mount aloft, touched and
+            fired the boy's mind. As he read, studied, and
+            observed, while his hands were busy with his work,
+            there was a constant fluttering going on in the eyrie
+            of his thoughts. By an instinct analogous to that
+            which sends a duck to the water, the boy took to the
+            discussion of public questions. It was as if an innate
+            force was directing him toward his mission&#8212;the reformation
+            of great public wrongs. At sixteen he made
+            his first contribution to the press. It was a discussion
+            of a quasi-social subject, the relation of the
+            sexes in society. He was at the impressionable age,
+            when the rosy god of love is at his tricks. He was
+            also at a stage of development, when boys are least
+            attractive, when they are disagreeably virile, full of
+            their own importance and the superiority of their sex.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_023" id="P_023" title="P_023"></a>
+            In the "Breach of the Marriage Promise," by "An
+            Old Bachelor," these signs of adolescence are by no
+            means wanting, they are, on the contrary, distinctly
+            present and palpable. But there were other signs
+            besides these, signs that the youth had had his eyes
+            wide open to certain difficulties which beset the
+            matrimonial state and to the conventional steps
+            which lead to it, and that he had thought quite
+            soberly, if not altogether wisely upon them. The
+            writer was verdant, to be sure, and self-conscious,
+            and partial in his view of the relations of the sexes,
+            but there was withal a serious purpose in the writing.
+            He meant to expose and correct what he conceived
+            to be reprehensible conduct on the part of the
+            gentler sex, bad feminine manners. Just now he
+            sees the man's side of the shield, a few years later he
+            will see the woman's side also. He ungallantly concludes
+            "to lead the '<em>single life</em>,' and not," as he
+            puts it, "trouble myself about the ladies." A most
+            sapient conclusion, considering that this veteran
+            misogynist was but sixteen years old. During the
+            year following the publication of this article, he plied
+            his pen with no little industry&#8212;producing in all
+            fifteen articles on a variety of topics, such as "South
+            American Affairs," "State Politics," "A Glance at
+            Europe," etc., all of which are interesting now chiefly
+            as showing the range of his growing intelligence, and
+            as the earliest steps by which he acquired his later mastery
+            of the pen and powerful style of composition.
+            In a letter addressed to his mother about this time,
+            the boy is full of Lloyd, undisguisedly proud of
+            Lloyd, believes in Lloyd. "When I peruse them
+            over" (<i>i.e.</i> those fifteen communications to the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_024" id="P_024" title="P_024"></a>
+            press), "I feel absolutely astonished," he na&iuml;vely confesses,
+            "at the different subjects which I have discussed,
+            and the style in which they are written.
+            Indeed it is altogether a matter of surprise that I
+            have met with such signal success, seeing I do not
+            understand <em>one single rule of grammar</em>, and having a
+            very inferior education." The printer's lad was
+            plainly not lacking in the bump of approbativeness,
+            or the quality of self-assertiveness. The quick
+            mother instinct of Fanny Garrison took alarm at the
+            tone of her boy's letter. Possibly there was something
+            in Lloyd's florid sentences, in his facility of
+            expression, which reminded her of Abijah. He, too,
+            poor fellow, had had gifts in the use of the pen, and
+            what had he done, what had he come to? Had he
+            not forsaken wife and children by first forsaking the
+            path of holiness? So she pricks the boy's bubble,
+            and points him to the one thing needful&#8212;God in the
+            soul. But in her closing words she betrays what we
+            all along suspected, her own secret pleasure in her
+            son's success, when she asks, "Will you be so kind
+            as to bring on your pieces that you have written
+            for me to see?" Ah! was she not every inch a
+            mother, and how Lloyd did love her. But she was
+            no longer what she had been. And no wonder, for
+            few women have been called to endure such heavy
+            burdens, fight so hopelessly the battle for bread, all
+            the while her heart was breaking with grief. Disease
+            had made terrible inroads upon her once strong and
+            beautiful person. Not the shadow of the strength
+            and beauty of her young womanhood remained. She
+            was far away from her early home and friends, far
+            away from her darling boy, in Baltimore. James,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_025" id="P_025" title="P_025"></a>
+            her pride, was at sea, Elizabeth, a sweet little maiden
+            of twelve, had left her to take that last voyage
+            beyond another sea, and Abijah, without one word
+            of farewell, with the silence of long years unbroken,
+            he, too, also! had hoisted sail and was gone forever.
+            And now in her loneliness and sorrow, knowing that
+            she, too, must shortly follow, a great yearning rose
+            up in her poor wounded heart to see once more her
+            child, the comfort and stay of her bitter life. And
+            as she had written to him her wish and longing,
+            the boy went to her, saw the striking change, saw
+            that the broken spirit of the saintly woman was day
+            by day nearing the margin of the dark hereafter,
+            into whose healing waters it would bathe and be
+            whole again. The unspeakable experience of mother
+            and son, during this last meeting is not for you and
+            me, reader, to look into. Soon after Lloyd's return
+            to Newburyport a cancerous tumor developed on her
+            shoulder, from the effects of which she died September
+            3, 1823, at the age of forty-five. More than a
+            decade after her death her son wrote: "She has been
+            dead almost eleven years; but my grief at her loss is
+            as fresh and poignant now as it was at that period;"
+            and he breaks out in praise of her personal charms in
+            the following original lines:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"She was the masterpiece of womankind&#8212;<br>In shape and height majestically fine;<br>Her cheeks the lily and the rose combined;<br>Her lips&#8212;more opulently red than wine;<br>Her raven locks hung tastefully entwined;<br>Her aspect fair as Nature could design;<br>And then her eyes! so eloquently bright!<br>An eagle would recoil before her light."<br><br></div>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_026" id="P_026" title="P_026"></a>
+            The influence of this superb woman was a lasting
+            power for truth and righteousness in the son's stormy
+            life. For a whole year after her death, the grief of
+            the printer's lad over his loss, seemed to have checked
+            the activity of his pen. For during that period nothing
+            of his appeared in the <i>Herald</i>.
+            But after the sharp
+            edge of his sorrow had worn off, his pen became
+            active again in the discussion of public men and public
+            questions. It was a period of bitter personal and
+            political feuds and animosities. The ancient Federal
+            party was <i>in articulo mortis</i>. The
+            death-bed of a great political organization proves oftentimes the
+            graveyard of lifelong friendships. For it is a scene
+            of crimination and recrimination. And so it happened
+            that the partisans of John Adams, and the
+            partisans of John Adams's old Secretary of State,
+            Timothy Pickering, were in 1824 doing a thriving
+            business in this particular line. Into this funereal
+            performance our printer's apprentice entered with
+            pick and spade. He had thus early a <i>penchant</i> for
+            controversy, a soldier's scent for battle. If there was
+            any fighting going on he proceeded directly to have
+            a hand in it. And it cannot be denied that that hand
+            was beginning to deal some manly and sturdy blows,
+            whose resound was heard quite distinctly beyond
+            the limits of his birthplace. His communications
+            appeared now, not only in the <i>Herald</i>, but in the
+            Salem <i>Gazette</i> as well. Now it was the
+            Adams-Pickering controversy, now the discussion of General
+            Jackson as a presidential candidate, now the state of
+            the country in respect of parties, now the merits of
+            "American Writers," which afforded his 'prentice
+            hand the requisite practice in the use of the pen. He
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_027" id="P_027" title="P_027"></a>
+            had already acquired a perfect knowledge of typesetting
+            and the mechanical makeup of a newspaper.
+            During his apprenticeship he took his first lesson in
+            the art of thinking on his feet in the presence of an
+            audience. The audience to be sure were the members
+            of a debating club, which he had organized. He
+            was very ambitious and was doubtless looking forward
+            to a political career. He saw the value of extempore
+            speech to the man with a future, and he
+            wisely determined to possess himself of its advantage.
+            He little dreamt, however, to what great use he was
+            to devote it in later years. There were other points
+            worth noting at this time, and which seemed to
+            prophecy for him a future of distinction. He
+            possessed a most attractive personality. His energy
+            and geniality, his keen sense of humor, his social and
+            bouyant disposition, even his positive and opinionated
+            temper, were sources of popular strength to him.
+            People were strongly drawn to him. His friends
+            were devoted to him. He had that quality, which
+            we vaguely term magnetic, the quality of attaching
+            others to us, and maintaining over them the ascendency
+            of our character and ideas.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the midst of all this progress along so many
+            lines, the days of his apprenticeship in the
+            <i>Herald</i>
+            office came to an end. He was just twenty. With true
+            Yankee enterprise and pluck, he proceeded to do for
+            himself what for seven years he had helped to do for
+            another&#8212;publish a newspaper. And with a brave
+            heart the boy makes his launch on the uncertain sea
+            of local journalism and becomes editor and publisher
+            of a real, wide-awake sheet, which he calls the <i>Free
+               Press.</i> The paper was independent in politics and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_028" id="P_028" title="P_028"></a>
+            proved worthy of its name during the six months
+            that Garrison sat in the managerial chair. Here is
+            the tone which the initial number of the paper holds
+            to the public: "As to the political course of the
+            <i>Free Press</i>, it shall be, in the widest sense of
+            the term, <em>independent</em>. The publisher does not mean by this, to
+            rank amongst those who are of everybody's and of
+            nobody's opinion; ... nor one of whom the
+            old French proverb says:
+            <i>Il ne soit sur quel pied danser</i>.
+            [He knows not on which leg to dance.] Its
+            principles shall be open, magnanimous and free. It
+            shall be subservient to no party or body of men; and
+            neither the craven fear of loss, nor the threats of the
+            disappointed, nor the influence of power, shall ever
+            awe one single opinion into silence. Honest and fair
+            discussion it will court; and its columns will be open
+            to all temperate and intelligent communications
+            emanating from whatever political source. In fine
+            we will say with Cicero: 'Reason shall prevail with
+            him more than popular opinion.' They who like
+            this avowal may extend their encouragement; and if
+            any feel dissatisfied with it, they must act accordingly.
+            The publisher cannot condescend to solicit
+            their support." This was admirable enough in its
+            way, but it was poor journalism some will say. And
+            without doubt when judged by the common commercial
+            standard it <em>was</em> poor journalism. In this
+            view it is a remarkable production, but in another aspect
+            it is still more remarkable in that it took with
+            absolute accuracy the measure of the man. As a
+            mental likeness it is simply perfect. At no time during
+            his later life did the picture cease to be an exact
+            moral representation of his character. It seems quite
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_029" id="P_029" title="P_029"></a>
+            unnecessary, therefore, to record that he proceeded
+            immediately to demonstrate that it was no high
+            sounding and insincere declaration. For in the
+            second number, he mentions with that singular
+            serenity, which ever distinguished him on such occasions,
+            the discontinuance of the paper on account of
+            matter contained in the first issue, by ten indignant
+            subscribers. "Nevertheless," he adds, "our happiness
+            at the loss of such subscribers is not a whit
+            abated. We <em>beg</em> no man's patronage, and shall ever
+            erase with the same cheerfulness that we insert the
+            name of any individual.... Personal or political
+            offence we shall studiously avoid&#8212;truth <em>never</em>."
+            Here was plainly a wholly new species of the <i>genus
+               homo</i> in the editorial seat. What, expect to make a
+            newspaper pay and not beg for patronage? Why
+            the very idea was enough to make newspaperdom
+            go to pieces with laughter. Begging for patronage,
+            howling for subscribers, cringing, crawling, changing
+            color like the chameleon, howling for Barabbas or
+            bellowing against Jesus, all these things must your
+            newspaper do to prosper. On them verily hang the
+            whole law and all the profits of modern journalism.
+            This is what the devil of competition was doing in
+            that world when William Lloyd Garrison entered it.
+            It took him up into an exceedingly high mountain, we
+            may be certain, and offered him wealth, position, and
+            power, if he would do what all others were doing. And
+            he would not. He went on editing and publishing
+            his paper for six months regardful only of what his
+            reason approved&#8212;regardless always of the disapproval
+            of others. Not once did he palter with his
+            convictions or juggle with his self-respect for the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_030" id="P_030" title="P_030"></a>
+            sake of pelf or applause. His human horizon was
+            contracted, to be sure. It could hardly be otherwise
+            in one so young. His world was his country, and
+            patriotism imposed limits upon his affections. "Our
+            country, our whole country, and nothing but our
+            country," was the ardent motto of the
+            <i>Free Press</i>.
+            The love of family comes, in the order of growth, before
+            the love of country; and the love of country
+            precedes the love of all mankind. "First the blade,
+            then the ear, then the full corn in the ear," is the
+            great law of love in the soul as of corn in the soil. Besides
+            this contraction of the affections, there was also
+            manifest in his first journalistic venture a deficiency
+            in the organ of vision, a failure to see into things and
+            their relations. What he saw he reported faithfully,
+            suppressing nothing, adding nothing. But the objects
+            which passed across the disk of his editoral intelligence
+            were confined almost entirely to the
+            surface of things, to the superficies of national
+            life. He had not the ken at twenty to penetrate beneath
+            the happenings of current politics. Of the existence
+            of slavery as a supreme reality, we do not
+            think that he then had the faintest suspicion. No
+            shadow of its tremendous influence as a political
+            power seemed to have arrested for a brief instant his
+            attention. He could copy into his paper this
+            atrocious sentiment which Edward Everett delivered
+            in Congress, without the slightest comment or
+            allusion. "Sir, I am no soldier. My habits and education
+            are very unmilitary, but there is no cause in
+            which I would sooner buckle a knapsack on my
+            back, and put a musket on my shoulder than that of
+            putting down a servile insurrection at the South."
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_031" id="P_031" title="P_031"></a>
+            The reason is plain enough. Slavery was a <i>terra
+               incognito</i> to him then, a book of which he had not
+            learned the ABC. Mr. Everett's language made
+            no impression on him, because he had not the key to
+            interpret its significance. What he saw, that he set
+            down for his readers, without fear or favor. He had
+            not seen slavery, knew nothing of the evil. Acquaintance
+            with the deeper things of life, individual or
+            national, comes only with increasing years, they are
+            hardly for him who has not yet reached his majority.
+            Slavery was the very deepest thing in the life of the
+            nation sixty-four years ago. And if Garrison did not
+            then so understand it, neither did his contemporaries,
+            the wisest and greatest of them so understand it.
+            The subject of all others which attracted his attention,
+            and kept his editorial pen busy, was the claim
+            of Massachusetts for indemnity from the general government,
+            for certain disbursements made by her for
+            the defence of her sea-coast during the war of 1812.
+            This matter, which forms but a mere dust point in
+            the perspective of history, his ardent young mind
+            mistook for a principal object, erected into a permanent
+            question in the politics of the times. But the
+            expenditure of enormous energies upon things of
+            secondary and of even tertiary importance, to the
+            neglect of others of prime and lasting interest, is
+            supremely human. He was errant where all men go
+            astray. But the schoolmaster of the nation was
+            abroad, and was training this young man for the
+            work he was born to do. These six months were,
+            therefore, not wasted, for in the university of experience
+            he did ever prove himself an apt scholar.
+            One lesson he had learned, which he never needed to
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_032" id="P_032" title="P_032"></a>
+            relearn. Just what that lesson was, he tells in his
+            valedictory to the subscribers of the
+            <i>Free Press</i>, as
+            follows: "This is a time-serving age; and he who
+            attempts to walk uprightly or speak honestly, cannot
+            rationally calculate upon speedy wealth or preferment."
+            A sad lesson, to be sure, for one so young
+            to learn so thoroughly. Perhaps some reader will
+            say that this was cynical, the result of disappointment.
+            But it was not cynical, neither was it the result
+            of disappointment. It was unvarnished truth,
+            and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less.
+            It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men,
+            needed to know at the threshold of his experience
+            with the world. Such a revelation proves disastrous
+            to the many who go down to do business in that
+            world. Ordinary and weak and neutral moral constitutions
+            are wrecked on this reef set in the human
+            sea. Like a true mariner he had written it boldly on
+            his chart. There at such and such a point in the voyage
+            for the golden fleece, were the rocks and the
+            soul-devouring
+            dragons of the way. Therefore, oh! my
+            soul, beware. What, indeed, would this argonaut of
+            the press take in exchange for his soul? Certainly
+            not speedy wealth nor preferment. Ah! he could
+            not praise where he ought to reprobate; could not
+            reprobate where praise should be the meed. He had
+            no money and little learning, but he had a conscience
+            and he knew that he must be true to that conscience,
+            come to him either weal or woe. Want renders
+            most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this
+            early age, absolutely invulnerable. Should he and
+            that almost omnipotent inquisitor, public opinion,
+            ever in the future come into collision upon any principle
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_033" id="P_033" title="P_033"></a>
+            of action, a keen student of human nature
+            might forsee that the young recusant could never be
+            starved into silence or conformity to popular
+            standards. And with this stern, sad lesson treasured
+            up in his heart, Garrison graduated from another
+            room in the school-house of experience. All the discoveries
+            of the young journalist were not of this
+            grim character. He made another discovery altogether
+            different, a real gem of its kind. The drag-net
+            of a newspaper catches all sorts of poets and
+            poetry, good, bad, and indifferent&#8212;oftener the bad
+            and indifferent, rarely the good. The drag-net of the
+            <i>Free Press</i> was no exception to this rule; but,
+            one day, it fetched up from the depths of the hard commonplaces
+            of our New England town life a genuine
+            pearl. We will let Mr. Garrison tell the story in his
+            own way:
+
+         </p>
+         <blockquote>
+            <p>
+               "Going up-stairs to my office, one day, I observed
+               a letter lying near the door, to my address; which, on
+               opening, I found to contain an original piece of poetry
+               for my paper, the <i>Free Press</i>. The ink was very
+               pale, the handwriting very small; and, having at that
+               time a horror of newspaper original poetry&#8212;which
+               has rather increased than diminished with the lapse
+               of time&#8212;my first impulse was to tear it in pieces,
+               without reading it; the chances of rejection, after its
+               perusal, being as ninety-nine to one; ... but summoning
+               resolution to read it, I was equally surprised
+               and gratified to find it above mediocrity, and so gave
+               it a place in my journal.... As I was anxious to
+               find out the writer, my post-rider, one day, divulged
+               the secret, stating that he had dropped the letter in
+               the manner described, and that it was written by a
+               <a class="newpage" name="P_034" id="P_034" title="P_034"></a>
+               Quaker lad, named Whittier, who was daily at work
+               on the shoemaker's bench, with hammer and lapstone,
+               at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I
+               lost no time in driving to see the youthful rustic
+               bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence,
+               almost unable to speak, and blushing like a
+               maiden. Giving him some words of encouragement,
+               I addressed myself more particularly to his parents,
+               and urged them with great earnestness to grant him
+               every possible facility for the development of his
+               remarkable genius."
+
+            </p>
+         </blockquote>
+         <p>
+            Garrison had not only found a true poet, but a true
+            friend as well, in the Quaker lad, John Greenleaf
+            Whittier. The friendship which sprang up between
+            the two was to last during the lifetime of the
+            former. Neither of them in those days of small
+            things could have possibly by any flight of the imagination
+            foreseen how their two lives, moving in parallel
+            lines, would run deep their shining furrows
+            through one of the greatest chapters of human history.
+            But I am anticipating, and that is a vice of
+            which no good storyteller ought to be guilty. So,
+            then, let me incontinently return from this excursion
+            and pursue the even tenor of my tale.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison had stepped down from his elevated position
+            as the publisher and editor of the <i>Free Press</i>.
+            He was without work, and, being penniless, it behooved
+            him to find some means of support. With
+            the instinct of the bright New England boy, he determined
+            to seek his fortunes in Boston. If his honesty
+            and independence put him at a disadvantage, as publisher
+            and editor, in the struggle for existence, he
+            had still his trade as a compositor to fall back upon
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_035" id="P_035" title="P_035"></a>
+            As a journeyman printer he would earn his bread,
+            and preserve the integrity of an upright spirit. And
+            so without a murmur, and with cheerfulness and persistency,
+            he hunted for weeks on the streets of Boston
+            for a chance to set types. This hunting for a job in
+            a strange city was discouraging enough. Twice before
+            had he visited the place, which was to be his
+            future home. Once when on his way to Baltimore
+            to see his mother, and once afterward when on a sort
+            of pleasure tramp with three companions. But the
+            slight knowledge which he was able to obtain of the
+            town and its inhabitants under these circumstances
+            did not now help him, when from office to office he
+            went in quest of something to do. After many failures
+            and renewed searchings, he found what he was
+            after, an opportunity to practice his trade. Business
+            was dull, which kept our journeyman printer on the
+            wing; first at one and then at another printing office
+            we find him setting types for a living during the
+            year 1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter;
+            but he was not ashamed to work, neither was he
+            afraid of hard work. During this year, he found
+            time to take a hand in a little practical politics.
+            There was in July, 1827, a caucus of the Federal party
+            to nominate a successor to Daniel Webster in the
+            House of Representatives. Young Garrison attended
+            this caucus, and made havoc of its cut and dried programme,
+            by moving the nomination of Harrison
+            Gray Otis, instead of the candidate, a Mr. Benjamin
+            Gorham, agreed upon by the leaders. Harrison Gray
+            Otis was one of Garrison's early and particular idols.
+            He was, perhaps, the one Massachusetts politician
+            whom the young Federalist had placed on a
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_036" id="P_036" title="P_036"></a>
+            pedestal. And so on this occasion he went into the
+            caucus with a written speech in his hat, eulogistic of
+            his favorite. He had meant to have the speech at
+            his tongue's end, and to get it off as if on the spur
+            of the moment. But the speech stayed where it was
+            put, in the speaker's hat, and failed to materialize
+            where and when it was wanted on the speaker's
+            tongue. As the mountain would not go to Mahomet,
+            Mahomet like a sensible prophet went to the mountain.
+            Our orator in imitation of this illustrious
+            example, bowed to the inevitable and went to his
+            mountain. Pulling his extempore remarks out of his
+            hat, he delivered himself of them to such effect as to
+            create quite an Otis sentiment in the meeting. This
+            performance was, of course, a shocking offence in the
+            eyes of those, whose plans it had disturbed. With
+            one particular old fogy he got into something of a
+            newspaper controversy in consequence. The "consummate
+            assurance" of one so young fairly knocked
+            the breath out of this Mr. Eminent Respectability;
+            it was absolutely revolting to all his "ideas of propriety,
+            to see a stranger, a man who never paid a tax
+            in our city, and perhaps no where else, to possess the
+            impudence to take the lead and nominate a candidate
+            for the electors of Boston!" The "young gentleman
+            of six months standing," was not a whit abashed or
+            awed by the commotion which he had produced.
+            That was simply a case of cause and effect. But he
+            seemed in turn astonished at his opponent's evident
+            ignorance of William Lloyd Garrison. "It is true,"
+            he replied, with the proud dignity of conscious power,
+            "it is true that my acquaintance in this city is limited.
+            I have sought none. Let me assure him, however,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_037" id="P_037" title="P_037"></a>
+            that if my life be spared, my name shall one
+            day be known to the world&#8212;at least to such extent
+            that common inquiry shall be unnecessary. This, I
+            know will be deemed excessive vanity&#8212;but time
+            shall prove it prophetic." To the charge of youth
+            he makes this stinging rejoinder, which evinces the
+            progress he was making in the tournament of language:
+            "The little, paltry sneers at my youth by
+            your correspondent have long since become pointless.
+            It is the privileged abuse of old age&#8212;the
+            hackneyed allegation of a thousand centuries&#8212;the
+            damning <em>crime</em> to which all men have been subjected.
+            I leave it to metaphysicians to determine the precise
+            moment when wisdom and experience leap into existence,
+            when, for the first time, the mind distinguishes
+            truth from error, selfishness from patriotism, and
+            passion from reason. It is sufficient for me that I am
+            understood." This was Garrison's first experience with
+            "gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston.
+            It was not his last, as future chapters will abundantly
+            show.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_038" id="P_038" title="P_038"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap2"></a>
+            CHAPTER II.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE MAN HEARS A VOICE: SAMUEL, SAMUEL!
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            There is a moment in the life of every serious soul,
+            when things, which were before unseen and unheard
+            in the world around him become visible and audible.
+            This startling moment comes to some sooner, to others
+            later, but to all, who are not totally given up to the
+            service of self, at sometime surely. From that moment
+            a change passes over such an one, for more and
+            more he hears mysterious voices, and clearer and
+            more clear he sees apparitional forms floating up
+            from the depths above which he kneels. Whence
+            come they, what mean they? He leans over the
+            abyss, and lo! the sounds to which he hearkens are
+            the voices of human weeping and the forms at which
+            he gazes are the apparitions of human woe; they
+            beckon to him, and the voices beseech him in multitudinous
+            accent and heart-break: "Come over, come
+            down, oh! friend and brother, and help us." Then
+            he straightway puts away the things and the thoughts
+            of the past and girding himself with the things, and
+            the thoughts of the divine OUGHT and the almighty
+            MUST, he goes over and down to the rescue.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Such an epochal first moment came to William
+            Lloyd Garrison in the streets of Boston. Amid the
+            hard struggle for bread he heard the abysmal voices,
+            saw the gaunt forms of misery. He was a constant
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_039" id="P_039" title="P_039"></a>
+            witness of the ravages of the demon of drink&#8212;saw
+            how strong men succumbed, and weak ones turned to
+            brutes in its clutch. And were they not his brothers,
+            the strong men and the weak ones alike? And how
+            could he, their keeper, see them desperately beset
+            and not fly to their help? Ah! he could not and did
+            not walk by on the other side, but, stripling though
+            he was, rushed to do battle with the giant vice, which
+            was slaying the souls and the bodies of his fellow
+            citizens. Rum during the three first decades of the
+            present century was, like death, no respecter of persons,
+            entering with equal freedom the homes of the
+            rich, and the hovels of the poor. It was in universal
+            demand by all classes and conditions of men. No
+            occasion was esteemed too sacred for its presence and
+            use. It was an honored guest at a wedding, a christening,
+            or a funeral. The minister whose hands were
+            laid in baptismal blessing on babes, or raised in the
+            holy sacrament of love over brides, lifted also the
+            glass; and the selfsame lips which had spoken the
+            last words over the dead, drank and made merry
+            presently afterward among the decanters on the
+            side-board.
+            It mattered not for what the building was
+            intended&#8212;whether for church, school, or parsonage,
+            rum was the grand master of ceremonies, the indispensable
+            celebrant at the various stages of its completion.
+            The party who dug the parson out after a
+            snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort of prelibation
+            of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing
+            not, according to the Jewish notion, with milk and
+            <em>honey</em>, but according to the revised version of Yankeedom,
+            with milk and <em>rum</em>. Rum was, forsooth, a
+            very decent devil, if judged by the exalted character
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_040" id="P_040" title="P_040"></a>
+            of the company it kept. It stood high on the rungs
+            of the social ladder and pulled and pushed men from
+            it by thousands to wretchedness and ruin. So flagrant
+            and universal was the drinking customs of Boston then
+            that dealers offered on the commons during holidays,
+            without let or hindrance, the drunkard's glass to
+            the crowds thronging by extemporized booths and
+            bars. Shocking as was the excesses of this period
+            "nothing comparatively was heard on the subject of
+            intemperance&#8212;it was seldom a theme for the essayist&#8212;the
+            newspapers scarcely acknowledged its existence,
+            excepting occasionally in connection with some
+            catastrophes or crimes&#8212;the Christian and patriot,
+            while they perceived its ravages, formed no plans for
+            its overthrow&#8212;and it did not occur to any that a
+            paper devoted mainly to its suppression, might be
+            made a direct and successful engine in the great
+            work of reform. Private expostulations and individual
+            confessions were indeed sometimes made; but
+            no systematic efforts were adopted to give precision
+            to the views or a bias to the sentiments of the
+            people." Such was the state of public morals and
+            the state of public sentiment up to the year 1826,
+            when there occurred a change. This change was
+            brought about chiefly through the instrumentality
+            of a Baptist city missionary, the Rev. William
+            Collier. His labors among the poor of Boston had
+            doubtless revealed to him the bestial character of
+            intemperance, and the necessity of doing something
+            to check and put an end to the havoc it was working.
+            With this design he established the <i>National
+               Philanthropist</i> in Boston, March 4, 1826. The editor
+            was one of Garrison's earliest acquaintances in the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_041" id="P_041" title="P_041"></a>
+            city. Garrison went after awhile to board with him,
+            and still later entered the office of the
+            <i>Philanthropist</i>
+            as a type-setter. The printer of the paper, Nathaniel
+            H. White and young Garrison, occupied the same
+            room at Mr. Collier's. And so almost before our
+            hero was aware, he had launched his bark upon the
+            sea of the temperance reform. Presently, when the
+            founder of the paper retired, it seemed the most
+            natural thing in the world, that the young journeyman
+            printer, with his editorial experience and ability,
+            should succeed him as editor. His room-mate,
+            White, bought the <i>Philanthropist</i>, and in April
+            1828, formally installed Garrison into its editorship. Into
+            this new work he carried all his moral earnestness
+            and enthusiasm of purpose. The paper grew under
+            his hand in size, typographical appearance, and in
+            editorial force and capacity. It was a wide-awake
+            sentinel on the wall of society; and week after
+            week its columns bristled and flashed with apposite
+            facts, telling arguments, shrewd suggestions, cogent
+            appeals to the community to destroy the accursed
+            thing. No better education could he have had as
+            the preparation for his life work. He began to
+            understand then the strength of deep-seated public
+            evils, to acquaint himself with the methods and instruments
+            with which to attack them. The <i>Philanthropist</i>
+            was a sort of forerunner, so far as the training
+            in intelligent and effective agitation was concerned,
+            of the <i>Genius of Universal Emancipation</i> and
+            of the <i>Liberator</i>. One cannot read his sketch of
+            the progress made by the temperance reform, from
+            which I have already quoted, and published by him
+            in the <i>Philanthropist</i> in April, 1828, without
+            being
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_042" id="P_042" title="P_042"></a>
+            struck by the strong similitude of the temperance
+            to the anti-slavery movement in their beginnings.
+            "When this paper was first proposed," the young
+            temperance editor records, "it met with a repulsion
+            which would have utterly discouraged a less zealous
+            and persevering man than our predecessor. The
+            moralist looked on doubtfully&#8212;the whole community
+            esteemed the enterprise desperate. Mountains of
+            prejudice, overtopping the Alps, were to be beaten
+            down to a level&#8212;strong interest, connected by a
+            thousand links, severed&#8212;new habits formed; Every
+            house, and almost every individual, in a greater or
+            less degree, reclaimed. Derision and contumely
+            were busy in crushing this sublime project in its
+            birth&#8212;coldness and apathy encompassed it on every
+            side&#8212;but our predecessor, nevertheless, went boldly
+            forward with a giant's strength and more than a
+            giant's heart&#8212;conscious of difficulties and perils,
+            though not disheartened, armed with the weapons
+            of truth&#8212;full of meekness, yet certain of a splendid
+            victory&#8212;and relying on the promises of God for
+            the issue." What an inestimable object-lesson to
+            Garrison was the example of this good man going
+            forth singlehanded to do battle with one of the
+            greatest evils of the age! It was not numerical
+            strength, but the faith of one earnest soul that is
+            able in the world of ideas and human passions to remove
+            mountains out of the way of the onward march
+            of mankind. This truth, we may be sure, sunk many
+            fathoms deep into the mind of the young moralist.
+            And no wonder. For the results of two years agitation
+            and seed sowing were of the most astonishing
+            character. "The change which has taken place in
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_043" id="P_043" title="P_043"></a>
+            public sentiment," he continues, "is indeed remarkable ... incorporated
+            as intemperance <em>was</em>, and
+            still <em>is</em>, into our very existence as a people....
+            A regenerating spirit is everywhere seen; a
+            strong impulse to action has been given, which, beginning
+            in the breasts of a few individuals, and
+            then affecting villages, and cities, and finally whole
+            States, has rolled onward triumphantly through the
+            remotest sections of the republic. As union and
+            example are the levers adopted to remove this gigantic
+            vice, temperance societies have been rapidly
+            multiplied, many on the principle of entire abstinence,
+            and others making it a duty to abstain from
+            encouraging the distillation and consumption of
+            spirituous liquors. Expressions of the deep abhorrence
+            and sympathy which are felt in regard to the
+            awful prevalence of drunkenness are constantly
+            emanating from legislative bodies down to various
+            religious conventions, medical associations, grand
+            juries, etc., etc. But nothing has more clearly
+            evinced the strength of this excitement than the
+            general interest taken in this subject by the conductors
+            of the press. From Maine to the Mississippi,
+            and as far as printing has penetrated&#8212;even among
+            the Cherokee Indians&#8212;but one sentiment seems to
+            pervade the public papers, viz., the necessity of
+            strenuous exertion for the suppression of intemperance."
+            Such a demonstration of the tremendous
+            power of a single righteous soul for good, we may
+            be sure, exerted upon Garrison lasting influences.
+            What a revelation it was also of the transcendent
+            part which the press was capable of playing in the
+            revolution of popular sentiment upon moral questions;
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_044" id="P_044" title="P_044"></a>
+            and of the supreme service of organization
+            as a factor in reformatory movements. The seeds
+            sowed were faith in the convictions of one man against
+            the opinions, the prejudices, and the practices of the
+            multitude; and knowledge of and skill in the use of
+            the instruments by which the individual conscience
+            may be made to correct and renovate the moral
+            sense of a nation. But there was another seed corn
+            dropped at this time in his mind, and that is the
+            immense utility of woman in the work of regenerating
+            society. She it is who feels even more than man the
+            effects of social vices and sins, and to her the moral reformer
+            should strenuously appeal for aid. And this,
+            with the instinct of genius, Garrison did in the
+            temperance reform, nearly seventy years ago. His editorials in the
+            <i>Philanthropist</i> in the year 1828 on
+            "Female Influence" may be said to be the <i>courier
+               avant</i> of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
+            of to-day, as they were certainly the precursors of the
+            female anti-slavery societies of a few years later.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But now, without his knowing it, a stranger from
+            a distant city entered Boston with a message,
+            which was to change the whole purpose of the young
+            editor's life. It was Benjamin Lundy, the indefatigable
+            friend of the Southern slave, the man who
+            carried within his breast the whole menagerie of
+            Southern slavery. He was fresh from the city
+            which held the dust of Fanny Garrison, who had
+            once written to her boy in Newburyport, how the
+            good God had cared for her in the person of a
+            colored woman. Yes, she had written: "The ladies
+            are all kind to me, and I have a colored woman that
+            waits on me, that is so kind no one can tell how kind
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_045" id="P_045" title="P_045"></a>
+            she is; and although a slave to man, yet a free-born
+            soul, by the grace of God. Her name is Henny,
+            and should I never see you again, and you should
+            come where she is, remember her, for your poor
+            mother's sake." And now, without his dreaming of
+            it, this devoted Samaritan in black, who, perhaps,
+            had long ago joined her dear friend in the grave, was
+            coming to that very boy, now grown to manhood, to
+            claim for her race what the mother had asked for
+            her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of all those little
+            ones of the nation but who had a home in the
+            many-mansioned
+            heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and
+            ear witness of the barbarism of slavery. "My
+            heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross
+            abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt
+            his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul."
+            With apostolic faith and zeal he had for a decade
+            been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his
+            bruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great love, he had
+            gone about the country on his self-imposed task.
+            To do this work he had given up the business of a
+            saddler, in which he had prospered, had sacrificed
+            his possessions, and renounced the ease that comes
+            with wealth; had courted unheard-of hardships,
+            and wedded himself for better and worse to poverty
+            and unremitting endeavor. Nothing did he esteem too
+            dear to relinquish for the slave. Neither wife nor
+            children did he withhold. Neither the summer's
+            heat nor the winter's cold was able to daunt him or
+            turn him from his object. Though diminutive and
+            delicate of body, no distance or difficulty of travel
+            was ever able to deter him from doing what his
+            humanity had bidden him do. From place to place,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_046" id="P_046" title="P_046"></a>
+            through nineteen States, he had traveled, sowing as
+            he went the seeds of his holy purpose, and watering
+            them with his life's blood. Not Livingstone nor
+            Stanley on the dark continent exceeded in sheer
+            physical exertion and endurance the labors of this
+            wonderful man. He belongs in the category of
+            great explorers, only the irresistible passion and purpose,
+            which pushed him forward, had humanity, not
+            geography, as their goal. Where, in the lives of
+            either Stanley or Livingstone do we find a record of
+            more astonishing activity and achievement than what
+            is contained in these sentences, written by Garrison
+            of Lundy, in the winter of 1828? "Within a few
+            months he has traveled about twenty-four hundred
+            miles, of which upwards of nineteen hundred were
+            performed <em>on foot!</em> during which time he has held
+            nearly fifty public meetings. Rivers and mountains
+            vanish in his path; midnight finds him wending his
+            solitary way over an unfrequented road; the sun is
+            anticipated in his rising. Never was moral sublimity
+            of character better illustrated." Such was the
+            marvelous man, whose visit to Boston, in the month
+            of March, of the year 1828, dates the beginning of a
+            new epoch in the history of America. The event of
+            that year was not the "Bill of Abominations," great
+            as was the national excitement which it produced;
+            nor was it yet the then impending political struggle
+            between Jackson and Adams, but the unnoticed
+            meeting of Lundy and Garrison. Great historic
+            movements are born not in the whirlwinds, the earthquakes,
+            and the pomps of human splendor and
+            power, but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand,
+            heroic spirits. Up to this time Garrison had had, as
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_047" id="P_047" title="P_047"></a>
+            the religious revivalist would say, no "realizing
+            sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. Occasionally
+            an utterance had dropped from his pen which
+            indicated that his heart was right on the subject, but
+            which evinced no more than the ordinary opposition
+            to its existence, nor any profound convictions as to
+            his own or the nation's duty in regard to its extinction.
+            His first reference to the question appeared in
+            connection with a notice made by him in the <i>Free
+               Press</i> of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa," in which
+            the authoress sings of:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"The wild and mingling groans of writhing millions,<br>Calling for vengeance on my guilty land."<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            He commended the verses "to all those who wish to
+            cherish female genius, and whose best feelings are
+            enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressed sons of
+            Africa." He was evidently impressed, but the impression
+            belonged to the ordinary, transitory sort. His
+            next recorded utterance on the subject was also in
+            the <i>Free Press</i>. It was made in relation with some
+            just and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth
+            of July oration, with its "ceaseless apostrophes to
+            liberty, and fierce denunciations of tyranny." Such
+            a tone was false and mischievous&#8212;the occasion was
+            for other and graver matter. "There is one theme,"
+            he declares, "which should be dwelt upon, till our
+            whole country is free from the curse&#8212;it is slavery."
+            The emphasis and energy of the rebuke and exhortation
+            lifts this second allusion to slavery, quite outside
+            of merely ordinary occurrences. It was not an ordinary
+            personal occurrence for it served to reveal in its
+            lightning-like flash the glow and glare of a conscience
+            taking fire. The fire slumbered until a few weeks
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_048" id="P_048" title="P_048"></a>
+            before Lundy entered Boston, when there were again
+            the glow and glare of a moral sense in the first stages
+            of ignition on the enormity of slave institutions. The
+            act of South Carolina in making it illegal to teach a
+            colored person to read and write struck this spark
+            from his pen: "There is something unspeakably
+            pitiable and alarming," he writes in the
+            <i>Philanthropist</i>,
+            "in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary,
+            for self-preservation, to seal up the mind and
+            debase the intellect of man to brutal incapacity....
+            Truly the alternatives of oppression are terrible. But
+            this state of things cannot always last, nor ignorance
+            alone shield us from destruction." His interest in the
+            question was clearly growing. But it was still in the
+            gristle of sentiment waiting to be transmuted into
+            the bone and muscle of a definite and determined purpose,
+            when first he met Lundy. This meeting of the
+            two men, was to Garrison what the fourth call of God
+            was to Samuel, the Hebrew lad, who afterward became
+            a prophet. As the three previous calls of God and
+            the conversations with Eli had prepared the Jewish
+            boy to receive and understand the next summons of
+            Jehovah, so had Garrison's former experience and
+            education made him ready for the divine message
+            when uttered in his ears by Lundy. All the sense of
+            truth and the passion for righteousness of the young
+            man replied to the voice, "Here am I." The hardening
+            process of growth became immediately manifest
+            in him. Whereas before there was sentimental opposition
+            to slavery, there began then an opposition,
+            active and practical. When Lundy convened many
+            of the ministers of the city to expose to them the barbarism
+            of slavery, Garrison sat in the room, and as
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_049" id="P_049" title="P_049"></a>
+            Lundy himself records, "expressed his approbation
+            of my doctrines." The young reformer must needs
+            stand up and make public profession of his new faith
+            and of his agreement with the anti-slavery principles
+            of the older. But it was altogether different with the
+            assembled ministers. Lundy, as was his wont on
+            such occasions, desired and urged the formation of an
+            anti-slavery society, but these sons of Eli of that generation
+            were not willing to offend their slave-holding
+            brethren in the South. Eyes they had, but they
+            refused to see; ears, which they stopped to the cry of
+            the slave breaking in anguish and appeal from the
+            lips of this modern man of God. Garrison, eleven
+            years later, after the lips, which were eloquent then
+            with their great sorrow, were speechless in the grave,
+            told the story of that ministers' meeting. And
+            here is the story:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "He (Lundy) might as well have urged the stones
+            in the streets to cry out in behalf of the perishing
+            captives. Oh, the moral cowardice, the chilling apathy,
+            the criminal unbelief, the cruel skepticism, that
+            were revealed on that memorable occasion! My soul
+            was on fire then, as it is now, in view of such a development.
+            Every soul in the room was heartily
+            opposed to slavery, but, it would terribly alarm and
+            enrage the South to know that an anti-slavery society
+            existed in Boston. But it would do harm rather than
+            good openly to agitate the subject. But <em>perhaps a
+               select</em> committee might be formed, to be called by some
+            name that would neither give offence, nor excite suspicion
+            as to its real design! One or two only were
+            for bold and decisive action; but as they had neither
+            station nor influence, and did not rank among the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_050" id="P_050" title="P_050"></a>
+            wise and prudent, their opinion did not weigh very
+            heavily, and the project was finally abandoned. Poor
+            Lundy! that meeting was a damper to his feelings."
+            There is no doubt that Garrison was one of the very
+            few present, who "were for bold and decisive action"
+            against the iniquity. The grief and disappointment
+            of his brave friend touched his heart with a brother's
+            affection and pity. The worldly wisdom and lukewarmness
+            of the clergy kindled a righteous indignation
+            within his freedom-loving soul. This was his
+            first bitter lesson from the clergy. There were, alas,
+            many and bitterer experiences to follow, but of them
+            he little recked at the time. As this nineteenth-century
+            prophet mused upon the horrible thing the fires
+            of a life purpose burned within him. And oftener
+            thenceforth we catch glimpses of the glow and glare
+            of a soul bursting into flame. The editorials in the
+            <i>Philanthropist</i>, which swiftly followed Lundy's
+            visit, began to throw off more heat as the revolving wheels
+            of an electrical machine throw off sparks. The evil
+            that there was in the world, under which, wherever he
+            turned, he saw his brother man staggering and bleeding,
+            was no longer what it had been, a vague and
+            shadowy apparition, but rather a terrible and tremendous
+            reality against which he must go forth to fight
+            the fight of a lifetime. And so he girded him with his
+            life purpose and flung his moral earnestness against
+            the triple-headed curse of intemperance, slavery, and
+            war. A mighty human love had begun to flow
+            inward and over him. And as the tide steadily rose
+            it swallowed and drowned all the egoism of self and
+            race in the altruism of an all-embracing humanity.
+            When an apprentice in the office of the Newburyport
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_051" id="P_051" title="P_051"></a><i>Herald</i>, and writing on the subject of South
+            American affairs he grew hot over the wrongs suffered by
+            American vessels at Valparaiso and Lima. He was
+            for finishing "with cannon what cannot be done in a
+            conciliatory and equitable manner, where justice
+            demands such proceedings." This was at seventeen
+            when he was a boy with the thoughts of a boy. Six
+            years later he is a man who has looked upon the sorrows
+            of men. His old boy-world is far behind him,
+            and the ever-present sufferings of his kind are in
+            front of him. War now is no longer glorious, for it
+            adds immeasurably to the sum of human misery.
+            War ought to be abolished with intemperance and
+            slavery. And this duty he began to utter in the ears
+            of his country. "The brightest traits in the American
+            character will derive their luster, not from the laurels
+            picked from the field of blood, not from the magnitude
+            of our navy and the success of our arms," he
+            proclaimed, "but from our exertions to banish war
+            from the earth, to stay the ravages of intemperance
+            among all that is beautiful and fair, to unfetter those
+            who have been enthralled by chains, which we have
+            forged, and to spread the light of knowledge and
+            religious liberty, wherever darkness and superstition
+            reign.... The struggle is full of sublimity, the conquest
+            embraces the world." Lundy himself did not
+            fully appreciate the immense gain, which his cause
+            had made in the conversion of Garrison into an active
+            friend of the slave. Not at once certainly. Later he
+            knew. The discovery of a kindred spirit in Boston
+            exerted probably no little influence in turning for the
+            second time his indefatigable feet toward that city.
+            He made it a second visit in July, 1828, where again
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_052" id="P_052" title="P_052"></a>
+            he met Garrison. His experience with the ministers
+            did not deter him from repeating the horrible tale
+            wherever he could get together an audience. This
+            time he secured his first public hearing in Boston.
+            It was in the Federal Street Baptist Church. He
+            spoke not only on the subject of slavery itself, the
+            growth of anti-slavery societies, but on a new phase
+            of the general subject, viz., the futility of the Colonization
+            Society as an abolition instrument. Garrison
+            was present, and treasured up in his heart the words
+            of his friend. He did not forget how Lundy had
+            pressed upon his hearers the importance of petitioning
+            Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District
+            of Columbia, as we shall see further on. But
+            poor Lundy was unfortunate with the ministers. He
+            got this time not the cold shoulder alone but a clerical
+            slap in the face as well. He had just sat down
+            when the pastor of the church, Rev. Howard Malcolm,
+            uprose in wrath and inveighed against any intermeddling
+            of the North with slavery, and brought the
+            meeting with a high hand to a close. This incident
+            was the first collision with the church of the forlorn
+            hope of the Abolition movement. Trained as Garrison
+            was in the orthodox creed and sound in that creed
+            almost to bigotry, this behavior of a standard-bearer
+            of the church, together with the apathy displayed by
+            the clergy on a former occasion, caused probably the
+            first "little rift within the lute" of his creed, "that
+            by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening,
+            slowly silence all." For in religion as in love,
+            "Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all." The Rev.
+            Howard Malcolm's arbitrary proceeding had prevented
+            the organization of an anti-slavery committee.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_053" id="P_053" title="P_053"></a>
+            But this was affected at a second meeting of the
+            friends of the slave. Garrison was one of the twenty
+            gentlemen who were appointed such a committee.
+            His zeal and energy far exceeded the zeal and energy
+            of the remaining nineteen. He did not need the
+            earnest exhortation of Lundy to impress upon his
+            memory the importance of "activity and steady perseverance."
+            He perceived almost at once that everything
+            depended on them. And so he had formed
+            plans for a vigorous campaign against the existence
+            of slavery in the District of Columbia. But before he
+            was ready to set out along the line of work, which he
+            had laid down for Massachusetts, the scene of his
+            labors shifted to Bennington, Vermont. Before he
+            left Boston, Lundy had recognized him as "a valuable
+            coadjutor." The relationship between the two men
+            was becoming beautifully close. The more Lundy
+            saw of Garrison, the more he must have seemed to
+            him a man after his own heart. And so no wonder
+            that he was solicitous of fastening him to his cause
+            with hooks of steel. The older had written the
+            younger reformer a letter almost paternal in tone&#8212;he
+            must do thus and thus, he must not be disappointed
+            if he finds the heavy end of the burthen
+            borne by himself, while those associated with him do
+            little to keep the wheels moving, he must remember
+            that "a few will have the labor to perform and the
+            honor to share." Then there creeps into his words a
+            grain of doubt, a vague fear lest his young ally should
+            take his hands from the plough and go the way of all
+            men, and here are the words which Paul might have
+            written to Timothy: "I hope you will persevere in
+            your work, steadily, but not make too large calculations
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_054" id="P_054" title="P_054"></a>
+            on what may be accomplished in a particularly
+            stated time. You have now girded on a holy warfare.
+            Lay not down your weapons until honorable
+            terms are obtained. <em>The God of hosts is on your side.</em>
+            Steadiness and faithfulness will most assuredly overcome
+            every obstacle." The older apostle had yet to
+            learn that the younger always did what he undertook
+            in the field of morals and philanthropy.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But the scene had shifted from Boston to Bennington,
+            and with the young reformer goes also his plan
+            of campaign for anti-slavery work. The committee
+            of twenty, now nineteen since his departure, slumbered
+            and slept in the land of benevolent intentions,
+            a practical illustration of Lundy's pungent saying,
+            that "philanthropists are the slowest creatures breathing.
+            They think forty times before they act." The
+            committee never acted, but its one member in Vermont
+            did act, and that promptly and powerfully as
+            shall shortly appear. Garrison had gone to Bennington
+            to edit the <i>Journal of the Times</i> in the interest
+            of the reelection of John Quincy Adams to the Presidency.
+            For this object he was engaged as editor of
+            the paper. What he was engaged to do he performed
+            faithfully and ably, but along with his fulfillment of
+            his contract with the friends of Mr. Adams, he carried
+            the one which he had made with humanity likewise.
+            In his salutatory he outlined his intentions in
+            this regard thus: "We have three objects in view,
+            which we shall pursue through life, whether in this
+            place or elsewhere&#8212;namely, the suppression of intemperance
+            and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation
+            of every slave in the republic, and the perpetuity
+            of national peace. In discussing these topics
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_055" id="P_055" title="P_055"></a>
+            what is wanting in vigor shall be made up in zeal."
+            From the issue of that first number if the friends of
+            Adams had no cause to complain of the character of
+            his zeal and vigor in their service, neither had the
+            friends of humanity. What he had proposed doing
+            in Massachusetts as a member of the anti-slavery
+            committee of twenty, he performed with remarkable
+            energy and success in Vermont. It was to obtain
+            signatures not by the hundred to a petition for the
+            abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, but
+            by the thousands, and that from all parts of the State.
+            He sent copies of the petition to every postmaster in
+            Vermont with the request that he obtain signatures
+            in his neighborhood. Through his exertions a public
+            meeting of citizens of Bennington was held and indorsed
+            the petition. The plan for polling the anti-slavery
+            sentiment of the State worked admirably.
+            The result was a monster petition with 2,352 names
+            appended. This he forwarded to the seat of Government.
+            It was a powerful prayer, but as to its effect,
+            Garrison had no delusions. He possessed even then
+            singularly clear ideas as to how the South would receive
+            such petitions, and of the course which it would
+            pursue to discourage their presentation. He was no less
+            clear as to how the friends of freedom ought to carry
+            themselves under the circumstances. In the <i>Journal
+               of the Times</i> of November, 1828, he thus expressed
+            himself: "It requires no spirit of prophecy to predict
+            that it (the petition) will create great opposition.
+            An attempt will be made to frighten Northern
+            'dough-faces' as in case of the Missouri question.
+            There will be an abundance of furious declamation,
+            menace, and taunt. Are we, therefore, to approach
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_056" id="P_056" title="P_056"></a>
+            the subject timidly&#8212;with half a heart&#8212;as if we were
+            treading on forbidden ground? No, indeed, but earnestly,
+            fearlessly, as becomes men, who are determined
+            to clear their country and themselves from the guilt
+            of oppressing God's free and lawful creatures."
+            About the same time he began to make his assaults
+            on the personal representatives of the slave-power in
+            Congress, cauterizing in the first instance three
+            Northern "dough-faces," who had voted against some
+            resolutions, looking to the abolition of the slave-trade
+            and slavery itself in the District of Columbia. So
+            while the South thus early was seeking to frighten
+            the North from the agitation of the slavery question
+            in Congress, Garrison was unconsciously preparing
+            a countercheck by making it dangerous for a Northern
+            man to practice Southern principles in the
+            National Legislature. He did not mince his words,
+            but called a spade a spade, and sin, sin. He perceived
+            at once that if he would kill the sin of slave-holding,
+            he could not spare the sinner. And so he
+            spoke the names of the delinquents from the housetop
+            of the <i>Journal of the Times</i>, stamping upon their
+            brows the scarlet letter of their crime against liberty.
+            He had said in the October before: "It is time that
+            a voice of remonstrance went forth from the North,
+            that should peal in the ears of every slaveholder like
+            a roar of thunder.... For ourselves, we are resolved
+            to agitate this subject to the utmost; nothing but
+            death shall prevent us from denouncing a crime which
+            has no parallel in human depravity; we shall take
+            high ground. <em>The alarm must be perpetual.</em>" A voice
+            of remonstrance, with thunder growl accompaniment,
+            was rising higher and clearer from the pen of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_057" id="P_057" title="P_057"></a>
+            young editor. His tone of earnestness was deepening
+            to the stern bass of the moral reformer, and the
+            storm breath of enthusiasm was blowing to a blaze
+            the glowing coals of his humanity. The wail of
+            the fleeing fugitive from the house of bondage
+            sounded no longer far away and unreal in his ears,
+            but thrilled now right under the windows of his soul.
+            The masonic excitement and the commotion created
+            by the abduction of Morgan he caught up and shook
+            before the eyes of his countrymen as an object lesson
+            of the million-times greater wrong daily done the
+            slaves. "All this fearful commotion," he pealed,
+            "has arisen from the abduction of <em>one man</em>. More
+            than two millions of unhappy beings are groaning out
+            their lives in bondage, and scarcely a pulse quickens,
+            or a heart leaps, or a tongue pleads in their behalf.
+            'Tis a trifling affair, which concerns nobody. Oh!
+            for the spirit that rages, to break every fetter of
+            oppression!" Such a spirit was fast taking possession
+            of the writer.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Of this Lundy was well informed. He had not
+            lost sight of his young coadjutor, but had watched
+            his course with great hope and growing confidence.
+            In him he found what he had discovered in no one
+            else, anti-slavery activity and perseverance. He had
+            often found men who protested loudly their benevolence
+            for the negro, but who made not the slightest
+            exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes.
+            "They will pen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or
+            so&#8212;and then&#8212;<em>the subject is exhausted!</em>" It was not so
+            with his young friend, the Bennington editor. He
+            saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject
+            of African emancipation can never be exhausted
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_058" id="P_058" title="P_058"></a>
+            until the system of slavery itself be totally annihilated."
+            He was faithful among the faithless found
+            by Lundy. To reassure his doubting leader, Garrison
+            took upon himself publicly a vow of perpetual consecration
+            to the slave. "Before God and our country,"
+            he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation
+            of the enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost
+            in our pursuits. The people of New England are
+            interested in this matter, and they must be aroused
+            from their lethargy as by a trumpet-call. They shall
+            not quietly slumber while we have the management
+            of a press, or strength to hold a pen." The question
+            of slavery had at length obtained the ascendency
+            over all other questions in his regard. And when
+            Lundy perceived this he set out from Baltimore to
+            Bennington to invite Garrison to join hands with
+            him in his emancipation movement at Baltimore.
+            He performed the long journey on foot, with staff in
+            hand in true apostolic fashion. The two men of
+            God met among the mountains of Vermont, and
+            when the elder returned from the heights the younger
+            had resolved to follow him to the vales where men
+            needed his help, the utmost which he could give
+            them. He agreed to join his friend in Baltimore and
+            there edit with him his little paper with the grand
+            name (<i>The Genius of Universal Emancipation</i>),
+            devoted to preaching the gospel of the gradual abolishment of
+            American slavery. Garrison was to take the position
+            of managing editor, and Lundy to look after the subscription
+            list. The younger to be resident, the elder
+            itinerant partner in the publication of the paper.
+            Garrison closed his relations with the <i>Journal of the
+               Times</i>, March 27, 1829, and delivered his valedictory
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_059" id="P_059" title="P_059"></a>
+            to its readers. This valedictory strikes with stern
+            hammer-stroke the subject of his thoughts. "Hereafter,"
+            it reads, "the editorial charge of this paper
+            will devolve on another person. I am invited to
+            occupy a broader field, and to engage in a higher
+            enterprise; that field embraces the whole country&#8212;that
+            enterprise is in behalf of the slave population."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "To my apprehension, the subject of slavery
+            involves interests of greater moment to our welfare as
+            a republic, and demands a more prudent and minute
+            investigation than any other which has come before
+            the American people since the Revolutionary struggle&#8212;than
+            all others which now occupy their attention.
+            No body of men on the face of the earth deserve
+            their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so
+            much as the slaves of this country; and yet they are
+            almost entirely neglected. It is true many a cheek
+            burns with shame in view of our national inconsistency,
+            and many a heart bleeds for the miserable
+            African. It is true examples of disinterested benevolence
+            and individual sacrifices are numerous, particularly
+            in the Southern States; but no systematic,
+            vigorous, and successful measures have been made to
+            overthrow this fabric of oppression. I trust in God
+            that I may be the humble instrument of breaking at
+            least one chain, and restoring one captive to liberty;
+            it will amply repay a life of severe toil." The causes
+            of temperance and peace came in also for an earnest
+            parting word, but they had clearly declined to a
+            place of secondary importance in the writer's regard.
+            To be more exact, they had not really declined, but
+            the slavery question had risen in his mind above both.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_060" id="P_060" title="P_060"></a>
+            They were great questions, but it was <em>the</em> question&#8212;had
+            become <em>his</em> cause.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Lundy, after his visit to Garrison at Bennington,
+            started on a trip to Hayti with twelve emancipated
+            slaves, whom he had undertaken to colonize
+            there. Garrison awaited in Boston the return of his
+            partner to Baltimore. The former, meanwhile, was
+            out of employment, and sorely in need of money.
+            Never had he been favored with a surplusage of the
+            root of all evil. He was deficient in the money-getting
+            and money-saving instinct. Such was plainly
+            not his vocation, and so it happened that wherever he
+            turned, he and poverty walked arm in arm, and the
+            interrogatory, "wherewithal shall I be fed and
+            clothed on the morrow?" was never satisfactorily
+            answered until the morrow arrived. This led him at
+            times into no little embarrassment and difficulty. But
+            since he was always willing to work at the case,
+            and to send his "pride on a pilgrimage to Mecca,"
+            the embarrassment was not protracted, nor did the
+            difficulty prove insuperable.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Congregational societies of Boston invited
+            him in June to deliver before them a Fourth of July
+            address in the interest of the Colonization Society.
+            The exercises took place in Park Street Church. Ten
+            days before this event he was called upon to pay a
+            bill of four dollars for failure to appear at the May
+            muster. Refusing to do so, he was thereupon summoned
+            to come into the Police Court on the glorious
+            Fourth to show cause why he ought not to pay the
+            amercement. He was in a quandary. He did not
+            owe the money, but as he could not be in two places
+            at the same time, and, inasmuch as he wanted very
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_061" id="P_061" title="P_061"></a>
+            much to deliver his address before the Congregational
+            Societies, and did not at all long to make the acquaintance
+            of his honor, the Police Court Judge, he
+            determined to pay the fine. But, alack and alas! he
+            had "not a farthing" with which to discharge him
+            from his embarrassment. Fortunately, if he wanted
+            money he did not want friends. And one of these,
+            Jacob Horton, of Newburyport, who had married
+            his "old friend and playmate, Harriet Farnham,"
+            came to his rescue with the requisite amount.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            On the day and place appointed Garrison appeared
+            before the Congregational Societies with an address,
+            to the like of which, it is safe to say, they had never
+            before listened. It was the Fourth of July, but the
+            orator was in no holiday humor. There was not, in
+            a single sentence of the oration the slightest endeavor
+            to be playful with his audience. It was rather
+            an eruption of human suffering, and of the humanity
+            of one man to man. What the Boston clergy saw
+            that afternoon, in the pulpit of Park Street Church,
+            was the vision of a soul on fire. Garrison burned
+            and blazed as the sun that July afternoon burned
+            and blazed in the city's streets. None without
+            escaped the scorching rays of the latter, none within
+            was able to shun the fervid heat of the former.
+            Those of my readers who have watched the effects
+            of the summer's sun on a track of sandy land and
+            have noted how, about midday, the heat seems to
+            rise in sparkling particles and exhalations out of the
+            hot, surcharged surface, can form some notion of the
+            moral fervor and passion of this Fourth of July address,
+            delivered more than sixty years ago, in Boston.
+            Through all the pores of it, over all the length and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_062" id="P_062" title="P_062"></a>
+            breadth of it, there went up bright, burning particles
+            from the sunlit sympathy and humanity of the young
+            reformer.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In beginning, he animadverted, among other
+            things, on the spread of intemperance, of political
+            corruption, on the profligacy of the press, and, amid
+            them all, the self-complacency and boastfulness of
+            the national spirit, as if it bore a charmed life.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "But," he continued, "there is another evil which,
+            if we had to contend against nothing else, should
+            make us quake for the issue. It is a gangrene preying
+            upon our vitals&#8212;an earthquake rumbling under
+            our feet&#8212;a mine accumulating material for a national
+            catastrophe. It should make this a day of fasting
+            and prayer, not of boisterous merriment and idle
+            pageantry&#8212;a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory
+            joy. It should spike every cannon, and
+            haul down every banner. Our garb should be sack-cloth&#8212;our
+            heads bowed in the dust&#8212;our supplications
+            for the pardon and assistance of Heaven.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Sirs, I am not come to tell you that slavery is a
+            curse, debasing in its effects, cruel in its operations,
+            fatal in its continuance. The day and the occasion
+            require no such revelation. I do not claim the discovery
+            as my own, that 'all men are born equal,' and
+            that among their inalienable rights are 'life, liberty,
+            and the pursuit of happiness.' Were I addressing any
+            other than a free and Christian assembly, the enforcement
+            of this truth might be pertinent. Neither do I
+            intend to analyze the horrors of slavery for your
+            inspection, nor to freeze your blood with authentic
+            recitals of savage cruelty. Nor will time allow me to
+            explore even a furlong of that immense wilderness of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_063" id="P_063" title="P_063"></a>
+            suffering which remains unsubdued in our land. I
+            take it for granted that the existence of these evils is
+            acknowledged, if not rightly understood. My object
+            is to define and enforce our duty, as Christians and
+            philanthropists."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This was, by way of exordium, the powerful skirmish
+            line of the address. Assuming the existence of
+            the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme, viz., the
+            duty of abolishing it. To this end he laid down four
+            propositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon
+            on the heights overlooking and commanding his
+            enemies' works. The first, broadly stated, asserted
+            the kinship of the slave to the free population of the
+            republic. They were men; they were natives of the
+            country; they were in dire need. They were ignorant,
+            degraded, morally and socially. They were the
+            heathen at home, whose claims far outranked those
+            in foreign lands; they were higher than those of the
+            "Turks or Chinese, for they have the privileges of
+            instruction; higher than the Pagans, for they are not
+            dwellers in a Gospel land; higher than our red men
+            of the forest, for we do not bind them with gyves,
+            nor treat them as chattels."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Then he turned hotly upon the Church, exclaiming:
+            "What has Christianity done by direct effort for
+            our slave population? Comparatively nothing. She
+            has explored the isles of the ocean for objects of
+            commiseration; but, amazing stupidity! she can gaze
+            without emotion on a multitude of miserable beings
+            at home, large enough to constitute a nation of freemen,
+            whom tyranny has heathenized by law. In her
+            public services they are seldom remembered, and in
+            her private donations they are forgotten. From one
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_064" id="P_064" title="P_064"></a>
+            end of the country to the other her charitable societies
+            form golden links of benevolence, and scatter
+            their contributions like rain drops over a parched
+            heath; but they bring no sustenance to the perishing
+            slave. The blood of souls is upon her garments, yet
+            she heeds not the stain. The clanking of the prisoner's
+            chains strike upon her ear, but they cannot penetrate
+            her heart."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Then, with holy wrath upon the nation, thus:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Every Fourth of July our Declaration of Independence
+            is produced, with a sublime indignation, to
+            set forth the tyranny of the mother country, and to
+            challenge the admiration of the world. But what a
+            pitiful detail of grievances does this document present,
+            in comparison with the wrongs which our slaves
+            endure? In the one case it is hardly the plucking of
+            a hair from the head; in the other, it is the crushing
+            of a live body on the wheel&#8212;the stings of the wasp
+            contrasted with the tortures of the Inquisition. Before
+            God I must say that such a glaring contradiction
+            as exists between our creed and practice the
+            annals of six thousand years cannot parallel. In view
+            of it I am ashamed of my country. I am sick of our
+            unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and
+            equality; of our hypocritical cant about the inalienable
+            rights of man. I would not for my right hand
+            stand up before a European assembly, and exult that
+            I am an American citizen, and denounce the usurpations
+            of a kingly government as wicked and unjust;
+            or, should I make the attempt, the recollection of my
+            country's barbarity and despotism would blister my
+            lips, and cover my cheeks with burning blushes of
+            shame."
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_065" id="P_065" title="P_065"></a><p>
+            Passing to his second proposition, which affirmed
+            the right of the free States to be in at the death of
+            slavery, he pointed out that slavery was not sectional
+            but national in its influence. If the consequences of
+            slave-holding did not flow beyond the limits of the
+            slave section, the right would still exist, on the principle
+            that what affected injuriously one part must
+            ultimately hurt the whole body politic. But it was
+            not true that slavery concerned only the States where
+            it existed&#8212;the parts where it did not exist were
+            involved by their constitutional liability to be called
+            on for aid in case of a slave insurrection, as they were
+            in the slave representation clause of the national compact,
+            through which the North was deprived of its
+            "just influence in the councils of the nation." And,
+            furthermore, the right of the free States to agitate
+            the question inhered in the principle of majority rule&#8212;the
+            white population of the free States being almost
+            double that of the slave States, "and the voice of this
+            overwhelming majority should be potential." He
+            repelled in strong language the wrongfulness of
+            allowing the South to multiply the votes of those
+            freemen by the master's right to count three for every
+            five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican
+            to suffer property to be represented as men, and <i>vice
+               versa</i>, because it gives the South an unjust ascendancy
+            over other portions of territory, and a power
+            which may be perverted on every occasion."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He looked without shrinking upon the possibility
+            of disunion even then.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Now I say that, on the broad system of equal
+            rights," he declared, "this inequality should no
+            longer be tolerated. If it cannot be speedily put
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_066" id="P_066" title="P_066"></a>
+            down&#8212;not by force but by fair persuasion&#8212;if we are
+            always to remain shackled by unjust, constitutional
+            provisions, when the emergency that imposed them
+            has long since passed away; if we must share in the
+            guilt and danger of destroying the bodies and souls
+            of men <em>as the price of our Union</em>; if the slave States
+            will haughtily spurn our assistance, and refuse to consult
+            the general welfare, then the fault is not ours if
+            a separation eventually takes place."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Considering that he was in his twenty-fourth year,
+            and that the Abolition movement had then no actual
+            existence, the orator evinced surprising prescience in
+            his forecast of the future, and of the strife and hostility
+            which the agitation was destined to engender.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "But the plea is prevalent," he said, "that any
+            interference by the free States, however benevolent
+            or cautious it might be, would only irritate and
+            inflame the jealousies of the South, and retard the
+            cause of emancipation. If any man believes that
+            slavery can be abolished without a struggle with the
+            worst passions of human nature, quietly, harmoniously,
+            he cherishes a delusion. It can never be done,
+            unless the age of miracles returns. No; we must
+            expect a collision, full of sharp asperities and bitterness.
+            We shall have to contend with the insolence,
+            and pride, and selfishness of many a heartless being.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Sirs, the prejudices of the North are stronger
+            than those of the South; they bristle like so many
+            bayonets around the slaves; they forge and rivet the
+            chains of the nation. Conquer them and the victory
+            is won. The enemies of emancipation take courage
+            from our criminal timidity.... We are ...
+            afraid of our own shadows, who have been driven
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_067" id="P_067" title="P_067"></a>
+            back to the wall again and again; who stand trembling
+            under their whips; who turn pale, retreat,
+            and surrender at a talismanic threat to dissolve the
+            Union...." But the difficulties did not daunt
+            him, nor the dangers cow him. He did not doubt,
+            but was assured, that truth was mighty and would
+            prevail. "Moral influence when in vigorous exercise,"
+            he said, "is irresistible. It has an immortal
+            essence. It can no more be trod out of existence by
+            the iron foot of time, or by the ponderous march of
+            iniquity, than matter can be annihilated. It may disappear
+            for a time; but it lives in some shape or other,
+            in some place or other, and will rise with renovated
+            strength. Let us then be up and doing. In the
+            simple and stirring language of the stout-hearted
+            Lundy, all the friends of the cause must go to work,
+            keep to work, hold on, and never give up." The
+            closing paragraph is this powerful peroration: "I
+            will say, finally, that I despair of the republic while
+            slavery exists therein. If I look up to God for success,
+            no smile of mercy or forgiveness dispels the
+            gloom of futurity; if to our own resources, they are
+            daily diminishing; if to all history our destruction is
+            not only possible but almost certain. Why should
+            we slumber at this momentous crisis? If our hearts
+            were dead to every thought of humanity; if it were
+            lawful to oppress, where power is ample; still, if we
+            had any regard for our safety and happiness, we
+            should strive to crush the vampire which is feeding
+            upon our life-blood. All the selfishness of our nature
+            cries aloud for a better security. Our own vices are
+            too strong for us, and keep us in perpetual alarm;
+            how, in addition to these, shall we be able to contend
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_068" id="P_068" title="P_068"></a>
+            successfully with millions of armed and desperate
+            men, as we must, eventually, if slavery do not cease?"
+            Exit the apprentice, enter the master. The period of
+            preparation is ended, the time of action begun. The
+            address was the fiery cry of the young prophet ere
+            he plunged into the unsubdued wilderness of
+            American slavery.
+
+         </p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap3"></a>
+            CHAPTER III.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE MAN BEGINS HIS MINISTRY.
+
+         </h2><a class="newpage" name="P_069" id="P_069" title="P_069"></a><p>
+            Some time in August, 1829, Garrison landed in Baltimore,
+            and began with Lundy the editorship of
+            <i>The Genius of Universal Emancipation</i>. Radical as
+            the Park Street Church address was, it had, nevertheless,
+            ceased to represent in one essential matter his anti-slavery
+            convictions and principles. The moral impetus
+            and ground-swell of the address had carried
+            him beyond the position where its first flood of feeling
+            had for the moment left him. During the composition
+            of the address he was transported with grief
+            and indignation at the monstrous wrong which
+            slavery did the slaves and the nation. He had not
+            thought out for himself any means to rid both of the
+            curse. The white heat of the address destroyed for
+            the instant all capacity for such thinking. "Who can
+            be amazed, temperate, and furious&#8212;in a moment?
+            No man. The expedition of his violent love outran
+            the pauser reason" He had accepted the colonization
+            scheme as an instrument for removing the evil,
+            and called on all good citizens "to assist in establishing
+            auxiliary colonization societies in every State,
+            county, and town"; and implored "their direct and
+            liberal patronage to the parent society." He had not
+            apparently, so much as dreamed of any other than
+            gradual emancipation. "The emancipation of all
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_070" id="P_070" title="P_070"></a>
+            the slaves of this generation is most assuredly out of
+            the question," he said; "the fabric which now towers
+            above the Alps, must be taken away brick by brick,
+            and foot by foot, till it is reduced so low that it may
+            be overturned without burying the nation in its
+            ruins. Years may elapse before the completion of
+            the achievement; generations of blacks may go
+            down to the grave, manacled and lacerated, without
+            a hope for their children." He was on the Fourth of
+            July a firm and earnest believer in the equity and
+            efficacy of gradualism. But after that day, and some
+            time before his departure for Baltimore, he began to
+            think on this subject. The more he thought the less
+            did gradualism seem defensible on moral grounds.
+            John Wesley had said that slavery was the "sum of
+            all villainies"; it was indeed the sin of sins, and as
+            such ought to be abandoned not gradually but immediately.
+            Slave-holding was sin and slaveholders
+            were sinners. The sin and sinner should both be denounced
+            as such and the latter called to instant repentance,
+            and the duty of making immediate restitution
+            of the stolen liberties of their slaves. This was
+            the tone ministers of religion held every where toward
+            sin and sinners, and this should be the tone held by
+            the preachers of Abolition toward slavery, and slaveholders.
+            To admit the principle of gradualism was for
+            Abolition to emasculate itself of its most virile quality.
+            Garrison, consequently rejected gradualism as
+            a weapon, and took up instead the great and quickening
+            doctrine of immediatism. Lundy did not know
+            of this change in the convictions of his coadjutor
+            until his arrival in Baltimore. Then Garrison frankly
+            unburdened himself and declared his decision to conduct
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_071" id="P_071" title="P_071"></a>
+            his campaign against the national iniquity along
+            the lines of immediate and unconditional emancipation.
+            The two on this new radicalism did not see
+            eye to eye. But Lundy with sententious shrewdness
+            and liberality suggested to the young radical: "Thee
+            may put thy initials to thy articles and I will put my
+            initials to mine, and each will bear his own burden."
+            And the arrangement pleased the young radical, for
+            it enabled him to free his soul of the necessity which
+            was then sitting heavily upon it. The precise state
+            of his mind in respect of the question at this juncture
+            in its history and in his own is made plain enough in
+            his salutatory address in <i>The Genius of Universal
+               Emancipation</i>. The vow made in Bennington ten
+            months before to devote his life to philanthrophy,
+            and the dedication of himself made six months afterward
+            to the extirpation of American slavery, he
+            solemnly renews and reseals in Baltimore. He does
+            not hate intemperance and war less, but slavery more,
+            and those, therefore, he formally relegates thenceforth
+            to a place of secondary importance in the endeavors
+            of the future. It is obvious that the colonization
+            scheme has no strong hold upon his intelligence. He
+            does not conceal his respect for it as an instrument
+            of freedom, but he puts no high value on its utility.
+            "It may pluck a few leaves," he remarks, "from the
+            Bohon Upas, but can neither extract its roots nor
+            destroy its withering properties. Viewed as an auxiliary,
+            it deserves encouragement; but as a remedy
+            it is altogether inadequate." But this was not all.
+            As a remedy, colonization was not only altogether inadequate,
+            its influence was indirectly pernicious, in
+            that it lulled the popular mind into "a belief that
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_072" id="P_072" title="P_072"></a>
+            the monster has received his mortal wound." He
+            perceived that this resultant indifference and apathy
+            operated to the advantage of slavery, and to the injury
+            of freedom. Small, therefore, as was the good
+            which the Colonization Society was able to achieve, it
+            was mixed with no little ill. Although Garrison has
+            not yet begun to think on the subject, to examine into
+            the motives and purposes of the society, it does not
+            take a prophet to foresee that some day he will. He
+            had already arrived at conclusions in respect of the
+            rights of the colored people "to choose their own
+            dwelling place," and against the iniquity of their expatriation,
+            which cut directly at the roots of the
+            colonization scheme. Later the pro-slavery character
+            of the society will be wholly revealed to him. But
+            truth in the breast of a reformer as of others must
+            needs follow the great law of moral growth, first the
+            blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear.
+            It is enough that he has made the tremendous step
+            from gradual to immediate and unconditional emancipation
+            on the soil.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At this period he tested the disposition of slaveholders
+            to manumit their slaves. The Colonization
+            Society had given it out that there was no little
+            desire on the part of many masters to set their slaves
+            free. All that was wanted for a practical demonstration
+            in this direction was the assurance of free
+            transportation out of the country for the emancipated
+            slaves. Lundy had made arrangement for the
+            transportation of fifty slaves to Hayti and their
+            settlement in that country. So he and Garrison
+            advertised this fact in the <i>Genius</i>, but they
+            waited in vain for a favorable response from the South&#8212;notwithstanding
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_073" id="P_073" title="P_073"></a>
+            the following humane inducement which this
+            advertisement offered: "THE PRICE OF PASSAGE WILL BE
+            ADVANCED, and everything furnished of which they
+            may stand in need, until they shall have time to prepare
+            their houses and set in to work." No master
+            was moved to take advantage of the opportunity.
+            This was discouraging to the believers in the efficacy
+            of colonization as a potent anti-slavery instrument.
+            But Garrison was no such believer. With unerring
+            moral instinct he had from the start placed his
+            reliance "on nothing but the eternal principles of
+            justice for the speedy overthrow of slavery."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He obtained at this period an intimate personal
+            knowledge of the free colored people. He saw that
+            they were not essentially unlike other races&#8212;that
+            there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar
+            about them, and that the evil or the good which they
+            manifested was the common property of mankind in
+            similar circumstances. He forthwith became their
+            brave defender against the common slanders of the
+            times. "There is a prevalent disposition among all
+            classes to traduce the habits and morals of our free
+            blacks," he remarked in the <i>Genius</i>. "The most
+            scandalous exaggerations in regard to their condition
+            are circulated by a thousand mischievous
+            tongues, and no reproach seems to them too deep or
+            unmerited. Vile and malignant indeed is this practice,
+            and culpable are they who follow it. We do
+            not pretend to say that crime, intemperance, and
+            suffering, to a considerable extent, cannot be found
+            among the free blacks; but we do assert that they are
+            as moral, peaceable, and industrious as that class of
+            the whites who are, like them, in indigent circumstances&#8212;and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_074" id="P_074" title="P_074"></a>
+            far less intemperate than the great
+            body of foreign immigrants who infest and corrupt
+            our shores." This idea of the natural equality of the
+            races he presented in the <i>Genius</i> a few weeks
+            before with Darwinian breadth in the following admirable
+            sentences: "I deny the postulate that God has made,
+            by an irreversible decree, or any inherent qualities,
+            one portion of the human race superior to another.
+            No matter how many breeds are amalgamated&#8212;no
+            matter how many shades of color intervene between
+            tribes or nations give them the same chances to
+            improve, and a fair start at the same time, and the
+            result will be equally brilliant, equally productive,
+            equally grand."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At the same time that he was making active, personal
+            acquaintance with the free colored people, he
+            was making actual personal acquaintance with the
+            barbarism of slavery also. "The distinct application
+            of a whip, and the shrieks of anguish" of the
+            slave, his residence in Baltimore had taught him was
+            "nothing uncommon" in that city. Such an instance
+            had come to him while in the street where the office
+            of the <i>Genius</i> was located. It was what was
+            occurring at almost all hours of the day and in almost all
+            parts of the town. He had not been in Baltimore
+            a month when he saw a specimen of the brutality of
+            slavery on the person of a negro, who had been mercilessly
+            flogged. On his back were thirty-seven gashes
+            made with a cowskin, while on his head were many
+            bruises besides. It was a Sunday morning, fresh
+            from his terrible punishment, that the poor fellow
+            had found the editors of the <i>Genius</i>, who, with
+            the compassion of brothers, took him in, dressed his
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_075" id="P_075" title="P_075"></a>
+            wounds, and cared for him for two days. Such an
+            experience was no new horror to Lundy, but it was
+            doubtless Garrison's first lesson in that line, and it
+            sank many fathoms deep into his heart.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Maryland was one of the slave-breeding States and
+            Baltimore a slave emporium. There was enacted the
+            whole business of slavery as a commercial enterprise.
+            Here the human chattels were brought and here
+            warehoused in jails and other places of storage and
+            detention. Here they were put up at public auction,
+            and knocked down to the highest bidder, and from
+            here they were shipped to New Orleans, the great
+            distributing center for such merchandise. He heard
+            what Lundy had years before heard, the wail of
+            captive mothers and fathers, wives, husbands and
+            children, torn from each other; like Lundy, "he
+            felt their pang of distress; and the iron entered his
+            soul." He could not hold his peace in the midst of
+            such abominations, but boldly exposed and denounced
+            them. His indignation grew hot when he saw that
+            Northern vessels were largely engaged in the coastwise
+            slave-trade; and when, to his amazement, he
+            learned that the ship <i>Francis</i>, owned by Francis
+            Todd, a Newburyport merchant, had sailed for New
+            Orleans with a gang of seventy-five slaves, his indignation
+            burst into blaze. He blazoned the act and
+            the name of Francis Todd in the <i>Genius</i>, and did
+            verily what he had resolved to do, viz., "to cover with
+            thick infamy all who were concerned in this nefarious
+            business," the captain as well as the owner of the
+            ill-freighted ship. He did literally point at these
+            men the finger of scorn. Every device known to the
+            printer's art for concentrating the reader's attention
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_076" id="P_076" title="P_076"></a>
+            upon particular words and sentences, Garrison made
+            skillful use of in his articles&#8212;from the deep damnation
+            of the heavy black capitals in which he printed
+            the name Francis Todd, to the small caps in which
+            appeared the words, "sentenced to solitary confinement
+            for life," and which he flanked with two terrible
+            indices. But the articles did not need such embellishment.
+            They were red hot branding irons without
+            them. One can almost smell the odor of burning
+            flesh as he reads the words: "It is no worse to fit
+            out piratical cruisers or to engage in the foreign
+            slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade along our
+            coast; and the men who have the wickedness to participate
+            therein, for the purpose of keeping up wealth
+            should be <b>==&gt;</b><b>SENTENCED
+               TO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR LIFE</b>;
+            <b>&lt;==</b><em>they are
+               the enemies of their own species&#8212;highway
+               robbers, and murderers</em>; and their final
+            doom will be, unless they speedily repent, <em>to occupy
+               the lowest depths of perdition</em>. I know that our laws
+            make a distinction in this matter. I know that the
+            man who is allowed to freight his vessel with slaves
+            at home, for a distant market, would be thought
+            worthy of death if he should take a similar freight
+            on the coast of Africa; but I know, too, that this
+            distinction is absurd, and at war with the common
+            sense of mankind, and that God and good men regard
+            it with abhorrence.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "I recollect that it was always a mystery in Newburyport
+            how Mr. Todd contrived to make profitable
+            voyages to New Orleans and other places, when other
+            merchants, with as fair an opportunity to make
+            money, and sending to the same ports at the same
+            time invariably made fewer successful speculations.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_077" id="P_077" title="P_077"></a>
+            The mystery seems to be unravelled. Any man can
+            gather up riches if he does not care by what means
+            they are obtained."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A copy of the <i>Genius</i>, containing this article
+            Garrison sent to the owner of the ship <i>Francis</i>.
+            What followed made it immediately manifest that the branding
+            irons of the reformer had burned home with scarifying
+            effect. Mr. Todd's answer to the strictures
+            was a suit at law against the editors of the
+            <i>Genius</i> for five thousand dollars in damages. But
+            this was not all. The Grand Jury for Baltimore indicted them for
+            publishing "a gross and malicious libel against
+            Francis Todd and Nicholas Brown." This was at the
+            February Term, 1830. On the first day of March following,
+            Garrison was tried. He was ably and eloquently
+            defended by Charles Mitchell, a young lawyer
+            of the Baltimore Bar. But the prejudice of judge
+            and jury rendered the verdict of guilty a foregone
+            conclusion. April 17, 1830, the Court imposed a penalty
+            of fifty dollars and costs, which, with the fine
+            amounted in all to nearly one hundred dollars. The
+            fine and costs Garrison could not pay, and he was
+            therefore committed to jail as a common malefactor.
+            His confinement lasted seven weeks. He did not
+            languish during this period. His head and hands
+            were in fact hardly ever more active than during the
+            term of his imprisonment. Shut out by Maryland
+            justice from work without the jail, he found and did
+            that which needed to be done within "high walls and
+            huge." He was an extraordinary prisoner and was
+            treated with extraordinary consideration by the Warden.
+            He proved himself a genuine evangel to the
+            prisoners, visiting them in their cells, cheering them
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_078" id="P_078" title="P_078"></a>
+            by his bouyant and benevolent words, giving them
+            what he had, a brother's sympathy, which to these ill-fated
+            ones, was more than gold or silver. He indited
+            for such of them as he deemed deserving, letters and
+            petitions to the Governor praying their pardon; and
+            he had the great satisfaction of seeing many of his
+            efforts in this regard crowned with success.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But more than this his imprisonment afforded him
+            an opportunity for a closer acquaintance with the
+            barbarism of slavery than he could possibly have
+            made had he lived otherwise in Baltimore. A Southern
+            jail was not only the place of detention of
+            offenders against social justice, but of slaves waiting
+            for the next market-day, of recaptured fugitives waiting
+            for their owners to reclaim them. Here they were
+            huddled and caged, pitiful and despairing in their
+            misery. Such scenes sickened the young reformer
+            every day. God had opened to him the darkest chapter
+            in the book of the negroes' wrongs. Here is a page
+            from that black volume of oppression and cruelty, the
+            record of which he has preserved in the following
+            graphic narrative: "During my late incarceration
+            in Baltimore prison, four men came to obtain a runaway
+            slave. He was brought out of his cell to confront
+            his master, but pretended not to know him&#8212;did
+            not know that he had ever seen him before&#8212;could
+            not recollect his name. Of course the master was
+            exceedingly irritated. 'Don't you remember,' said
+            he, 'when I gave you not long since thirty-nine lashes
+            under the apple-tree? Another time when I gave you
+            a sound flogging in the barn? Another time when
+            you was scourged for giving me the lie, by saying
+            that the horse was in a good condition?' 'Yes,'
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_079" id="P_079" title="P_079"></a>
+            replied the slave, whose memory was thus quickened,
+            'I do recollect. You have beaten me cruelly without
+            cause; you have not given me enough to eat
+            and drink; and I don't want to go back again.
+            I wish you to sell me to another master. I
+            had rather even go to Georgia than to return
+            home!'
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "'I'll let you know, you villain,' said the master,
+            'that my wishes and not <em>yours</em>, are to be consulted.
+            I'll learn you how to run away again.'"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The other men advised him to take the black
+            home, and cut him up in inch pieces for his impudence,
+            obstinacy, and desertion&#8212;swearing tremendously
+            all the while. The slave was ordered back to
+            his cell. Then ensued the following colloquy between
+            Garrison and the master:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G.&#8212;"Sir, what right have you to that poor creature?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            M.&#8212;"My father left him to me."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G.&#8212;"Suppose your father had broken into a bank
+            and stolen ten thousand dollars, and safely bequeathed
+            that as a legacy; could you conscientiously
+            keep the money? For myself, I had rather rob
+            any bank to an indefinite amount than kidnap a
+            fellow-being, or hold him in bondage; the sin would
+            be less injurious to society, and less sinful in the
+            sight of God."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            M.&#8212;"Perhaps you would like to buy the slave
+            and give him his liberty?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G.&#8212;"Sir, I am a poor man; and were I ever so
+            opulent, it would be necessary, on your part, to make
+            out a clear title to the services of the slave before I
+            could conscientiously make a bargain."
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_080" id="P_080" title="P_080"></a><p>
+            M&#8212;"Well, sir, I can prove from the Bible that
+            slavery is right."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G.&#8212;"Ah! that is a precious book&#8212;the rule of conduct.
+            I have always supposed that its spirit was
+            directly opposed to everything in the shape of fraud
+            and oppression. However, sir, I should be glad to
+            hear your text."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            M. (hesitatingly)&#8212;"Ham&#8212;Noah's curse, you
+            know."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G. (hastily)&#8212;"Oh, sir, you build on a very slender
+            foundation. Granting even&#8212;what remains to be
+            proved&#8212;that the Africans are the descendants of
+            Ham, Noah's curse was a <em>prediction</em> of future servitude,
+            and not an injunction to oppress. Pray, sir, is
+            it a careful desire to fulfill the Scriptures, or to make
+            money, that induces you to hold your fellow-men in
+            bondage?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            M. (excitedly)&#8212;"Why, sir, do you really think that
+            the slaves are beings like ourselves?&#8212;that is, I mean
+            do you believe that they possess the same faculties
+            and capacities as the whites?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G. (energetically)&#8212;"Certainly, sir, I do not know
+            that there is any moral or intellectual quality in the
+            curl of the hair, or the color of the skin. I cannot
+            conceive why a black man may not as reasonably object
+            to my color, as I to his. Sir, it is not a black
+            face that I detest, but a black heart&#8212;and I find it
+            very often under a white skin."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            M. (derisively)&#8212;"Well, sir, how should you like to
+            see a black man President of the United States?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G. (severely)&#8212;"As to that, sir, I am a true Republican,
+            and bow to the will of the majority. If the
+            people prefer a black President, I should cheerfully
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_081" id="P_081" title="P_081"></a>
+            submit; and if he be qualified for the station, may
+            peradventure give him my vote."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            M. (triumphantly)&#8212;"How should you like to have
+            a black man marry your daughter?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            G. (making a home thrust and an end of the dialogue)&#8212;"I am not
+            married&#8212;I have no daughter.
+            Sir, I am not familiar with <em>your</em> practices; but allow
+            me to say, that slaveholders generally should be the
+            last persons to affect fastidiousness on that point; for
+            they seem to be enamored with <em>amalgamation</em>."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's pen was particularly busy during the
+            term of his imprisonment. He paid his respects to
+            the State's Attorney who prosecuted him, to the judge
+            who condemned him, and to Francis Todd, the owner
+            of the ship <i>Francis</i>. He prepared and scattered
+            broadcast a true account of his trial, showing how
+            the liberty of the press had been violated in the case.
+            He did not doubt that it would astonish Europe if it
+            were known there "that <em>an American citizen lies incarcerated
+               in prison, for having denounced slavery and
+               its abettors in his own country</em>." The fact created no
+            little astonishment in America. Slavery became distinctly
+            connected for the first time with abridgments
+            of the freedom of the press, and the right of free
+            speech. And the cause of the slave became involved
+            with the Constitutional liberties of the republic. In
+            punishing Garrison, the Abolitionist, the rights of
+            Garrison the white freeman were trampled on. And
+            white freemen in the North, who cared nothing for
+            Abolitionism, but a great deal for their right to speak
+            and write freely, resented the outrage. This fact was
+            the most important consequence, which flowed from
+            the trial and imprisonment of the young editor of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_082" id="P_082" title="P_082"></a><i>The Genius of Universal Emancipation</i>. "As the
+            news of my imprisonment became extensively known," he
+            wrote, "and the merits of the case understood, not a
+            mail rolled into the city but it brought me consolatary
+            letters from individuals hitherto unknown to
+            me, and periodicals of all kinds from every section
+            of the Union (not even excepting the South), all
+            uniting to give me a triumphant acquittal&#8212;all
+            severely reprehending the conduct of Mr. Todd&#8212;and
+            all regarding my trial as a mockery of justice."
+            This unexpected result was one of those accidents of
+            history, which "have laws as fixed as planets have."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The prosecution and imprisonment of Garrison
+            was without doubt designed to terrorize him into
+            silence on the subject of slavery. But his persecutors
+            had reckoned without a knowledge of their victim.
+            Garrison had the martyr's temperament and invincibility
+            of purpose. His earnestness burned the more
+            intensely with the growth of opposition and peril.
+            Within "gloomy walls close pent," he warbled gay
+            as a bird of a freedom which tyrants could not touch,
+            nor bolts confine:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose,<br>Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole,<br>And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes!"<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            or with deep, stern gladness sang he to "The Guiltless
+            Prisoner" how:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"A martyr's crown is richer than a king's!<br>Think it an honor with thy Lord to bleed,<br>And glory 'midst intensest sufferings;<br>Though beat&#8212;imprisoned&#8212;put to open shame<br>Time shall embalm and magnify thy name."<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            "Is it supposed by Judge Brice," the guiltless prisoner
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_083" id="P_083" title="P_083"></a>
+            wrote from his cell, "that his frowns can intimidate
+            me, or his sentence stifle my voice on the subject
+            of African oppression? He does not know me.
+            So long as a good Providence gives me strength and
+            intellect, I will not cease to declare that the existence
+            of slavery in this country is a foul reproach to the
+            American name; nor will I hesitate to proclaim the
+            guilt of kidnappers, slave abettors, or slaveowners,
+            wheresoever they may reside, or however high
+            they may be exalted. I am only in the <i>alphabet</i>
+            of my task; time shall perfect a useful work.
+            It is my shame that I have done so little for the
+            people of color; yea, before God, I feel humbled
+            that my feelings are so cold, and my language
+            so weak. A few white victims must be sacrificed
+            to open the eyes of this nation, and to show
+            the tyranny of our laws. I expect and am willing to
+            be persecuted, imprisoned, and bound for advocating
+            African rights; and I should deserve to be a slave
+            myself if I shrunk from that duty or danger." The
+            story of the trial of William Lloyd Garrison, from
+            which the above brave words are taken, fell into the
+            hands of that noble man and munificent merchant,
+            Arthur Tappan, of New York. From the reading of
+            it he rose "with that deep feeling of abhorrence of
+            slavery and its abettors which every one must feel
+            who is capable of appreciating the blessings of
+            liberty," and thereupon notified Lundy to draw upon
+            him for one hundred dollars if that amount would
+            give the young editor his liberty. The fine and costs
+            of court were accordingly paid and just forty-nine
+            days after entering Baltimore jail a prisoner, Garrison
+            recovered his freedom. The civil action of Todd
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_084" id="P_084" title="P_084"></a>
+            against him was still pending. Nothing daunted
+            Garrison went North two days after his discharge to
+            obtain certain evidence deemed important by his
+            counsel to his defence. He took with him an open
+            letter from Lundy looking to the renewal of
+            the weekly <i>Genius</i> under their joint control.
+            Prior to Garrison's trial the paper had fallen into great
+            stress for want of money. Lundy and he had made
+            a division of their labors, the latter doing the editorial
+            and office work, while the former traveled from
+            place to place soliciting subscriptions and collecting
+            generally the sinews of war. But the experiment
+            was not successful from a business standpoint. For
+            as Garrison playfully observed subsequently:
+            "Where friend Lundy could get one new subscriber,
+            I could knock a <em>dozen</em> off, and I did so. It was the
+            old experiment of the frog in the well, that went two
+            feet up and fell three feet back, at every jump."
+            Where the income of the paper did not exceed fifty
+            dollars in four months and the weekly expenditure
+            amounted to at least that sum, the financial failure of
+            the enterprise was inevitable. This unhappy event
+            did actually occur six weeks before the junior editor
+            went to jail; and the partnership was formally dissolved
+            in the issue of the <i>Genius</i> of March 5, 1830.
+            But when Arthur Tappan made his generous offer of
+            a hundred dollars to effect Garrison's release, he
+            made at the same time an offer of an equal amount
+            to aid the editors in re&euml;stablishing the
+            <i>Genius</i>. This
+            proposition led to hopes on the part of the two
+            friends to a renewal of their partnership in the cause
+            of emancipation. And so Garrison's visit to the
+            North was taken advantage of to test the disposition
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_085" id="P_085" title="P_085"></a>
+            of Northern philanthropy to support such a paper.
+            But what he found was a sad lack of interest in the
+            slave. Everywhere he went he encountered what
+            appeared to him to be the most monstrous indifference
+            and apathy on the subject. The prejudices of the free
+            States seemed to him stronger than were those of
+            the South. Instead of receiving aid and encouragement
+            to continue the good work of himself and coadjutor,
+            and for the doing of which he had served a term
+            of seven weeks in prison, men, even his best friends
+            sought to influence him to give it up, and to persuade
+            him to forsake the slave, and to turn his time and
+            talents to safer and more profitable enterprises nearer
+            home. He was informed by these worldly wise men
+            and Job's counselors that his "scheme was visionary,
+            fanatical, unattainable." "Why should he make
+            himself," they argued, "an exile from home and all
+            that he held dear on earth, and sojourn in a strange
+            land, among enemies whose hearts were dead to every
+            noble sentiment?" Ah! he himself confessed that all
+            were against his return to Baltimore. But his love
+            of the slave was stronger than the strength of the
+            temptation. He put all these selfish objections behind
+            him. As he has recorded the result of this experience:
+            "Opposition served only to increase my ardor, and
+            confirm my purpose." Strange and incomprehensible
+            to his fellows is the man who prefers "persecution,
+            reproach, and poverty" with duty, to worldly ease
+            and honor and riches without it. When a man
+            appears in society who is not controlled by motives
+            which usually govern the conduct of other men he
+            becomes at first an object of pity, then of contempt,
+            and, lastly, of hate. Garrison we may be sure at the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_086" id="P_086" title="P_086"></a>
+            end of this visit had made rapid transit from the first
+            to the second of these stages in the esteem of his
+            generation.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            His experience was not all of this deplorable kind.
+            He left Baltimore without the money required to pay
+            his way North, depending literally upon the good
+            God to provide for him the necessary means to complete
+            his journey. And such help was more than
+            once providentially afforded the young apostle of liberty.
+            At New York, when he did not know how he
+            was to go farther for want of means, he met a Mr.
+            Samuel Leggett who gave him a pass on the "splendid
+            steamboat <i>President</i>." It seems that this friend
+            in his need had read with indignation the story of his trial.
+            The bread which he had scattered from his prison on
+            the waters of public sentiment had thus returned to
+            him after many days in the timely assistance of a
+            sympathetic soul. And then, again, when he was in
+            Boston in sore distress for a little money, suddenly,
+            beautifully, the desire of his heart was satisfied. But
+            let him tell the incident in his own touching way.
+            His face was turned toward Baltimore: "But how
+            was I to return?" he asks. "I had not a dollar in
+            my pocket, and my time was expired. No one understood
+            my circumstances. I was too proud to beg, and
+            ashamed to borrow. My friends were prodigal of
+            pity, but of nothing else. In the extremity of my
+            uneasiness, I went to the Boston post-office, and found
+            a letter from my friend Lundy, inclosing a draft for
+            $100 from a stranger and as a remuneration for my
+            poor inefficient services in behalf of the slaves!" The
+            munificent stranger was Ebenezer Dole, of Hallowell,
+            Maine. Money thus acquired was a sacred trust to
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_087" id="P_087" title="P_087"></a>
+            this child of Providence. "After deducting the
+            expenses of traveling," he goes on to say, "the
+            remainder of the above-named sum was applied
+            in discharging a few of the debts incurred by the
+            unproductiveness of the <i>Genius</i>."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison returned to Baltimore, but he did not
+            tarry long in that slave-ruled city. Todd's suit
+            against him was tried after his departure, and the
+            jury soothed the Newburyport merchant's wounded
+            pride with a verdict for a thousand dollars. He never
+            attempted, however, to enforce the payment of the
+            same being content probably with the "vindication,"
+            which his legal victory gave him.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Before the reformer left Baltimore he had definitely
+            abandoned the plans looking to a revival of his interest
+            in the <i>Genius</i>. He determined instead to publish
+            a sheet devoted to the abolition of slavery under his
+            sole management and control. This paper he proposed
+            to call the <i>Public Liberator</i>, and to issue from
+            Washington. The prospectus of this journalistic
+            project bearing date, August, 1830, declares in its
+            opening sentence its "primary object" to be "the
+            abolition of slavery, and the moral and intellectual
+            elevation of our colored population." "I shall spare
+            no efforts," he pledged himself, "to delineate the
+            withering influence of slavery upon our national
+            prosperity and happiness, its awful impiety, its rapid
+            extension, and its inevitable consequences if it be
+            suffered to exist without hindrance. It will also be
+            my purpose to point out the path of safety, and a
+            remedy for the disease." This comprehensive and
+            aggressive plan of campaign signalized the rise of an
+            Abolitionism wholly unlike the Abolitionism of any
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_088" id="P_088" title="P_088"></a>
+            previous time in the history of the country. It did
+            in fact date the opening of a new era in the slavery
+            struggle in America.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            With Northern indifference and apathy on the subject
+            of emancipation, Garrison's previous visit to the
+            North had acquainted him. Their existence he saw
+            interposed the main obstacle to the success of his
+            new venture in journalism. "The cause of this callous
+            state of feeling," he believed, "was owing to
+            their exceeding ignorance of the horrors of slavery."
+            He accordingly made up his mind to throw the light
+            which he possessed into the midst of this darkness. He
+            had written in prison three lectures on "Slavery and
+            Colonization." What better could he now do than to
+            deliver those lectures at the North? If the good people
+            and their religious leaders knew what he knew, they
+            would presently feel as he did on the question. He was
+            loath to leave Baltimore without giving this testimony
+            against slavery. But unable to procure a room
+            for this purpose was finally compelled to content himself
+            with the witness he had already borne in the
+            <i>Genius</i> and in prison in behalf of the slave.
+            In Philadelphia he well-nigh failed to obtain a hall for his
+            lectures, but did finally succeed in getting the Franklin
+            Institute, where, to small audiences, he lifted up
+            his voice against the iniquity of the times. He repeated
+            his lectures in New York, New Haven, and
+            Hartford. But not many came out to hear him.
+            The nation, its churches, and politicians had thrust
+            their fingers in their ears to every cry coming up
+            from the slave. Why should they go to sup with a
+            madman on horrors, with which as patriotic people
+            they were forbidden to concern themselves. And so
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_089" id="P_089" title="P_089"></a>
+            for the most part Garrison could do nothing with
+            communities, which had eyes, but obstinately refused
+            to see with them upon any subject relating to the
+            abominations of slavery. In his own town of Newburyport,
+            officers of Christian churches not only refused
+            to hear his message themselves, but debarred
+            others from listening to the woes and wrongs of fellow-creatures
+            in bondage. As Mr. Garrison truly
+            said at the time: "If I had visited Newburyport to
+            plead the cause of twenty white men in chains, every
+            hall and every meeting-house would have been
+            thrown open, and the fervor of my discourses anticipated
+            and exceeded by my fellow-townsmen. The
+            fact that two millions of colored beings are groaning
+            in bondage, in this land of liberty, excites no interest
+            nor pity." If these damning facts are remembered
+            sixty years after their occurrence to the shame of
+            the trustees of the two churches, viz., the Presbyterian
+            Church on Harris street and the Second Congregational
+            Church, it is also remembered to the honor of
+            the two pastors, Rev. Dr. Daniel Dana, and the Rev.
+            Dr. Luther F. Dimmick, that they had thrown open
+            to the prophet the doors of their meeting-houses,
+            which the trustees afterward slammed in his face.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In Boston the same hard luck followed him. In
+            all that city of Christian churches he could not obtain
+            the use of a single meeting-house, "in which to
+            vindicate the rights of TWO MILLIONS of American
+            citizens, who are now groaning in servile chains
+            in this boasted land of liberty; and also to
+            propose just, benevolent, and constitutional measures
+            for their relief." So ran an advertisement
+            in the Boston <i>Courier</i> of the sorely tried soul.
+            For
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_090" id="P_090" title="P_090"></a>
+            two weeks he had gone up and down the town in
+            search of a room free of cost, in which to deliver his
+            message. The door of every sanctuary was locked
+            against his cause. It was then, as a final recourse,
+            that he turned to the <i>Courier</i>, and made his last
+            appeal to the Christian charity of the city. The prayer
+            of the prophet was answered from an unexpected
+            quarter. It was that ecclesiastical dragon of the
+            times, Abner Kneeland, and his society of "blasphemers,"
+            who proved afresh the truth of that
+            scripture which says: "Not every one that saith unto
+            me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
+            heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father
+            which is in heaven." It was they that gave to liberty
+            a hearing, to the prophet of righteousness a chance
+            to deliver his message. It was in their meeting-house,
+            in Julian Hall, that Garrison gave his lectures,
+            giving the first one on the evening of October 15,
+            1830.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Samuel J. May, who was present, has preserved his
+            impressions of the lecture and lecturer. "Never
+            before," he records many years afterward, "was I so
+            affected by the speech of man. When he had ceased
+            speaking I said to those around me: 'That is a
+            providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake
+            our nation to its center, but he will shake slavery out
+            of it. We ought to know him, we ought to help
+            him. Come, let us go and give him our hands.' Mr.
+            Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up with me and we
+            introduced each other. I said to him, 'Mr. Garrison,
+            I am not sure that I can indorse all you have said
+            this evening. Much of it requires careful consideration.
+            But I am prepared to embrace you. I am
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_091" id="P_091" title="P_091"></a>
+            sure you are called to a great work, and I mean to
+            help you.' Mr. Sewall cordially assured him of his
+            readiness also to cooperate with him. Mr. Alcott
+            invited him to his home. He went and we sat with
+            him until twelve that night, listening to his discourse,
+            in which he showed plainly that <em>immediate, unconditional
+               emancipation, without expatriation, was the right of
+               every slave, and could not be withheld by his master an
+               hour without sin</em>. That night my soul was baptised
+            in his spirit, and ever since I have been a disciple and
+            fellow-laborer of William Lloyd Garrison." A new
+            force had arisen in our history, and a new epoch
+            had broken bolts for humanity.
+
+         </p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap4"></a>
+            CHAPTER IV.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
+
+         </h2><a class="newpage" name="P_092" id="P_092" title="P_092"></a><p>
+            The providential man was not yet twenty-five. In
+            personal appearance he was quite the reverse of his
+            friend Lundy. Garrison was gifted with a body
+            that matched his mind, strong, straight, sound in
+            every part, and proportioned in every member. As
+            he stood he was much above the medium height.
+            His dark hair had already partially left the crown of
+            the high dome-shaped head. His forehead combined
+            height with breadth, which, taken in connection
+            with the brown eyes covered with the now
+            habitual glasses, lent to his countenance a striking
+            air of moral serenity and elevation. Force, firmness,
+            no ordinary self-reliance and courage found
+            masterly expression in the rest of the face. There
+            was through the whole physical man a nice blending
+            of strength and delicacy of structure. The impression
+            of fineness and finish was perhaps mainly owing
+            to the woman-like purity and freshness of skin and
+            color, which overspread the virile lines and features
+            of the face from brow to chin. What one saw in that
+            face was the quality of justice made flesh, good-will
+            to men personified.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This characterization of the reformer's countenance
+            may be considered absurd by some readers.
+            But absurd it is not. People who had read his stern
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_093" id="P_093" title="P_093"></a>
+            denunciations of slave-holding and slaveholders, and
+            who had formed their image of the man from his
+            "hard language" and their own prejudices could not
+            recognize the original when they met him. His manner
+            was peculiarly winning and attractive, and in
+            personal intercourse almost instantly disarmed hostility.
+            The even gentleness of his rich voice, his unfailing
+            courtesy and good temper, his quick eye for
+            harmless pleasantries, his hearty laugh, the Quaker-like
+            calmness, deliberateness, and meekness, with
+            which he would meet objections and argue the righteousness
+            of his cause, his sweet reasonableness and
+            companionableness were in strange contrast to popular
+            misconceptions and caricatures of him. No one
+            needed to be persuaded, who had once conversed
+            with him, that there was no hatred or vindictiveness
+            in his severities of language toward slaveholders.
+            That he was no Jacobin, no enemy of society, was
+            perceived the moment one looked into his grave,
+            kind face, or caught the warm accents of his pacific
+            tones, or listened to the sedate intensity, and humanity
+            of his discourses on the enormity of American
+            slavery as they fell from him in conversations between
+            man and man. Here is a case in point, a typical incident
+            in the life of the reformer; it occurred, it is
+            true, when he was twenty-seven, but it might have
+            occurred at twenty-five quite as well; it is narrated
+            by Samuel J. May in his recollections of the anti-slavery
+            conflict: On his way from New York to
+            Philadelphia with Garrison, Mr. May fell into a discussion
+            with a pro-slavery passenger on the vexed
+            question of the day. There was the common pro-slavery
+            reasoning, which May answered as well as he
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_094" id="P_094" title="P_094"></a>
+            was able. Presently Mr. Garrison drew near the disputants,
+            whereupon May took the opportunity to
+            shift the anti-slavery burden of the contention to his
+            leader's shoulders. All of his most radical and unpopular
+            Abolition doctrines Garrison immediately
+            proceeded to expound to his opponent. "After a
+            long conversation," says Mr. May, "which attracted
+            as many as could get within hearing, the gentleman
+            said, courteously: 'I have been much interested, sir,
+            in what you have said, and in the exceedingly frank
+            and temperate manner in which you have treated the
+            subject. If all Abolitionists were like you, there would
+            be much less opposition to your enterprise. But, sir,
+            depend upon it, that hair-brained, reckless, violent
+            fanatic, Garrison, will damage, if he does not shipwreck,
+            any cause.' Stepping forward, I replied, 'Allow
+            me, sir, to introduce you to Mr. Garrison, of whom
+            you entertain so bad an opinion. The gentleman
+            you have been talking with is he.'"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Or take Harriet Martineau's first impressions on
+            seeing him. "His aspect put to flight in an instant
+            what prejudices his slanderers had raised in me. I
+            was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance
+            glowing with health, and wholly expressive of purity,
+            animation and gentleness. I did not wonder at the
+            citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop window
+            without a name to it, went in and bought it, and
+            framed it as the most saintlike of countenances."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The appearance of such a man on the stage of our
+            history as a nation, at this hour, was providential.
+            His coming was in the fulness of time. A rapid review
+            of events anterior to the advent of Garrison will
+            serve to place this matter more clearly before the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_095" id="P_095" title="P_095"></a>
+            general reader. To begin, then, at the beginning we
+            have two ships off the American coast, the one casting
+            anchor in Plymouth harbor, the other discharging its
+            cargo at Jamestown. They were both freighted with
+            human souls. But how different! Despotism landed
+            at Jamestown, democracy at Plymouth. Here in the
+            germ was the Southern idea, slave labor, slave institutions;
+            and here also was the Northern idea, free labor,
+            free institutions. Once planted they grew, each seed
+            idea multiplying after its kind. In course of time
+            there arose on one side an industrial system in which
+            the plantation principle, race-rule and race-slavery,
+            were organic centers; and, on the other, a social
+            system in which the principle of popular power and
+            government, the town meeting, and the common school
+            were the ganglia of social expansion. Contrary ideas
+            beget naturally enough contrary interests and institutions.
+            So it is no matter for surprise that the local
+            interests and institutions of the thirteen revolted
+            colonies lacked homogeneity and identity. What
+            was calculated to promote the general welfare of the
+            Northern one, it was quite possible might work a
+            totally opposite result in the Southern. For, indeed,
+            while there were slaves in them all, the slave system
+            had taken root in Southern soil only; and while on
+            the other hand the spirit of freedom was existent in
+            each, free labor had rooted itself in Northern ground
+            solely.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            As the war of the Revolution was an uprising
+            against arbitrary power, and for the establishment of
+            political liberty, it pushed easily into the foreground
+            the larger subject of human rights. Most of the
+            leading actors felt the inconsistency of keeping some
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_096" id="P_096" title="P_096"></a>
+            men in bondage, when they were fighting to rid themselves
+            of a tyranny which, in comparison to the other,
+            was a state of honorable freedom. Their humanity
+            condemned African slavery, and they earnestly desired
+            its extinction. The Declaration of Independence
+            proves to how high a level the tide of freedom rose
+            in the colonies. The grand truths by it proclaimed
+            the signers of that instrument did not restrict in their
+            application to some men to the exclusion of other
+            men. They wrote "All men," and they meant exactly
+            what they wrote. Too simply honest and great
+            they were to mean less than their solemn and deliberate
+            words.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            On political as well as on moral grounds they desired
+            emancipation. But there was a difficulty which
+            at the time proved insuperable. The nation-making
+            principle, the idea of country, was just emerging out
+            of the nebulous civil conditions and relations of the
+            ante-Revolutionary epoch. There was no existent
+            central authority to reach the evil within the States
+            except the local governments of the States respectively.
+            And States in revolt against the central authority
+            of the mother country would hardly be disposed
+            to divest themselves of any part of their newly
+            asserted right to govern themselves for the purpose
+            of conferring the same upon any other political body.
+            To each State, then, the question was necessarily left
+            for settlement.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The war, during its continuance, absorbed the
+            united resources and energies of the people and their
+            leaders. The anti-slavery movement made accordingly
+            but small progress. Reforms thrive only when
+            they get a hearing. Public attention is the food on
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_097" id="P_097" title="P_097"></a>
+            which they thrive. But precious little of this food
+            was the Abolition cause able to snatch in those bitter
+            years. It could not grow. It remained in the gristle&#8212;hardly
+            more than a sentiment. But the sentiment
+            was a seed, the promise and potency of kindlier times.
+            With the close of the long struggle other questions
+            arose; got the people's ears; fixed the attention of the
+            leaders. Scant notice could emancipation extort from
+            men who had to repair the ravages of an exhausting
+            war, reconstruct shattered fortunes, restore civil society
+            in parts tumbling into ruinous disorder. The
+            instinct of self-preservation was altogether too masterful
+            for the moral starveling. It succumbed to circumstances,
+            content to obtain an occasional sermon,
+            an annual address, a few scattered societies to keep a
+            human glow in the bosom of the infant Confederacy.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Confederation failed. The formation of a
+            more perfect union was demanded and undertaken.
+            This transcendent task straightway thrust into the
+            background every other enterprise and interest. The
+            feeble activity of the freedom-making principle was
+            checked, for the time being, by the energy of the
+            nation-making power. They were not antagonistic
+            forces&#8212;only in the natural order of things, the earliest
+            stages in the evolution of the former had to come
+            after the first steps were taken in the development of
+            the latter. Before there could start a general movement
+            against American slavery there must needs be
+            an American nation. An American nation was, in
+            the year 1787, in process of successful development.
+            With the adoption of the Constitution, the national
+            principle entered on a period of marvelous expansion
+            and activity.
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_098" id="P_098" title="P_098"></a><p>
+            Let it not, however, be hastily concluded that freedom
+            meanwhile was in total eclipse, that the anti-slavery
+            sentiment was absolutely without influence.
+            For it unquestionably inspired the Ordinance of 1787.
+            The Northwest Territory, out of which were subsequently
+            organized the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
+            Michigan, and Wisconsin, was thereby, forever
+            secured to the Northern idea, and free labor. Supplementary
+            to this grand act was the Constitutional
+            prohibition of the African slave-trade after the year
+            1808. Together they were intended to discourage
+            the growth of slavery&#8212;the first by restricting its territorial
+            extension, the second, by arresting its numerical
+            increase. And without doubt they would have
+            placed the evil in the way of ultimate extinction had
+            other and far reaching causes not intervened to produce
+            adverse social and political conditions.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The first of these causes, in point of time, were certain
+            labor-saving inventions in England, which vastly
+            enhanced the demand for raw cotton. Arkwright's
+            invention of the spinning machine about twenty years
+            prior to the adoption of the Constitution, perfected
+            by the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, and the mule
+            of Crompton, "turned Lancashire," the historian
+            Green says, "into a hive of industry." The then rapid
+            demand for cotton operated in time as a stimulus
+            to its production in America. Increased productivity
+            raised the value of slave property and slave
+            soil. But the slow and tedious hand method of separating
+            the fiber of the cotton bulb from the seed
+            greatly limited the ability of the Cotton States to
+            meet and satisfy the fast growing demand of the
+            English manufacturers, until Eli Whitney, in 1793, by
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_099" id="P_099" title="P_099"></a>
+            an ingenious invention solved the problem of supply
+            for these States. The cotton gin was not long in
+            proving itself the other half&#8212;the other hand of the
+            spinning machine.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            From that year the slave interests of the South
+            rose in market value, and its industrial system
+            assumed unexpected importance in the economic
+            world. The increased production of cotton led
+            directly to increased demand for slave labor and
+            slave soil. The increased demand for slave labor the
+            Constitutional provision relating to the African slave
+            trade operated in part to satisfy. The increased
+            demand for slave soil was likewise satisfied by the
+            cession to the United States by Georgia and North
+            Carolina of the Southwest Territory, with provisos
+            practically securing it to slavery. Out of this new
+            national territory were subsequently carved the slave
+            States of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Slave soil unlike free soil, is incapable of sustaining
+            a dense population. Slave labor calls for large
+            spaces within which to multiply and prosper. The
+            purchase of Louisiana and the acquisition of Florida
+            met this agrarian necessity on the part of the South.
+            Immense, unsettled areas thus fell to the lot of the
+            slave system at the crisis of its material expansion and
+            prosperity. The domestic slave-trade under the impetus
+            of settling these vast regions according to the
+            plantation principle, became an enormous and spreading
+            industry. The crop of slaves was not less profitable
+            than the crop of cotton. A Southern white
+            man had but to buy a score of slaves and a few hundred
+            acres to get "rich beyond the dreams of avarice."
+            So at least calculated the average Southern man.
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_100" id="P_100" title="P_100"></a><p>
+            This revival of slavery disappointed the humane
+            expectation of its decline and ultimate extinction
+            entertained by the founders of the republic. It built
+            up instead a growing and formidable slave class, and
+            interest in the Union. With the rise of giant slave
+            interests, there followed the rise of a power devoted
+            to their encouragement and protection.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Three far-reaching concessions the slave States
+            obtained in the convention of 1787, viz., the right to
+            import slaves from Africa until 1808; the rendition
+            of fugitive slaves escaping into the free States, and
+            the three-fifths slave representation clause of the
+            Constitution&#8212;all of which added vastly to the
+            security and value of this species of property, and
+            as a consequence contributed to the slave revival.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The equality of the States in the upper branch of
+            the National Legislature, taken in connection with the
+            right of the slave States to count five slaves as three
+            freemen in the apportionment of representatives to
+            the lower House of Congress, gave the Southern section
+            an almost immediate ascendency in the Federal
+            Government. To the South was thus opened by an
+            unexpected combination of circumstances a wide
+            avenue for the acquisition of fabulous wealth, and to
+            Southern public men an incomparable arena for the
+            exercise of political abilities and leadership. An
+            institution, which thus ministered to two of the
+            strongest passions of mankind&#8212;avarice and ambition&#8212;was
+            certain to excite the most intense attachment.
+            Its safety naturally, therefore, became among
+            the slave class an object of prime importance.
+            Southern jealousy in this regard ultimated inevitably
+            in Southern narrowness, Southern sectionalism, which
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_101" id="P_101" title="P_101"></a>
+            early manifested themselves in the exclusion from
+            lead in national affairs of Northern public men,
+            reputed to be unfriendly to slavery. Webster as late
+            as 1830, protested warmly against this intolerance.
+            Like begets like. And the proscribing of anti-slavery
+            politicians by the South, created in turn not a little
+            sectional feeling at the North, and helped to stimulate
+            there a consciousness of sectional differences, of
+            antagonism of interests between the two halves of
+            the Union.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Discontent with the original basis of the Union,
+            which had given the South its political coign of
+            vantage, broke out first in New England. The occasion,
+            though not the cause, of this discontent was,
+            perhaps, the downfall of the Federal party, whose
+            stronghold was in the East. The commercial and
+            industrial crisis brought on by the embargo, and
+            which beggared, on the authority of Webster, "thousands
+            of families and hundreds of thousands of individuals"
+            fanned this Eastern dissatisfaction into
+            almost open disaffection towards a government dominated
+            by Southern influence, and directed by Southern
+            statesmanship. To the preponderance of this
+            Southern element in national legislation New England
+            traced her misfortunes. She was opposed to
+            the War of 1812, but was overruled to her hurt by
+            the South. In these circumstances New England
+            went for correcting the inequalities of the original
+            basis of the Union, which gave to the South its
+            undue preponderance in shaping national laws and
+            policies. This was the purpose of the Hartford
+            Convention, which proposed the abrogation of the
+            slave representation clause of the Constitution, and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_102" id="P_102" title="P_102"></a>
+            the imposition of a check upon the admission of new
+            States into the Union. The second proposition did
+            not say "new slave States," but new slave States was,
+            nevertheless, intended by the Convention. Here in
+            point of time and magnitude, was the first distinct
+            collision of the two sets of ideas and interests of the
+            Republic.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Following the Treaty of Ghent other and imperious
+            questions engaged the public attention&#8212;questions of
+            the tariff, of finance, internal improvements, national
+            defence, a new navy, forts and fortifications. Hard
+            times, too, engrossed an enormous share of this attention.
+            The immediate needs and problems of the
+            hour pushed into the background all less pressing
+            ones. The slavery question amidst the clamor and
+            babel of emergent and material interests, lost something
+            of its sectional heat and character. But its
+            fires were not extinguished, only banked as events
+            were speedily to reveal.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The application of Missouri for admission into the
+            Union as a slave State four years after the Hartford
+            Convention blew to a blaze the covered embers of
+            strife between the sections. The North was violently
+            agitated. For the admission of a new slave State
+            meant two more slave votes in the Senate, and an
+            increase on the old inequitable basis of slave representation
+            in the lower House of Congress. It meant
+            to the Northern section indefinite Southern ascendency,
+            prolonged Southern lead in national legislation.
+            All the smouldering passions of the earlier period, of
+            embargo, and non-intercourse, and the war of 1812,
+            flamed suddenly and fiercely in the heart of the free
+            States.
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_103" id="P_103" title="P_103"></a><p>
+            The length and bitterness of that controversy excited
+            the gravest apprehensions for the stability of
+            the Union. The dread of disunion led to mutual
+            concessions, to the Missouri Compromise. The slave-holding
+            section got its immediate claim allowed, and
+            the free States secured the erection of a line to the
+            north of which slavery was forever prohibited. And
+            besides this, the admission of Maine was supposed to
+            neutralize whatever political advantages, which would
+            accrue to the South from the admission of Missouri
+            as a slave State. Both sections were content, and the
+            slavery question was thought to be permanently
+            settled. With this final disposition of an ugly problem,
+            the peace and permanence of the Union were
+            viewed universally as fixed facts. Still, considering
+            the gravity of the case, a little precaution would not
+            go amiss. The slavery question had shaken men's
+            faith in the durability of the republic. It was therefore
+            adjudged a highly dangerous subject. The political
+            physicians with one accord prescribed on the
+            ounce-of-prevention principle, <em>quiet</em>, SILENCE, and
+            OBLIVION, to be administered in large and increasing
+            doses to both sections. Mum was the word, and
+            mum the country solemnly and suddenly became
+            from Maine to Georgia. But, alas! beneath the ashes
+            of this Missouri business, deep below the unnatural
+            silence and quiet, inextinguishable fires were burning
+            and working again to the surface of politics. In such
+            circumstances a fresh outbreak of old animosities
+            must occur as soon as the subterranean heat should
+            reach the point of highest combustibility in the
+            federal system. The tariff proved to be that point of
+            highest combustibility.
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_104" id="P_104" title="P_104"></a><p>
+            Alexander Hamilton inaugurated the policy of
+            giving governmental aid to infant manufactures. The
+            wisdom of diversifying the industries of the young
+            nation was acquiesced in by the leading statesmen of
+            both sections. Beset as the republic then was by
+            international forces hostile to democratic institutions,
+            it was natural enough that the great men who presided
+            over its early years should seek by Federal legislation
+            to render it, as speedily and completely as
+            possible, industrially self-dependent and self-supporting.
+            The war of 1812 enforced anew upon the
+            attention of statesmen the importance of industrial independence.
+            The war debt, together with certain governmental
+            enterprises and expenditures growing out
+            of the war, was largely, if not wholly, responsible for
+            the tariff of 1816. This act dates the rise of our
+            American system of protection. It is curious to note
+            that Southern men were the leaders of this new departure
+            in the national fiscal policy. Calhoun, Clay,
+            and Lowndes were the guiding spirits of that period
+            of industrial ferment and activity. They little dreamt
+            what economic evils were to fall in consequence
+            upon the South. That section was not slow to feel
+            the unequal action of the protective principle. The
+            character of its labor incapacitated the South from
+            dividing the benefits of the new revenue policy with
+            its free rival. The South of necessity was restricted
+            to a single industry, the tillage of the earth. Slave
+            labor did not possess the intelligence, the skill, the
+            patience, the mechanical versatility to embark successfully
+            in manufacturing enterprises. Free labor
+            monopolised the protected industries, and Northern
+            capital caught all the golden showers of fiscal legislation.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_105" id="P_105" title="P_105"></a>
+            What the South needed, from an economic
+            point of view, was unrestricted access to the markets
+            of the world for her products, and the freest competition
+            of the world in her own markets. The limitations
+            imposed upon the slave States by their industrial
+            system was in itself a tremendous handicap in their
+            struggle for an advantageous place in the New World
+            of the nineteenth century; in their struggle with
+            their free sisters for political leadership in the Union.
+            But with the development of the protective principle
+            those States fell into sore financial distress, were
+            ground between the upper millstone of the protective
+            system and the nether millstone of their own industrial
+            system. Prosperity and plenty did presently
+            disappear from that section and settled in the North.
+            In 1828 Benton drew this dark picture of the state of
+            the South:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "In place of wealth, a universal pressure for money
+            was felt; not enough for common expenses; the
+            price of all property down; the country drooping
+            and languishing; towns and cities decaying, and the
+            frugal habits of the people pushed to the verge of
+            universal self-denial for the preservation of their
+            family estates."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He did not hesitate to charge to Federal legislation
+            the responsibility for all this poverty and distress,
+            for he proceeds to remark that:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Under this legislation the exports of the South
+            have been made the basis of the Federal revenue.
+            The twenty odd millions annually levied upon imported
+            goods are deducted out of the price of their
+            cotton, rice, and tobacco, either in the diminished
+            prices which they receive for those staples in foreign
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_106" id="P_106" title="P_106"></a>
+            ports, or in the increased price which they pay for
+            the articles they have to consume at home."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A suffering people are not apt to reason clearly or
+            justly on the causes which have brought them to indigence.
+            They feel their wretchedness and reach out
+            for a victim. And the law-making power usually
+            happens to be that victim. As the distress of the
+            South increased, the belief that Federal legislation
+            was responsible for it increased likewise. The spread
+            and deepening of this conviction in the Southern
+            States precipitated among them an ominous crisis in
+            their attachment to the Union. Nullification and an
+            embittered sectionalism was the hateful legacy
+            bequeathed to the republic by the tariff controversy.
+            It left the South in a hyper-sensitive state in all matters
+            relating to her domestic interests. It left the
+            North in a hyper-sensitive condition on all matters
+            touching the peace and stability of the Union. The
+            silence and oblivion policy on the subject of slavery
+            was renewed with tenfold intensity. Ulysses-like the
+            free States bound themselves, their right of free
+            speech, and their freedom of the press on this subject,
+            for fear of the Siren voices which came thrilling on
+            every breeze from the South. Quiet was the word,
+            and quiet the leaders in Church and State sought to
+            enforce upon the people, to the end that the vision of
+            "States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, of a land
+            rent with civil feuds, or drenched it may be, in fraternal
+            blood," might not come to pass for their "glorious
+            Union."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The increasing friction and heat between the sections
+            during twenty-five years, had effected every portion
+            of the Federal system, and created conditions
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_107" id="P_107" title="P_107"></a>
+            favorable to a violent explosion. Sectional differences
+            of a political and industrial complexion, forty years
+            had sufficed to develop. Sectional differences of a
+            moral and social character forty years had also sufficed
+            to generate. To kindle all those differences, all
+            that mass of combustible feelings and forces into a
+            general conflagration a spark only was wanted. And
+            out of the glowing humanity of one man the spark
+            was suddenly struck.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It is curious to note that in the year 1829, the very
+            year in which William Lloyd Garrison landed in Baltimore,
+            and began the editorship of <i>The Genius of
+               Universal Emancipation</i>, the American Convention, or
+            national assembly of the old State societies for the
+            abolition of slavery, fell into desuetude. It was as if
+            Providence was clearing the debris of an old dispensation
+            out of the way of the new one which his
+            prophet was beginning to herald, as if guarding
+            against all possibility of having the new wine, then
+            soon to be pressed from the moral vintage of the
+            nation, put into old bottles. The Hour for a new
+            movement against slavery had come, and with its
+            arrival the Man to hail it had also come.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Other men had spoken and written against slavery,
+            and labored for the freedom of the slave before Garrison
+            had thought upon the subject at all. Washington
+            and Jefferson, Franklin, Jay, and Hamilton had
+            been Abolitionists before he was born, but theirs was
+            a divided interest. The establishment of a more perfect
+            union was the paramount object of their lives.
+            John Wesley had denounced slavery in language
+            quite as harsh as Garrison's, but his, too, was a
+            divided interest, the religious revival of the eighteenth
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_108" id="P_108" title="P_108"></a>
+            century being his distinctive mission. Benezet,
+            Woolman, and Lundy were saints, who had yearned
+            with unspeakable sympathy for the black bondmen,
+            and were indefatigable in good works in his behalf,
+            but they had not that stern and iron quality without
+            which reforms cannot be launched upon the attention
+            of mankind. What his predecessors lacked, Garrison
+            possessed to a marvelous degree&#8212;the undivided
+            interest, the supremacy of a single purpose, the stern
+            stuff out of which the moral reformer is made, and in
+            which he is panoplied. They were all his, but there
+            was another besides&#8212;immediatism. This element
+            distinguished the movement against slavery, started
+            by him, from all other movements begun before he
+            arrived on the stage, for the emancipation of the
+            slaves in the Union.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This doctrine of immediate as opposed to gradual
+            emancipation, was not original with Garrison,
+            nor was he the first to enunciate it. More than
+            a dozen years before he was converted to it, Rev.
+            George Bourne, in "The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable,"
+            had shown that "the system (of slavery) is
+            so entirely corrupt that it admits of no cure but by
+            a <em>total and immediate abolition</em>. For a gradual emancipation
+            is a virtual recognition of the right, and establishes
+            the rectitude of the practice. If it be just
+            for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be
+            inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated." In
+            1824, eight years after the publication of Bourne's
+            book, and five years before Garrison announced the
+            doctrine in the <i>Genius</i>, the Rev. James Duncan
+            maintained it, in his "Treatise on Slavery," with no uncertainty
+            of sense or conviction. But neither Bourne
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_109" id="P_109" title="P_109"></a>
+            nor Duncan had been able to effect an incarnation of
+            the doctrine, without which the good which it aimed
+            at could not be achieved. What they failed to effect,
+            it is the glory of Garrison that he achieved in his
+            own person. He was "<em>total and immediate Abolition</em>"
+            personified. "Truth is mighty and will prevail," is
+            a wise saying and worthy of acceptation. But this
+            ultimate prevailing of TRUTH depends mainly upon
+            individual effort, applied not intermittently, but
+            steadily to a particular segment of the circle of conduct.
+            It is the long, strong, never-ending pull and tug
+            upon the wheels of conduct, which marks the great
+            reformer. He finds his age or country stuck in some
+            Serbonian bog of iniquity. He prays, but he prays
+            with his shoulders braced strenuously against the
+            body of society, and he does not cease his endeavors
+            until a revolution in conduct places his age or country
+            on firm ground beyond its Serbonian bog. The coming
+            of such a man is no accident. When the Hour is
+            ready and the Man comes, a new epoch in the life of
+            a people arises from the conjunction. Of such vast
+            consequence verily was the coming into American
+            history of William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+         </p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap5"></a>
+            CHAPTER V.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
+
+         </h2><a class="newpage" name="P_110" id="P_110" title="P_110"></a><p>
+            After leaving Baltimore, Garrison clung pathetically
+            to the belief that, if he told what he had seen
+            of the barbarism of slavery to the North, he would
+            be certain to enlist the sympathy and aid of its leaders,
+            political and ecclesiastical, in the cause of emancipation.
+            The sequel to his efforts in this regard
+            proved that he was never more mistaken in his life.
+            He addressed letters to men like Webster, Jeremiah
+            Mason, Lyman Beecher, and Dr. Channing, "holding
+            up to their view the tremendous iniquity of the land,
+            and begging them, ere it should be too late, to interpose
+            their great power in the Church and State, to
+            save our country from the terrible calamities which
+            the sin of slavery was bringing upon us." But there
+            is no evidence that this appeal produced the feeblest
+            ripple in the lives of the two first; and upon the two
+            last it was equally barren of result. Dr. Channing,
+            indeed, did not take the trouble to hear any one of
+            the three lectures of the young philanthropist. Dr.
+            Beecher, however, was at the pains to be present at
+            the first lecture given at Julien Hall. But he betrayed
+            no real interest in the subject. He had no
+            time to devote to anti-slavery, had, in fine, too many
+            irons in the fire already. To this impotent apology
+            of the great preacher of immediatism in his dealing
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_111" id="P_111" title="P_111"></a>
+            with all kinds of sin, except the sin of slave-holding,
+            for not espousing the cause of the slave, Mr. Garrison
+            made his famous retort:
+
+         </p>
+         <blockquote>
+            <p>
+               "Then you had better let all your irons burn than
+               neglect your duty to the slave."
+
+            </p>
+         </blockquote>
+         <p>
+            What more did this poor and friendless man, with
+            his one idea and his harsh language, know of duties
+            and dangers than Daniel Webster, who was busy saving
+            the Union; than Lyman Beecher, who was not
+            less busy saving souls; or than Dr. Channing, who was
+            quite as busy saving liberalism in matters of religion?
+            What folly and presumption it must have seemed to
+            these mighty men this attempt of Garrison to impress
+            upon them a proper sense of their obligations to their
+            country.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Your zeal," said Dr. Beecher to him, with unlimited
+            condescension of tone&#8212;"your zeal is commendable,
+            but you are misguided. If you will give up
+            your fanatical notions and be guided by us (the
+            clergy) we will make you the Wilberforce of
+            America."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            And so what was the young man, burning up with
+            his one idea, to do in presence of such a failure to
+            win these men to the leadership of the anti-slavery
+            movement? He could not hold his peace; his message
+            he was compelled to deliver in the ears of the
+            nation whether its leaders would hear or forbear.
+            Perhaps the common people would hearken to what
+            the wise and powerful had rejected. At any rate
+            they should hear what was resting upon his soul with
+            the weight of a great woe, the force of a supreme
+            command. But how was he, penniless and friendless,
+            to roll from his bosom the burden which was crushing
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_112" id="P_112" title="P_112"></a>
+            it; to pause long enough in the battle for bread
+            to fight the battle of the slave? Ah, if he had money!
+            but no money did he have, not a dollar in his pocket!
+            Oh, if he had rich friends who would dedicate their
+            riches to the preaching of the gospel of freedom! but
+            alas! rich friends there were none. Oh, if he could
+            cry to the Church for help in this hour of his need!
+            but it was slowly dawning on him that not from the
+            Church would help come to his cause; for a grievous
+            thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon
+            sat staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits
+            to stone, turning also to stone the hearts of the
+            people.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Undismayed by the difficulties which were closing
+            in around him, Garrison resolutely set himself to
+            accomplish his purpose touching the establishment
+            of a weekly paper devoted to the abolition of slavery.
+            He had promised in his <i>Prospectus</i> to issue the
+            first number of the <i>Public Liberator</i> "as soon as
+            subscriptions thereto may authorize the attempt." But had
+            he waited for the fulfillment of this condition, the
+            experiment could never have been tried. When subscribers
+            did not come in, the paper, he determined
+            should go forth all the same. But there are some
+            things in the publication of a paper which no man
+            can dispense with, which indispensable somethings
+            are: types, a press, an office, and an assistant. All
+            these requisites were wanting to the man whose sole
+            possession seemed an indomitable will, a faith in himself,
+            and in the righteousness of his cause, which nothing
+            could shake, nor disappointment nor difficulty,
+            however great, was able to daunt or deter. To such
+            an unconquerable will, to such an invincible faith
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_113" id="P_113" title="P_113"></a>
+            obstacles vanish; the impossible becomes the attainable.
+            As Garrison burned to be about his work, help
+            came to him from a man quite as penniless and
+            friendless as himself. The man was Isaac Knapp, an
+            old companion of his in Newburyport, who had also
+            worked with him in the office of the <i>Genius</i>, in
+            Baltimore. He was a practical printer, and was precisely
+            the sort of assistant that the young reformer needed
+            at this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a
+            man like himself acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited
+            capacity for the endurance of unlimited hardships.
+            Together they worked out the financial problems
+            which blocked the way to the publication of the
+            paper. The partners took an office in Merchants'
+            Hall building, then standing on the corner of Congress
+            and Water streets, Boston, which gave their
+            joint enterprise a local habitation. It had already a
+            name. They obtained the use of types in the printing
+            office of the <i>Christian Examiner</i>, situated in the
+            same building. The foreman, Stephen Foster,
+            through his ardent interest in Abolition, made the
+            three first numbers of the paper possible. The publishers
+            paid for the use of the types by working
+            during the day at the case in the <i>Examiner's</i>
+            office. They got the use of a press from another foreman
+            with Abolition sympathies, viz., James B. Yerrington,
+            then the printer of the Boston <i>Daily Advocate</i>.
+            Thus were obtained the four indispensables to the publication
+            of the <i>Liberator</i>&#8212;types, a press, an office, and
+            an assistant.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            When at length the offspring of such labor and
+            sacrifices made its appearance in the world, which
+            was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point of size, insignificant
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_114" id="P_114" title="P_114"></a>
+            enough. It did not look as if its voice would
+            ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it
+            saw the light. Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet
+            with four columns to the page, measuring fourteen
+            inches one way and nine and a quarter the other,
+            and you will get an idea of the diminutiveness of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> on the day of its birth. The very paper
+            on which it was printed was procured on credit. To
+            the ordinary observer it must have seemed such a weakling
+            as was certain to perish from inanition in the
+            first few months of its struggle for existence in the
+            world of journalism. It was domiciled during successive
+            periods in four different rooms of the
+            Merchant's Hall building, until it reached No. 11,
+            "under the eaves," whence it issued weekly for many
+            years to call the nation to repentance. A photographic
+            impression of this cradle-room of the anti-slavery
+            movement has been left by Oliver Johnson, an eye-witness.
+            Says Mr. Johnson: "The dingy walls;
+            the small windows, bespattered with printer's ink;
+            the press standing in one corner; the composing-stands
+            opposite; the long editorial and mailing
+            table, covered with newspapers; the bed of the
+            editor and publisher on the floor&#8212;all these make
+            a picture never to be forgotten." For the first
+            eighteen months the partners toiled fourteen hours a
+            day, and subsisted "chiefly upon bread and milk, a
+            few cakes, and a little fruit, obtained from a baker's
+            shop opposite, and a petty cake and fruit shop in the
+            basement," and, alas, "were on short commons even at
+            that." Amid such hard and grinding poverty was
+            the <i>Liberator</i> born. But the great end of the
+            reformer glorified the mean surroundings:
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_115" id="P_115" title="P_115"></a><div class="lg">"O truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born<br>In the rude stable, in the manger nursed;<br>What humble hands unbar those gates of morn<br>Through which the splendors of the New Day burst."<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            About the brow of this "infant crying in the night,"
+            shone aureole-like the sunlit legend: <em>Our country is the
+               world&#8212;our countrymen are mankind.</em> The difference between
+            this motto of the <i>Liberator</i> and that of the
+            <i>Free Press</i>: <em>Our country, our whole country,
+               and nothing but our country</em>&#8212;measures the greatness of the revolution
+            which had taken place in the young editor.
+            The grand lesson he had learned, than which there is
+            none greater, that beneath diversities of race, color,
+            creed, language, there is the one human principle,
+            which makes all men kin. He had learned at the age
+            of twenty-five to know the mark of brotherhood made
+            by the Deity Himself: "Behold! my brother is man,
+            not because he is American or Anglo-Saxon, or white
+            or black, but because he is a fellow-man," is the simple,
+            sublime acknowledgment, which thenceforth he was
+            to make in his word and life.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It was Mr. Garrison's original design, as we have
+            seen, to publish the <i>Liberator</i> from Washington.
+            Lundy had, since the issue of the <i>Prospectus</i> for
+            the new paper, removed the <i>Genius</i> to the capital
+            of the nation. This move of Lundy rendered the establishment
+            of a second paper devoted to the abolition of
+            slavery in the same place, of doubtful utility, but,
+            weighty as was this consideration from a mere business
+            point of view, in determining Garrison to locate
+            the <i>Liberator</i> in another quarter, it was not
+            decisive. Just what was the decisive consideration, he reveals
+            in his salutatory address in the <i>Liberator</i>. Here
+            it is:
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_116" id="P_116" title="P_116"></a><p>
+            "During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting
+            the minds of the people by a series of discourses on
+            the subject of slavery," he confides to the reader,
+            "every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the
+            fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment
+            was to be effected in the free States&#8212;<em>and particularly
+               in New England</em>&#8212;than at the South. I found contempt
+            more bitter, opposition more active, detraction
+            more relentless; prejudice more stubborn, and apathy
+            more frozen than among slaveowners themselves.
+            Of course there were individual exceptions to the
+            contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not
+            dishearten me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift
+            up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the
+            nation, <em>within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birthplace
+               of liberty</em>." This final choice of Boston as a base from
+            which to operate against slavery was sagacious, and
+            of the greatest moment to the success of the experiment
+            and to its effective service to the cause.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            If the reformer changed his original intention respecting
+            the place of publication for his paper, he made
+            no alteration of his position on the subject of slavery.
+            "I shall strenuously contend," he declares in the salutatory,
+            "for the immediate enfranchisement of our
+            slave population." "In Park Street Church," he goes
+            on to add, "on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address
+            on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular
+            but pernicious doctrine of <em>gradual</em> abolition. I seize
+            this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal
+            recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my
+            God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor
+            slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity,
+            injustice, and absurdity."
+
+         </p><a class="newpage" name="P_117" id="P_117" title="P_117"></a><p>
+            To those who find fault with his harsh language he
+            makes reply: "I <em>will</em> be as harsh as truth, and as
+            uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not
+            wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.
+            No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a
+            moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his
+            wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother
+            to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into
+            which it has fallen&#8212;but urge me not to use moderation
+            in a cause like the present. I am in earnest&#8212;I
+            will not equivocate&#8212;I will not excuse&#8212;I will not
+            retreat a single inch&#8212;AND I WILL BE HEARD." Martin
+            Luther's "Here I take my stand," was not braver
+            or grander than the "I will be heard," of the American
+            reformer. It did not seem possible that a young
+            man, without influence, without money, standing
+            almost alone, could ever make good those courageous
+            words. The country, in Church and State, had
+            decreed silence on the subject of slavery; the patriotism
+            of the North, its commerce, its piety, its labor and
+            capital had all joined hands to smother agitation, and
+            stifle the discussion of a question that imperilled the
+            peace and durability of Webster's glorious Union.
+            But one man, tearing the gag from his lips, defying
+            all these, cried, "Silence, there shall not be!" and
+            forthwith the whole land began to talk on the forbidden
+            theme:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"O small beginnings ye are great and strong,<br>Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!<br>Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong.<br>Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain!"<br><br></div>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap6"></a>
+            CHAPTER VI.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE HEAVY WORLD IS MOVED.
+
+         </h2><a class="newpage" name="P_118" id="P_118" title="P_118"></a><p>
+            Archimedes with his lever desired a place to stand
+            that he might move the world of matter. Garrison
+            with his paper, having found a place for his feet,
+            demonstrated speedily his ability to push from its
+            solid base the world of mind. His plan was very
+            simple, viz., to reveal slavery as it then existed in its
+            naked enormity, to the conscience of the North, to be
+            "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice."
+            And so, week after week, he packed in the columns of
+            the <i>Liberator</i> facts, the most damning facts,
+            against slaveholders, their cruelty and tyranny. He painted
+            the woes of the slaves as if he, too, had been a slave.
+            For the first time the masters found a man who
+            rebuked them as not before had they been rebuked.
+            Others may have equivocated, but this man called
+            things by their proper names, a spade, a spade, and
+            sin, sin. Others may have contented themselves with
+            denunciations of the sins and with excuses for the
+            sinner, as a creature of circumstances, the victim of
+            ancestral transgressions, but this man offered no excuses
+            for the slave-holding sinner. Him and his sin he
+            denounced in language, which the Eternal puts only
+            into the mouths of His prophets. It was, as he had
+            said, "On this subject I do not wish to think, or
+            speak, or write, with moderation." The strength and
+            resources of his mother-tongue seemed to him wholly
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_119" id="P_119" title="P_119"></a>
+            inadequate for his needs, to express the transcendent
+            wickedness of slave-holding. All the harsh, the
+            stern, the terrible and tremendous energies of the
+            English speech he drew upon, and launched at slaveholders.
+            Amid all of this excess of the enthusiast
+            there was the method of a calculating mind. He
+            aimed to kindle a conflagration because he had icebergs
+            to melt. "The public shall not be imposed
+            upon," he replied to one of his critics, "and men and
+            things shall be called by their right names. I retract
+            nothing, I blot out nothing. My language is exactly
+            such as suits me; it will displease many, I know; to
+            displease them is my intention." He was philosopher
+            enough to see that he could reach the national conscience
+            only by exciting the national anger. It was
+            not popular rage, which he feared but popular apathy.
+            If he could goad the people to anger on the
+            subject of slavery he would soon be rid of their apathy.
+            And so week after week he piled every sort of
+            combustible material, which he was able to collect on
+            board the <i>Liberator</i> and lighting it all, sent the
+            fiery messenger blazing among the icebergs of the Union.
+            Slaveholders were robbers, murderers, oppressors;
+            they were guilty of all the sins of the decalogue, were
+            in a word the chief of sinners. At the same moment
+            that the reformer denied their right of property in
+            the slave, he attacked their character also, held them
+            up in their relation of masters to the reprobation of
+            the nation and of mankind as monsters of injustice
+            and inhumanity. The tone which he held toward
+            them, steadily, without shadow of change, was the
+            tone of a righteous man toward the workers of iniquity.
+            The indifference, the apathy, the pro-slavery
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_120" id="P_120" title="P_120"></a>
+            sympathy and prejudice of the free States rendered the
+            people of the North hardly less culpable. They were
+            working iniquity with the people of the South. This
+            was the long, sharp goad, which the young editor
+            thrust in between the bars of the Union and stirred
+            the guilty sections to quick and savage outbursts of
+            temper against him and the bitter truths which he
+            preached. Almost directly the proofs came to him
+            that he was HEARD at the South and at the North
+            alike. Angry growls reached his ears in the first
+            month of the publication of the <i>Liberator</i> from
+            some heartless New England editors in denunciation of his
+            "violent and intemperate attacks on slaveholders."
+            The <i>Journal</i>, published at Louisville, Kentucky,
+            and edited by George D. Prentice, declared that, "some
+            of his opinions with regard to slavery in the United
+            States are no better than lunacy." The <i>American
+               Spectator</i> published at the seat of the National Government,
+            had hoped that the good sense of the "late talented
+            and persecuted junior editor" of the <i>Genius</i>,
+            "would erelong withdraw him even from the side of
+            the Abolitionists." And from farther South the growl
+            which the reformer heard was unmistakably ferocious.
+            It was from the State of South Carolina and
+            the Camden <i>Journal</i>, which pronounced the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            "a scandalous and incendiary budget of sedition."
+            These were the beginning of the chorus of curses,
+            which soon were to sing their serpent songs about his
+            head. Profane and abusive letters from irate slaveholders
+            and their Northern sympathisers began to
+            pour into the sanctum of the editor. Within a few
+            months after the first issue of the <i>Liberator</i> the
+            whole aspect of the world without had changed toward
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_121" id="P_121" title="P_121"></a>
+            him. "Foes are on my right hand, and on my left,"
+            he reported to some friends. "The tongue of detraction
+            is busy against me. I have no communion with
+            the world&#8212;the world none with me. The timid, the
+            lukewarm, the base, affect to believe that my brains are
+            disordered, and my words the ravings of a maniac.
+            Even many of my friends&#8212;they who have grown up
+            with me from my childhood&#8212;are transformed into
+            scoffers and enemies." The apathy of the press, and
+            the apathy of the people were putting forth signs
+            that the long winter of the land was passing away.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            To a colored man belongs the high honor of having
+            been the <i>courier avant</i> of the slavery
+            agitation. This man was David Walker, who lived in Boston, and
+            who published in 1829 a religio-political discussion
+            of the status of the negroes of the United States in
+            four articles. The wretchedness of the blacks in consequence
+            of slavery he depicted in dark and bitter
+            language. Theodore Parker, many years afterward,
+            said that the negro was deficient in vengeance, the
+            lowest form of justice. "Walker's Appeal" evinced
+            no deficiency in this respect in its author. The pamphlet
+            found its way South, and was the cause of no
+            little commotion among the master-class. It was
+            looked upon as an instigation to servile insurrection.
+            The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put upon
+            the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the
+            sanguinary character of the book. For he himself
+            was the very reverse of Walker. Garrison was a full
+            believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance as
+            enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical
+            collisions of every description, as wicked and
+            inhuman. He sang to the slave:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg"><a class="newpage" name="P_122" id="P_122" title="P_122"></a>"Not by the sword shall your deliverance be;<br>Not by the shedding of your master's blood,<br>Not by rebellion&#8212;or foul treachery,<br>Upspringing suddenly, like swelling flood;<br>Revenge and rapine ne'er did bring forth good.<br>God's <em>time is best</em>!&#8212;nor will it long delay;<br>Even now your barren cause begins to bud,<br>And glorious shall the fruit be!&#8212;watch and pray,<br>For lo! the kindling dawn that ushers in the day."<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            He considered "Walker's Appeal" "a most injudicious
+            publication, yet warranted by the creed of an
+            independent people." He saw in our Fourth-of-July
+            demonstrations, in our glorification of force as an
+            instrument for achieving liberty, a constant incentive
+            to the slaves to go and do likewise. If it was right
+            for the men of 1776 to rise in rebellion against their
+            mother-country, it surely could not be wrong were
+            the slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and
+            strike for their freedom. It certainly did not lie in
+            the mouth of a people, who apotheosized force, to
+            condemn them. What was sauce for the white man's
+            goose was sauce for the black man's gander.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The South could not distinguish between this sort
+            of reasoning, and an express and positive appeal to
+            the slaves to cut the throats of their masters. The
+            contents of the <i>Liberator</i> were quite as likely
+            to produce a slave insurrection as was "Walker's Appeal,"
+            if the paper was allowed to circulate freely among
+            the slave population. It was, in fact, more dangerous
+            to the lives and interests of slaveholders by virtue of
+            the pictorial representation of the barbarism and
+            abomination of the peculiar institution, introduced
+            as a feature of the <i>Liberator</i> in its seventeenth
+            number, in the shape of a slave auction, where the slaves
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_123" id="P_123" title="P_123"></a>
+            are chattels, and classed with "horses and other
+            cattle," and where the tortures of the whipping-post
+            are in vigorous operation. Here was a message,
+            which every slave, however ignorant and illiterate
+            could read. His instinct would tell him, wherever
+            he saw the pictured horror, that a friend, not an
+            enemy, had drawn it, but for what purpose? What
+            was the secret meaning, which he was to extract from
+            a portrayal of his woes at once so real and terrible.
+            Was it to be a man, to seize the knife, the torch, to
+            slay and burn his way to the rights and estate of a
+            man? Garrison had put no such bloody import into
+            the cut. It was designed not to appeal to the passions
+            of the slaves, but to the conscience of the
+            North. But the South did not so read it, was incapable,
+            in fact, of so reading it. What it saw was a
+            shockingly realistic representation of the wrongs of
+            the slaves, the immediate and inevitable effect of
+            which upon the slaves would be to incite them to
+            sedition, to acts of revenge. Living as the slaveholders
+            were over mines of powder and dynamite, it
+            is not to be marveled at that the first flash of danger
+            filled them with apprehension and terror. The awful
+            memories of San Domingo flamed red and dreadful
+            against the dark background of every Southern
+            plantation and slave community. In the "belly" of
+            the <i>Liberator's</i> picture were many San Domingos.
+            Extreme fear is the beginning of madness; it is, indeed,
+            a kind of madness. The South was suddenly plunged
+            into a state of extreme fear toward which the
+            <i>Liberator</i> and "Walker's Appeal" were hurrying it,
+            by one of those strange accidents or coincidences of
+            history.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_124" id="P_124" title="P_124"></a>
+            This extraordinary circumstance was the slave insurrection
+            in Southampton, Virginia, in the month of
+            August, 1831. The leader of the uprising was the
+            now famous Nat Turner. Brooding over the wrongs
+            of his race for several years, he conceived that he
+            was the divinely appointed agent to redress them.
+            He was cast in the mould of those rude heroes, who
+            spring out of the sides of oppression as isolated trees
+            will sometimes grow out of clefts in a mountain.
+            With his yearning to deliver his people, there mingled
+            not a little religious frenzy and superstition. Getting
+            his command from Heaven to arise against the masters,
+            he awaited the sign from this same source of
+            the moment for beginning the work of destruction.
+            It came at last and on the night of August 21st; he and
+            his confederates made a beginning by massacring
+            first his own master, Mr. Joseph Travis, and his entire
+            family. Turner's policy was remorseless enough.
+            It was to spare no member of the white race, whether
+            man, woman, or child, the very infant at the mother's
+            breast was doomed to the knife, until he was able to
+            collect such an assured force as would secure the success
+            of the enterprise. This purpose was executed
+            with terrible severity and exactness. All that night
+            the work of extermination went on as the slave leader
+            and his followers passed like fate from house to
+            house, and plantation to plantation, leaving a wide
+            swathe of death in their track. Terror filled the
+            night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror
+            clutched the bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable,
+            horrible. James McDowell, one of the leaders of the
+            Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories
+            and sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_125" id="P_125" title="P_125"></a>
+            debate, which broke out in the Virginia Legislature,
+            during the winter afterward. One of the
+            legislators, joined to his idol, and who now, that
+            the peril had passed, laughed at the uprising as a
+            "petty affair." McDowell retorted&#8212;"Was that a
+            'petty affair,' which erected a peaceful and confiding
+            portion of the State into a military camp, which outlawed
+            from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers
+            had offended; which barred every door, penetrated
+            every bosom with fear or suspicion, which so
+            banished every sense of security from every man's
+            dwelling, that let but a hoof or horn break upon the
+            silence of the night, and an aching throb would be
+            driven to the heart? The husband would look to his
+            weapon, and the mother would shudder and weep
+            upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and
+            his deluded, drunken handful of followers which produced
+            such effects? Was it this that induced distant
+            counties, where the very name of Southampton was
+            strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir, it
+            was the <em>suspicion eternally
+               attached to the slave himself,</em>&#8212;a
+            suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every
+            family, that the same bloody deed might be acted
+            over at any time and in any place, that the materials
+            for it were spread through the land, and were always
+            ready for a like explosion."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Sixty one whites and more than a hundred blacks
+            perished in this catastrophe. The news produced a
+            profound sensation in the Union. Garrison himself,
+            as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings.
+            Eight months before he had in a strain of prophecy
+            penetrated the future and caught a glimpse of just
+            such an appalling tragedy:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg"><a class="newpage" name="P_126" id="P_126" title="P_126"></a>"Wo, if it come with storm, and blood, and fire,<br>When midnight darkness veils the earth and sky!<br>Wo to the innocent babe&#8212;the guilty sire&#8212;<br>Mother and daughter&#8212;friends of kindred tie!<br><em>Stranger and citizen alike shall die!</em><br>Red-handed slaughter his revenge shall feed,<br>And havoc yell his ominous death-cry,<br>And wild despair in vain for mercy plead&#8212;<br>While hell itself shall shrink and sicken at the deed!"<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            After the Southampton insurrection the slavery
+            agitation increased apace, and the <i>Liberator</i> and
+            its editor became instantly objects of dangerous notoriety
+            in it. The eyes of the country were irresistibly
+            drawn to them. They were at the bottom of the uprising,
+            they were instigating the slaves to similar
+            outbreaks. The savage growlings of a storm came
+            thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful
+            mutterings against the agitator and his paper
+            grew thenceforth more distinct and threatening
+            throughout the free States. October 15, 1831, Garrison
+            records in the <i>Liberator</i> that he "is constantly
+            receiving from the slave States letters filled with the
+            most diabolical threats and indecent language." In
+            the same month Georgetown, S.C., in a panic made
+            it unlawful for a free colored person to take the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            from the post-office. In the same month the
+            Charleston <i>Mercury</i> announced that "gentlemen of
+            the first respectability" at Columbia had offered a
+            reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and
+            conviction of any white person circulating the
+            <i>Liberator</i>,
+            Walker's pamphlet, "or any other publication of
+            seditious tendency." In Georgia the same symptoms
+            of fright were exhibited. In the same month the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_127" id="P_127" title="P_127"></a>
+            grand jury at Raleigh, N.C., indicted William Lloyd
+            Garrison and Isaac Knapp for circulating the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            in that county. It was even confidently expected
+            that a requisition would be made by the Executive of
+            the State upon the Governor of Massachusetts for
+            their arrest, when they would be tried under a law,
+            which made their action felony. "Whipping and
+            imprisonment for the first offence, and death, without
+            benefit of clergy, for the second." Governor Floyd
+            said in his message to the Virginia Legislature in
+            December that there was good cause to suspect that
+            the plans of the Southampton massacre were "designed
+            and matured by unrestrained fanatics in some
+            of the neighboring States." Governor Hamilton sent
+            to the South Carolina Legislature in the same month
+            an excited message on the situation. He was in
+            entire accord with the Virginia Executive as to the
+            primary and potent agencies which led to the slave
+            uprising in Virginia. They were "incendiary newspapers
+            and other publications put forth in the non-slave-holding
+            States, and freely circulated within the
+            limits of Virginia." As specimens of "incendiary
+            newspapers and other publications, put forth in the
+            non-slave-holding States," the South Carolina official
+            sent along with his message, copies of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of
+            Color," for the enlightenment of the members of the
+            Legislature. But it remained for Georgia to cap the
+            climax of madness when her Legislature resolved:
+
+         </p>
+         <blockquote>
+            <p>
+               "That the sum of five thousand dollars be, and the
+               same is hereby appropriated, to be paid to any person
+               or persons who shall arrest, bring to trial and prosecute
+               to conviction, under the laws of this State, the editor
+               <a class="newpage" name="P_128" id="P_128" title="P_128"></a>
+               or publisher of a certain paper called the
+               <i>Liberator</i>,
+               published in the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts;
+               or who shall arrest and bring to trial and
+               prosecute to conviction, under the laws of this State,
+               any other person or persons who shall utter, publish,
+               or circulate within the limits of this State said paper
+               called the <i>Liberator</i>, or any other paper,
+               circular, pamphlet, letter, or address of a seditious character."
+
+            </p>
+         </blockquote>
+         <p>
+            This extraordinary resolve was signed Dec. 26, 1831,
+            by "Wilson Lumpkin, Governor." The whole South
+            was in a state of terror. In its insane fright it would
+            have made short shrift of the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator,</i>
+            had he by accident, force, or fraud have fallen into
+            the clutches of its laws. The Georgia reward of five
+            thousand dollars was as Mr. Garrison put it, "a bribe
+            to kidnappers." The Southern method of dealing
+            with the agitation within the slave States was violent
+            and effective. There could be no agitation after the
+            agitators were abolished. And the Southern method
+            was to abolish the agitators.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The suppression of Abolitionism within the slave
+            States was no difficult matter, but its suppression at
+            the North was a problem of a wholly different nature,
+            as the South was not long in finding out. It would
+            not understand why its violent treatment of the disease
+            within its jurisdiction could not be prescribed as a
+            remedy by the non-slave-holding half of the Union
+            within its borders. And so the South began to call
+            loudly and fiercely for the suppression of a movement
+            calculated to incite the slaves to insubordination and
+            rebellion. This demand of the South had its influence
+            at the North. Such newspapers as the <i>National
+               Intelligencer,</i> and the Boston <i>Courier</i>
+            suggested
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_129" id="P_129" title="P_129"></a>
+            amendments to the laws whereby the publication of
+            incendiary writings in the free States might be prohibited.
+            The latter journal allowed that under the
+            criminal code of Massachusetts "every man has a
+            right to advocate Abolition, or conspiracy, or murder;
+            for he may do all these without breaking our
+            laws, although in any Southern State public justice
+            and public safety would require his punishment."
+            "But," the editor goes on to remark, "if we have no
+            laws upon the subject, it is because the exigency
+            was not anticipated.... Penal statutes against
+            treasonable and seditious publications are necessary
+            in all communities. We have them for our own protection;
+            if they should include provisions for the protection
+            of our neighbors it would be no additional
+            encroachment upon the liberty of the press." The
+            Governors of Virginia and Georgia remonstrated with
+            Harrison Gray Otis, who was Mayor of Boston in
+            the memorable year of 1831, "against an incendiary
+            newspaper published in Boston, and, as they alleged,
+            thrown broadcast among their plantations, inciting to
+            insurrection and its horrid results." As a lawyer
+            Mayor Otis, however, "perceived the intrinsic, if not
+            insuperable obstacles to legislative enactments made
+            to prevent crimes from being consummated beyond
+            the local jurisdiction." But the South was not seeking
+            a legal opinion as to what it could or could not
+            do. It demanded, legal or illegal, that Garrison and the
+            <i>Liberator</i> be suppressed. To the Boston mayor the
+            excitement over the editor and his paper seemed like
+            much ado about nothing. The cause appeared to
+            his supercilious mind altogether inadequate to the
+            effect. And so he set to work to reduce the panic by
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_130" id="P_130" title="P_130"></a>
+            exposing the vulgarity and insignificance of the
+            object, which produced it. That he might give the
+            Southern bugaboo its <i>quietus</i>, he directed one of
+            his deputies to inquire into a publication, of which "no
+            member of the city government, nor any person," of
+            his honor's acquaintance, "had ever heard." The
+            result of this inquiry Mayor Otis reported to the
+            Southern functionaries.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Some time afterward," he wrote, "it was reported
+            to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out
+            the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure
+            hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and
+            his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all
+            colors."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            With this bare bodkin Harrison Gray Otis thought
+            to puncture the Southern panic. But the slaveholders
+            had correcter notions of the nature and tendency
+            of the Abolition enterprise than had the Boston
+            mayor. They had a strange, an obstinate presentiment of disaster from the
+            first instant that the <i>Liberator</i>
+            loomed upon their horizon. It was a battery
+            whose guns, unless silenced, would play havoc
+            with Southern interests and the slave system; <i>ergo</i>,
+            the paper must be suppressed; <i>ergo</i>, its editor must
+            be silenced or destroyed. And so when Otis, from
+            his serene height, assured them of his "belief that
+            the new fanaticism had not made, nor was likely to
+            make, proselytes among the respectable classes of
+            our people," they continued to listen to their fears,
+            and to cry the louder for the suppression of the
+            "incendiary newspaper published in Boston."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The editor of that paper never flinched before the
+            storm of malignity which was gathering about his
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_131" id="P_131" title="P_131"></a>
+            head. He pursued the even tenor of his way, laboring
+            at the case more than fourteen hours every day,
+            except Sundays, upon the paper, renewing, week after
+            week, his assaults upon the citadel of the great iniquity,
+            giving no quarter to slave-holding sinners, but
+            carrying aloft the banner of IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL
+            EMANCIPATION. Otis had looked to numbers
+            and respectability as his political barometer and
+            cue; but when, after diligent search with official
+            microscopes, he failed to observe the presence of
+            either in connection with this "new fanaticism," wise
+            man that he was, he turned over and renewed his slumbers
+            on the edge of a volcano whose ominous rumbling
+            the Southern heart had heard and interpreted
+            aright. He was too near to catch the true import of
+            the detonations of those subterranean forces which
+            were sounding, week after week, in the columns of
+            the <i>Liberator</i>. They seemed trivial, harmless,
+            contemptible, like the toy artillery of children bombarding
+            Fort Independence. Garrison's moral earnestness
+            and enthusiasm seemed to the Boston mayor
+            like the impotent rage of a man nursing memories of
+            personal injuries suffered at the South.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            If there was panic in the South, there was none in
+            the office of the <i>Liberator</i>. Unterrified by the
+            commotion which his composing-stick was producing
+            near and far, he laughed to scorn the abuse and
+            threats of his enemies. When the news of the reward
+            of the State of Georgia "for the abduction of his
+            person" reached him, he did not quail, great as was
+            his peril, but boldly replied:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Of one thing we are sure: all Southern threats
+            and rewards will be insufficient to deter us from pursuing
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_132" id="P_132" title="P_132"></a>
+            the work of emancipation. As citizens of the
+            United States we know our rights and dare maintain
+            them. We have committed no crime, but are expending
+            our health, comfort, and means for the salvation
+            of our country, and for the interests and security of
+            infatuated slaveholders, as well as for the relief of
+            the poor slaves."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Archimedes with his lever had moved the world.
+            Archimedes "in a small chamber, unfurnitured and
+            mean," had set a world of pro-slavery passions and
+            prejudices spinning away into space:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"Such earnest natures are the fiery pith,<br>The compact nucleus, 'round which systems grow;<br>Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith,<br>And whirls impregnate with the central glow."<br><a class="newpage" name="P_133" id="P_133" title="P_133"></a><br></div>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap7"></a>
+            CHAPTER VII.
+
+            MASTER STROKES.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            "Help came but slowly" to the reformer. With a
+            single instrument he had stirred the nation, as no
+            other man had done, on the slavery question. He had
+            thrown the South into widespread excitement, and
+            thawed the apathy of the North into widespread
+            attention. He had won an almost instant hearing for
+            his cause. But he knew that this was not enough.
+            Effective as he had shown the weapon of the press to
+            be, it alone was unequal to the conduct of prolonged
+            agitation. And prolonged agitation Garrison clearly
+            apprehended was to be the price of abolition. Back
+            of him and the <i>Liberator</i> he needed an organized
+            force, coadjutors like Aaron and Hur to hold up his
+            arms during the mighty conflict on which he had now
+            entered with the slave interests of the country. Those
+            interests were organized, and because they were
+            organized they were powerful. The sentiment of
+            freedom he determined to organize and to render it
+            thereby invincible. To organized wrong he designed
+            to oppose organized right, confident that organized
+            right would prevail in the end. He had knowledge
+            of the utility of temperance societies in advancing
+            the cause of sobriety among the people. He had
+            learned from Lundy how much he had relied upon
+            the union of men as anti-slavery helps. Garrison
+            determined to summon to his side the powerful
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_134" id="P_134" title="P_134"></a>
+            agency of an anti-slavery society devoted to
+            immediate and unconditional emancipation. He had
+            already made converts; he had already a small following.
+            At Julien Hall, on the occasion of his first
+            lecture on the subject of slavery, he had secured three
+            remarkable men to the movement, viz., Rev. Samuel
+            J. May, then a young Unitarian minister, Samuel E.
+            Sewall, a young member of the Bar, and A. Bronson
+            Alcott, a sage even in his early manhood. They had
+            all promised him aid and comfort in the great task
+            which he had undertaken. A little later two others,
+            quite as remarkable as those first three were drawn
+            to the reformer's side, and abetted him in the treason
+            to iniquity, which he was prosecuting through the
+            columns of the <i>Liberator</i> with unrivaled zeal and
+            devotion. These disciples were Ellis Grey Loring
+            and David Lee Child. They were a goodly company,
+            were these five conspirators, men of intellect and
+            conscience, of high family and social connections, of
+            brilliant attainments and splendid promises for the
+            future. To this number must be added a sixth,
+            Oliver Johnson, who was at the time editing <i>The
+               Christian Soldier</i>, disciple of Garrison then, and ever
+            after his devoted friend. The early promises of this
+            noble half dozen friends of the slave were more than
+            fulfilled in after years. Often to the dingy room
+            "under the eaves" in Merchants' Hall they climbed
+            to carry aid and comfort to "one poor, unlearned
+            young man," and to sit at his feet in this cradle-room
+            of the new movement. It was there in communion
+            with the young master that suggestions looking to
+            the formation of an anti-slavery society, were doubtless
+            first thrown out.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_135" id="P_135" title="P_135"></a></p>
+         <div class="lg">"The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean;<br>Yet there the freedom of a race began."<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            It was not all clear sailing for the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> even with such choice spirits. They did
+            not always carry aid and comfort to him, but differences
+            of opinions sometimes as well. He did not
+            sugar-coat enough the bitter truth which he was telling
+            to the nation. Some of them would have preferred
+            <i>The Safety Lamp</i> to the
+            <i>Liberator</i> as a title less
+            likely to offend the prejudices of many good people.
+            Some again objected to the pictorial heading of the
+            paper as an altogether unwise proceeding, and positively
+            mischievous. He had the same experience
+            when the formation of an Abolition society was under
+            consideration. He was confronted with this benevolent
+            aversion to giving offence by calling things by
+            their right names. But much as he desired to have
+            his friends and followers organized for associated
+            action, where a principle was at stake he was with
+            them as with slavery itself absolutely inflexible and
+            uncompromising. He was for organizing on the
+            principle of immediate emancipation. A few deemed
+            that ground too radical and revolutionary, and were
+            for ranging themselves under the banner of Gradualism,
+            thinking to draw to their ranks a class of people,
+            who would be repelled by Immediatism. But Garrison
+            was unyielding, refused to budge an inch to conciliate
+            friend or foe&#8212;not even such stanch supporters
+            as were Sewall and Loring, who supplied him again
+            and again with money needed to continue the publication
+            of the <i>Liberator</i>. No, he was right and they
+            were wrong, and they, not he, ought accordingly to
+            yield. The contention between the leader and his
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_136" id="P_136" title="P_136"></a>
+            disciples was not what was expedient, but what was
+            right. It was on the part of the leader the assertion
+            of a vital principle, and on this ground he was
+            pledged against retreat. The mountain could not go
+            to Mahomet, therefore Mahomet must needs go to the
+            mountain. Garrison could not abandon his position,
+            wherefore in due time Loring, Child, and Sewall surrendered
+            theirs. Finely has Lowell expressed this
+            righteous stubbornness, and steadfastness to principle
+            in three stanzas of his poem entitled, "The Day of
+            Small Things," and which have such an obvious lesson
+            for our own times that I shall venture to quote
+            them in this place:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="poem">
+            <h3><a name="SmallThings"></a></h3>
+            <div class="lg">"Who is it will not dare himself to trust?<br>Who is it hath not strength to stand alone?<br>Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST?<br>He and his works, like sand from earth are blown.<br><br></div>
+            <div class="lg">"Men of a thousand shifts and wiles look here!<br>See one straightforward conscience put in pawn<br>To win a world! See the obedient sphere<br>By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!<br><br></div>
+            <div class="lg">"Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,<br>And by the Present's lips repeated still,<br>In our own single manhood to be bold,<br>Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"<br><br></div>
+         </div>
+         <p>
+            The history of the making of this first society is an
+            interesting story. There were four meetings in all
+            before it was found possible to complete the work of
+            its organization. These meetings extended over a
+            space of nearly three months, so obstinate were a
+            minority against committing the proposed society
+            to the principle of immediate emancipation. The
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_137" id="P_137" title="P_137"></a>
+            very name which was to be given to the association
+            provoked debate and disagreement. Some were for
+            christening it "Philo-African," while Garrison would
+            no such milk-and-water title, but one which expressed
+            distinctly and graphically the real character of the organization,
+            viz., "New England Anti-Slavery Society."
+            He would sail under no false or neutral colors, but
+            beneath the red flag of open and determined hostility
+            to slavery. It should be a sign which no one
+            could possibly mistake. The first meeting was held
+            at the office of Samuel E. Sewall, November 13, 1831.
+            At the third meeting, convened New Year's evening
+            of 1832, which was the first anniversary of the publication
+            of the <i>Liberator</i>, the work of organization was
+            finished, with a single important exception, viz., the
+            adoption of the preamble to the constitution. The
+            character of the preamble would fix the character of
+            the society. Therefore that which was properly first
+            was made to come last. The fourth meeting took
+            place on the night of January 6th in the African Baptist
+            Church on what was then Belknap but now known
+            as Joy street. The young leader and fourteen of his
+            followers met that evening in the school-room for
+            colored children, situated under the auditorium of
+            the church. They could hardly have fallen upon a
+            more obscure or despised place for the consummation
+            of their enterprise in the city of Boston than was
+            this selfsame negro church and school-room. The
+            weather added an ever memorable night to the opprobrium
+            of the spot. A fierce northeaster accompanied
+            with "snow, rain, and hail in equal proportions" was
+            roaring and careering through the city's streets. To
+            an eye-witness, Oliver Johnson, "it almost seemed
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_138" id="P_138" title="P_138"></a>
+            as if Nature was frowning upon the new effort to
+            abolish slavery; but," he added, "the spirits of the
+            little company rose superior to all external circumstances."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            If there was strife of the elements without, neither
+            was there sweet accord within among brethren.
+            "The spirits of the little company" may have risen
+            superior to the weather, but they did not rise superior
+            to the preamble, with the principle of immediatism
+            incorporated in it. Eleven stood by the leader and
+            made it the chief of the corner of the new society,
+            while three, Messrs. Loring, Sewall, and Child, refused
+            to sign the Constitution and parted sorrowfully
+            from the small band of the New England Anti-Slavery
+            Society. But the separation was only temporary, for
+            each returned to the side of the reformer, and proved
+            his loyalty and valor in the trying years which followed.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The preamble which was the bone of so much contention
+            declared that: "We, the undersigned, hold
+            that every person, of full age and sane mind, has a
+            right to immediate freedom from personal bondage
+            of whatsoever kind, unless imposed by the sentence
+            of the law for the commission of some crime. We
+            hold that man cannot, consistently with reason,
+            religion, and the eternal and immutable principles
+            of justice, be the property of man. We hold that
+            whoever retains his fellow-man in bondage is guilty
+            of a grievous wrong. We hold that a mere difference
+            of complexion is no reason why any man should be
+            deprived of any of his natural rights, or subjected to
+            any political disability. While we advance these
+            opinions as the principles on which we intend to act,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_139" id="P_139" title="P_139"></a>
+            we declare that we will not operate on the existing
+            relations of society by other than peaceful and lawful
+            means, and that we will give no countenance to
+            violence or insurrection."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Twelve, the apostolic number, affixed to the preamble
+            and constitution their names, and thus formed
+            the first Garrisonian Society for the abolition of slavery
+            in the United States. The names of these apostolic
+            men it is well to keep in mind. They are William
+            Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Robert B. Hall,
+            Arnold Buffum, William J. Snelling, John E. Fuller,
+            Moses Thatcher, Joshua Coffin, Stillman B. Newcomb,
+            Benjamin C. Bacon, Isaac Knapp, and Henry
+            K. Stockton. The band of reformers, their work
+            done, had risen to pass out of the low, rude room into
+            the dark night. The storm was still raging. They
+            themselves had perchance been sobered by the experiences
+            of the evening. They had gone in fifteen,
+            they were returning twelve. And, after all, what had
+            they accomplished? What could they a mere handful
+            do to abolish slavery entrenched as it was in Church
+            and State? It is possible that some such dim discouragement,
+            some such vague misgiving of the
+            futility of the evening's labor, was in the hearts of
+            those wearied men, and that their leader divined as
+            much, for the spirit of prophecy fell upon Garrison
+            just as they "were stepping out into the storm and
+            darkness." "We have met to-night," he said, "in
+            this obscure school-house; our numbers are few and
+            our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil
+            Hall shall erelong echo with the principles we
+            have set forth. We shall shake the nation by their
+            mighty power." Then the little band dispersed "into
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_140" id="P_140" title="P_140"></a>
+            the storm and darkness," carrying with them these
+            words charged with hope and courage.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The fruitful seed of organized agitation Garrison
+            had securely planted in soil fertile and ready for its
+            reception. Its growth constitutes one of the marvels
+            of reforms. Within a few brief years it multiplied
+            into hundreds and thousands of societies throughout
+            the free States. But its beginnings were small and
+            humble enough. "The objects of the society" were
+            according to the second article of the constitution,
+            "to endeavor by all means sanctioned by law, humanity,
+            and religion, to effect the abolition of slavery in
+            the United States, to improve the character and condition
+            of the free people of color, to inform and correct
+            public opinion in relation to their situation and
+            rights, and to obtain for them equal civil and political
+            rights and privileges with the whites." The
+            means which were immediately adopted by the society
+            for the accomplishment of these objects were mainly
+            three, than which none others could have been
+            more effective. These were petitioning Congress on
+            the subject of slavery. The publication and circulation
+            of anti-slavery addresses and tracts, and the employment
+            of anti-slavery agents, "in obtaining or
+            communicating intelligence, in the publication and
+            distribution of tracts, books, or papers, or in the execution
+            of any measure which may be adopted to promote
+            the objects of the society." Such was the simple
+            but unequaled machinery which the New England
+            Anti-Slavery Society relied upon for success in the
+            war, which it had declared against American slavery.
+            The executive power of the body, and the operation
+            of its machinery were lodged in a board of managers
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_141" id="P_141" title="P_141"></a>
+            of which Garrison's was the leading, originating
+            mind. The society started out bravely in the use of
+            its means by memorializing Congress for the abolition
+            of slavery, "in the District of Columbia and in
+            the Territories of the United States under their jurisdiction,"
+            and by preparing and distributing an address
+            in maintenance of the doctrine of immediate emancipation.
+            The board of managers set the machinery in
+            motion as far and as fast as the extremely limited
+            pecuniary ability of the society would permit. The
+            membership was not from the rich classes. It was
+            Oliver Johnson who wittily remarked that not
+            more than one or two of the original twelve,
+            "could have put a hundred dollars into the treasury
+            without bankrupting themselves." The remark was
+            true, and was quite as applicable to any dozen of the
+            new-comers as to the original twelve. The society
+            was never deficient in zeal, but it was certainly sadly
+            wanting in money. And money was even to such
+            men and to such a movement an important factor in
+            revolutionizing public opinion.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The <i>Liberator</i> was made the official organ of the
+            society, and in this way was added to its other weapons
+            that of the press. This was a capital arrangement,
+            for by it both the paper and the society were
+            placed under the direction of the same masterly
+            guidance. There was still one arrow left in the moral
+            quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of
+            the people, and that was the appointment of an agent
+            to spread the doctrines of the new propaganda of
+            freedom. In August the board of managers, metaphorically
+            speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison
+            the agent of the society to lecture on the subject
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_142" id="P_142" title="P_142"></a>
+            of slavery "for a period not exceeding three
+            months." This was the first drop from a cloud then
+            no bigger than a hand, but which was to grow and
+            spread until, covering the North, was, at the end of
+            a few short years, to flood the land with anti-slavery
+            agents and lecturers.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Our anti-slavery agent visited portions of Massachusetts,
+            Maine, and Rhode Island, preaching the Abolition
+            gospel in divers places, and to many people&#8212;notably
+            at such centers of population as Worcester,
+            Providence, Bangor, and Portland, making at the
+            latter city a signal conversion to his cause in the person
+            of General Samuel Fessenden, distinguished then
+            as a lawyer, and later as the father of William Pitt
+            Fessenden. The anti-slavery schoolmaster was
+            abroad, and was beginning to turn New England and
+            the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where he
+            sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the
+            forms.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the
+            society during the first year of its existence that it
+            was no empty declaration or boast of the
+            <i>Abolitionist</i>,
+            the new monthly periodical of the society, that
+            "probably, through its instrumentality, more public
+            addresses on the subject of slavery, and appeals in
+            behalf of the contemned free people of color, have
+            been made in New England, during the past year
+            (1832) than were elicited for forty years prior to its
+            organization."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The introduction of the principle of association
+            into the slavery agitation, and the conversion of it
+            into an organized movement was an achievement of
+            the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_143" id="P_143" title="P_143"></a>
+            man, or to all others put together, belongs the
+            authorship of this immense initiative. He it was,
+            who, having "announced the principle, arranged the
+            method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling
+            of the anti-slavery sentiment of New England
+            under a common standard, in a common cause, was
+            a master stroke of moral generalship. This master
+            stroke the leader followed up promptly with a second
+            stroke not less masterly. That second stroke was his
+            "Thoughts on African Colonization," published in
+            the summer succeeding the formation of the New
+            England Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's championship of the cause of the slave
+            had started with strong faith in the efficacy and disinterestedness
+            of the colonization scheme as an instrument
+            of emancipation. It commanded, therefore, his
+            early support. In his Park Street Church address he
+            evinced himself in earnest sympathy with the friends
+            of colonization. But after his arrival in Baltimore a
+            change began to exhibit itself in this regard. He
+            began to qualify his confidence in its utility; began
+            to discern in it influences calculated to retard general
+            emancipation. As these doubts and misgivings arose
+            within him he expressed them frankly in the
+            <i>Genius</i>.
+            Lundy had been suspicious of the pro-slavery purposes
+            or interests of the enterprise for many years.
+            He could not reconcile himself to the significant or,
+            at least, singular fact of so many slaveholders being
+            in the membership and the offices of the association.
+            Then, in addition to this lack of confidence on the
+            part of Lundy in the scheme, Garrison became acquainted,
+            for the first time, with the objects of the
+            society's philanthropy&#8212;the class of free people of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_144" id="P_144" title="P_144"></a>
+            color. He found that these people were not at all
+            well affected to the society; that they had no appreciation
+            of its benevolent intentions in respect to themselves.
+            He found, on the contrary, that they were
+            positively embittered toward it and toward its designs
+            for their removal from the country as toward their
+            worst enemy. This circumstance was undoubtedly
+            a poser to their young friend. How could he reconcile
+            this deep-seated and widespread disbelief in the
+            purity of the motives of the Colonization Society,
+            with the simple integrity and humanity of the enterprise
+            itself? Later, his acquaintance with such representatives
+            of the free people of color in Philadelphia
+            as James Forten and his son-in-law, Robert Purvis,
+            served but to confirm those first impressions which
+            he received in Baltimore from the Watkinses and
+            the Greeners. It was the same experience in New
+            York and New Haven, in Boston and Providence.
+            He learned that from the very beginning, in the year
+            1817, that the free people of color in Richmond and
+            Philadelphia had, by an instinctive knowledge of
+            threatened wrong and danger, met and resolved
+            against the society and its sinister designs upon
+            themselves. These people did not wish to leave the
+            country; they did not wish to be sent to Liberia; but
+            the society, bent on doing them good against their
+            will, did want them to leave the country, did want
+            to send them to Liberia.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            And why did the society desire to remove the free
+            people of color out of the country? Was it from motives
+            of real philanthropy? The colored people were
+            the first to detect its spurious humanity, the first to see
+            through the artful disguises employed to impose upon
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_145" id="P_145" title="P_145"></a>
+            the conscience of the republic. Their removal, they
+            intuitively divined, was proposed not to do their race
+            a benefit, but rather to do a service to the owners of
+            slaves. These objects of the society's pseudo-philanthropy
+            had the sagacity to perceive that, practically,
+            their expatriation tended to strengthen the
+            chains of their brethren then in slavery; for if the
+            South could get rid of its free colored population, its
+            slave property would thereby acquire additional
+            security, and, of consequence, increased market value.
+            Like cause, like effect. If the operation of the colonization
+            scheme was decidedly in the interest of the
+            masters, it was the part of wisdom to conclude as the
+            free colored people did actually conclude that the
+            underlying motive, the hidden purpose of the society
+            was also in the interest of the masters.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison did not reach his conclusions as to the
+            pro-slavery character and tendency of the society
+            abruptly. The scales fell away gradually from his
+            eyes. He was not completely undeceived until he
+            had examined the reports of the society and found
+            in them the most redundant evidence of its insincerity
+            and guilt. It was out of its own mouth that he
+            condemned it. When he saw the society in its true
+            character, he saw what he must do. It was a wolf in
+            sheep's skin running at large among the good shepherd's
+            flock, and inflicting infinite hurt upon his poor
+            sheep. He no longer wondered at the horror which
+            the colonization scheme inspired among the free
+            people of color. They were right. The society was
+            their dangerous and determined enemy; it was the
+            bulwark of the slave-holding classes. With the
+            instinct of a great purpose he resolved to carry this
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_146" id="P_146" title="P_146"></a>
+            powerful bulwark of slavery by assault. To the
+            attack he returned week after week in the
+            <i>Liberator</i>,
+            during a year and a half. Then he hurled himself
+            upon it with all his guns, facts, arguments, denunciations,
+            blowing away and burning up every shred of
+            false covering from the doctrines, principles, and
+            purposes of the society, revealing it to mankind in
+            its base and monstrous character.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The society's one motive "to get rid of the free
+            people of color," was outrageous enough, but this
+            was not its only sin. There was another phase to the
+            mischief it was working, which lifted it to the rank of
+            a great sinner. It was not only harmful in its principles
+            and purposes. "It imperatively and effectually
+            seals up the lips," so Garrison accused it, "of a vast
+            number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of
+            giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they
+            associate, and thereby leading to a dissolution of the
+            compact, dare not expose the flagrant enormities of
+            the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of holding
+            human beings in bondage. They dare not lead
+            to the onset against the forces of tyranny; and if
+            they shrink from the conflict, how shall the victory
+            be won? I do not mean to aver that in their sermons,
+            or addresses, or private conversations, they
+            never allude to the subject of slavery; for they do so
+            frequently, or at least every Fourth of July. But my
+            complaint is that they content themselves with representing
+            slavery as an evil&#8212;a misfortune&#8212;a calamity
+            which has been entailed upon us by former
+            generations,&#8212;<em>and
+               not as an individual</em> CRIME, embracing in its
+            folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. <em>They
+               do not identify the criminal</em>; they make no direct,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_147" id="P_147" title="P_147"></a>
+            pungent, earnest appeal to the consciences of men-stealers."
+            This was a damning bill, but it was true
+            in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison
+            adduced to establish his charges was overwhelming
+            and irrefragable.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright
+            described the baleful influence of the society upon
+            the humanity and philanthropy of the nation. "The
+            humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could
+            not otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced
+            into an African Colonization Society, whereby all
+            slaves who had grown seditious and troublesome to
+            their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous
+            African coast. That this wretched and seemingly
+            transparent humbug could have deluded anybody,
+            must now seem past belief; but I must with shame
+            confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it. And
+            that fact would put me in doubt of my own sanity at
+            the time if I did not know that high statesmen, presidents
+            of colleges, able editors, and that most
+            undoubted of firm philanthropists, Gerritt Smith,
+            shared the same delusion. Bible and missionary societies
+            fellowshipped that mean and scurvy device of
+            the kidnapper, in their holy work. It was spoken of
+            as the most glorious of Christian enterprises, had a
+            monthly magazine devoted to itself, and taxed about
+            every pulpit in the land for an annual sermon in its
+            favor."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Such was the Colonization Society, and its
+            entrenched strength in the piety and philanthropy of
+            the country at the moment when Garrison published
+            his "Thoughts." It did not seem possible that a single
+            arm however powerful, was able to start its roots;
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_148" id="P_148" title="P_148"></a>
+            but, directly upon the launching of this bolt, the
+            roots of the Bohun Upas, as Garrison graphically
+            designated the society, were seen to have started, and
+            the enterprise appeared blasted as by fire. The
+            deluded intellect and conscience of the free States
+            saw in the fierce light, which the pamphlet of the
+            reformer threw upon the colonization scheme how
+            shamefully imposed upon they had been. They had
+            believed the society "the most glorious of Christian
+            enterprises," and, lo! it stood revealed to them a
+            "scurvy device of the kidnapper." The effect was
+            extraordinary. The book was seized and its contents
+            devoured by some of the finest minds of the
+            North. Here is an example of the interest which it
+            excited and the converts which it made: "Last Monday
+            evening was our Law Club meeting, and I had
+            the great satisfaction of hearing Judge Mellen, our
+            Chief-Justice, say he had read your 'Thoughts,' was a
+            thorough convert to your views, and was ready to do
+            all in his power to promote them. Mr. Longfellow
+            [father of Henry W. Longfellow] was present also,
+            and with equal warmth and clearness expressed himself
+            also in favor of your views. This is getting the
+            two first men in the State for talents and influence in
+            benevolent effort. I have no doubt they will head
+            the list of those who will subscribe to form here an
+            anti-slavery society. Mr. Greenleaf [Simon] also,
+            will cordially come in, and I need not say he is one of
+            the first [men] in the State, for his character is known."
+            This quotation is made from a letter of General Samuel
+            Fessenden, of Portland, Me., to Mr. Garrison,
+            dated December 14, 1832. Among the remarkable
+            minds which the "Thoughts" disillusioned in respect
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_149" id="P_149" title="P_149"></a>
+            of the character and tendency of the Colonization
+            Society were Theodore D. Weld, Elizur Wright, and
+            Beriah Green, N.P. Rogers, William Goodell, Joshua
+            Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Lewis Tappan, and James
+            Miller McKim.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's assertion that "the overthrow of the
+            Colonization Society was the overthrow of slavery
+            itself," was, from the standpoint of a student of history,
+            an exaggerated one. We know now that the
+            claim was not founded on fact, that while they did
+            stand together they did not fall together. But the
+            position was, nevertheless, the strongest possible one
+            for the anti-slavery movement to occupy at the time.
+            In the disposition of the pro-slavery forces on the
+            field of the opening conflict in 1832, the colonization
+            scheme commanded the important approaches to the
+            citadel of the peculiar institution. It cut off the
+            passes to public opinion, and to the religious and
+            benevolent influences of the land. To reach these it
+            was necessary in the first place to dislodge the society
+            from its coign of vantage, its strategical point in
+            the agitation. And this is precisely what "The
+            Thoughts on African Colonization" did. It dislodged
+            the society from its powerful place in the moral sentiment
+            of the North. The capture of this position
+            was like the capture of a drawbridge, and the precipitation
+            of the assaulting column directly upon
+            the walls of a besieged castle. Within the pamphlet
+            was contained the whole tremendous enginery of
+            demolition. The anti-slavery agent and lecturer
+            thenceforth set it up wherever he spoke.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            To him it was not only the catapult; it furnished
+            the missile-like facts and arguments for
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_150" id="P_150" title="P_150"></a>
+            breaching the walls of this pro-slavery stronghold as
+            well.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The effect of the publication of "The Thoughts"
+            in this country was extraordinary, but the result of
+            their circulation in England was hardly less so. It
+            produced there as here a revolution in public sentiment
+            upon the subject. The philanthropy and piety
+            of Great Britain had generally prior to the unmasking
+            of the society, looked upon it as an instrument of
+            Emancipation, and had accordingly given it their
+            powerful countenance, and not a little material support.
+            But from the moment that the pamphlet
+            reached England a decided change in this regard
+            became manifest. The society made fruitless attempts
+            to break the force of the blow dealt it by Garrison in
+            the United States. But wherever its emissaries
+            traveled "The Thoughts" confronted and confounded
+            them. So that Mr. Garrison was warranted in saying
+            that "all that sophistry or misrepresentation could
+            effect to overthrow its integrity has been attempted
+            in vain. The work, as a whole, stands irrefutable."
+            The attempts made to maintain its hold upon the
+            British public were characterized by duplicity and
+            misrepresentation beyond anything practiced in
+            America. The work of deceiving the philanthropy
+            of Great Britain was conducted by the emissary of
+            the society, Elliott Cresson, a man perfectly fitted to
+            perform his part with remarkable thoroughness and
+            industry. Three thousand miles away from America,
+            and practically secure from contradiction, he went
+            about making outrageous statements as to the anti-slavery
+            character and purpose of the colonization
+            enterprise. As there was no one in England sufficiently
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_151" id="P_151" title="P_151"></a>
+            acquainted with the operations and designs
+            of the society, he was enabled to falsify facts, to conceal
+            the real principles of the scheme with astonishing
+            audacity and activity. He approached Wilberforce,
+            and duped Clarkson into a belief in the anti-slavery
+            aim of the society.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Unmasked in America, the time had come when the
+            interests of the Abolition movement on this side of
+            the Atlantic required that it should be stripped of its
+            disguises on the other side also. No better instrument
+            could be selected for this purpose than the man
+            who had torn the mask from its features in the United
+            States. And so in March, 1833, the Board of Managers
+            of the New England Anti-Slavery Society notified
+            the public of the appointment of "William Lloyd
+            Garrison as their agent, and that he would proceed to
+            England as soon as the necessary arrangements can
+            be made, for the purpose of procuring funds to aid
+            in the establishment of the proposed <b>MANUAL
+               LABOR SCHOOL FOR COLORED YOUTH</b>, and
+            of disseminating in that country the truth in relation
+            to American slavery, and to its ally, the American
+            Colonization Society." The managers offered in
+            justification of their step the fact that "Elliott Cresson
+            is now in England as an agent for the Colonization
+            Society, and that he has procured funds to a
+            considerable amount by representing that the object
+            of the society is 'to assist in the emancipation of all
+            the slaves now in the United States.' It is important
+            that the philanthropists of that country should be
+            undeceived, and that the real principles and designs
+            of the Colonization Society should be there made
+            known."
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_152" id="P_152" title="P_152"></a>
+            In pursuance of this mission Garrison sailed from
+            New York, May 2, 1833. Twenty days later he landed
+            in Liverpool. His arrival was opportune, for all
+            England was watching the closing scene in the drama
+            of West India Emancipation. He was an eye-witness
+            of the crowning triumph of the English Abolitionists,
+            viz., the breaking by Act of Parliament of the fetters
+            of eight hundred thousand slaves. He was in time to
+            greet his great spiritual kinsman, William Wilberforce,
+            and to undeceive him in respect of the Colonization
+            Society, before death claimed his body, and to follow
+            him to his last resting-place by the side of Pitt
+            and Fox, in Westminster Abbey.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A highly interesting incident of this visit is best
+            told in Mr. Garrison's own words. He said:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "On arriving in London I received a polite invitation
+            by letter from Mr. Buxton to take breakfast with
+            him. Presenting myself at the appointed time, when
+            my name was announced, instead of coming forward
+            promptly to take me by the hand, he scrutinized me
+            from head to foot, and then inquired, 'Have I the
+            pleasure of addressing Mr. Garrison, of Boston, in
+            the United States?' 'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I am he;
+            and I am here in accordance with your invitation.'
+            Lifting up his hands he exclaimed, 'Why, my dear
+            sir, I thought you were a black man! And I have
+            consequently invited this company of ladies and
+            gentlemen to be present to welcome Mr. Garrison,
+            the black advocate of emancipation, from the United
+            States of America.' I have often said that that is the
+            only compliment I have ever had paid to me that I care
+            to remember or to tell of! For Mr. Buxton had
+            somehow or other supposed that no white American
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_153" id="P_153" title="P_153"></a>
+            could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and
+            therefore I must be black!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison promptly threw down his challenge to
+            Elliott Cresson, offering to prove him an impostor
+            and the Colonization Society "corrupt in its principles,
+            proscriptive in its measures, and the worst
+            enemy of the free colored and slave population of
+            the United States." From the first it was apparent
+            that Cresson did not mean to encounter the author
+            of the "Thoughts" in public debate. Even a mouse
+            when cornered will show fight, but there was no
+            manly fight in Cresson. Garrison sent him a letter
+            containing seven grave charges against his society,
+            and dared him to a refutation of them in a joint discussion.
+            This challenge was presented four times
+            before the agent of colonization could be persuaded
+            to accept it. Garrison was bent on a joint public
+            discussion between himself and Mr. Cresson. But
+            Mr. Cresson was bent on avoiding his opponent. He
+            skulked under one pretext or another from vindicating
+            the colonization scheme from the seven-headed
+            indictment preferred against it by the agent of the
+            New England Anti-Slavery Society. As Cresson
+            could not be driven into a joint discussion with him
+            there was nothing left to Garrison but to go on without
+            him. His arraignment and exposure of the
+            society in public and private was thorough and overwhelming.
+            He was indefatigable in the prosecution
+            of this part of his mission. And his labor was not in
+            vain. For in less than three months after his reaching
+            England he had rendered the Colonization
+            Society as odious there as his "Thoughts" had made
+            it in America. The great body of the anti-slavery
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_154" id="P_154" title="P_154"></a>
+            sentiment in Great Britain promptly condemned the
+            spirit and object of the American Colonization Society.
+            Such leaders as Buxton and Cropper "termed
+            its objects <em>diabolical</em>;" while Zachary Macaulay,
+            father of the historian, did not doubt that "the
+            unchristian prejudice of color (which alone has
+            given birth to the Colonization Society, though
+            varnished over with other more plausible pretences,
+            and veiled under a profession of a Christian
+            regard for the temporal and spiritual interests of the
+            negro which is belied by the whole course of its
+            reasonings and the spirit of its measures) is so
+            detestable in itself that I think it ought not to be
+            tolerated, but, on the contrary, ought to be denounced
+            and opposed by all humane, and especially by all
+            pious persons in this country."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The protest against the Colonization Society
+            "signed by Wilberforce and eleven of the most distinguished
+            Abolitionists in Great Britain," including
+            Buxton, Macaulay, Cropper, and Daniel O'Connell,
+            showed how thoroughly Garrison had accomplished
+            his mission. The protest declares, thanks to the
+            teachings of the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery
+            Society, that the colonization scheme "takes
+            its roots from a cruel prejudice and alienation in the
+            whites of America against the colored people, slave
+            or free. This being its source the effects are what
+            might be expected; that it fosters and increases the
+            spirit of caste, already so unhappily predominant;
+            that it widens the breach between the two races&#8212;exposes
+            the colored people to great practical persecution,
+            in order to <em>force</em> them to emigrate; and, finally,
+            is calculated to swallow up and divert that feeling
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_155" id="P_155" title="P_155"></a>
+            which America, as a Christian and free country, cannot
+            but entertain, that slavery is alike incompatible
+            with the law of God and with the well-being of man,
+            whether the enslaver or the enslaved." The solemn
+            conclusion of the illustrious signers of this mighty
+            protest was that: "That society is, in our estimation,
+            not deserving of the countenance of the British
+            public." This powerful instrument fell, as Garrison
+            wrote at the time, "like a thunderbolt upon the
+            society." The damage inflicted upon it was immense,
+            irreparable. The name of Thomas Clarkson was
+            conspicuous by its absence from the protest. He
+            could not be induced to take positive ground against
+            the society. Garrison had visited him for this purpose.
+            But the venerable philanthropist, who was
+            then blind, had taken position on <i>neutral ground</i>,
+            and could not, after an interview of four hours, be
+            induced to abandon it. But, fortunately, potent as
+            the name of Clarkson would have been in opposition
+            to the society, it was not indispensable to its overthrow
+            in Great Britain. Garrison had won to his
+            side "all the staunch anti-slavery spirits," while
+            Cresson was able to retain only "a few titled, wealthy,
+            high-pretending individuals."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The success of the mission was signal, its service to
+            the movement against slavery in America manifold.
+            Garrison writing from London to the board of
+            managers, summarized the results produced by it as
+            follows: "1st, awakening a general interest among
+            the friends of emancipation in this country, and
+            securing their efficient co&ouml;peration with us in the abolition
+            of slavery in the United States; 2d, dispelling
+            the mists with which the agent of the American
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_156" id="P_156" title="P_156"></a>
+            Colonization Society has blinded the eyes of benevolent
+            men in relation to the design and tendency of
+            the society; 3d, enlisting able and eloquent advocates
+            to plead our cause; 4th, inducing editors of
+            periodicals and able writers to give us the weight of
+            their influence; 5th, exciting a spirit of emulation
+            in the redemption of our slave population among the
+            numerous female anti-slavery societies; 6th, procuring
+            a large collection of anti-slavery documents,
+            tracts, pamphlets, and volumes, which will furnish
+            us with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition."
+            These were indeed some of the grand results of
+            laborious weeks. His mission was ended. He was
+            profoundly grateful to the good God for its success.
+            The great movement which he had started against
+            oppression in his own country was awaiting his
+            aggressive leadership. He did not tarry abroad,
+            therefore, but set sail from London August 18, 1833,
+            for New York, where he landed six weeks later.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_157" id="P_157" title="P_157"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap8"></a>
+            CHAPTER VIII
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            COLORPHOBIA
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's Abolitionism was of the most radical
+            character. It went the whole length of the humanity
+            of the colored race, and all that that implied. They
+            were, the meanest members, whether bond or free,
+            his brothers and his sisters. From the first he regarded
+            them as bone of his bone and blood of his
+            blood, as children with him of a common father.
+            Poor and enslaved and despised to be sure, wronged
+            by all men, and contemned by all men, but for that
+            very reason they were deserving of his most devoted
+            love and labor. He never looked down upon them
+            as wanting in any essential respect the manhood
+            which was his. They were men and as such
+            entitled to immediate emancipation. They were
+            besides entitled to equality of civil and political
+            rights in the republic, entitled to equality and fraternity
+            in the church, equality and fraternity at the
+            North, equality and fraternity always and everywhere.
+            This is what he preached, this is what he practiced.
+            In not a single particular was he ever found separating
+            himself from his brother in black, saying to
+            him "thus far but no farther." He never drew the
+            line in public or private between him and the people
+            whose cause was his cause&#8212;not even socially. He
+            went into their homes and was in all things one with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_158" id="P_158" title="P_158"></a>
+            them. He forgot that he was white, forgot that they
+            were black, forgot the pride of race, forgot the stigma
+            of race too in the tie of human kinship which bound
+            him to them. If he had what they did not possess,
+            the rights of a man, the civil and political position of
+            a man in the State, the equality of a brother in the
+            church, it could not make him feel better than they,
+            it filled him instead with a righteous sense of wrong,
+            a passionate sympathy, a supreme desire and determination
+            to make his own rights the measure of
+            theirs.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "I lose sight of your present situation," he said
+            in his address before Free People of Color, "and
+            look at it only in futurity. I imagine myself surrounded
+            by educated men of color, the Websters, and
+            Clays, and Hamiltons, and Dwights, and Edwardses
+            of the day. I listen to their voice as judges and
+            representatives, and rulers of the people&#8212;the whole
+            people." This glowing vision was not the handiwork
+            of a rhetorician writing with an eye to its effect upon
+            his hearers. The ardent hope of the reformer was
+            rather the father of the golden dream.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This practical recognition of the negro as a man
+            and a brother was the exact opposite of the treatment
+            which was his terrible lot in the country. Never in
+            all history was there a race more shamefully oppressed
+            by a dominant race than were the blacks by
+            the whites of America. Held as slaves in the South,
+            they were stamped as social outcasts at the North.
+            There was no one, however mean or vicious, who if
+            he possessed a white skin, was not treated more
+            humanely than were they. In the most enlightened
+            of the free States they were discriminated against by
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_159" id="P_159" title="P_159"></a>
+            public laws and proscribed by public opinion. They
+            were in a word pariahs of the republic. They were
+            shut out from all the common rights, and privileges
+            and opportunities enjoyed by the lowest of the
+            favored race. They were denied equality in the public
+            school. The principle of popular education had
+            no application to a class which was not of the people,
+            a class which the common sentiment of a Christian
+            nation had placed at the zero point of political values,
+            and meant to keep forever at that point. Entrance
+            to the trades were barred to the blacks. What did
+            they want with such things where there was no white
+            trash so forgetful of his superiority as to consent to
+            work by their side. Nowhere were they allowed the
+            same traveling accommodations as white men, and they
+            were everywhere excluded from public inns. Neither
+            wealth nor refinement was able to procure them
+            admission into other than "Jim Crow cars." If
+            heart-sick at the outrages by every one heaped upon
+            them they turned for consolation to the house of
+            God, even there the spirit of proscription and caste
+            prejudice met them, and pointed to the "negro pew"
+            where they sat corraled from the congregation as if
+            they had no equal share in the salvation which the
+            pulpit preached. Everywhere the white man had
+            the right of way, even on the highway to heaven!
+            And in no place was the negro made to feel the prejudice
+            against his color more gallingly than in
+            churches arrogating the name of Christian. He had
+            no rights on earth, he had none in trying to get into the
+            bosom of the founder of Christianity, which the white
+            sinners or saints were bound to respect. Even the
+            liberty-loving Quakers of Philadelphia were not
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_160" id="P_160" title="P_160"></a>
+            above the use of the "negro seat" in their meetings.
+            Somehow they discerned that there was a great gulf
+            separating in this life at least the white from the
+            black believer. That God had made of one blood all
+            nations of men, St. Paul had taught, but the American
+            church had with one accord in practice drawn
+            the line at the poor despised colored man. He was
+            excluded from ecclesiastical equality, for he was
+            different from other men for whom Christ died. The
+            Bible declared that man was made but a little lower
+            than the angels; the American people in their State
+            and Church supplemented this sentiment by acts
+            which plainly said that the negro was made but a
+            little above the brute creation.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Here are instances of the length to which the
+            prejudice against color carried the churches in those
+            early years of the anti-slavery movement:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In 1830, a colored man, through a business transaction
+            with a lessee of one of the pews in Park Street
+            Church, came into possession of it. Thinking to
+            make the best use of his opportunity to obtain religious
+            instruction for himself and family from this
+            fountain of orthodoxy, the black pew-holder betook
+            him, one Sunday, to "Brimstone Corner." But he
+            was never permitted to repeat the visit. "Brimstone
+            Corner" could not stand him another Lord's day,
+            and thereupon promptly expelled him and his family
+            out of its midst. The good deacons displayed their
+            capacity for shielding their flock from consorting
+            with "niggers," by availing themselves of a technicality
+            to relet the pew to a member who was not
+            cursed with a dark skin. On another Lord's day, in
+            another stronghold of Boston Christianity, Oliver
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_161" id="P_161" title="P_161"></a>
+            Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns of a
+            large number of the congregation" for daring to take
+            a fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his
+            own into his pew, to listen to Dr. Beecher. The
+            good people of the old Baptist meeting-house, at
+            Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing
+            the heavenly calm of their religious devotions
+            by so much as a thought of believers with black
+            faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front
+            and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they
+            secured themselves from a sight of the obnoxious
+            creatures, while Jehovah, who is no respecter of persons,
+            was in His holy place. Incredible as it may
+            seem, a church in the town of Stoughton, Mass.,
+            to rid itself of even a semblance of Christian fellowship
+            and equality with a colored member, did actually
+            cut the floor from under the colored member's
+            pew!
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the
+            churches affected Garrison in the most painful manner.
+            He says:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "I never can look up to these wretched retreats
+            for my colored brethren without feeling my soul
+            overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation,
+            and sorrow."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He had such an intimate acquaintance with members
+            of this despised caste in Boston and Philadelphia,
+            and other cities, and appreciated so deeply their
+            intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren,
+            that he felt their insults and injuries as if they were
+            done to himself. He knew that beneath many a
+            dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen,
+            and he knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_162" id="P_162" title="P_162"></a>
+            them was the American prejudice against their color.
+            In 1832, just after a visit to Philadelphia, where he
+            was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much
+            of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to
+            see what I saw, to hear what I heard, and to experience
+            what I felt in associating with many colored
+            families. There are colored men and women, young
+            men and young ladies, in that city, who have few
+            superiors in refinement, in moral worth, and in all
+            that makes the human character worthy of admiration
+            and praise."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits
+            and advancement, the free people of color received
+            nothing but disparagement and contempt from eminent
+            divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries
+            of the Colonization Society. They were "the
+            most abandoned wretches on the face of the earth";
+            they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous";
+            they were "more degraded and miserable than
+            the slaves," and <i>ad infinitum</i> through the whole
+            gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was human for the
+            American people to hate a class whom they had so
+            deeply wronged, and altogether human for them to
+            justify their atrocious treatment by blackening before
+            the world the reputation of the said class. That this
+            was actually done is the best of all proofs of the
+            moral depravity of the nation which slavery had
+            wrought.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's vindication of the free people of color
+            in Exeter Hall, London, on July 13, 1833, from this
+            sort of detraction and villification is of historic value:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_163" id="P_163" title="P_163"></a>
+            for the mind to coin, or the tongue to utter
+            baser libels against an injured people. Their condition
+            is as much superior to that of the slaves as the
+            light of heaven is more cheering than the darkness
+            of the pit. Many of their number are in the most
+            affluent circumstances, and distinguished for their
+            refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing
+            churches, supplied by pastors of their own
+            color, in various parts of the land, embracing a large
+            body of the truly excellent of the earth. They have
+            public and private libraries. They have their temperance
+            societies, their debating societies, their moral
+            societies, their literary societies, their benevolent societies,
+            their saving societies, and a multitude of kindred
+            associations. They have their infant schools,
+            their primary and high schools, their sabbath schools,
+            and their Bible classes. They contribute to the support
+            of foreign and domestic missions to Bible and tract
+            societies, etc. In the city of Philadelphia alone they
+            have more than fifty associations for moral and intellectual
+            improvement. In fact, they are rising up,
+            even with mountains of prejudice piled upon them,
+            with more than Titanic strength, and trampling beneath
+            their feet the slanders of their enemies. A
+            spirit of virtuous emulation is pervading their ranks,
+            from the young child to the gray head. Among them
+            is taken a large number of daily and weekly newspapers,
+            and of literary and scientific periodicals, from
+            the popular monthlies up to the grave and erudite
+            <i>North American</i> and
+            <i>American Quarterly Reviews</i>. I
+            have at this moment, to my own paper, the
+            <i>Liberator</i>,
+            one thousand subscribers among this people; and,
+            from an occupancy of the editorial chair for more
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_164" id="P_164" title="P_164"></a>
+            than seven years, I can testify that they are more
+            punctual in their payments than any five hundred
+            white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately
+            in my subscription book."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            There was an earnest desire on the part of the free
+            people of color to raise the level of their class in the
+            Union. At a convention held by them in Philadelphia,
+            in 1831, they resolved upon a measure calculated
+            to make up, to some extent, the deprivations
+            which their children were suffering by being excluded
+            from the higher schools of learning in the land. So
+            they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor
+            system for the education of colored youth.
+            They appealed for aid to their benevolent friends,
+            and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build their
+            institution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence,
+            "purchased several acres of land, in the southerly
+            part of the city, and made arrangements for the
+            erection of a suitable building, and furnishing it with
+            needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city
+            and country."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The school, however, was never established owing
+            to the violent hostility of the citizens, who with the
+            Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council resolved in
+            public meeting to "<em>resist</em> the establishment of the
+            proposed college in this place by every lawful means."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The free people of color were derided because of
+            their ignorance by their persecutors, but when they
+            and their friends proposed a plan to reduce that ignorance,
+            their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution.
+            New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied
+            in the Colonization Society, were not bent on the
+            education of this class but on its emigration to the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_165" id="P_165" title="P_165"></a>
+            coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions
+            and cruelties did American prejudice against color
+            involve American Christianity and humanity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years
+            afterward Connecticut enacted altogether the most
+            shameful crime in her history. There lived in the
+            year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State,
+            an accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence
+            Crandall. Besides a superior education, she
+            possessed the highest character. And this was well;
+            for she was the principal of the Female Boarding
+            School located in that town. The institution was, in
+            1833, at the beginning of its third year, and in a flourishing
+            condition. While pursuing her vocation of a
+            teacher, Miss Crandall made the acquaintance of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> through a "nice colored girl," who was
+            at service in the school. Abhorring slavery from childhood,
+            it is no wonder that the earnestness of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> exerted an immediate and lasting
+            influence upon the sympathies of the young principal. The
+            more she read and the more she thought upon the
+            subject the more aroused she became to the wrongs
+            of which her race was guilty to the colored people.
+            She, too, would lend them a helping hand in their
+            need. Presently there came to her a colored girl
+            who was thirsting for an education such as the Canterbury
+            Boarding School for young ladies was dispensing
+            to white girls. This was Miss Crandall's
+            opportunity to do something for the colored people,
+            and she admitted the girl to her classes. But she
+            had no sooner done so than there were angry objections
+            to the girl's remaining.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_166" id="P_166" title="P_166"></a>
+            the village," Miss Crandall records, "told me that if
+            I continued that colored girl in my school it would
+            not be sustained."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out
+            of the school, and thereby caused a most extraordinary
+            exhibition of Connecticut chivalry and Christianity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Seeing how matters stood with her in these circumstances,
+            Prudence Crandall conceived the remarkable
+            purpose of devoting her school to the education of
+            colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether
+            her idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she
+            turned for counsel to the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>. She
+            went to Boston for this purpose, and there, at the old
+            Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening
+            of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business
+            with Mr. Garrison. This visit and interview confirmed
+            the brave soul in her desire to change her
+            school into one for the higher education of colored
+            girls. It was expected that a sufficient number of
+            such pupils could be obtained from well-to-do colored
+            families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New
+            York to assure the financial success of the enterprise.
+            When Miss Crandall had fully matured her plans in
+            the premises she announced them to the Canterbury
+            public. But if she had announced that she contemplated
+            opening a college for the spread of contagious
+            diseases among her townspeople, Canterbury
+            could not possibly have been more agitated and
+            horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in
+            her face. She was denounced in town meetings, and
+            there was not chivalry enough to cause a single
+            neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May
+            had to come from an adjoining town for this purpose.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_167" id="P_167" title="P_167"></a>
+            "But," says Mr. May, "they would not hear
+            me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with
+            threats of personal violence."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut
+            which made the holding of such a school as that
+            of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good Canterbury folk
+            procured the passage of a hasty act through the Legislature,
+            which was then in session, "making it a
+            penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment,
+            for any one in that State keeping a school to take as
+            his or her pupils the children of colored people of
+            other States." But the heart of the young Quaker
+            woman was the heart of a heroine. She dared to
+            disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound over
+            for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor.
+            It was no use, persecution could not cow the noble
+            prisoner into submission to the infamous statute. In
+            her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied
+            about her in the unparalleled contest which raged
+            around her person and her school. There was no
+            meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies did
+            not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The
+            newspapers of the county and of the adjoining counties
+            teemed with the grossest misrepresentations, and
+            the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against Miss
+            Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the
+            most part, peremptorily refused us any room in their
+            columns to explain our principles and purposes, or to
+            refute the slanders they were circulating." Four or
+            five times within two years she was forced into court
+            to defend her acts against the determined malignity
+            of men who stood high in the Connecticut Church
+            and State. The shops in the town boycotted her, the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_168" id="P_168" title="P_168"></a>
+            churches closed their doors to her and her pupils.
+            Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians
+            to prescribe for them. It is said that the
+            heroic soul was cut off from intercourse with her own
+            family, in the hope doubtless that she would the
+            sooner capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of
+            her neighbors. But firm in her resolve the fair
+            Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel
+            of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power.
+            Then, like savages, her foes defiled with the excrement
+            of cattle the well whence the school drew its
+            supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs
+            and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of
+            diabolism was fitly ended by the introduction of the
+            fire fiend, and the burning of the detestable building
+            devoted to the higher education of "niggers."
+            Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury
+            Christianity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's
+            indignation to the highest pitch. Words were
+            inadequate to express his emotions and agony of
+            soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership
+            he wrote George W. Benson, his future brother-in-law,
+            "we may as well, first as last, meet this proscriptive
+            spirit, <em>and conquer it</em>.
+            We&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>,
+            all the friends of the cause&#8212;must make this a common concern.
+            The New Haven excitement has furnished a
+            bad precedent&#8212;a second must not be given or I know
+            not what we can do to raise up the colored population
+            in a manner which their intellectual and moral
+            necessities demand. In Boston we are all excited at
+            the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing
+            and Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_169" id="P_169" title="P_169"></a>
+            Garrison took in from his <i>Liberator</i> outlook the
+            entire field of the struggle. No friend of the slave,
+            however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or
+            ready reinforcements. To him the free people of color
+            turned for championship, and to the
+            <i>Liberator</i> as a
+            mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and for
+            the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced
+            apace. Everywhere the army of their friends and the
+            army of their foes were in motion, and the rising
+            storm winds of justice and iniquity were beginning
+            "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of
+            a nation's soul.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_170" id="P_170" title="P_170"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap9"></a>
+            CHAPTER IX.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            AGITATION AND REPRESSION.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English
+            mission was signalized by two closely related
+            events, viz., the formation of the New York City
+            Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first
+            of a succession of anti-slavery mobs in the North.
+            The news of his British successes had preceded him,
+            and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of
+            his pro-slavery countrymen. For had he not with
+            malice prepense put down the "most glorious of
+            Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country
+            in the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And
+            when O'Connell in Exeter Hall pointed the finger of
+            scorn at America and made her a by-word and a hissing
+            in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting
+            got up to further the designs of this "misguided
+            young gentlemen who has just returned from England
+            whither he has recently been for the sole purpose
+            as it would seem [to the <i>Commercial Advertiser</i>]
+            of traducing the people and institutions of his own
+            country." Had he not caught up and echoed back
+            the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:&#8212;"<i>Shame
+               on the American Slaveholders</i>! Base wretches should
+            we shout in chorus&#8212;base wretches, how dare you
+            profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_171" id="P_171" title="P_171"></a>
+            fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the
+            sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The noise of these treasons on a foreign shore,
+            "deafening the sound of the westerly wave, and riding
+            against the blast as thunder goes," to borrow
+            O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had
+            reached the country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The
+            national sensitiveness was naturally enough stung to
+            the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is not
+            content with disturbing the peace of the Union with
+            his new fanaticism, but must needs presume to make
+            the dear Union odious before the world as well. And
+            his return, what is it to be but the signal for increased
+            agitation on the slavery question. The conquering
+            hero comes and his fanatical followers salute him
+            forthwith with a new anti-slavery society, which
+            means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife
+            between the North and the South. "Are we tamely
+            to look on, and see this most dangerous species of
+            fanaticism extending itself through society?" shrieked
+            on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York
+            Harbor, the malignant editor of the <i>Courier and
+               Enquirer</i>.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The pro-slavery and lawless elements of the city
+            were not slow to take the cue given by metropolitan
+            papers, and to do the duty of patriots upon their
+            country's enemies. Arthur Tappen and his anti-slavery
+            associates outwitted these patriotic gentlemen,
+            who attended in a body at Clinton Hall on the evening
+            of October 2, 1833, to perform the aforesaid duty
+            of patriots, while the objects of their attention were
+            convened at Chatham Street Chapel and organizing
+            their new fanaticism. The mob flew wide of its
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_172" id="P_172" title="P_172"></a>
+            mark a second time, for when later in the evening it
+            began a serenade more expressive than musical before
+            the entrance to the little chapel on Chatham street
+            the members of the society "folded their tents like
+            the Arabs and as silently stole away." The Abolitionists
+            accomplished their design and eluded their enemies
+            at the same time. But the significance of the
+            riotous demonstration went not unobserved by them
+            and their newly arrived leader. It was plain from
+            that night that if the spirit of Abolitionism had risen,
+            the spirit of persecution had risen also.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer
+            in Boston. An inflammatory handbill announced to
+            his townsmen his arrival. "The true American has
+            returned, <i>alias</i> William Lloyd Garrison, the 'Negro
+            Champion,' from his disgraceful mission to the British
+            metropolis," etc., etc., and wound up its artful list
+            of lies with the malignant suggestion that "He is now
+            in your power&#8212;do not let him escape you, but go
+            this evening, armed with plenty of <em>tar and feathers</em>
+            and administer to him justice at his abode at No. 9
+            Merchant's Hall, Congress street." In obedience to
+            this summons, a reception committee in the shape of
+            "a dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded
+            a storm," did pay their respects to the "true American"
+            in front of his abode at the <i>Liberator</i> office.
+            Fortunately the storm passed over without breaking
+            that evening on the devoted head of the "Negro
+            Champion." But the meaning of the riotous demonstration
+            it was impossible to miss. Like the mob in
+            New York it clearly indicated that the country was
+            on the outer edge of an area of violent disturbances
+            on the subject of slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_173" id="P_173" title="P_173"></a>
+            The peril which Garrison had twice escaped was
+            indeed grave, but neither it nor the certainty of
+            future persecution could flutter or depress his spirits.
+            "For myself," he wrote subsequently in the
+            <i>Liberator</i>,
+            "I am ready to brave any danger even unto death.
+            I feel no uneasiness either in regard to my fate or to
+            the success of the cause of Abolition. Slavery must
+            speedily be abolished; the blow that shall sever the
+            chains of the slaves may shake the nation to its
+            center&#8212;may momentarily disturb the pillars of the
+            Union&#8212;but it shall redeem the character, extend the
+            influence, establish the security, and increase the
+            prosperity of our great republic." It was not the
+            rage and malice of his enemies which the brave soul
+            minded, but the ever-present knowledge of human
+            beings in chains and slavery whom he must help.
+            Nothing could separate him from his duty to them,
+            neither dangers present nor persecutions to come.
+            The uncertainty of life made him only the more
+            zealous in their behalf. The necessity of doing, doing,
+            and yet ever doing for the slave was plainly pressing
+            deep like thorns into his thoughts. "I am more and
+            more impressed;" he wrote a friend a few weeks later,
+            "I am more and more impressed with the importance
+            of 'working whilst the day lasts.' If 'we all do fade
+            as a leaf,' if we are 'as the sparks that fly upward,'
+            if the billows of time are swiftly removing the sandy
+            foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the
+            captive, and for our country, and for the subjugation
+            of a hostile world, must be done quickly. Happily
+            'our light afflictions are but for a moment.'"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This yearning of the leader for increased activity
+            in the cause of immediate emancipation was shared
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_174" id="P_174" title="P_174"></a>
+            by friends and disciples in different portions of the
+            country. Few and scattered as were the Abolitionists,
+            they so much the more needed to band together
+            for the great conflict with a powerful and organized
+            evil. This evil was organized on a national scale,
+            the forces of righteousness which were rising against
+            it, if they were ever to overcome it and rid the land
+            of it, had needs to be organized on a national scale
+            also. Garrison with the instinct of a great reformer
+            early perceived the immense utility of a national
+            anti-slavery organization for mobilizing the whole
+            available Abolition sentiment of the free States in a
+            moral agitation of national and tremendous proportions.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He had not long to wait after his return from
+            England before this desire of his soul was satisfied.
+            It was in fact just a month afterward that a call for
+            a convention for the formation of the American Anti-Slavery
+            Society went out from New York to the friends
+            of immediate emancipation throughout the North. As
+            an evidence of the dangerously excited state of the
+            popular mind on the subject of slavery there stands
+            in the summons the significant request to delegates
+            to regard the call as confidential. The place fixed
+            upon for holding the convention was Philadelphia,
+            and the time December 4, 1833.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison bestirred himself to obtain for the convention
+            a full representation of the friends of freedom.
+            He sent the call to George W. Benson, at
+            Providence, urging him to spread the news among
+            the Abolitionists of his neighborhood and to secure
+            the election of a goodly number of delegates by the
+            society in Rhode Island. He forthwith bethought
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_175" id="P_175" title="P_175"></a>
+            him of Whittier on his farm in Haverhill, and
+            enjoined his old friend to fail not to appear in Philadelphia.
+            But while the young poet longed to go to
+            urge upon his Quaker brethren of that city "to make
+            their solemn testimony against slavery visible over
+            the whole land&#8212;to urge them, by the holy memories
+            of Woolman and Benezet and Tyson to come up as
+            of old to the standard of Divine Truth, though even
+            the fires of another persecution should blaze around
+            them," he feared that he would not be able to do so.
+            The spirit was surely willing but the purse was
+            empty, "as thee know," he quaintly adds, "our farming
+            business does not put much cash in our pockets."
+            The cash he needed was generously supplied by
+            Samuel E. Sewall, and Whittier went as a delegate
+            to the convention after all. The disposition on the
+            part of some of the poorer delegates was so strong to
+            be present at the convention that not even the lack
+            of money was sufficient to deter them from setting
+            out on the expedition. Two of them, David T. Kimball
+            and Daniel E. Jewett, from Andover, Mass., did
+            actually supplement the deficiencies of their pocket-books
+            by walking to New Haven, the aforesaid
+            pocket-books being equal to the rest of the journey
+            from that point.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            About sixty delegates found their way to Philadelphia
+            and organized on the morning of December 4th,
+            in Adelphi Hall, the now famous convention. It was
+            a notable gathering of apostolic spirits&#8212;"mainly
+            composed of comparatively young men, some in
+            middle age, and a few beyond that period." They
+            had come together from ten of the twelve free States,
+            which fact goes to show the rapid, the almost epidemic-like
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_176" id="P_176" title="P_176"></a>
+            spread of Garrisonian Abolitionism through
+            the North. The <i>Liberator</i> was then scarcely three
+            years old, and its editor had not until the second day
+            of the convention attained the great age of twenty-eight!
+            The convention of 1787 did not comprise
+            more genuine patriotism and wisdom than did this
+            memorable assembly of American Abolitionists. It
+            was from beginning to end an example of love to
+            God and love to men, of fearless scorn of injustice
+            and fearless devotion to liberty. Not one of those
+            three score souls who made up the convention, who
+            did not take his life in his hand by reason of the
+            act. It was not the love of fame surely which brought
+            them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so
+            many of them endure real physical privation, which
+            drew all by a common, an irresistible impulse to congregate
+            for an unpopular purpose within reach of
+            the teeth and the claws of an enraged public
+            opinion.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The convention, as one man might have said with
+            the single-minded Lundy, "My heart was deeply
+            grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail
+            of the captive; I felt his pang of distress; and the
+            iron entered my soul." The iron of slavery had
+            indeed entered the soul of every member of the convention.
+            It was the divine pang and pity of it which
+            collected from the East and from the West this remarkable
+            body of reformers.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The story of how they had to find a president illustrates
+            the contemporary distrust and antagonism,
+            which the anti-slavery movement aroused among the
+            men of standing and influence. Knowing in what
+            bad odor they were held by the community, and anxious
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_177" id="P_177" title="P_177"></a>
+            only to serve their cause in the most effective
+            manner, the members of the convention hit upon the
+            plan of asking some individual eminent for his respectability
+            to preside over their deliberations, and
+            thereby disarm the public suspicions and quiet the
+            general apprehensions felt in respect of the incendiary
+            character of their intention. So in pursuance
+            of this plan six of their number were dispatched on
+            the evening of December 3d to seek such a man. But
+            the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes
+            proved a failure. After two attempts and two
+            repulses the committee were not disposed to invite
+            the humiliation of a third refusal and must have listened
+            with no little relief, to this blunt summary of
+            the situation by Beriah Green, who was one of the
+            six. "If there is not timber amongst ourselves,"
+            quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of,
+            let us get along without one, or go home and stay
+            there until we have grown up to be men." The next
+            day Green was chosen, and established in a manner
+            never to be forgotten by his associates that the convention
+            did possess "timber big enough to make a
+            president of."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Narrow as were the circumstances of many of the
+            members, the convention was by no means destitute
+            of men of wealth and business prominence. Such were
+            the Winslows, Isaac and Nathan, of Maine, Arnold
+            Buffum, of Massachusetts, and John Rankin and
+            Lewis Tappan, of New York. Scholarship, talents,
+            and eloquence abounded among the delegates. Here
+            there was no lack, no poverty, but extraordinary sufficiency,
+            almost to redundancy. The presence of the
+            gentler sex was not wanting to lend grace and picturesqueness
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_178" id="P_178" title="P_178"></a>
+            to the occasion. The beautiful and benignant
+            countenance of Lucretia Mott shed over the
+            proceedings the soft radiance of a pure and regnant
+            womanhood; while the handful of colored delegates
+            with the elegant figure of Robert Purvis at their head,
+            added pathos and picturesqueness to the <i>personnel</i> of
+            the convention. Neither was the element of danger
+            wanting to complete the historic scene. Its presence
+            was grimly manifest in the official intimation that
+            evening meetings of the convention could not be protected,
+            by the demonstrations of popular ill-will which
+            the delegates encountered on the streets, by the
+            detachment of constabulary guarding the entrance to
+            Adelphi Hall, and by the thrillingly significant precaution
+            observed by the delegates of sitting with locked
+            doors. Over the assembly it impended cruel and
+            menacing like fate. Once securely locked within the
+            hall, the Abolitionists discreetly abstained from leaving
+            it at noon for dinner, well knowing how small a
+            spark it takes to kindle a great fire. It was foolhardy
+            to show themselves unnecessarily to the excited
+            crowds in the streets, and so mindful that true courage
+            consisteth not in recklessness, they despatched
+            one of their number for crackers and cheese, which
+            they washed down with copious draughts of cold
+            water. But they had that to eat and drink besides,
+            whereof the spirits of mischief without could not
+            conceive.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The grand achievement of the convention was, of
+            course, the formation of the American Anti-Slavery
+            Society, but the crown of the whole was unquestionably
+            the Declaration of Sentiments. The composition
+            of this instrument has an interesting history. It
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_179" id="P_179" title="P_179"></a>
+            seems that the delegates considered that the remarkable
+            character of the movement which they were
+            launching upon the wide sea of national attention
+            demanded of them an expression altogether worthy
+            of so momentous an undertaking. The adoption of
+            a constitution for this purpose was felt to be inadequate.
+            A constitution was indispensable, but some
+            other expression was necessary to give to their work
+            its proper proportion and importance. Such a manifestation
+            it was deemed meet to make in the form of
+            a declaration of sentiments. A committee was accordingly
+            appointed to draft the declaration. This committee
+            named three of its number, consisting of Garrison,
+            Whittier, and Samuel J. May to draw up the
+            document. The sub-committee in turn deputed Garrison
+            to do the business.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Mr. May has told in his <i>Recollections of the Anti-Slavery
+               Conflict</i>, how he and Whittier left their friend
+            at ten o'clock in the evening, agreeing to call at eight
+            the following morning and how on their return at
+            the appointed hour they found Garrison with shutters
+            closed and lamps burning, penning the last paragraph
+            of the admirable document. He has told how
+            they three read it over together two or three times,
+            making some slight alterations in it, and how at nine
+            o'clock the draft was laid by them before the whole
+            committee. The author of the recollections has left
+            a graphic account of its effect upon the convention.
+            "Never in my life," he says, "have I seen a deeper
+            impression made by words than was made by that
+            admirable document upon all who were present.
+            After the voice of the reader had ceased there was
+            silence for several minutes. Our hearts were in perfect
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_180" id="P_180" title="P_180"></a>
+            unison. There was but one thought with us all.
+            Either of the members could have told what the
+            whole convention felt. We felt that the word had
+            just been uttered which would be mighty, through
+            God, to the pulling down of the strongholds of
+            slavery." Such was the scene at the first reading of
+            the Declaration of Sentiments, Dr. Atlee, the reader.
+            The effect at its final reading was, if possible, even
+            more dramatic and eloquent. Whittier has depicted
+            this closing and thrilling scene. He has described
+            how Samuel J. May read the declaration for the last
+            time. "His sweet, persuasive voice faltered with
+            the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the
+            solemn pledges of the concluding paragraphs. After
+            a season of silence, David Thurston of Maine, rose as
+            his name was called by one of the secretaries and
+            affixed his name to the document. One after another
+            passed up to the platform, signed, and retired in
+            silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the occasion&#8212;the
+            shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle
+            rested upon every countenance."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The effects, so electrical and impressive, which followed
+            the reading of the declaration were not
+            disproportioned to its merits, for it was an instrument
+            of singular power, wisdom, and eloquence.
+            Indeed, to this day, more than half a century after it
+            was written it still has virtue to quicken the breath
+            and stir the pulses of a sympathetic reader out of
+            their normal time. A great passion for freedom and
+            righteousness irradiates like a central light the whole
+            memorable document. It begins by a happy reference
+            to an earlier convention, held some fifty-seven
+            years before in the same place, and which adopted a
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_181" id="P_181" title="P_181"></a>
+            declaration holding "that all men are created equal;
+            that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
+            inalienable rights; that among these are life, <b>LIBERTY</b>,
+            and the pursuit of happiness;" and how at the trumpet-call
+            of its authors three millions of people rushed
+            to arms "deeming it more glorious to die instantly
+            as free men, than desirable to live one hour as slaves";
+            and how, though few in number and poor in resources
+            those same people were rendered invincible
+            by the conviction that truth, justice, and right were
+            on their side. But the freedom won by the men of
+            1776 was incomplete without the freedom for which
+            the men of 1833 were striving. The authors of the
+            new declaration would not be inferior to the authors
+            of the old "in purity of motive, in earnestness of
+            zeal, in decision of purpose, intrepidity of action, in
+            steadfastness of faith, in sincerity of spirit." Unlike
+            the older actors, the younger had eschewed the
+            sword, the spilling of human blood in defence of
+            their principles. Theirs was a moral warfare, the
+            grappling of truth with error, of the power of love
+            with the inhumanities of the nation. Then it glances
+            at the wrongs which the fathers suffered, and at the
+            enormities which the slaves were enduring. The
+            "fathers were never slaves, never bought and sold
+            like cattle, never shut out from the light of knowledge
+            and religion, never subjected to the lash of brutal
+            taskmasters," but all these woes and more, an unimaginable
+            mountain of agony and misery, was the
+            appalling lot of the slaves in the Southern States.
+            The guilt of this nation, which partners such a crime
+            against human nature, "is unequaled by any other
+            on earth," and therefore it is bound to instant repentance,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_182" id="P_182" title="P_182"></a>
+            and to the immediate restitution of justice to
+            the oppressed.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Declaration of Sentiments denies the right of
+            man to hold property in a brother man, affirms the
+            identity in principle between the African slave trade
+            and American slavery, the imprescriptibility of the
+            rights of the slaves to liberty, the nullity of all laws
+            which run counter to human rights, and the grand
+            doctrine of civil and political equality in the Republic,
+            regardless of race and complexional differences.
+            It boldly rejects the principle of compensated emancipation,
+            because it involves a surrender of the position
+            that man cannot hold property in man; because
+            slavery is a crime, and the master is not wronged by
+            emancipation but the slaves righted, restored to
+            themselves; because immediate and general emancipation
+            would only destroy nominal, not real, property,
+            the labor of the slaves would still remain to the
+            masters and doubled by the new motives which freedom
+            infuses into the breasts of her children; and,
+            finally because, if compensation is to be given at all it
+            ought to be given to those who have been plundered
+            of their rights. It spurns in one compact paragraph
+            the pretensions of the colonization humbug as "delusive,
+            cruel, and dangerous."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But lofty and uncompromising as were the moral
+            principles and positions of the declaration, it nevertheless
+            recognized with perspicuity of vision the
+            Constitutional limitations of the Federal Government
+            in relation to slavery. It frankly conceded
+            that Congress had no right to meddle with the evil in
+            any of the States. But wherever the national jurisdiction
+            reached the general government was bound
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_183" id="P_183" title="P_183"></a>
+            to interfere and suppress the traffic in human flesh.
+            It was the duty of Congress, inasmuch as it possessed
+            the power, to abolish slavery in the District of
+            Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast
+            and between the States. The free States are the
+            <i>particeps criminis</i> of the slave States. They are
+            living under a pledge of their tremendous physical force to
+            rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in
+            the South; they are liable at any instant to be called
+            on under the Constitution to suppress a general
+            insurrection of the slaves. This relationship is criminal,
+            "is full of danger, <b>IT MUST BE BROKEN UP</b>."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            So much for the views and principles of the
+            declaration, now for the designs and measures as
+            enumerated therein: "We shall organize anti-slavery
+            societies, if possible, in every city, town and village
+            in our land.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of
+            remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty, and of rebuke.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively,
+            anti-slavery tracts and periodicals.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the
+            cause of the suffering and the dumb.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We shall aim at a purification of the churches
+            from all participation in the guilt of slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather
+            than that of slaves, by giving a preference to their
+            productions; and
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring
+            the whole nation to speedy repentance."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The instrument closes by pledging the utmost of
+            its signers to the overthrow of slavery&#8212;"come what
+            may to our persons, our interests, or our reputations&#8212;whether
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_184" id="P_184" title="P_184"></a>
+            we live to witness the triumph of Liberty,
+            Justice, and Humanity, or perish untimely as martyrs
+            in this great, benevolent, and holy cause." Twin
+            pledge it was to that ancestral, historic one made in
+            1776: "And for the support of this declaration, with
+            a firm reliance on the protection of <b>DIVINE PROVIDENCE</b>,
+            we mutually pledge to each other, our lives,
+            our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Whittier has predicted for the Declaration of
+            Sentiments an enduring fame: "It will live," he
+            declares, "as long as our national history." Samuel
+            J. May was equally confident that this "Declaration of
+            the Rights of Man," as he proudly cherished it, would
+            "live a perpetual, impressive protest against every
+            form of oppression, until it shall have given place to
+            that brotherly kindness which all the children of the
+            common Father owe to one another." As a particular
+            act and parchment-roll of high thoughts and
+            resolves, highly expressed, it will not, I think, attain
+            to the immortality predicted for it. For as such it
+            has in less than two generations passed almost
+            entirely out of the knowledge and recollection of
+            Americans. But in another sense it is destined to
+            realize all that has been foreshadowed for it by its
+            friends. Like elemental fire its influence will glow
+            and flame at the center of our national life long after
+            as a separate and sovereign entity it shall have been
+            forgotten by the descendants of its illustrious author
+            and signers.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The convention was in session three days, and its
+            proceedings were filled with good resolutions and
+            effective work. Arthur Tappan was elected President
+            of the national organization, and William Green,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_185" id="P_185" title="P_185"></a>
+            Jr., Treasurer. Elizur Wright, Jr., was chosen Secretary
+            of Domestic Correspondence, William Lloyd
+            Garrison Secretary of Foreign Correspondence, and
+            Abraham L. Cox Recording Secretary. Besides
+            these officers there were a Board of Management and
+            a number of Vice-Presidents selected. For three
+            days the hearts of the delegates burned within them
+            toward white-browed Duty and the master, Justice,
+            who stood in their midst and talked with divine
+            accents to their spirits of how men were enslaved
+            and cruelly oppressed by men, their own brothers,
+            and how the cry of these bondmen came up to
+            them for help. And with one accord there fell upon
+            the delegates a pang and pity, an uplifting, impelling
+            sense of 'woe unto us' if we withhold from our
+            brethren in bonds the help required of us. This
+            rising tide of emotion and enthusiasm gathering
+            mass at each sitting of the convention, culminated
+            during the several readings of the Declaration of
+            Sentiments. And when on the third day Beriah
+            Green brought the congress to a close in a valedictory
+            address of apostolic power and grandeur, and
+            with a prayer so sweet, so fervent, and strong as to
+            melt all hearts, the pent-up waters of the reform was
+            ready to hurl themselves into an agitation the like
+            of which had never before, nor has since, been seen
+            or felt in the Union. Thenceforth freedom's little
+            ones were not without great allies, who were "exultations,
+            agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable
+            mind."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Everywhere the flood of Abolitionism burst upon
+            the land, everywhere the moral deluge spread through
+            the free States. Anti-slavery societies rose as it were,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_186" id="P_186" title="P_186"></a>
+            out of the ground, so rapid, so astonishing were their
+            growth during the year following the formation of
+            the national society. In nearly every free State they
+            had appeared doubling and quadrupling in number,
+            until new societies reached in that first year to upwards
+            of forty. Anti-slavery agents and lecturers
+            kept pace with the anti-slavery societies. They began
+            to preach, to remonstrate, to warn, entreat, and rebuke
+            until their voices sounded like the roar of many
+            waters in the ears of the people. Wherever there was
+            a school-house, a hall, or a church, there they were,
+            ubiquitous, irrepressible, a cry in the wilderness of a
+            nation's iniquity. Anti-slavery tracts and periodicals
+            multiplied and started from New York and Boston
+            in swarms, and clouds, the thunder of their wings
+            were as the thunder of falling avalanches to the guilty
+            conscience of the country. There was no State,
+            city, town, or village in the Republic where their
+            voice was not heard.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Rev. Amos A Phelp's "Lectures on Slavery
+            and Its Remedy;" "the Rev. J.D. Paxton's 'Letters
+            on Slavery'; the Rev. S.J. May's letters to Andrew
+            T. Judson, 'The Rights of Colored People to Education
+            Vindicated'; Prof. Elizur Wright, Jr.'s, 'Sin of
+            Slavery and Its Remedy'; Whittier's 'Justice and Expediency';
+            and, above all, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's
+            startling 'Appeal in favor of that class of Americans
+            called Africans' were the more potent of the new
+            crop of writings betokening the vigor of Mr. Garrison's
+            Propagandism," says that storehouse of anti-slavery
+            facts the "Life of Garrison" by his children.
+            Swift poured the flood, widespread the inundation of
+            anti-slavery publications. Money, although not commensurate
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_187" id="P_187" title="P_187"></a>
+            with the vast wants of the crusade, came
+            in copious and generous streams. A marvelous
+            munificence characterized the charity of wealthy
+            Abolitionists. The poor gave freely of their mite,
+            and the rich as freely of their thousands. Something
+            of the state of simplicity and community of goods
+            which marked the early disciples of Christianity
+            seemed to have revived in the hearts of this band of
+            American reformers. A spirit of renunciation, of
+            self-sacrifice, of brotherly kindness, of passionate love
+            of righteousness, of passionate hatred of wrong, of
+            self-consecration to truth and of martyrdom lifted
+            the reform to as high a moral level as had risen
+            any movement for the betterment of mankind in any
+            age of the world.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The resolutions of the signers of the Declaration of
+            Sentiment, to enlist the pulpit in the cause of the
+            suffering and dumb, and to attempt the purification
+            of the churches from all participation in the guilt of
+            slavery, encountered determined opposition from the
+            pulpits and the churches themselves. The Abolitionists
+            were grieved and indignant at the pro-slavery
+            spirit which pulpits and churches displayed. But
+            what happened was as we now look back at those
+            proceedings, an inevitable occurrence, a foregone
+            conclusion. The pulpits were only representative of
+            the religion of the pews, and the pews were occupied
+            by the same sort of humanity that toil and spin and
+            haggle over dollars and cents six out of every seven
+            days. They have their selfish and invested interests,
+            fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices,
+            which an episode like Sunday, churches, and sermons
+            do not seriously affect. Indeed, Sunday, churches,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_188" id="P_188" title="P_188"></a>
+            and sermons constitute an institution of modern civilization
+            highly conservative of invested interests,
+            fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices.
+            Who advances a new idea, a reformatory movement,
+            disturbs the <i>status quo</i>, stirs up the human bees in
+            that great hive called society, and that lesser one
+            called the church, and he must needs expect to have
+            the swarm about his head.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This was precisely what happened in the case of
+            the anti-slavery movement. It threatened the then
+            <i>status quo</i> of property rights, it attacked the
+            fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices of the
+            South and of the North alike. The revolution which
+            this new idea involved in the slave States, was of the
+            most radical character, going down to a complete reconstruction
+            of their entire social system. At once
+            the human hornets were aroused, and in these circumstances,
+            the innocent and the guilty were furiously
+            beset. Because the new idea which disturbed the
+            South had originated in the North, the wrath of the
+            South rose hot against not the authors of the new
+            idea alone but against the people of that section as
+            well. But this sectional unpleasantness endangered
+            the stability of the Union, and menaced with obstructions
+            and diversions the golden stream of Northern
+            traffic, dollars, and dividends. This was intolerable,
+            and forthwith the Apiarian brotherhood of the free
+            States put together their heads with those of the slave
+            States to attack, sting, and utterly abolish the new
+            idea, and the new idea's supporters. The Northern
+            churches were, of course, in the Northern brotherhood.
+            And when the new fanaticism threatened the
+            financial stability of the pews, the pulpits instead of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_189" id="P_189" title="P_189"></a>
+            exerting themselves in behalf of the suffering and
+            dumb slaves, exerted themselves to preserve the prosperity
+            of the pews by frowning down the friends of
+            the slaves. They were among the first to stone the
+            new idea and its fiery prophets. "Away with them!"
+            shouted in chorus pulpit and pews. Sad? yes, but
+            alas! natural, too. These men were not better nor
+            worse than the average man. They were the average
+            men of their generation, selfish, narrow, material,
+            encrusted in their prejudices like snails in their shells,
+            struggling upward at a snail's pace to the larger life,
+            with its added sweetness and humanities, but experiencing
+            many a discomfiture by the way from those
+            foul and triple fiends, the World, the Flesh, and the
+            Devil.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Nowhere in the churches was their opposition to
+            the Abolition movement more persistent and illiberal
+            than in the theological seminaries, whence the pulpits
+            drew their supplies of preachers. Like master, like
+            servant, these institutions were indentured to the public,
+            and reflected as in a mirror the body and pressure
+            of its life and sentiment. That a stream cannot rise
+            higher than its source, although a theological stream,
+            found remarkable demonstration in the case of Lane
+            Seminary. Here after the publication of the
+            "Thoughts on Colonization," and the formation of
+            the National Society, an earnest spirit of inquiry broke
+            out among the students on the subject of slavery. It
+            was at first encouraged by the President, Lyman
+            Beecher, who offered to go in and discuss the question
+            with his "boys." That eminent man did not long
+            remain in this mind. The discussions which he so
+            lightly allowed swept through the institution with the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_190" id="P_190" title="P_190"></a>
+            force of a great moral awakening. They were continued
+            during nine evenings and turned the seminary
+            at their close, so far as the students went, into an
+            anti-slavery society. This is not the place to go at
+            length into the history of that anti-slavery debate,
+            which, in its consequences, proved one of the events
+            of the anti-slavery conflict. Its leader was Theodore
+            D. Weld, who was until Wendell Phillips appeared
+            upon the scene, the great orator of the agitation.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Dr. Beecher had no notion of raising such a ghost
+            when he said, "Go ahead, boys, I'll go in and discuss
+            with you." It was such an apparition of independence
+            and righteousness as neither the power of the trustees
+            nor the authority of the faculty was ever able to dismiss.
+            The virtue of a gag rule was tried to suppress
+            Abolition among the students, but instead of suppressing
+            Abolition, it well-nigh suppressed the seminary;
+            for, rather than wear a gag on the obnoxious subject,
+            the students&#8212;to between seventy and eighty, comprising
+            nearly the whole muster-roll of the school&#8212;withdrew
+            from an institution where the exercise of the
+            right of free inquiry and free speech on a great moral
+            question was denied and repressed. The same spirit
+            of repression arose later in the Theological School at
+            Andover, Mass. There the gag was effectively applied
+            by the faculty, and all inquiry and discussion relating
+            to slavery disappeared among the students. But
+            the attempt to impose silence upon the students of
+            Phillips's Academy near-by was followed by the secession
+            of forty or fifty of the students.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Ah! the Abolitionists had undertaken to achieve
+            the impossible, when they undertook to enlist the
+            pulpit in the cause of the slaves, and to purify the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_191" id="P_191" title="P_191"></a>
+            churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery.
+            For the average man, whether within or without the
+            church, is not controlled in his conduct toward his
+            brother man by the principles and precepts of Jesus,
+            but by the laws of social and individual selfishness.
+            These selfish forces may at epochal moments align
+            themselves with justice and liberty, and they not
+            infrequently do, otherwise human progress must be
+            at an end. In advancing themselves, they perforce
+            advance justice and liberty. Thus do men love their
+            neighbors as themselves, and move forward to fraternity
+            and equality in kingdoms and commonwealths.
+            The special province of moral reformers, like Garrison
+            and the Abolitionists, seems to be to set these
+            egoistic and altruistic elements of human society at
+            war, the one against the other, thereby compelling its
+            members and classes, willy nilly, to choose between
+            the belligerents. Some will enlist on one side, some
+            on the other, but in the furnace heat of the passions
+            which ensues, an ancient evil, or a bad custom or
+            institution, gets the vitality burned out of it, which in
+            due time falls as slag out of the new order that arises
+            at the close of the conflict.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_192" id="P_192" title="P_192"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap10"></a>
+            CHAPTER X.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            BETWEEN THE ACTS.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            Mr. Garrison, in a private letter to a friend under
+            date of September 12, 1834, summarises the doings
+            of the preceding twelve months of his life, and makes
+            mention of a fact which lends peculiar interest to
+            that time: "It has been the most eventful year," he
+            remarks, "in my history. I have been the occasion
+            of many uproars, and a continual disturber of the
+            public peace. As soon as I landed I turned the city
+            of New York upside down. Five thousand people
+            turned out to see me tarred and feathered, but were
+            disappointed. There was also a small hubbub in
+            Boston on my arrival. The excitement passed away,
+            but invective and calumny still followed me. By
+            dint of some industry and much persuasion, I succeeded
+            in inducing the Abolitionists in New York to
+            join our little band in Boston, in calling a national
+            convention at Philadelphia. We met, and such a
+            body of men, for zeal, firmness, integrity, benevolence,
+            and moral greatness, the world has rarely seen in
+            a single assembly. Inscribed upon a declaration which
+            it was my exalted privilege to write, their names can
+            perish only with the knowledge of the history of our
+            times. A National Anti-Slavery Society was formed,
+            which astonished the country by its novelty, and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_193" id="P_193" title="P_193"></a>
+            awed it by its boldness. In five months its first annual
+            meeting was held in the identical city in which, only
+            seven antecedent months, Abolitionists were in peril
+            of their lives. In ability, interest, and solemnity it
+            took precedence of all the great religious celebrations
+            which took place at the same time. During the same
+            month, a New England anti-slavery convention was
+            held in Boston, and so judicious were its measures,
+            so eloquent its appeals, so unequivocal its resolutions,
+            that it at once gave shape and character to the anti-slavery
+            cause in this section of the Union. In the
+            midst of all these mighty movements, I have wooed
+            "a fair ladye," and won her, have thrown aside
+            celibacy, and jumped body and soul into matrimony,
+            have sunk the character of bachelor in that of husband,
+            have settled down into domestic quietude, and
+            repudiated all my roving desires, and have found that
+            which I have long been yearning to find, a home, a
+            wife, and a beautiful retreat from a turbulent city."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison does not exaggerate the importance of
+            the initiatives and achievements of the year, or the
+            part played by him in its history. His activity was
+            indeed phenomenal, and the service rendered by him
+            to the reform, was unrivaled. He was in incessant
+            motion, originating, directing, inspiring the agitation
+            in all portions of the North. What strikes one
+            strongly in studying the pioneer is his sleeplessness,
+            his indefatigableness, his persistency in pursuit of his
+            object. Others may rest after a labor, may have
+            done one, two, or three distinct tasks, but between
+            Garrison's acts there is no hiatus, each follows each,
+            and is joined to all like links in a chain. He never
+            closed his eyes, nor folded his arms, but went forward
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_194" id="P_194" title="P_194"></a>
+            from work to work with the consecutiveness of
+            a law of nature.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But amid labors so strenuous and uninterrupted
+            the leader found opportunity to woo and win "a fair
+            ladye." She was a daughter of a veteran Abolitionist,
+            George Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn., who with his
+            sons George W. and Henry E. Benson, were among
+            the stanchest of the reformer's followers and supporters.
+            The young wife, before her marriage, was
+            not less devoted to the cause than they. She was in
+            closest sympathy with her husband's anti-slavery
+            interests and purposes. Never had husband found wife
+            better fitted to his needs, and the needs of his life
+            work. So that it might be truly said that Garrison
+            even when he went a-wooing forgot not his cause and
+            that when he took a wife, he made at the same time
+            a grand contribution to its ultimate triumph.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            How did Helen Eliza Garrison serve the great
+            cause? One who knew shall tell. He has told it in
+            his own unequaled way. "That home," he says, "was
+            a great help. Her husband's word and pen scattered
+            his purpose far and wide; but the comrades that his
+            ideas brought to his side her welcome melted into
+            friends. No matter how various and discordant they
+            were in many things&#8212;no matter how much there was
+            to bear and overlook&#8212;her patience and her thanks
+            for their sympathy in the great idea were always sufficient
+            for the work also.... In that group of remarkable
+            men and women which the anti-slavery movement
+            drew together, she had her own niche&#8212;which
+            no one else could have filled so perfectly or unconsciously
+            as she did.... She forgot, omitted nothing.
+            How much we all owe her!" These were words
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_195" id="P_195" title="P_195"></a>
+            spoken by a friend, whose name will appear later on
+            in this story; words spoken by him at the close of her
+            beautiful life, as she lay dead in her coffin.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            And here is another account of her written by the
+            husband on the first anniversary of their marriage:
+            "I did not marry her," he confides to her brother
+            George, "expecting that she would assume a prominent
+            station in the anti-slavery cause, but for domestic
+            quietude and happiness. So completely absorbed
+            am I in that cause, that it was undoubtedly wise in
+            me to select as a partner one who, while her benevolent
+            feelings were in union with mine, was less immediately
+            and entirely connected with it. I knew she
+            was naturally diffident, and distrustful of her own
+            ability to do all that her heart might prompt. She is
+            one of those who prefer to toil unseen&#8212;to give by
+            stealth&#8212;and to sacrifice in seclusion. By her unwearied
+            attention to my wants, her sympathetic regards,
+            her perfect equanimity of mind, and her sweet and
+            endearing manners; she is no trifling support to
+            Abolitionism, inasmuch as she lightens my labors, and
+            enables me to find exquisite delight in the family circle,
+            as an offset to public adversity."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            And here is a lovely bit of self-revelation made to her
+            betrothed several months before they were wedded.
+            "I am aware of the responsibility that will devolve
+            upon me," she writes, "and how much my example
+            will be copied among that class you have so long
+            labored to elevate and enlighten. I have been considering
+            how the colored people think of dress, and
+            how much of their profits are expended for useless
+            ornaments that foolishly tend to make a show and
+            parade. As much stress will, of course, be laid on
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_196" id="P_196" title="P_196"></a>
+            Garrison's <em>wife</em> by that class, it behooves me to be
+            very circumspect in all things, when called upon to
+            fill so important a station."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The marriage occurred September 4, 1834, and the
+            next day the pair set up housekeeping in "Freedom's
+            Cottage," on Bower street, Roxbury. The young
+            housekeepers were rich in every good thing except
+            money; and of that commodity there was precious
+            little that found its way into the family till. And
+            money was indispensable even to a philanthropist,
+            who cared as little for it as did Garrison. He had
+            never in his twenty-eight years experienced the sensation
+            which a bank account, however small, gives its
+            possessor. He had been toiling during the last three
+            years in a state of chronic self-forgetfulness, and of
+            consequence in a state of chronic inpecuniosity. He
+            had never been careful of what he got&#8212;was careful
+            only of what he gave. For himself he was ready to
+            subsist on bread and water and to labor more than
+            fourteen hours at the case to make the issue of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> possible. But surely he could not
+            put "a fair ladye" on such limited commons even for the sake of
+            his cause. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and an
+            unworldly minded reformer ought to be supplied with
+            the wherewithal needful to feed, clothe, and house
+            himself and those dependent upon him. Some such
+            thought shaped itself in Garrison's mind as his circumstances
+            grew more and more straitened, and his
+            future as the head of a family looked more and more
+            ominous. Anxiety for the morrow pressed heavily
+            upon him as his responsibilities as a breadwinner
+            hugged closer and closer his everyday life. Poverty
+            ceased to be the ordinary enemy of former years,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_197" id="P_197" title="P_197"></a>
+            whom he from the lookouts of the unconquerable
+            mind used to laugh to scorn; it had become instead
+            a cruel foe who worried as by fire the peace of his
+            soul.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            There was the <i>Liberator</i>? The
+            <i>Liberator</i> as a
+            moral engine was a marvelous success; but the
+            <i>Liberator</i> as a money-maker was a most dismal
+            failure. If its owners had possessed only common aptitude
+            for business the failure need not have been so
+            complete, indeed the enterprise might have been
+            crowned with a moderate degree of success. But
+            never were two men more entirely lacking in the
+            methods, which should enter into ventures of that
+            character, than were Garrison and Knapp. Garrison
+            was unfortunate in this respect but it seems that
+            Knapp was more so. Neither took to book-keeping,
+            and neither overcame his serious deficiency in this
+            regard. The consequence was that the books kept
+            themselves, and confusion grew upon confusion until
+            the partners were quite confounded. Garrison na&iuml;vely
+            confesses this fault of the firm to his brother-in-law
+            thus: "Brother Knapp, you know, resembles me
+            very closely in his habits of procrastination. Indeed
+            I think he is rather worse than I am in this respect!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The paper was issued originally without a single
+            subscriber. At the end of the first volume the subscription
+            list numbered five hundred names. In the
+            course of the next two volumes this number was
+            more than doubled, almost tripled, in fact. The subscription
+            price was two dollars. The property would
+            have begun from this point to make returns to its
+            owners had they possessed the business training and
+            instinct requisite to its successful management. But
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_198" id="P_198" title="P_198"></a>
+            they were reformers, not money-getters, and instead
+            of enjoying the profits they proceeded to use them
+            up incontinently in their first enlargement of the
+            paper. But while they had added to the cost of
+            publication, they took no thought to augment the
+            cost of subscription. The publishers gave more and
+            the subscribers received more for the sum of two
+            dollars. The pecuniary embarrassments of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> increased, and so the partners'
+            "bondage to penury" increased also. This growing pressure was
+            finally relieved by "several generous donations,"
+            made for the support of the paper. At the beginning
+            of the fourth volume, the publishers wisely or other-wisely,
+            again enlarged their darling, and again neglected
+            to raise the subscription rates at the same
+            time.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Misfortunes never come without company, but alight
+            in flocks, and a whole flock of misfortunes it was to
+            the <i>Liberator</i> when Joshua Coffin,
+            "that huge personification of good humor," was appointed canvassing
+            agent for the paper. He was as wanting in
+            business methods as his employers were. Confusion
+            now gathered upon confusion around the devoted
+            heads of the partners, was accelerated and became
+            daily more and more portentous and inextricable.
+            The delinquencies of subscribers grew more and
+            more grave. On the three first volumes they were
+            two thousand dollars in arrears to the paper. This
+            was a large, a disastrous loss, but traceable, to no
+            inconsiderable extent, doubtless, to the loose business
+            methods of the reformer and his partner. The
+            <i>Liberator</i> at the beginning of its fourth year was
+            struggling in a deep hole of financial helplessness
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_199" id="P_199" title="P_199"></a>
+            and chaos. Would it ever get out alive, or "<b>SHALL
+               THE <i>LIBERATOR</i> DIE?</b>" burst in a cry of
+            anguish, almost despair, from its editor, so weak in thought of
+            self, so supreme in thought of others.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This carelessness of what appertained to the things
+            which concerned self, and devotion to the things
+            which concerned his cause, finds apt and pathetic
+            illustration in this letter to Samuel J. May in the summer
+            of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and
+            burdens were never harder to carry:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my
+            partner joins with me in consenting to print an edition
+            of Miss Crandall's [defence] as large as the one
+            proposed by you, at our own risk. As to the profits
+            that may arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do
+            not expect to make any; on the contrary, we shall
+            probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the difficulty
+            of disposing of any publication, however interesting
+            or valuable in itself. But a trial so important
+            as Miss C.'s, involving such momentous consequences
+            to a large portion of our countrymen, implicating so
+            deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to
+            go unpublished, and <em>shall</em> not while we have the necessary
+            materials for printing it."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation
+            of the <i>Liberator</i>, in the spring of 1834, was
+            twenty-three hundred copies, and that this number
+            was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred;
+            in New York, three hundred: in Boston,
+            two hundred; in other parts of the free States
+            eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred,
+            one-half was sent as exchange with other papers,
+            and eighty of the other half were divided equally
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_200" id="P_200" title="P_200"></a>
+            between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies
+            for gratuitous distribution. The colored subscribers
+            to the paper were to the whites as three to one.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            There were several suggestions by sundry friends
+            looking to the release of the <i>Liberator</i> from its
+            embarrassments, and, to the relief of its unselfish
+            publishers, from the grinding poverty which its
+            issue imposed upon them. The most hopeful
+            and feasible of them was the scheme of which
+            Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834: "I
+            am happy to say," he pours into her ears, "that it
+            is probable the managers of the New England Anti-Slavery
+            Society will determine, to-morrow afternoon,
+            to take all the pecuniary liabilities of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            hereafter, and give me a regular salary for editing it,
+            and friend Knapp a fair price for printing it. My salary
+            will not be less than $800 per annum, and perhaps
+            it will be fixed at a $1,000.... The new arrangement
+            will go into effect on the 1st of July." But alas; the
+            managers took no such action on the morrow, nor
+            went the "new arrangement" into effect at the time
+            anticipated. The editor was married in September,
+            and two months later the eagerly expected relief was
+            still delayed. This hope deferred must have caused
+            the young husband meanwhile no little anxiety and
+            heart sickness.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Love in a cottage is very pretty and romantic in
+            novels, but love in a cottage actually thriving on
+            "bread and water," was a sweet reality in the home
+            of the young couple in Roxbury. "All the world loves
+            a lover," says Emerson, but alas! there are exceptions
+            to all rules, and all the world loved not Garrison in
+            his newly found felicity as shall presently appear.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_201" id="P_201" title="P_201"></a>
+            The pledge made by the reformer in the initial number of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> to be "as harsh as truth,"
+            had been kept to the letter. To some minds there is
+            nothing more difficult to understand and tolerate
+            than is the use of harsh language toward individual
+            wrongdoers. They appear to be much more solicitous
+            to turn away the wrath of the wicked than to
+            do away with their wickedness. Multitudes of such
+            minds were offended at the tremendous severities of
+            Garrison's speech. They were for peace at any cost,
+            while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These pro-slavery
+            critics were not necessarily wanting in good
+            feelings to the slaves, or lacking in a sense of the
+            justice of their cause. But the feelings and the sense
+            were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to
+            that terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation
+            of such people exceeded all bounds when contemplating
+            wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the
+            abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood
+            and habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked
+            no indignation, provoked instead unbounded charity
+            for the willing victims of ancestral transgressions.
+            Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of circumstances,
+            these people expended all their sympathy
+            while upon the Southern slave, who were to their
+            view <em>the circumstances</em>, they looked with increasing
+            disapprobation. Garrison's harsh language greatly
+            shocked this class&#8212;excited their unbounded indignation
+            against the reformer.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Besides this class there was another, composed of
+            friends, whom Garrison's denunciatory style offended.
+            To Charles Pollen and Charles Stuart, and Lewis
+            Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_202" id="P_202" title="P_202"></a>
+            great agitator was a sore trial. To them and to
+            others, too, his language seemed grossly intemperate
+            and vituperative, and was deemed productive of
+            harm to the movement. But Garrison defended his
+            harsh language by pointing to the state of the country
+            on the subject of slavery before he began to use
+            it, and to the state of the country afterward. How
+            utterly and morally dead the nation was before, how
+            keenly and marvelously alive it became afterward.
+            The blast which he had blown had jarred upon the
+            senses of his slumbering countrymen he admitted,
+            but he should not be blamed for that. What to his
+            critics sounded harsh and abusive, was to him the
+            trump of God. For, at the thunder-peal which the
+            Almighty blew from the mouth of his servant, how,
+            as by a miracle, the dead soul of the nation awoke to
+            righteousness. He does not arrogate to himself infallibility,
+            indeed he is sure that his language is not
+            always happily chosen. Such errors, however, appear
+            to him trivial, in view of indisputable and extraordinary
+            results produced by the <i>Liberator</i>. He believes
+            in marrying masculine truths to masculine words.
+            He protests against his condemnation by comparison.
+            "Every writer's style is his own&#8212;it may be
+            smooth or rough, plain or obscure, simple or grand,
+            feeble or strong," he contends, "but <em>principles</em> are immutable."
+            By his principles, therefore he would, be
+            judged. "Whittier, for instance," he continues, "is
+            highly poetical, exuberant, and beautiful. Stuart is
+            solemn, pungent, and severe. Wright is a thorough
+            logician, dextrous, transparent, straightforward.
+            Beriah Green is manly, eloquent, vigorous, devotional.
+            May is persuasive, zealous, overflowing with the milk
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_203" id="P_203" title="P_203"></a>
+            of human kindness. Cox is diffusive, sanguine, magnificent,
+            grand. Bourne thunders and lightens.
+            Phelps is one great, clear, infallible argument&#8212;demonstration
+            itself. Jocelyn is full of heavenly-mindedness,
+            and feels and speaks and acts with a
+            zeal according to knowledge. Follen is chaste, profound,
+            and elaborately polished. Goodell is perceptive,
+            analytical, expert, and solid. Child (David
+            L.) is generously indignant, courageous, and demonstrative;
+            his lady combines strength with beauty,
+            argumentation with persuasiveness, greatness with
+            humility. Birney is collected, courteous, dispassionate&#8212;his
+            fearlessness excites admiration, his conscientiousness
+            commands respect." Of these writers,
+            which is acceptable to slaveholders or their apologists?
+            Some have been cruelly treated and all been
+            calumniated as "fanatics, disorganizers, and madmen."
+            And why? "Certainly not for the <em>phraseology</em>
+            which they use, but for the <em>principles</em> which they
+            adopt."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            From another quarter came presently notes of discord,
+            aroused by Garrison's <em>hard language</em>. Sundry
+            of the Unitarian clergy, under the lead of Rev. Henry
+            Ware, Jr., took it into their heads that the editor of
+            the <i>Liberator</i> and some others were outrageously
+            abusing the Abolition cause, "mismanaging it by
+            their unreasonable violence" of language. Wherefore
+            those gentlemen interposed to rescue the great
+            cause from harm by a brilliant scheme designed to
+            secure moderation in this regard. This brilliant
+            scheme was nothing less absurd than the establishment
+            of a censorship over the <i>Liberator</i>. But as
+            these solicitous souls had reckoned without their
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_204" id="P_204" title="P_204"></a>
+            host, their amiable plan came to naught; but not,
+            however, before adding a new element to the universal
+            discord then fast swelling to a roar. To the
+            storm of censure gathering about his head the reformer
+            bowed not&#8212;neither swerved he to the right
+            hand nor to the left&#8212;all the while deeming it, "with
+            the apostle, a small thing to be judged by man's
+            judgment." "I solicit no man's praise," he sternly
+            replies to his critics, "I fear no men's censure."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            There was still another cause of offence given by
+            Garrison to his countrymen. It was not his <em>hard language</em>,
+            but a circumstance less tolerable, if that was
+            possible, than even that rock of offence. It seems
+            that when the editor of the <i>Liberator</i> was in
+            England, and dining with Thomas Powell Buxton, he was asked
+            by the latter in what way the English Abolitionists
+            could best assist the anti-slavery movement in America,
+            and he had replied, "<em>By giving us George Thompson</em>."
+            This unexpected answer of the American
+            appeared without doubt to the Englishman at the
+            time somewhat extraordinary. He had his misgivings
+            as to the wisdom, to say nothing of the propriety, of
+            an international act of such importance and delicacy
+            as the sending of George Thompson to America. He
+            questioned whether the national self-love of the
+            American people would not resent the arrival of an
+            Englishman on such a mission among them and
+            refuse him a fair hearing in consequence. But Garrison
+            was confident that while Thompson's advent
+            would stir up the pro-slavery bile of the North and
+            all that, he would not be put to much if any greater
+            disadvantage as a foreigner in speaking in New England
+            on the subject of slavery, than were those Abolitionists
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_205" id="P_205" title="P_205"></a>
+            who were to the manner born. As to his
+            friend's personal safety in the East, Garrison was
+            extremely optimistic, had not apparently the slightest
+            apprehensions for him in this regard.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Well, after due deliberation, George Thompson consented
+            to undertake the mission to America, and the
+            English reformers to send him, though not all of them.
+            For some there were like James Cropper, who were
+            indisposed to promoting such a mission, or "paying
+            agents to travel in the United States." It was natural
+            enough for Mr. Garrison to prefer such a request
+            after hearing George Thompson speak. For he was
+            one of those electric speakers, who do with popular
+            audiences what they will. In figure and voice and
+            action, he was a born orator. His eloquence was
+            graphic, picturesque, thrilling, and over English
+            audiences it was irresistible. Garrison fancied that
+            such eloquence would prove equally attractive to and
+            irresistible over American audiences as well. But in
+            this he was somewhat mistaken, for Thompson had
+            to deal with an element in American audiences of
+            which he had had no experience in England. What
+            that element was he had occasion to surmise directly
+            he arrived upon these shores. He reached New
+            York just sixteen days after the marriage of his
+            friend, the editor of the <i>Liberator</i> to be
+            immediately threatened with mob violence by the metropolitan
+            press in case he ventured to "lecture in favor of
+            immediate Abolition," and to be warned that: "If our
+            people will not suffer our own citizens to tamper with
+            the question of slavery, it is not to be supposed that
+            they will tolerate the officious intermeddling of a
+            foreign fanatic." Then as if by way of giving him
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_206" id="P_206" title="P_206"></a>
+            a taste of the beak and talons of the American <i>amour
+               propre</i>, he and his family were put out of the Atlantic
+            Hotel in deference to the wish of an irate Southerner.
+            Thus introduced the English orator advanced speedily
+            thereafter into closer acquaintance with the American
+            public. He lectured in many parts of New
+            England where that new element of rowdyism and
+            virulence of which his English audiences had given
+            him no previous experience, manifested its presence
+            first in one way and then in others, putting him
+            again and again in jeopardy of life and limb. At
+            Augusta, Maine, his windows were broken, and he
+            was warned out of the town. At Concord, New
+            Hampshire, his speech was punctuated with missiles.
+            At Lowell, Massachusetts, he narrowly escaped being
+            struck on the head and killed by a brickbat. Indeed
+            it was grimly apparent that the master of Freedom's
+            Cottage would be obliged to revise his views as to the
+            hazard, which his friend ran in speaking upon the
+            subject of slavery in New England. To do so was
+            weekly becoming for that friend an enterprise of
+            great personal peril. But it added also to the fierce
+            hatred with which the public now regarded Garrison.
+            He was the author of all the mischief, the slavery
+            agitation, the foreign emissary. He had even dared to
+            inject the poison of Abolitionism into the politics of
+            Boston and Massachusetts. This attempt on the part
+            of the <i>Liberator</i> to establish an anti-slavery
+            test of office was only another proof of the dangerous character
+            of the new fanaticism and the Jacobinical
+            designs of the Garrisonian fanatics, ergo, the importance
+            of suppressing the incendiaries. Down with
+            Thompson! Garrison must be destroyed! The
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_207" id="P_207" title="P_207"></a>
+            Union&#8212;it must and shall be preserved! All these
+            the public excitement, which had risen everywhere
+            to a tempest, had come more and more to mean. A
+            tremendous crisis had come in the life of Garrison,
+            and a great peril, eagle-like, with the stirred-up hate
+            of a nation, was swooping upon him.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_208" id="P_208" title="P_208"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap11"></a>
+            CHAPTER XI.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            MISCHIEF LET LOOSE.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            A wild-cat-like creature was abroad. To it the
+            Abolitionists were to be thrown. It was to destroy
+            Garrison, make an end of Thompson, and suppress
+            between its enormous jaws the grandest moral movement
+            of the century. Besides doing up this modest
+            little programme, the beast, O wonderful to say, was
+            also to crown its performances by "saving" the
+            Union. Rejoicing in the possession of such a conservative
+            institution, the politicians, the press, and
+            public opinion uncaged the monster, while from
+            secure seats they watched the frightful scenes of fury
+            and destruction enacted by it in the national arena.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            These scenes began in the summer of 1834, and in
+            the city of New York. They were ushered in by the
+            breaking up of an anti-slavery celebration on the
+            Fourth of July by the clack and roar of several hundred
+            young rowdies, gathered for the purpose. Their
+            success but whetted the appetite of the spirit of mischief
+            for other ventures against the Abolitionists. As
+            a consequence New York was in a more or less disturbed
+            state from the fourth to the ninth of the
+            month. The press of the city, with but a single exception
+            (<i>The Evening Post</i>) meanwhile goaded the
+            populace on by false and inflammatory representations
+            touching the negroes and their friends, to the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_209" id="P_209" title="P_209"></a>
+            rioting which began in earnest on the evening of the
+            ninth. That night a mob attacked Lewis Tappan's
+            house on Rose street, breaking in the door, smashing
+            blinds and windows, and playing havoc generally
+            with the furniture. On the following evening the
+            rioters assailed the store of Arthur Tappan, on Pearl
+            street, demolishing almost every pane of glass in the
+            front of the building. On the same evening the mob
+            paid its respects to Rev. Dr. Cox, by breaking windows
+            both at his house and at his church. The negro
+            quarters in the neighborhood of Five Points, and
+            their houses in other parts of the city, were raided on
+            the night of the 11th, and much damage done by the
+            lawless hordes which for nearly a week wreaked their
+            wrath upon the property of the negroes and their
+            anti-slavery friends.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            After this brave beginning, the wild-cat-like spirit
+            continued, these ferocious demonstrations in New
+            Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Connecticut,
+            Maine, and New Hampshire. The slavery agitation
+            had increased apace. It had broken out in Congress
+            on the presentation of anti-slavery petitions. The
+            fire thus kindled spread through the country. Southern
+            excitement became intense, amounted almost to
+            panic. The activity of the anti-slavery press, the
+            stream of anti-slavery publications, which had, indeed,
+            increased with singular rapidity, was exaggerated
+            by the Southern imagination, struck it with a
+            sort of terror. There were meetings held in many
+            parts of the South, tremendous scenes enacted there.
+            In Charleston, South Carolina, the post-office was
+            broken open by an aristocratic mob, under the lead
+            of the famous Robert Y. Hayne, and a bonfire made
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_210" id="P_210" title="P_210"></a>
+            of the Abolition mail-matter which it contained. As
+            this Southern excitement advanced, a passionate fear
+            for the stability of the Union arose in the heart of
+            the North. Abolition and the Abolitionists had produced
+            these sectional disturbances. Abolition and
+            the Abolitionists were, therefore, enemies of the
+            "glorious Union." Northern excitement kept pace
+            with Southern excitement until, in the summer of
+            1835, a reign of terror was widely established over
+            both sections. To Garrison, from his <i>Liberator</i>
+            outlook, all seemed "Consternation and perplexity, for
+            perilous times have come." They had, indeed, come
+            in New York, as witness this from the pen of Lydia
+            Maria Child, who was at the time (August 15) in
+            Brooklyn. Says she:
+
+         </p>
+         <blockquote>
+            <p>
+               "I have not ventured into the city, nor does one of
+               us dare to go to church to-day, so great is the excitement
+               here. You can form no conception of it. 'Tis
+               like the time of the French Revolution, when no man
+               dared trust his neighbor. Private assassins from
+               New Orleans are lurking at the corners of the streets
+               to stab Arthur Tappan, and very large sums are
+               offered for any one who will convey Mr. Thompson
+               into the slave States.... There are several
+               thousand Southerners now in the city, and I am
+               afraid there are not seven hundred among them who
+               have the slightest fear of God before their eyes. Mr.
+               Wright [Elizur] was yesterday barricading his doors
+               and windows with strong bars and planks an inch
+               thick. Violence in some form seems to be generally
+               expected."
+
+            </p>
+         </blockquote>
+         <p>
+            Great meetings to put the Abolitionists down afforded
+            vents during this memorable year to the pent-up
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_211" id="P_211" title="P_211"></a>
+            excitement of the free States. New York had had
+            its great meeting, and had put the Abolitionists down
+            with pro-slavery resolutions and torrents of pro-slavery
+            eloquence. Boston, too, had to have her
+            great meeting and her cataracts of pro-slavery oratory
+            to reassure the South of the sympathy and support
+            of "the great body of the people of the Northern
+            States." The toils seemed everywhere closing around
+            the Abolitionists. The huge head of the asp of public
+            opinion, the press of the land was everywhere busy,
+            day and night, smearing with a thick and virulent
+            saliva of lies the brave little band and its leader.
+            Anti-slavery publications, calculated to inflame the
+            minds of the slaves against their masters, and intended
+            to instigate the slaves to servile insurrections,
+            had been distributed broadcast through the South by
+            the emissaries of anti-slavery societies. The Abolitionists
+            advocated the emancipation of the slaves in the
+            South by Congress, intermarriages between the two
+            races, the dissolution of the Union, etc. All of which
+            outrageous misrepresentations were designed to render
+            the movement utterly odious to the public, and
+            the public so much the more furious for its suppression.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It was in the midst of such intense and widespread
+            excitement that Boston called its meeting to abolish
+            the Abolitionists. It was the month of August, and
+            the heat of men's passions was as great as the heat
+            of the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the
+            city was so charged with inflammable gases that the
+            slightest spark would have sufficed to produce an explosion.
+            The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves
+            the while with unusual circumspection. They
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_212" id="P_212" title="P_212"></a>
+            deemed it prudent to publish an address to neutralize
+            the falsehoods with which they were assailed by their
+            enemies. The address drawn up by Garrison for the
+            purpose was thought "too fiery for the present time,"
+            by his more cautious followers and was rejected. The
+            <i>Liberator</i> office had already been threatened in
+            consequence of a fiery article by the editor, denouncing the
+            use of Faneuil Hall for the approaching pro-slavery
+            meeting. It seemed to the unawed and indignant
+            champion of liberty that it were "better that the
+            winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole
+            earth&#8212;better that an earthquake should engulf it&#8212;than
+            that it should be used for so unhallowed and
+            detestable a purpose!" The anti-abolition feeling of
+            the town had become so bitter and intense that Henry
+            E. Benson, then clerk in the anti-slavery office, writing
+            on the 19th of the month, believed that there were
+            persons in Boston, who would assassinate George
+            Thompson in broad daylight, and doubted whether
+            Garrison or Samuel J. May would be safe in Faneuil
+            Hall on the day of the meeting, and what seemed
+            still more significant of the inflamed state of the public
+            mind, was the confidence with which he predicted
+            that a mob would follow the meeting. The wild-cat-like
+            spirit was in the air&#8212;in the seething heart of the
+            populace.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The meeting was held August 21st, in the old cradle
+            of liberty. To its call alone fifteen hundred names
+            were appended. It was a Boston audience both as to
+            character and numbers, an altogether imposing affair,
+            over whom the mayor of the city presided and before
+            whom two of the most consummate orators of the
+            commonwealth fulmined against the Abolitionists.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_213" id="P_213" title="P_213"></a>
+            One of their hearers, a young attorney of twenty-four,
+            who listened to Peleg Sprague and Harrison Gray Otis
+            that day, described sixteen years afterward the latter
+            and the effects produced by him on that audience.
+            Our young attorney vividly recalled how "'Abolitionist'
+            was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of
+            Otis, and all the charms that a divine eloquence and
+            most felicitous diction could throw around a bad
+            cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed
+            actually ready to leap up beneath the magic of his
+            speech. It would be something, if one must die, to
+            die by such a hand&#8212;a hand somewhat worthy and
+            able to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The
+            orator was worthy of the gigantic task attempted;
+            and thousands crowded before him, every one of their
+            hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts
+            had bowed, not unworthily, for more than
+            thirty years."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which
+            the wild-cat-like spirit of the city got from the orators.
+            It is taken from the speech of Peleg Sprague.
+            The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson,
+            "an avowed <em>emissary</em>" "<em>a professed agitator</em>,"
+            who "comes here from the dark and corrupt institutions
+            of Europe to enlighten <em>us</em> upon the rights of
+            man and the moral duties of our own condition.
+            Received by our hospitality, he stands here upon our
+            soil, protected by our laws, and hurls firebrands, arrows,
+            and death into the habitations of our neighbors
+            and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have
+            kindled a conflagration which is sweeping in desolation
+            over our land, he has only to embark for his own
+            country, and there look serenely back with indifference
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_214" id="P_214" title="P_214"></a>
+            or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which
+            <em>our</em> cities are wrapt in flames, and <em>our</em> garments
+            rolled in blood."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but
+            not so its effects. The echoes of Otis and Sprague did
+            not cease at its close. They thrilled in the air,
+            they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people.
+            When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into
+            the streets of the city with them. Wherever afterward
+            they gathered Mischief made one in their midst.
+            Mischief was let loose, Mischief was afoot in the town.
+            The old town was no place for the foreign emissary,
+            neither was it a safe place for the arch-agitator. On
+            the day after the meeting, Garrison and his young
+            wife accordingly retreated to her father's home at
+            Brooklyn, Conn., where the husband needed not to be
+            jostling elbows with Mistress Mischief, and her <em>pals</em>.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's answer to the speeches of Otis and
+            Sprague was in his sternest vein. He is sure after
+            reading them that, "there is more guilt attaching to
+            the people of the free States from the continuance of
+            slavery, than those in the slave States." At least he
+            is ready to affirm upon the authority of Orator
+            Sprague, "that New England is as really a slave-holding
+            section of the republic as Georgia or South
+            Carolina." Sprague, he finds, "in amicable companionship
+            and popular repute with thieves and adulterers;
+            with slaveholders, slavedealers, and slave-destroyers; ... with
+            the disturbers of the public
+            peace; with the robbers of the public mail; with
+            ruffians who insult, pollute, and lacerate helpless
+            women; and with conspirators against the lives and
+            liberties of New England citizens."
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_215" id="P_215" title="P_215"></a>
+            To Otis who was then nearly seventy years of age
+            Garrison addressed his rebuke in tones of singular
+            solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged statesman
+            had transgressed against liberty "under circumstances
+            of peculiar criminality." "Yet at this solemn
+            period," the reprobation of the prophet ran, "you
+            have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious, to
+            lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication
+            of all imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great
+            system of crime and blood&#8212;to pander to the lusts and
+            desires of the robbers of God and his poor&#8212;to consign
+            over to the tender mercies of cruel taskmasters,
+            multitudes of guiltless men, women, and children&#8212;and
+            to denounce as an 'unlawful and dangerous association'
+            a society whose only object is to bring this
+            nation to repentance, through the truth as it is in
+            Jesus."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            These audacious and iconoclastic performances of
+            the reformer were not exactly adapted to turn from
+            him the wrath of the idol worshipers. They more
+            likely added fuel to the hot anger burning in Boston
+            against him. Three weeks passed after his departure
+            from the city, and his friends did not deem it safe
+            for him to return. Toward the end of the fourth
+            week of his enforced absence, against which he was
+            chafing not a little, an incident happened in Boston
+            which warned him to let patience have its perfect
+            work. It was on the night of September 17th that the
+            dispositions of the city toward him found grim expression
+            in a gallows erected in front of his house at
+            23 Brighton street. This ghastly reminder that the fellow-citizens of the
+            editor of the <i>Liberator</i> continued
+            to take a lively interest in him, "was made in real
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_216" id="P_216" title="P_216"></a>
+            workmanship style, of <i>maple joist</i> five inches through,
+            eight or nine feet high, for the accommodation of
+            two persons." Garrison and Thompson were the two
+            persons for whom these brave accommodations were
+            prepared. But as neither they nor their friends were
+            in a mood to have trial made of them, the intended
+            occupants consented to give Boston a wide berth, and
+            to be somewhat particular that they did not turn in
+            with her while the homicidal fit lasted.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This editing his paper at long range, and this
+            thought of life and safety Garrison did not at all relish.
+            They grew more and more irksome to his fearless
+            and earnest spirit. For his was a "pine-and-fagot"
+            Abolitionism that knew not the fear of men or their
+            wrath. But now he must needs have a care for the
+            peace of mind of his young wife, who was, within a
+            few months, to give birth to a child. And her anxiety
+            for him was very great. Neither was the anxiety of
+            devoted friends and followers to be lightly disregarded.
+            All of which detained the leader in Brooklyn
+            until the 25th of the month, when the danger
+            signals seemed to have disappeared. Whereupon he
+            set out immediately for his post in Boston to be at the
+            head of his forces. He found the city in one of those
+            strange pauses of popular excitement, which might
+            signify the ebb of the tide or only the retreat of the
+            billows. He was not inclined to let the anti-Abolition
+            agitation subside so soon, before it had carried on its
+            flood Abolition principles to wider fields and more
+            abundant harvests in the republic. Anxious lest the
+            cat-like temper of the populace was falling into
+            indifference and apathy, he and his disciples took
+            occasion to prod it into renewed wakefulness and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_217" id="P_217" title="P_217"></a>
+            activity. The instruments used for this purpose were anti-slavery meetings and
+            the sharp goad of his <i>Liberator</i>
+            editorials. The city was possessed with the
+            demon of slavery, and its foaming at the mouth was
+            the best of all signs that the Abolition exorcism was
+            working effectively. So, in between the glittering
+            teeth and the terrible paws was thrust the maddening
+            goad, and up sprang the mighty beast horrible to
+            behold.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            One of these meetings was the anniversary of the
+            formation of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
+            which fell on October 14th. The ladies issued their
+            notice, engaged a hall, and invited George Thompson
+            to address them. Now the foreign emissary was
+            particularly exasperating to Boston sensibility on
+            the subject of slavery. He was the veritable red
+            rag to the pro-slavery bull. The public announcement,
+            therefore, that he was to speak in the city
+            threw the public mind into violent agitation. The
+            <i>Gazette</i> and the
+            <i>Courier</i> augmented the excitement
+            by the recklessness with which they denounced the
+            proposed meeting, the former promising to Thompson
+            a lynching, while the latter endeavored to
+            involve his associates who were to the "manner
+            born" in the popular outbreak, which was confidently
+            predicted in case the "foreign vagrant"
+            wagged his tongue at the time appointed.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Notwithstanding the rage of press and people
+            the meeting was postponed through no willingness
+            on the part of the ladies, but because of the panic
+            of the owners of the hall lest their property should
+            be damaged or destroyed in case of a riot. The
+            ladies, thereupon, appointed three o'clock in the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_218" id="P_218" title="P_218"></a>
+            afternoon of October 21st as the time, and the hall
+            adjoining the Anti-Slavery Office, at 46 Washington
+            street, as the place where they would hold their
+            adjourned meeting. This time they made no mention
+            of Mr. Thompson's addressing them, merely
+            announcing several addresses. In fact, an address
+            from Mr. Thompson, in view of the squally outlook,
+            was not deemed expedient. To provide against
+            accidents and disasters, he left the city on the day
+            before the meeting. But this his enemies did not
+            know. They confidently expected that he was to
+            be one of the speakers. An inflammatory handbill
+            distributed on the streets at noon of the 21st seemed
+            to leave no doubt of this circumstance in the pro-slavery
+            portion of the city.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The handbill referred to ran as follows:
+
+         </p>
+         <blockquote>
+            <p>
+               THOMPSON,
+
+            </p>
+            <p>
+               THE ABOLITIONIST!
+
+            </p>
+            <p>
+               That infamous foreign scoundrel, <b>THOMPSON</b>, will hold
+               forth <em>this afternoon</em> at the
+               <i>Liberator</i> office. No. 48 Washington
+               street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of
+               the Union to <em>snake Thompson out</em>! It will be a contest between
+               the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A
+               purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens
+               to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on
+               Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before
+               dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant!
+
+            </p>
+            <p><i>Boston, Wednesday, 12 o'clock.</i></p>
+         </blockquote>
+         <p>
+            That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the
+            anti-slavery office, little dreaming of the peril which
+            was to overtake him in that very spot in the afternoon.
+            He went home to an early dinner, since his
+            wife was a member of the society, and he himself was
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_219" id="P_219" title="P_219"></a>
+            set down for an address. As he wended his way
+            homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing
+            the aforesaid handbills "in the insurance
+            offices, the reading-rooms, all along State street, in
+            the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.," and scattering it
+            "among mechanics at the North End, who were
+            mightily taken with it." Garrison returned about a
+            half hour before the time appointed for the meeting.
+            He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals
+            collected in front of the building where the
+            hall was situated, and on ascending to the hall more
+            of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the
+            access to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed
+            his way through them with difficulty. As he entered
+            the place of meeting and took his seat among the
+            ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young
+            rowdies recognized him and evinced this by the
+            exclamation: "That's Garrison!" The full significance
+            of the crowd just without the hall did not seem
+            to have occurred to the man whom they had identified.
+            He did not know that they were the foam
+            blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment
+            filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building
+            where he sat with such serenity of spirit. His
+            wife who had followed him from their home saw
+            what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred
+            had swelled to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular
+            cross, jammed in between the buildings on Washington
+            street, the head lowering in front of the anti-slavery
+            office, the foot reaching to the site where
+            stood Joy building, now occupied by the Rogers,
+            the right arm stretching along Court street to the
+            Court House, and the left encircling the old State
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_220" id="P_220" title="P_220"></a>
+            House, City Hall and Post-office then, in a gigantic
+            embrace. All hope of urging her way through that
+            dense mass was abandoned by Mrs. Garrison, and a
+            friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home,
+            where she passed the night.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began
+            to betoken a fast approaching storm. The
+            noises ominously increased on the landing just outside.
+            The door of the hall was swung wide open and
+            the entrance filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious
+            of danger, walked over to these persons and
+            remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard
+            to the disturbance which they were producing, winding
+            up with a characteristic bit of pleasantry: "Gentlemen,"
+            said he, "perhaps you are not aware that this
+            is a meeting of the Boston <em>Female</em> Anti-Slavery
+            Society, called and intended exclusively for <em>ladies</em>,
+            and those only who have been invited to address
+            them. Understanding this fact you will not be so
+            rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon
+            this meeting." But he added, "If, <em>gentlemen</em>, any of
+            you are <em>ladies</em> in disguise&#8212;why only apprise me of the
+            fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you
+            to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among
+            them accordingly." The power of benignity over
+            malignity lasted a few moments after this little
+            speech, when the situation changed rapidly from bad
+            to worse. "The tumult continually increased," says
+            an eye-witness, "with horrible execrations, howling,
+            stamping, and finally shrieking with rage. They
+            seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their
+            fury, but mounted on each other's shoulders, so that
+            a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight partition,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_221" id="P_221" title="P_221"></a>
+            of half the height of the wall which divides
+            the society's rooms from the landing place. We
+            requested them to allow the door to be shut; but
+            they could not decide as to whether the request
+            should be granted, and the door was opened and
+            shut with violence, till it hung useless from its
+            hinges."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet
+            these perturbed spirits and so enable the ladies to
+            hold their meeting without further molestation volunteered
+            at this juncture to the president of the society
+            to retire from the hall unless she desired him to
+            remain. She did not wish him to stay but urged him
+            to go at once not only for the peace of the meeting
+            but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the
+            hall meaning at the time to leave the building as well,
+            but egress by the way of the landing and the stairs,
+            he directly perceived was impossible, and did what
+            seemed the next best thing, entered the anti-slavery
+            office, separated from the hall by a board partition.
+            Charles C. Burleigh accompanied him within this
+            retreat. The door between the hall and the office was
+            securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous
+            serenity of mind, which was a part of him, busied
+            himself immediately with writing to a friend an
+            account of the scenes which were enacting in the next
+            room.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The tempest had begun in the streets also. The
+            mob from its five thousand throats were howling
+            "Thompson! Thompson!" The mayor of the city,
+            Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and
+            announced to the gentlemen of property and standing,
+            who were thus exercising their vocal organs, that
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_222" id="P_222" title="P_222"></a>
+            Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the
+            city. But the mayor was a modern Canute before the
+            sea of human passion, which was rushing in over law
+            and authority. He besought the rioters to disperse,
+            but he might as well have besought the waves breaking
+            on Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher
+            rose the voices; fiercer, fiercer waxed the multitude;
+            more and more frightful became the uproar. The
+            long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of
+            Abolitionists had broken loose at last and the deluge
+            had come. The mayor tossed upon the human inundation
+            as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him
+            for the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of
+            the town also.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Upstairs in the hall the society and its president
+            are quite as powerless as the mayor and the police
+            below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the president, is struggling
+            with the customary opening exercises. She has
+            called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some
+            passages from the Bible, and has lifted up her voice
+            in prayer to the All Wise and Merciful One "for direction
+            and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and
+            revilers." It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous
+            example of Christian heroism, for in the midst of the
+            hisses and threats and curses of the rioters, the prayer
+            of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But
+            now the rioters have thrown themselves against the
+            partition between the landing-place and the hall.
+            They are trying to break it down; now, they have
+            partially succeeded. In another moment they have
+            thrown themselves against the door of the office
+            where Garrison is locked. The lower panel is dashed
+            in. Through the opening they have caught sight of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_223" id="P_223" title="P_223"></a>
+            their object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk.
+            "There he is! That's Garrison! Out with the
+            scoundrel!" and other such words of recognition and
+            execration, burst from one and another of the mob.
+            The shattering of the partition, the noise of splitting
+            and ripping boards, the sharp crash caused by the
+            shivering of the office door, the loud and angry outcries
+            of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the
+            office that his position has become one of extreme
+            peril. But he does not become excited. His composure
+            does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to
+            escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with
+            the words, "You may as well open the door, and let
+            them come in and do their worst." But fortunately,
+            Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant
+            mood.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The advent of the mayor and the constables upon
+            the scene at this point rescued Garrison from immediately
+            falling into the hands of the mob, who were
+            cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the
+            voice of the mayor was heard urging the ladies to go
+            home as it was dangerous to remain; and now the voice
+            of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: "If this is
+            the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here
+            as anywhere." The ladies finally decided to retire,
+            and their exit diverted, while the operation lasted, the
+            attention of the huge, cat-like creature from their
+            object in the anti-slavery office. When the passing
+            of the ladies had ceased, the old fury of the mob
+            against Garrison returned. "Out with him!" "Lynch
+            him!" rose in wild uproar from thousands in the
+            streets. But again the attention of the huge, cat-like
+            creature was diverted from its object in the second
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_224" id="P_224" title="P_224"></a>
+            story of the building before which it was lashing
+            itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery
+            sign which hung from the rooms of the society over
+            the sidewalk. The mob had caught sight of it, and
+            directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter
+            helplessness in the presence of the multitude seemed
+            at this juncture to return to the chief magistrate of
+            the city. It was impossible to control the cataract-like
+            passions of the rioters. He heard their awful
+            roar for the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions.
+            The thought of what might happen next
+            appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the
+            sign with brickbats, and from the sign pass to the
+            building, and from the building to the constables,
+            and then&#8212;but the mayor glanced not beyond, for he
+            had determined to appease the fury of the mob by
+            throwing down to it the hateful sign. A constable
+            detached it, and hurled it down to the rioters in the
+            street. But by the act the mayor had signified that
+            the rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the
+            mob had really begun. When the rioters had wreaked
+            their wrath upon the emblem of freedom, they were
+            in the mood for more violence. The appetite for destruction,
+            it was seen, had not been glutted; only
+            whetted. Garrison's situation was now extremely
+            critical. He could no longer remain where he was,
+            for the mob would invade the building and hunt him
+            like hounds from cellar to garret. He must leave the
+            building without delay. To escape from the front
+            was out of the question. A way of escape must,
+            therefore, be found in the rear. All of these considerations
+            the mayor and Garrison's friends urged
+            upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_225" id="P_225" title="P_225"></a>
+            and, with a faithful friend, proceeded to the rear of
+            the building, where from a window he dropped to a
+            shed, but in doing so was very nearly precipitated to
+            the ground. After picking himself up he passed into a
+            carpenter's shop, meaning to let himself down into
+            Wilson's Lane, now Devonshire street, but the
+            myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every portion
+            of the building for their game, espied him at this
+            point, and with that set up a great shout. The workmen
+            came to the aid of the fugitive by closing the
+            door of the carpenter's shop in the face of his pursuers.
+            The situation seemed desperate. Retreat
+            from the front was cut off; escape from the rear anticipated
+            and foiled. Garrison perceived the futility
+            of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed
+            in his calm way to deliver himself up to them.
+            But his faithful Achates, John Reid Campbell, advised
+            him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long as
+            it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made
+            a final effort to get away. He retreated up stairs,
+            where his friend and a lad got him into a corner of
+            the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by
+            piling some boards in front of him. But, by that
+            time, the rioters had entered the building, and within
+            a few moments had broken into the room where Garrison
+            was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded
+            of him where Garrison was. But Reid
+            firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a window,
+            and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane,
+            advising them that it was not Garrison, but Garrison's
+            and Thompson's friend, who knows where Garrison
+            is, but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation
+            from below greeted this announcement. Almost
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_226" id="P_226" title="P_226"></a>
+            immediately afterward, Garrison was discovered and
+            dragged furiously to the window, with the intention
+            of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the
+            rioters were for doing this, while others were for
+            milder measures. "Don't let us kill him outright!"
+            they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a
+            rope around his body instead, and bade him descend
+            to the street. The great man was never greater
+            than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness
+            and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street.
+            From the window he bowed to the multitude who
+            were thirsting for his destruction, requesting them
+            to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then
+            he stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for
+            the purpose, and into the seething sea of human
+            passion.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison must now have been speedily torn to
+            pieces had he not been quickly seized by two or three
+            powerful men, who were determined to save him
+            from falling into the hands of the mob. They
+            were men of great muscular strength, but the muscular
+            strength of two or three giants would have proven
+            utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison's
+            deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed
+            their powerful arms, they also employed stratagem
+            as well to effect their purpose. They shouted
+            anon as they fought their way through the excited
+            throng, "He is an American! He shan't be hurt!" and
+            other such words which divided the mind of the mob,
+            arousing among some sympathy for the good man.
+            By this means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson's
+            lane into State street, in the rear of the old State
+            House. The champion was now on historic ground,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_227" id="P_227" title="P_227"></a>
+            ground consecrated by the blood of Crispus Attucks
+            and his fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His
+            hat was lost, much of his clothing was stripped from
+            his body, he was without his customary glasses, and
+            was therefore practically blind. He could hear the
+            awful clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he
+            could not distinguish them one from another, friend
+            from foe. Nevertheless he "walked with head erect,
+            calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going
+            to the stake, full of faith and manly hope" according
+            to the testimony of an eye-witness. Garrison
+            himself has thrown light on the state of his mind
+            during the ordeal. "The promises of God," he afterward
+            remembered, sustained his soul, "so that it was
+            not only divested of fear, but ready to sing aloud for
+            joy."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The news now reached the ears of the mayor that
+            Garrison was in the hands of the mob. Thereupon
+            the feeble but kindly magistrate began to act afresh
+            the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and
+            his constables struggled helplessly in the human current
+            rushing and raging around City Hall, the head
+            and seat of municipal law and authority. Without
+            the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably
+            have perished in the commotions which presently
+            reached their climax in violence and terror. He was
+            in the rear of City Hall when the mayor caught up
+            to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived
+            the extremity of the situation, and said to the
+            Faneuil Hall giants who had hold of Garrison, "Take
+            him into my office," which was altogether more easily
+            said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry
+            "to the Frog Pond with him!" Which order will be
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_228" id="P_228" title="P_228"></a>
+            carried out, that of the magistrate or that of the mob?
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            These were horrible moments while the two hung
+            trembling in the balance. But other private citizens
+            coming to the assistance of the mayor struck the
+            scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was
+            finally hustled, and thrust by main force into the
+            south door of the City Hall and carried up to the
+            mayor's room. But the mob had immediately effected
+            an entrance into the building through the north
+            door and filled the lower hall. The mayor now
+            addressed the pack, strove manfully in his feeble way
+            to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order,
+            to sustain the law and the honor of the city, he even
+            intimated to them that he was ready to lay down his
+            life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve
+            order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south
+            door and spoke in a similar strain to the mob on the
+            street. But alas! he knew not the secret for reversing
+            the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property
+            and standing in the community had been suddenly
+            transformed into a wolfish rabble.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The increasing tumult without soon warned the
+            authorities that what advantage the mayor may have
+            obtained in the contest with the mob was only temporary
+            and that their position was momentarily becoming
+            more perilous and less tenable. It was impossible
+            to say to what extreme of violence a multitude
+            so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It
+            seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that
+            the mob might in their frenzy attack the City Hall
+            to effect their purpose. There was one building in
+            the city, which the guardians of the law evidently
+            agreed could resist the rage of the populace, and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_229" id="P_229" title="P_229"></a>
+            that building was the jail. To this last stronghold
+            of Puritan civilization the authorities and the powers
+            that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison's
+            life. But even in this utmost pitch and extremity,
+            when law was trampled in the streets, when
+            authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when
+            anarchy had drowned order in the bosom of the
+            town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for legal forms asserted
+            itself. The good man, hunted for his life,
+            must forsooth be got into the only refuge which
+            promised him security from his pursuers by a regular
+            judicial commitment as a disturber of the peace. Is
+            there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the
+            Universal history of mobs?
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also
+            well meant, and therefore we will not stop to quarrel
+            with men who were equal to the perpetration of a legal
+            fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of civilized
+            society. But enough&#8212;the municipal wiseacres
+            having put their heads together and evolved the brilliant
+            plan of committing the prophet as a disturber of
+            the peace, immediately set about its execution, which
+            developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether
+            another color. For a more perilous and desperate
+            device to preserve Garrison's life could not well
+            have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got
+            out of the building and through that sea of ferocious
+            faces surging and foaming around it. First then by
+            disguising his identity by sundry changes in his
+            apparel. He obtained a pair of trousers from one
+            kindly soul, another gave him a coat, a third lent him
+            a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was
+            summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_230" id="P_230" title="P_230"></a>
+            of constables drew up and made an open way from
+            the door to it. Another hack was placed in readiness
+            at the north door. The hack at the south door was
+            only a ruse to throw the mob off the scent of their
+            prey, while he was got out of the north door and
+            smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the
+            plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had
+            been smuggled into the hack he was identified by the
+            mob, and then ensued a scene which defies description;
+            no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce
+            it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle
+            with the cry: "Cut the traces! Cut the reins!" They
+            flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon the
+            wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while
+            belaboring their heads right and left with a powerful
+            whip, which he also laid vigorously on the backs of
+            his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe
+            was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses
+            plunging at break-neck speed with the hack up Court
+            street and the mob pursuing it with yells of baffled
+            rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race for
+            life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along
+            Court street to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with
+            fell purpose flew hardly less swiftly in its track.
+            Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that the
+            hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but
+            reached it by a detour through Cambridge and Blossom
+            streets. Even then the mob pressed upon the
+            heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals
+            of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>, who was saved from
+            a frightful fate to use a Biblical phrase but by the
+            skin of his teeth.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_231" id="P_231" title="P_231"></a>
+            Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes,
+            was locked in a cell; and here, during the evening,
+            with no abatement of his customary cheerfulness and
+            serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious
+            friends, Whittier among them, whom through the
+            grated bars he playfully accosted thus: "You see my
+            accommodations are so limited, that I cannot ask you
+            to spend the night with me." That night in his
+            prison cell, and on his rude prison bed, he slept the
+            sleep of the just man, sweet and long:
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"When peace within the bosom reigns,<br>And conscience gives th' approving voice;<br>Though bound the human form in chains.<br>Yet can the soul aloud rejoice.<br><br></div>
+         <div class="lg">"'Tis true, my footsteps are confined&#8212;<br>I cannot range beyond this cell&#8212;<br>But what can circumscribe my mind,<br>To chain the winds attempt as well!"<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on
+            the walls of his cell. Besides this one he made two
+            other inscriptions there, to stand as memorabilia of
+            the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon
+            of October 21, 1835.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            After being put through the solemn farce of an
+            examination in a court, extemporized in the jail, Garrison
+            was discharged from arrest as a disturber of the
+            peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of
+            the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the
+            city for a few days, which he did, a deputy sheriff
+            driving him to Canton, where he boarded the train
+            from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and
+            together they went thence to her father's at Brooklyn,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_232" id="P_232" title="P_232"></a>
+            Conn. The apprehensions of the authorities in
+            respect of the danger of a fresh attack upon him were
+            unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent
+            search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages
+            and cars from the city that morning.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate
+            into <em>works</em> her sympathy for the South.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_233" id="P_233" title="P_233"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap12"></a>
+            CHAPTER XII.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            The results of the storm became immediately manifest
+            in several ways. Such a commotion did not
+            leave things in precisely the state in which they were
+            on the morning of the memorable day on which it
+            struck the city. The moral landscape and geography
+            of the community had sensibly changed at its close.
+            The full extent of the alteration wrought could not
+            at once be seen, nor was it at once felt. But that
+            there were deep and abiding changes made by it in
+            the court of public opinion in Boston and Massachusetts
+            on the subject of slavery there is little doubt.
+            It disgusted and alarmed many individuals who had
+            hitherto acted in unison with the social, business, and
+            political elements, which were at the bottom of the
+            riot. Francis Jackson, for instance, had been one of
+            the fifteen hundred signers of the call for the great
+            Faneuil Hall meeting of the 21st of August. But on
+            the afternoon of the 21st of October he threw his
+            house open to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society,
+            after its meeting had been broken up by the mob.
+            It seemed to him then that it was no longer a mere
+            struggle for the freedom of the slave, but for the right
+            of free speech and free discussion as well. Dr. Henry
+            I. Bowditch, a young man, in 1835, eminent professor
+            and physician subsequently, dates from that afternoon
+            of mob violence his conversion to Abolitionism.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_234" id="P_234" title="P_234"></a>
+            In that selfsame hour seeds of resistance to slavery
+            were sown in two minds of the first order in the city
+            and State. Wendell Phillips was a spectator in
+            the streets that day, and the father of Charles Sumner,
+            the sheriff at the time, fought bravely to save
+            Garrison from falling into the hands of the mob.
+            The great riot gave those young men their first
+            summons to enter the service of freedom. It was
+            not long afterward probably that they both began
+            to read the <i>Liberator</i>. From that event many
+            intelligent and conservative people associated slavery with
+            lynch law and outrage upon the rights of free speech
+            and popular assembly.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This anti-slavery reaction of the community received
+            practical demonstration in the immediate
+            increase of subscribers to the <i>Liberator</i>. Twelve
+            new names were added to the subscription list in one day.
+            It received significant illustration also in Garrison's
+            nomination to the legislature. In this way did between
+            seventy and eighty citizens testify their sympathy
+            for him and their reprobation of mob rule. In
+            yet another way was its influence felt, and this was
+            in the renewed zeal and activity which it instantly
+            produced on the part of the Abolitionists themselves.
+            It operated upon the movement as a powerful stimulus
+            to fresh sacrifices and unwearied exertions.
+            George W. Benson, Garrison's brother-in-law, led off
+            bravely in this respect, as the following extract from
+            a letter written by him in Boston, two days after the
+            riot, to Garrison, at Brooklyn, well illustrates. He
+            had come up to the city from Providence the night
+            before, in quest of his sister and her husband. Not
+            finding them, he turned to the cause which had been
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_235" id="P_235" title="P_235"></a>
+            so ruthlessly attacked, and this is the sort of care
+            which he bestowed upon it. He got Burleigh to
+            write a general relation of the mob for publication in
+            the <i>Liberator</i>, and Whittier to indite another,
+            with an appeal to the public, the same to be published immediately,
+            and of which he ordered three thousand
+            copies for himself.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "I further ordered," he writes, "one thousand
+            copies of A. Grimk&eacute;'s letter, with your introductory
+            remarks, and your address published in the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            several weeks since, with your name appended, and
+            Whittier's poetry on the times, in a pamphlet form.
+            I urged all our friends to redouble their exertions.
+            They seemed well disposed to accept the advice, as
+            nothing will now avail but thorough measures. <em>Liberty
+               or Death</em>!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This is a fair specimen of the indomitable, indefatigable
+            spirit which was born of the attempt to put
+            Abolitionism down by lawlessness and violence. Indeed,
+            the "Broad-Cloth Mob," viewed in the light of
+            the important consequences which followed it, was
+            equal to a hundred anti-slavery meetings, or a dozen
+            issues of the <i>Liberator</i>.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It is a curious and remarkable circumstance that,
+            on the very day of the Boston mob, there occurred
+            one in Utica, N.Y., which was followed by
+            somewhat similar results. An anti-slavery convention
+            was attacked and broken up by a mob of "gentlemen
+            of property and standing in the community,"
+            under the active leadership of a member of Congress.
+            Here there was an apparent defeat for the Abolitionists,
+            but the consequences which followed the outrage
+            proved it a blessing in disguise. For the cause made
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_236" id="P_236" title="P_236"></a>
+            many gains thereby, and conspicuously among them
+            was Gerritt Smith, ever afterward one of its most eloquent
+            and munificent supporters. If anti-slavery meetings
+            made converts by tens, anti-slavery mobs made
+            them by hundreds. The enemies of freedom builded
+            better than they knew or intended, and Garrison had
+            the weightiest of reasons for feeling thankful to them
+            for the involuntary, yet vast aid and comfort which
+            their pro-slavery virulence and violence were bringing
+            him and the anti-slavery movement throughout the
+            free States. Example: in 1835-36, the great mob year,
+            as many as three hundred and twenty-eight societies
+            were organized in the North for the immediate abolition
+            of slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The mob did likewise help towards a satisfactory
+            solution of the riddle propounded by Garrison: "Shall the
+            <i>Liberator</i> die?" The fresh access of anti-slavery
+            strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers,
+            begotten by it, exerted no slight influence on
+            the longevity of the <i>Liberator</i>. Poor the paper
+            continued, and embarrassed the editor for many a month
+            thereafter, but as an anti-slavery instrument its survival
+            may be said from that proceeding to have become
+            a necessity. To allow the <i>Liberator</i> to die at
+            this juncture would have been such a confession of
+            having been put down, such an ignominious surrender
+            to the mobocrats as the Abolitionists of Boston
+            would have scorned to make. "I trust," wrote
+            Samuel E. Sewall, "there will not be even one week's
+            interruption in the publication of the
+            <i>Liberator.</i>" <i>Ex
+               uno disce omnes</i>. He but voiced the sentiment of the
+            editor's disciples and associates in the city, in the
+            State, and in New England as well.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_237" id="P_237" title="P_237"></a>
+            Besides these larger consequences there were others
+            of a more personal and less welcome character.
+            The individual suffers but the cause goes forward.
+            Property-holders in Boston after the riot
+            were not at all disposed to incur the risk of renting
+            property to such disturbers of the peace
+            as Garrison and the <i>Liberator</i>. The owner of
+            his home on Brighton street was thrown into such
+            alarm for the safety of his property, if Garrison continued
+            to occupy it, that he requested the cancellation
+            of the lease and the vacation of the premises.
+            Garrison and his friends, all things considered,
+            decided that it was the part of wisdom to accede to
+            the request&#8212;although this breaking up of his home
+            was a sore trial to the young husband in more ways
+            than one.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The landlord of the building where was located the
+            <i>Liberator</i> office promptly notified the publishers
+            to remove the paper not many mornings after the
+            mob. This was particularly hard luck, inasmuch
+            as the most dilligent quest for another local habitation
+            for the paper, failed of success. No one was
+            willing to imperil his property by letting a part of
+            it to such a popularly odious enterprise. So that
+            not only had the household furniture of the editor to
+            be stored, but the office effects of the paper as well.
+            The inextinguishable pluck and zeal of Garrison and
+            his Boston coadjutors never showed to better advantage
+            than when without a place to print the
+            <i>Liberator</i>,
+            the paper was "set up in driblets" in other offices at
+            extraordinary expense, and sent out week after week
+            to tell the tale of the mob, and to preach with undiminished
+            power the gospel of universal emancipation.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_238" id="P_238" title="P_238"></a>
+            But more afflictive to the feelings of the reformer
+            than the loss of his home, or that of the office of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>, was the loss of his friend, George
+            Thompson. It seemed to him when the English orator
+            departed that "the paragon of modern eloquence,"
+            and "the benefactor of two nations," had left these
+            shores. Garrison's grief was as poignant as his
+            humiliation was painful. George Thompson had
+            come hither only as a friend of America, and
+            America had pursued him with the most relentless
+            malice. The greatest precautions were taken after
+            the "Broadcloth Mob" to ensure his safety. The
+            place of his concealment was kept a secret and committed
+            only to a few tried friends. There is no
+            doubt that had these precautions not been observed
+            and his hiding place been discovered by the ruffians
+            of the city, his life would have been attempted. Indeed
+            it is almost as certain that had he ventured to
+            show himself in public he would have been murdered
+            in broad daylight in any of the large towns and cities
+            of Massachusetts. His mission was clearly at an
+            end unless he was determined to invite martyrdom.
+            In these circumstances there was nothing to do but
+            to smuggle him out of the country at the first opportunity.
+            On Sunday, November 8, the anxiously
+            looked-for moment came when George Thompson
+            was put upon a packet, in which he sailed for St.
+            Johns, New Brunswick, whence he subsequently took
+            passage for England. Garrison was inconsolable.
+            "Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public,"
+            he sadly asked, "with subtle sophists and insolent
+            scoffers?" little dreaming that there was then
+            approaching him out of the all-hail hereafter a
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_239" id="P_239" title="P_239"></a>
+            greater in these identical respects than George
+            Thompson, indisputably great as he was.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It was a blessed refuge to Garrison, the Benson
+            homestead of Brooklyn, termed Friendship's Valley.
+            Hunted as a partridge by his enemies here he found the
+            quiet, and sympathy, and the right royal welcome and
+            affection for which his heart panted amidst the dust,
+            and din, and dangers of the crusade against slavery.
+            But grateful as were the domestic sweets of Friendship's
+            Valley, his was altogether too militant and
+            masterful a spirit to yield himself without a struggle
+            to the repose which it offered. He did not at all
+            relish the idea of being a forced exile from Boston,
+            of being obliged to edit the <i>Liberator</i> at such
+            long range. But his friends urged him to submit to the
+            one, and do the other, both on grounds of economy
+            and common prudence. He was almost super-anxious
+            lest it be said that the fear of the mob drove
+            him out of Boston, and that the fear of it kept him
+            out. This super-anxiety in that regard his friends to a
+            certain degree shared with him. It was a phase of
+            Abolition grit. Danger attracted this new species of
+            reformers as a magnet draws iron. Instead of running
+            away from it, they were, with one accord, forever
+            rushing into it. And the leader in Brooklyn
+            was for rushing back to Boston, where, if one chanced
+            to sow the wind in the morning, he might be morally
+            certain of reaping the whirlwind in the afternoon.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Two weeks after he had been secretly conveyed to
+            Canton by Deputy Sheriff Parkman, being the day of
+            his discharge from Leverett street jail, he was back
+            again in Boston. The popular excitement had subsided.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_240" id="P_240" title="P_240"></a>
+            He showed himself freely in the streets and
+            was nowhere molested. One day, however, while at
+            the anti-slavery office on Washington street, he witnessed
+            what was perhaps a final manifestation of the
+            cat-like spirit of the great mob. A procession passed
+            by with band and music, bearing aloft a large board
+            on which were represented George Thompson and a
+            black woman with this significant allusion to the riot,
+            made as if addressed to himself by his dusky companion
+            in disgrace: "When are we going to have
+            another meeting, Brother Thompson?" The cat-like
+            creature had lapsed into a playful mood, but its playfulness
+            would have quickly given place to an altogether
+            different fit did it but know that Garrison was
+            watching it from the window of the very room where
+            a few weeks before he had nearly fallen into its
+            clutches.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison remained in Boston two weeks, going
+            about the city, wherever and whenever business or
+            duty called him in a perfectly fearless way. He left
+            on the afternoon of November 18th. On that same
+            afternoon the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
+            held a memorable meeting at the house of Francis
+            Jackson. It was then that Harriet Martineau, another
+            foreign emissary, avowed her entire agreement with
+            the principles of the Abolitionists, which subjected
+            her to social ostracism, and to unlimited abuse from
+            the pro-slavery press of the city.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The new hatred of slavery which the mob had
+            aroused in Boston found heroic expression in a letter
+            of Francis Jackson's replying to a vote of thanks of
+            the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to him for
+            his hospitality to the ladies after their meeting was
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_241" id="P_241" title="P_241"></a>
+            broken up by the mob. Mr. Jackson in his answer
+            points with emphasis to the fact that his hospitality
+            had a double aim, one was the accommodation of the
+            ladies, the other the preservation of the right of free
+            discussion. In his regard a foundation principle of
+            free institutions had been assailed. "Happily," he
+            shrewdly observed, "one point seems already to be
+            gaining universal assent, that slavery cannot long
+            survive free discussion. Hence the efforts of the friends,
+            and apologists of slavery to break down this right.
+            And hence the immense stake which the enemies of
+            slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in
+            its preservation. The contest is, therefore, substantially
+            between liberty and slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so
+            neither can liberty breathe without it. Losing this,
+            we, too, shall be no longer free men indeed, but little,
+            if at all, superior to the millions we now seek to
+            emancipate." This apprehension and spirit of resistance,
+            voiced by Francis Jackson, was Garrison's new
+            ally, which, phoenix-like, was born out of the ashes
+            of that terrific attempt of his enemies to effect his
+            destruction, known as the "Broad-Cloth Mob."
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_242" id="P_242" title="P_242"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap13"></a>
+            CHAPTER XIII.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE BAROMETER CONTINUES TO FALL.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            Having made trial of the strong arm of the mob as
+            an instrument for putting down the Abolitionists, and
+            been quite confounded by its unexpected energy and
+            unmanageableness, Boston was well disposed to lay
+            the weapon aside as much too dangerous for use. For
+            the wild-cat-like creature might take it into its head,
+            when once it had got a taste of blood, to suppress
+            some other isms in the community besides Abolitionism.
+            No, no, the gentlemen of property and
+            standing in the community had too much at stake to
+            expose their property and their persons to the perils
+            of any further experiments in that direction, even for
+            the sake of expressing their sympathy for their dear
+            brethren in the South, or of saving the dear Union
+            into the bargain. Another method more in accord
+            with the genius of their high state of civilization, they
+            opined, might be invented to put the agitation and the
+            agitators of the slavery question down. The politicians
+            thereupon proceeded to make this perfectly
+            wonderful invention. Not the strong arm of the mob,
+            quoth these wiseacres, but the strong arm of the law
+            it shall be. And the strong arm of the law they
+            forthwith determined to make it.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Massachusetts was hearkening with a sort of fascination
+            to the song of the slave syren. And no wonder.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_243" id="P_243" title="P_243"></a>
+            For the song of the slave syren was swelling and
+            clashing the while with passionate and imperious
+            energy. South Carolina had led off in this kind of
+            music. In December following the Boston mob Governor
+            McDuffie, pitched the key of the Southern concert
+            in his message to the legislature descriptive of
+            anti-slavery publications, and denunciatory of the
+            anti-slavery agitation. The Abolitionists were, to his
+            mind, "enemies of the human race," and the movement
+            for immediate emancipation ought to be made
+            a felony punishable "by death without benefit of
+            clergy." He boldly denied that slavery was a political
+            evil, and vaunted it instead as "<em>the corner stone of
+               our republican edifice</em>." The legislature upon the
+            receipt of this extraordinary message proceeded to
+            demand of the free States the suppression, by effective
+            legislation, of anti-slavery societies and their incendiary
+            publications. The burden of this demand was
+            directly caught up by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia,
+            and Georgia. But there were some things
+            which even a pro-slavery North could not do to oblige
+            the South. Neither party, much as both desired it,
+            dared to undertake the violation by law of the great
+            right of free speech and of the freedom of the press.
+            Not so, however, was it with sundry party leaders,
+            notably the governors of New York and Massachusetts,
+            who were for trying the strong arm of the law
+            as an instrument for suppressing Abolitionism.
+            Edward Everett was so affected by the increasing
+            Southern excitement and his fears for the safety of
+            the dear Union that he must needs deliver himself in
+            his annual message upon the Abolition agitation. He
+            was of the opinion that the Abolitionists were guilty
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_244" id="P_244" title="P_244"></a>
+            of an offence against Massachusetts which might be
+            "prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." He
+            evidently did not consider that in the then present
+            state of political parties and of public opinion any
+            repressive legislation upon the subject could be got
+            through the legislature, and hence the immense utility
+            of the old machinery of the common law, as an
+            instrument for putting down the agitation. But in
+            order to get this machinery into operation, careful
+            preparation was necessary. Proof must not be wanting
+            as to the dangerous and unpatriotic character and
+            tendency of the movement to be repressed. There
+            should be the most authoritative utterance upon this
+            point to warrant the effective intervention of the
+            Courts and Grand Juries of the commonwealth in the
+            prosecution of the Abolitionists, as disturbers of the
+            peace. Ergo the Governor's deliverance in his annual
+            message against them. Now, if the legislature could
+            be brought to deliver itself in tones not less certain,
+            the third co&ouml;rdinate branch of the State government
+            might catch its cue and act with energy in suppressing
+            the disturbers of the peace of the commonwealth
+            and of the dear Union as well. This was the scheme,
+            the conspiracy which was in a state of incubation in
+            Massachusetts in the year 1836. The pro-slavery portion
+            of Governor Everett's message, together with the
+            Southern demands for repressive legislation against
+            the Abolitionists were referred to a joint legislative
+            committee for consideration and report. The chairman
+            of the committee was George Lunt, of Newburyport,
+            a bitter pro-slavery politician, who saw no sign,
+            received no light which did not come out of the
+            South.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_245" id="P_245" title="P_245"></a>
+            The Abolitionists perceived the gravity of the new
+            danger which threatened them, and rallied promptly
+            to avert it. They shrewdly guessed that the object
+            of the committee would not be the enactment of any
+            new law against themselves but the adoption of condemnatory
+            resolutions instead. This course they
+            rightly dreaded more than the other, and to defeat it
+            the managers of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society
+            requested a public hearing of the committee,
+            which was granted. On March 4th Garrison and
+            many of the anti-slavery leaders appeared before the
+            committee, with a carefully planned programme of
+            procedure. To each of the selected speakers was
+            assigned a distinct phase of the great subject of discussion
+            before the committee. Samuel J. May was
+            appointed to open with an exposition of the anti-slavery
+            movement and of the object and motives of
+            its founders; Garrison to follow with an exhibition
+            of the pacific character of the agitation as contained
+            in official publications whereby forgiveness, submission,
+            and non-resistance were steadily inculcated;
+            Ellis Gray Loring was next to demonstrate the perfectly
+            constitutional character of the agitation. The
+            Abolitionists had in no wise contravened the National
+            or the State Constitution, either in letter or spirit, and
+            so on through the programme. It was thus that the
+            Abolitionists dexterously killed two birds with one
+            stone; for at the same time that they made their
+            defence before the committee, they managed to present
+            their cause to the attention of the public as well.
+            Appearing before the committee to prevent hostile
+            action on the part of the legislature against their
+            movement, they skillfully turned the occasion into
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_246" id="P_246" title="P_246"></a>
+            the most notable meeting for agitating the subject of
+            slavery in the State during the year.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The pro-slavery malignity of the chairman helped
+            not a little to bring this result to pass. He again
+            and again interrupted the speakers with the
+            greatest insolence of behavior. Garrison, for a wonder,
+            was allowed to finish his remarks without interruption.
+            Here is a specimen of the way in which
+            Paul addressed himself to King Agrippa's master&#8212;public
+            opinion:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Sir," spoke he to the committee, "we loudly boast
+            of our free country, and of the union of these States,
+            yet I have no country! As a New Englander and as
+            an Abolitionist I am excluded by a bloody proscription
+            from one-half of the national territory, and so is
+            every man who is known to regard slavery with abhorrence.
+            Where is our Union? ... The right
+            of free and safe locomotion from one part of the land
+            to the other is denied to us, except on peril of our
+            lives.... Therefore it is, I assert, that the Union
+            is now virtually dissolved.... Look at McDuffie's
+            sanguinary message! Read Calhoun's Report
+            to the U.S. Senate, authorizing every postmaster in
+            the South to plunder the mail of such Northern letters
+            or newspapers as he may choose to think incendiary!
+            Sir, the alternative presented to the people of
+            New England is this: they must either submit to be
+            gagged and fettered by Southern taskmasters, or
+            labor unceasingly for the removal of slavery from
+            our country."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This was a capital stroke, a bold and brilliant
+            adaptation of the history of the times to the advancement
+            of the anti-slavery movement in New England.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_247" id="P_247" title="P_247"></a>
+            Missing Garrison, the anger of the chairman fell upon
+            Goodell and Prof. Follen, like a tiger's whelp. Follen
+            was remarking upon the Faneuil Hall meeting,
+            how it had rendered the Abolitionists odious in Boston,
+            and how, in consequence, the mob had followed
+            the meeting.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Now, gentlemen," the great scholar continued,
+            "may we most reasonably anticipate that similar
+            consequences would follow the expression by the
+            legislature of a similar condemnation? Would not
+            the mob again undertake to execute the informal
+            sentence of the General Court? Would it not let
+            loose again its bloodhounds upon us?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At this point Mr. Lunt peremptorily stopped the
+            speaker, exclaiming:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Stop, sir! You may not pursue this course of
+            remark. It is insulting to this committee and the
+            legislature which they represent."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Abolitionists, after this insult, determined to
+            withdraw from the hearing, and appeal to the legislature
+            to be heard, not as a favor but of right. A
+            new hearing was, therefore, ordered, and the reformers
+            appeared a second time before the committee.
+            But the scenes of the first were repeated at the second
+            hearing. The chairman was intolerably insolent to
+            the speakers. His violent behavior to William Goodell,
+            who was paying his respects to the Southern
+            documents lying on the table of the committee, terminated
+            the second hearing. These documents Mr.
+            Goodell described as fetters for Northern freemen,
+            and boldly interrogated the chairman in respect of
+            them thus:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Mr. Chairman, are you prepared to attempt putting
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_248" id="P_248" title="P_248"></a>
+            them on?" But the chairman was in no mood to
+            listen to the question. His insolence reached a climax
+            as he exclaimed passionately to Mr. Goodell,
+            "Stop, sir! Sit down, sir! The committee will hear
+            no more of this." But the temper of the Abolitionists
+            had risen also, as had also risen the temper of the great
+            audience of citizens who were present at the hearing
+            which was had in the hall of the House of Representatives.
+            "Freemen we came," retorted Goodell, "and
+            as freemen we shall go away." Scarcely had these
+            words died upon the ears when there rose sharply
+            from the auditory, the stern protest "Let us go
+            quickly, lest we be made slaves."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The attempt to suppress the Abolitionists was a
+            failure. It but stimulated the agitation and deepened
+            the popular interest in the subject. Strong allies
+            within and without the legislature were enlisted on
+            the side of freedom. The turning of the tide of public
+            sentiment in the grand old State had come. Slowly
+            did it rise for awhile, but from that event it never
+            ceased to flow in and with increasing volume. The
+            condemnatory report of the insolent chairman proved
+            as innocuous as the baying of dogs at the moon. The
+            legislature refused to indorse it and the pro-slavery
+            resolutions attached to it. They were both ignominiously
+            laid upon the table, and what is more to the
+            purpose as a straw to show the drift of popular
+            opinion on the slavery question in Massachusetts,
+            their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the
+            hands of his dissatisfied constituents.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The conflict was raging not alone in Massachusetts
+            but all through the free States. In Congress
+            the battle was assuming an intensely bitter character.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_249" id="P_249" title="P_249"></a>
+            Here the South was the agitator. Here she kept the
+            political waters in a state of violent ebullition. As
+            the discord grew, sectionalism threw darkening and
+            portentous shadows over the face of the Union.
+            The South was insisting in all stages of passion that
+            the tide of Abolition be checked in the North, that
+            the flood of incendiary publications be suppressed at
+            their sources in the free States. The Southern slave-holding
+            President had suggested the suppression of
+            these by Congress. He would "prohibit, under
+            severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern
+            States, through the mail, of incendiary publications
+            intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." But
+            when Webster and a few Northern leaders objected
+            to such a proceeding as unconstitutional and in
+            derogation of the freedom of the press, the South
+            treated the objection as inimical to Southern interest
+            and security. Thereupon the Southern excitement
+            increased all the faster. The slave-power was not
+            disposed to accept anything short of complete submission
+            on the part of the North. And this the
+            North could not well yield. While the slave-holding
+            States were clamoring for the suppression of Abolitionism
+            in the free States, Abolitionism was giving
+            evidences of extraordinary expansion, and activity.
+            It had risen well above the zero point in politics. It
+            was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes. A
+            new element had appeared at the polls and both of
+            the old parties began to exhibit a certain degree of
+            impressibility to the latest attraction. The slave-power
+            with quick instinct recognized in the new
+            comer a dangerous rival, and schemed for its destruction.
+            Southern jealousy took on the character of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_250" id="P_250" title="P_250"></a>
+            insanity. Neither Northern Whigs nor Northern
+            Democrats were permitted to show any regard for
+            the rival. They were to snub and utterly abolish
+            her, otherwise they should be snubbed and utterly
+            abolished by the slave-power. They could not with
+            impunity give to Abolitionism the scantiest attention
+            or courtesy. Not even a gallant like John Quincy
+            Adams, who was able to see nothing attractive in the
+            little band of reformers. They seemed to him, in
+            fact, "a small, shallow, and enthusiastic party preaching
+            the abolition of slavery upon the principles of
+            extreme democracy." If Mr. Adams had little love
+            for the South, he had none whatever for the Abolitionists.
+            By no stretch of the imagination could he
+            have been suspected of any sentimental attachment
+            to the Abolition movement. For his unvarying attitude
+            towards it was one of grim contempt. But if
+            the old Roman had no love for the Abolitionists, he
+            did have a deep-seated attachment and reverence for
+            certain ancient rights appertaining to free institutions,
+            which nothing was able to shake. Among
+            these was the great right of petition, viewed by the
+            ex-President as a right of human nature. For a
+            dozen years he stood in Congress its sleepless sentinel.
+            And herein did he perform for freedom most
+            valiant service. It made no difference to the dauntless
+            old man whether he approved of the prayer of a
+            petition or not, if it was sent to him he presented it
+            to the House all the same. He presented petitions
+            for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,
+            and one, at least, against it, petitions from black
+            and white, bond and free, with superb fidelity to the
+            precious right which he championed.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_251" id="P_251" title="P_251"></a>
+            This characteristic of the aged statesman kept the
+            Southern members in a state of chronic apprehension
+            and excitement. They bullied him, they raged like
+            so many wild animals against him, they attempted to
+            crush him with votes of censure and expulsion all to
+            no purpose. Then they applied the gag: "That all
+            petitions, memorials, and papers touching the abolition
+            of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring
+            slaves, in any State, or district, or territory of the
+            United States, be laid on the table without being
+            debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no action
+            be taken thereon." Mr. Adam's denunciation of this
+            action as a violation of the Constitution, of the right
+            of the people to petition, and of the right to freedom
+            of speech in Congress, found wide echo through the
+            North. The violence, intolerence, and tyranny of the
+            South were disgusting many of the most intelligent
+            and influential minds in the non-slave-holding States,
+            and driving them into more or less close affiliation
+            with the anti-slavery movement.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            And so it was wherever one turned there were conflict
+            and uproar. Everywhere contrary ideas, interests,
+            institutions, tendencies, were colliding with
+            inextinguishable rage. All the opposites and irreconcilables
+            in a people's life had risen and clashed
+            together in a death struggle for mastery. Freedom
+            and slavery, civilization and barbarism had found an
+            Armageddon in the moral consciousness of the
+            Republic. Now the combatants rallied and the battle
+            thickened at one point, now around another. At
+            Washington the tide rolls in with resounding fury
+            about the right of petition and the freedom of debate,
+            then through the free States it surges and beats
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_252" id="P_252" title="P_252"></a>
+            around the right of free speech and the freedom of
+            the press. Storm clouds are flying from the East and
+            from the West, flying out of the North and out of the
+            South. Everywhere the chaos of the winds has
+            burst, and the anarchy of the "live thunder."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Benton with his customary optimism from a Southern
+            standpoint, rejoiced in the year 1836 that the
+            people of the Northern States had "chased off the
+            foreign emissaries, silenced the gabbling tongues of
+            female dupes, and dispersed the assemblies, whether
+            fanatical, visionary, or incendiary, of all that congregated
+            to preach against evils that afflicted others, not
+            them, and to propose remedies to aggravate the disease
+            which they pretended to cure." Calhoun's pessimism
+            was clearer eyed. The great nullifier perceived
+            at once the insuppressible nature of the Abolition
+            movement and early predicted that the spirit
+            then abroad in the North would not "die away of
+            itself without a shock or convulsion." Yes, it was as
+            he had prophesied, the anti-slavery reform was, at
+            the very moment of Benton's groundless jubilation,
+            rising and spreading with astonishing progress
+            through the free States. It was gaining footholds in
+            the pulpit, the school, and the press. It was a stalwart
+            sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over
+            the fields of the then coming generation truths and
+            antipathies of social principles, which were to make
+            peace impossible between the slave-holding and the
+            non-slave-holding halves of the Union.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the year 1836 the anti-slavery leaven or residuum
+            for instance, was sufficiently potent to preserve the
+            statutes of the free States, free from repressive laws
+            directed against the Abolitionists. This was much
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_253" id="P_253" title="P_253"></a>
+            but there was undoubtedly another phase of the agitation,
+            a phase which struck the shallow eye of Benton,
+            and led him into false conclusions. It was not
+            clear sailing for the reform. It was truly a period of
+            stress and storm. Sometimes the reform was in a
+            trough of the sea of public opinion, sometimes on the
+            crest of a billow, and then again on the bosom of a
+            giant ground swell. In Boston in this selfsame year
+            which witnessed Benton's exultation over the fall of
+            Abolitionism, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
+            was not able to obtain the use of hall or church for
+            its annual meeting, and was in consequence forced
+            into insufficient accommodations at its rooms on
+            Washington street. The succeeding year the society
+            was obliged, from inability to obtain the use of either
+            hall or church in the city, to occupy for its annual
+            meeting the loft over the stable connected with the
+            Marlborough Hotel. It is a long way from this rude
+            meeting-house to the hall of the House of Representatives,
+            but in this storm and stress period the distance
+            was traversed in a few brief hours. The society
+            applied in its exigency for the use of the hall for an
+            evening meeting, and the application was granted by
+            the members. It was a <i>jeu d'esprit</i> of Henry B.
+            Stanton, "That when Boston votes we go into a stable,
+            but when the State votes we go into the State House."
+            It was even so, for the incident served to reveal what
+            was true everywhere through the free States that the
+            anti-slavery reform was making fastest progress
+            among people away from the great centres of population.
+            It found ready access to the simple American
+            folk in villages, in the smaller towns, and in the
+            rural districts of New England and the North. And
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_254" id="P_254" title="P_254"></a>
+            already from these independent and uncorrupted
+            sons and daughters of freedom had started the deep
+            ground swell which was to lift the level of Northern
+            public opinion on the question of slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This Walpurgis period of the movement culminated
+            on November 7, 1837, in a terrible tragedy. The
+            place was a little Illinois town, Alton, just over the
+            Mississippi River from St. Louis, and the victim was
+            Elijah P. Lovejoy. He was a minister of the Presbyterian
+            Church, and the editor of a weekly religious
+            newspaper, first published in St. Louis and removed
+            by him later to Alton. His sin was that he did not
+            hold his peace on the subject of slavery in the columns
+            of his paper. He was warned "to pass over in
+            silence everything connected" with that question.
+            But he had no choice, he had to cry aloud against
+            iniquities, which, as a Christian minister and a Christian
+            editor, he dared not ignore. His troubles with
+            the people of St. Louis took in the spring of 1836
+            a sanguinary turn, when he denounced the lynching
+            of a negro by a St. Louis mob, perpetrated under circumstances
+            of peculiar atrocity. In consequence
+            of his outspoken condemnation of the horror, his
+            office was broken into and destroyed by a mob.
+            Lovejoy thereupon removed his paper to Alton, but
+            the wild-cat-like spirit pursued him across the river
+            and destroyed his press. He replaced his broken
+            press with a new one, only to have his property a
+            second time destroyed. He replaced the second with
+            a third press, but a third time the mob destroyed his
+            property. Then he bought a fourth press, and
+            resolved to defend it with his life. Pierced by bullets
+            he fell, resisting the attack of a mob bent on the destruction
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_255" id="P_255" title="P_255"></a>
+            of his rights. Lovejoy died a martyr to free
+            speech and the freedom of the press.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The tidings of this tragedy stirred the free States
+            to unwonted depths. The murder of an able and singularly
+            noble man by a mob was indeed horrible
+            enough, but the blow which took his life was aimed
+            at the right of free speech and the freedom of the
+            press. He was struck down in the exercise of his liberties
+            as a citizen of the town where he met death,
+            and of the State and country to which he belonged.
+            What brave man and good in the North who might
+            not meet a similar fate for daring to denounce evils
+            approved by the community in which his lot was
+            cast? Who was safe? Whose turn would it be next
+            to pay with his life for attempts to vindicate the
+            birthright of his citizenship? What had Lovejoy
+            done, what had he written, that thousands of people
+            who did not agree with Garrison would not have
+            done and have written under like circumstances? He
+            was not a disciple of Garrison, he did not accept the
+            doctrine of immediate emancipation, and yet a pro-slavery
+            mob had murdered him. Yes, who was
+            safe? Who was to be the next? A great horror
+            transfixed the North, and bitter uncertainty, and
+            tremendous dread of approaching perils to its
+            liberties.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Ah! had not Garrison spoken much plain truth at
+            the public hearing of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
+            Society before the insolent chairman and his committee
+            when he said: "The liberties of the people of the
+            free States are identified with those of the slave population.
+            If it were not so, there would be no hope, in
+            my breast, of peaceful deliverance of the latter class
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_256" id="P_256" title="P_256"></a>
+            from their bondage. Our liberties are bound together
+            by a ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese
+            twins. The blow which cuts them asunder, will
+            inevitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of
+            speech and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and
+            the nation itself will be in bondage; let it remain
+            untrammeled, and Southern slavery must speedily
+            come to an end." The tragedy at Alton afforded
+            startling illustration of the soundness of this remark.
+            Classes like individuals gain wisdom only by experience;
+            and the murder of Lovejoy was one of those
+            terrific experiences which furrow themselves in the
+            soul of a people in frightful memories and apprehensions
+            which do not disappear but remain after long
+            lapse of years.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Twelve days after the murder&#8212;it was before the
+            development of the telegraph and rapid postal facilities&#8212;the
+            news reached Boston. It produced the most
+            profound sensation. Many of the leading citizens
+            felt straightway that if the rights assailed in the person
+            of Lovejoy were to be preserved to themselves
+            and their section, immediate action was required. A
+            great meeting was proposed, and Faneuil Hall
+            applied for. The application was denied by the
+            municipal authorities on the plea that its use for such
+            a purpose might provoke a mob. The city was, however,
+            dealing now not with the despised Abolitionists,
+            but with men of property and standing in the community
+            and was soon brought to its senses by the
+            indignant eloquence of Dr. Channing, appealing to
+            the better self of Boston in this strain: "Has it come
+            to this? Has Boston fallen so low? May not its citizens
+            be trusted to come together to express the great
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_257" id="P_257" title="P_257"></a>
+            principles of liberty for which their forefathers died?
+            Are our fellow-citizens to be murdered in the act of
+            defending their property and of assuming the right
+            of free discussion? And is it unsafe in this metropolis
+            to express abhorrence of the deed?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A second application for the hall was granted, and
+            a meeting, which is an historical event in the annals
+            of the old town, was held December 8, 1837&#8212;a meeting
+            memorable as an uprising, not of the Abolitionists,
+            but of the conservatism and respectability of the
+            city in behalf of the outraged liberties of white men.
+            Ever memorable, too, for that marvelous speech of Wendell
+            Phillips, which placed him instantly in the front
+            rank of minds with a genius for eloquence, lifted him
+            at once as an anti-slavery instrument and leader close
+            beside William Lloyd Garrison. The wild-cat-like
+            spirit which had hunted Thompson out of the country
+            and Lovejoy to death, had more than made
+            good the immense deficit of services thus created
+            through the introduction upon the national stage of
+            the reform of this consummate and incomparable
+            orator.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The assassination of Lovejoy was an imposing
+            object lesson to the North, but it was not the last.
+            Other and terrible illustrations of the triumph of
+            mobs followed it, notably the burning of Pennsylvania
+            Hall in Philadelphia on the evening of May 17,
+            1838. As the murder of Lovejoy formed the culmination
+            of outrages directed against the rights of person,
+            the burning of Pennsylvania Hall furnished the
+            climax of outrages committed against the rights of
+            property. The friends of the slave and of free discussion
+            in Philadelphia feeling the need of a place
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_258" id="P_258" title="P_258"></a>
+            where they might assemble for the exercise of the
+            right of free speech in a city which denied to them
+            the use of its halls and meeting-houses, determined
+            to erect for themselves such a place. At a cost of
+            forty thousand dollars they built Pennsylvania Hall
+            and devoted it to "Free Discussion, Virtue, Liberty,
+            and Independence."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Two days after the dedicatory exercises were had
+            the hall was occupied by the annual convention of
+            American Anti-Slavery Women. On the evening of
+            May 16th, Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman, Angelina
+            Grimk&eacute; Weld and others addressed the convention
+            in the new temple of freedom. The scenes of
+            that evening have been graphically described by the
+            first speaker as follows: "The floor of the hall was
+            densely crowded with women, some of the noblest
+            specimens of our race, a large proportion of whom
+            were Quakers. The side aisles and spacious galleries
+            were as thickly filled with men. Nearly three thousand
+            people were in the hall. There seemed to be
+            no visible symptoms of a riot. When I rose to speak
+            I was greeted with applause by the immense assembly,
+            and also several times in the course of my
+            remarks. As soon, however, as I had concluded my
+            address, a furious mob broke into the hall, yelling
+            and shouting as if the very fiends of the pit had suddenly
+            broken loose. The audience rose in some confusion,
+            and would undoubtedly have been broken up,
+            had it not been for the admirable self-possession of
+            some individuals, particularly the women. The
+            mobocrats finding that they could not succeed in
+            their purpose, retreated into the streets, and, surrounding
+            the building, began to dash in the windows
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_259" id="P_259" title="P_259"></a>
+            with stones and brick-bats. It was under these
+            appalling circumstances that Mrs. Chapman rose for
+            the first time in her life, to address a promiscuous
+            assembly of men and women&#8212;and she acquitted herself
+            nobly. She spoke about ten minutes, and was
+            succeeded by A.E.G. Weld, who occupied nearly
+            an hour. As the tumult from without increased, and
+            the brick-bats fell thick and fast (no one, however,
+            being injured) her eloquence kindled, her eye flashed,
+            and her cheeks glowed, as she devoutly thanked the
+            Lord that the stupid repose of that city had at length
+            been disturbed by the force of truth. When she sat
+            down, Esther Moore (a Friend) made a few remarks,
+            then Lucretia Mott, and finally Abby Kelley, a noble
+            young woman from Lynn.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "The meeting broke up about 10 o'clock, and we
+            all got safely home. The next day the street was
+            thronged with profane ruffians and curious spectators&#8212;the
+            women, however, holding their meetings in
+            the hall all day, till towards evening. It was given
+            out by the mob that the hall would be burnt to the
+            ground that night. We were to have a meeting in
+            the evening, but it was impossible to execute our
+            purpose. The mayor induced the manager to give
+            the keys of the building into his hands. He then
+            locked the doors, and made a brief speech to the mob,
+            assuring them that he had the keys, and that there
+            would be no meeting, and requesting them to retire.
+            He then went home, but the mob were bent on the
+            destruction of the hall. They had now increased to
+            several thousands, and soon got into the hall by
+            dashing open the doors with their axes. They then
+            set fire to this huge building, and in the course of an
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_260" id="P_260" title="P_260"></a>
+            hour it was a solid mass of flame. The bells of the
+            city were rung, and several engines rallied; but no
+            water was permitted to be thrown upon the building.
+            The light of the fire must have been seen a great
+            distance."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At midnight Garrison was spirited out of the city,
+            and conveyed in a covered carriage by a friend to
+            Bristol, about twenty miles, where in the morning he
+            took the steamboat for Boston. The light of that
+            fire was visible a great distance in more senses than
+            one. The burning of Pennsylvania Hall proved a
+            public enlightener. After that occurrence the gentlemen
+            of property scattered through the free States
+            devoted themselves less to the violent suppression of
+            Abolitionism and more to the forcible suppression,
+            upon occasion, of the alarming manifestations
+            of popular lawlessness, which found significant
+            demonstration just a week later in the city of
+            Boston.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Mr. Garrison has preserved for us an instructive
+            account of this affair, too, and here is the story as told
+            by him to his brother-in-law, George W. Benson, in a
+            letter dated May 25th: "The spirit of mobocracy,
+            like the pestilence, is contagious; and Boston is once
+            more ready to re&euml;nact the riotous scenes of 1835.
+            The Marlboro' Chapel, having just been completed,
+            and standing in relation to our cause just as did
+            Pennsylvania Hall, is an object of pro-slavery malevolence.
+            Ever since my return, threats have been given
+            out that the chapel should share the fate of the hall.
+            Last evening was the time for its dedication; and,
+            so threatening was the aspect of things, four companies
+            of light infantry were ordered to be in readiness,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_261" id="P_261" title="P_261"></a>
+            each being provided with 100 <i>ball</i> cartridges, to
+            rush to the scene of riot on the tolling of the bells.
+            The Lancers, a powerful body of horsemen, were
+            also in readiness. During the day placards were
+            posted at the corners of the streets, denouncing the
+            Abolitionists, and calling upon the citizens to rally at
+            the chapel in the evening, in order to put them down.
+            An immense concourse of people assembled, a large
+            proportion doubtless from motives of curiosity, and
+            not a few of them with evil designs; but owing to
+            the strong military preparations, the multitude
+            refrained entirely from any overt acts of violence.
+            They did not disperse till after 10 o'clock, and during
+            the evening shouted and yelled like a troop of
+            wild savages. Some ten or twelve were seized and
+            carried to the watch-house, and this morning fined
+            for their disorderly conduct."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The frightful excesses of the Walpurgis period of
+            the agitation reacted through the free States to an
+            extraordinary extent in favor of Abolition. The
+            greater the horror committed by the wild-cat-like
+            spirit, the greater the help which the reform derived
+            therefrom. The destruction of property, and the
+            destruction of life instead of putting down the hated
+            Abolitionists aroused in the public mind apprehensions
+            and antagonisms in respect of mobs, which
+            proved, immediately and ultimately, of immense advantage
+            to freedom. This revulsion on the part of
+            the North from lawless attempts to abolish Abolitionism,
+            affected almost unavoidably, and in the beginning
+            of it almost unconsciously, the friendly dispositions
+            of that section toward slavery, the root
+            and mainspring of these attempts. Blows aimed at
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_262" id="P_262" title="P_262"></a>
+            the agent were sure, regardless of the actor's intention,
+            to glance and strike the principal. In spite of
+            mobs then, and to a remarkable degree because of
+            mobs, Abolitionism had become a powerful motor
+            in revolutionizing public opinion in the free States
+            on the subject of slavery.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_263" id="P_263" title="P_263"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap14"></a>
+            CHAPTER XIV.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            BROTHERLY LOVE FAILS, AND IDEAS ABOUND.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            During those strenuous, unresting years, included
+            between 1829 and 1836, Garrison had leaned on his
+            health as upon a strong staff. It sustained him without
+            a break through that period, great as was the
+            strain to which it was subjected. But early in the
+            latter year the prop gave way, and the pioneer was
+            prostrated by a severe fit of sickness. It lasted off
+            and on for quite two years. His activity the first
+            year was seriously crippled, though at no time, owing
+            to his indomitable will, could he be said to have
+            been rendered completely <i>hors de combat</i>. Almost the
+            whole of 1836 he spent with his wife's family in
+            Brooklyn, where his first child was born. This new
+            mouth brought with it fresh cares of a domestic character.
+            He experienced losses also. Death removed
+            his aged father-in-law in the last month of 1836, and
+            four weeks later Henry E. Benson, his brother-in-law.
+            Their taking off was a sad blow to the reformer and
+            to the reform. That of the younger man cast a
+            gloom over anti-slavery circles in New England; for
+            at the time of his death he was the secretary and
+            general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and although
+            not twenty-three, had displayed uncommon
+            capacity for affairs. The business ability which he
+            brought into his office was of the greatest value
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_264" id="P_264" title="P_264"></a>
+            where there was such a distinct deficiency in that respect
+            among his coadjutors, and the loss of it seemed
+            irreparable.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Afflicted as he was, the leader was nevertheless
+            cheered by the extraordinary progress of the movement
+            started by him. The growth and activity of
+            Abolitionism were indeed altogether phenomenal. In
+            February, 1837, Ellis Gray Loring estimated that
+            there were then eight hundred anti-slavery societies
+            in the United States, that an anti-slavery society had
+            been formed in the North every day for the last two
+            years, and that in the single State of Ohio there were
+            three hundred societies, one of which had a membership
+            of four thousand names. The moral agitation
+            was at its height. The National Society had hit upon
+            a capital device for increasing the effectiveness of
+            its agents and lecturers. This was to bring them
+            together in New York for a few weeks' study of the
+            slavery question under the direction of such masters
+            as Theodore D. Weld, Beriah Green, Charles Stuart,
+            and others. All possible phases of the great subject,
+            such as, What is slavery? What is immediate emancipation?
+            The consequences of emancipation to the
+            South, etc., etc., pro-slavery objections and arguments
+            were stated and answered. The agents and
+            lecturers went forth from the convention bristling
+            with facts, and glowing with enthusiasm to renew the
+            crusade against slavery. Garrison, broken in health
+            as he was, went on from Boston to attend this school
+            of his disciples. He spoke briefly but repeatedly to
+            them upon the all-absorbing topic which had brought
+            them together. "It was a happy circumstance, too,"
+            he wrote, "that I was present with them, and that
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_265" id="P_265" title="P_265"></a>
+            they had an opportunity to become <em>personally</em>
+            acquainted with me; for, as I am a great stumbling-block
+            in the way of the people, or, rather, of some
+            people, it would be somewhat disastrous to our cause
+            if any of our agents, through the influence of popular
+            sentiment, should be led to cherish prejudices
+            against me."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In February, 1837, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society came to the
+            rescue of the <i>Liberator</i> from its
+            financial embarrassments and hand-to-mouth existence
+            by assuming the responsibility of its publication.
+            The arrangement did not in any respect
+            compromise Mr. Garrison's editorial independence,
+            but lifted from him and his friend Knapp in his own
+            language, "a heavy burden, which has long crushed
+            us to the earth." The arrangement, nevertheless,
+            continued but a year when it was voluntarily set
+            aside by Mr. Garrison for causes of which we must
+            now give an account.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the letter from which we have quoted above,
+            touching his visit to the Convention of Anti-Slavery
+            Agents, Garrison alludes to one of these causes. He
+            says: "I was most kindly received by all, and treated
+            as a brother, notwithstanding the wide difference of
+            opinion between us on some religious points, <em>especially
+               the Sabbath question</em>." The italics are our own.
+            Until within a few years he had been one of the
+            strictest of Sabbath observers. Although never formally
+            connected with any church, he had been a
+            narrow and even an intolerant believer in the creed
+            and observances of New England orthodoxy. Words
+            failed him in 1828 to express his abhorrence of a
+            meeting of professed infidels: "It is impossible," he
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_266" id="P_266" title="P_266"></a>
+            exclaimed with the ardor of a bigot, "to estimate the
+            depravity and wickedness of those who, at the
+            present day, reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ," etc. A year and a half later
+            while editing the <i>Genius</i> in
+            Baltimore, he held uncompromisingly to the stern
+            Sabbatical notions of the Puritans. A f&ecirc;te given to
+            Lafayette in France on Sunday seemed to him an
+            act of sheer religious desecration. The carrying of
+            passengers and the mails on the Sabbath provoked
+            his energetic reprobation. He was in all points of
+            New England Puritanism, orthodox of the orthodox.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Subsequently he began to see things in a different
+            light. As the area of his experience extended it
+            came to him that living was more than believing,
+            that it was not every one who professed faith in
+            Jesus had love for him in the heart; and that there
+            were many whom his own illiberalism had rated as
+            depraved and wicked on mere points of doctrine,
+            who, nevertheless, shamed by the blamelessness and
+            nobility of their conduct multitudes of ardent Christians
+            of the lip-service sort. Indeed this contradiction
+            between creed and conduct struck him with considerable
+            force in the midst of his harsh judgments
+            against unbelief and unbelievers. "There are, in
+            fact," he had remarked a year or two after he had
+            attained his majority, "few <em>reasoning</em> Christians; the
+            majority of them are swayed more by the usages of
+            the world than by any definite perception of what
+            constitutes duty&#8212;so far, we mean, as relates to the
+            subjugation of vices which are incorporated, as it
+            were, into the existence of society; else why is it
+            that intemperance, and slavery, and war, have not
+            ere this in a measure been driven from our land?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_267" id="P_267" title="P_267"></a>
+            As the months of his earnest young life passed
+            him by, they showed him as they went how horrible
+            a thing was faith without works. "By their fruits
+            ye shall know them," the Master had said, and more
+            and more as he saw how many and great were the
+            social evils to be reformed, and in what dire need
+            stood his country of righteous action, did he come
+            to put increasing emphasis on conduct, as the one
+            thing needful to rid the land of the triple curse of
+            slavery, intemperance, and war. As he mused upon
+            these giant evils, and the desolation which they were
+            singly and together causing in the world, and upon
+            the universal apathy of the churches in respect of
+            them, it seemed to him that the current religion was
+            an offence and an abomination. And in his prophetic
+            rage he denounced it as "a religion which quadrates
+            with the natural depravity of the heart, giving
+            license to sin, restraining no lust, mortifying not the
+            body, engendering selfishness, and cruelty!&#8212;a religion
+            which walks in silver slippers, on a carpeted
+            floor, having thrown off the burden of the cross and
+            changed the garments of humiliation for the splendid
+            vestments of pride! a religion which has no courage,
+            no faithfulness, no self-denial, deeming it better to
+            give heed unto men than unto God!" This was in
+            the autumn of 1829, but though he was thus violently
+            denunciatory of contemporary religion, the severity
+            of his judgment against the skepticism of the times
+            had not been materially modified. He still regarded
+            the unbeliever with narrow distrust and dislike.
+            When, after his discharge from Baltimore jail, he was
+            engaged in delivering his message on the subject of
+            slavery, and was seeking an opportunity to make
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_268" id="P_268" title="P_268"></a>
+            what he knew known to the people of Boston, he was
+            forced, after vainly advertising for a hall or meeting-house
+            in which to give his three lectures, to accept
+            the offer of Abner Kneeland's Society of Infidels of
+            the use of their hall for that purpose. The spirit of
+            these people, branded by the community as blasphemers,
+            and by himself, too, in all probability,
+            Garrison saw to be as admirable as the spirit displayed
+            by the churches of the city toward him and
+            his cause was unworthy and sinful. But, grateful as
+            he was for the hospitality of the infidels, he, nevertheless,
+            rather bluntly informed them that he had no
+            sympathy with their religious notions, and that he
+            looked for the abolition of slavery to evangelicism,
+            and to it alone.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A few years in the university of experience, where
+            he learned that conduct is better than creeds, and
+            living more than believing, served to emancipate him
+            from illiberal prejudices and narrow sectarianism.
+            He came to see, "that in Christ Jesus all stated
+            observances are so many self-imposed and unnecessary
+            yokes; and that prayer and worship are all
+            embodied in that pure, meek, child-like state of heart
+            which affectionately and reverently breathes but one
+            petition&#8212;'Thy will be done on earth as it is in
+            heaven.' Religion ... is nothing but love&#8212;perfect
+            love toward God and toward man&#8212;without formality,
+            without hypocrisy, without partiality&#8212;depending
+            upon no outward form to preserve its vitality or
+            prove its existence."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This important change in Mr. Garrison's religious
+            convictions became widely known in the summer of
+            1836 through certain editorial strictures of his upon
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_269" id="P_269" title="P_269"></a>
+            a speech of Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Pittsburgh, on the
+            subject of the Sabbath. The good doctor was cold
+            enough on the question of slavery, which involved
+            not only the desecration of the Sabbath, but of the
+            souls and bodies of millions of human beings. If
+            Christianity was truly of divine origin, and Garrison
+            devoutly believed that it was, it would approve its
+            divinity by its manner of dealing with the vices and
+            evils which were dragging and chaining the feet of
+            men to the gates of hell. If it parleyed with iniquity,
+            if it passed its victims by on the other side, if it did
+            not war incessantly and energetically to put down
+            sin, to destroy wickedness, it was of the earth, earthy,
+            and its expounders were dumb dogs where they
+            should bark the loudest and bite the hardest; and
+            Dr. Beecher appeared to him one of these dumb dogs,
+            who, when he opened his mouth at all, was almost
+            sure to open it at the men who were trying through
+            evil report and good to express in their lives the
+            spirit of Him who so loved the world that He gave
+            His Son to die to redeem it. He bayed loud enough
+            at the Abolitionists but not at the abomination which
+            they were attacking. He was content to leave it to
+            the tender mercies of two hundred years. No such
+            liberal disposition of the question of the Sabbath was
+            he willing to allow. He waxed eloquent in its behalf.
+            His enthusiasm took to itself wings and made a great
+            display of ecclesiastical zeal beautiful to behold.
+            "The Sabbath," quoth the teacher who endeavored
+            to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on the
+            subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his
+            prophetic soul quiescently committed to the operation
+            of two centuries; "the Sabbath," quoth he, "is
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_270" id="P_270" title="P_270"></a>
+            the <em>great sun of the moral world</em>." Out upon you,
+            said Garrison, the <b>LORD GOD</b> is the
+            <em>great sun of the moral world</em>, not the Sabbath.
+            It is not one, but
+            every day of the week which is His, and which men
+            should be taught to observe as holy days. It is not
+            regard for the forms of religion but for the spirit,
+            which is essential to righteousness. What is the
+            command, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
+            holy,' but one of ten commandments? Is the violation
+            of the fourth any worse than the violation of the
+            third or fifth, or sixth? Nowhere is it so taught in
+            the Bible. Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and
+            treading down of the whole ten, what but a vast
+            system of adultery, robbery, and murder, the daily
+            and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone
+            of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Mr. Garrison then passed to criticisms of a more
+            special character touching the observance of the day
+            thus: "These remarks are made not to encourage
+            men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a
+            pernicious and superstitious notion, and one that is
+            very prevalent, that extraordinary and supernatural
+            visitations of divine indignation upon certain transgressors
+            (of the Sabbath particularly and almost
+            exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of
+            Moses and the prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath
+            may have to a strict religious observance, we
+            are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must
+            necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to
+            enforce or prove its sanctity." This pious but
+            rational handling of the Sabbath question gave
+            instant offence to the orthodox readers of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>. For it was enough in those days to
+            convict
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_271" id="P_271" title="P_271"></a>
+            the editor of rank heresy. From one and another
+            of his subscribers remonstrances came pouring in
+            upon him. A young theological student at Yale
+            ordered his paper stopped in consequence of the
+            anti-Sabbatarian views of the editor. A Unitarian
+            minister at Harvard, Mass., was greatly cut up by
+            reason thereof, and suddenly saw what before he did
+            not suspect. "I had supposed you," he wrote in his
+            new estate, "a very pious person, and that a large
+            proportion of the Abolitionists were religious persons.... I have
+            thought of you as another Wilberforce&#8212;but
+            would Wilberforce have spoken thus of
+            the day on which the Son of God rose from the
+            dead?" Garrison's query in reply&#8212;"Would Wilberforce
+            have denied the identity of Christ with the
+            Father?"&#8212;was a palpable hit. But as he himself
+            justly remarked, "Such questions are not arguments,
+            but fallacies unworthy of a liberal mind." Nevertheless,
+            so long as men are attached to the leading
+            strings of sentiment rather than to those of reason,
+            such questions will possess tremendous destructive
+            force, as Mr. Garrison, in his own case, presently perceived.
+            He understood the importance of not arousing
+            against him "denominational feelings or peculiarities,"
+            and so had steered the <i>Liberator</i> clear of the
+            rocks of sectarianism. But when he took up in its
+            columns the Sabbath question he ran his paper
+            directly among the breakers of a religious controversy.
+            He saw how it was with him at once, saw
+            that he had stirred up against him all that religious
+            feeling which was crystallized around the first day of
+            the week, and that he could not hope to escape without
+            serious losses in one way or another. "It is
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_272" id="P_272" title="P_272"></a>
+            pretty certain," he writes Samuel J. May in September,
+            1836, "that the <i>Liberator</i> will sustain a serious
+            loss in its subscriptions at the close of the present
+            volume; and all appeals for aid in its behalf will be
+            less likely to prevail than formerly. I am conscious
+            that a mighty sectarian conspiracy is forming to
+            crush me, and it will probably succeed to some
+            extent."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This controversy over the Sabbath proved the thin
+            edge of differences and dissensions, which, as they
+            went deeper and deeper, were finally to rend asunder
+            the erstwhile united Abolition movement. The period
+            was remarkable for the variety and force of new
+            ideas, which were coming into being, or passing into
+            general circulation. And to all of them it seems that
+            Garrison was peculiarly receptive. He took them all
+            in and planted them in soil of extraordinary fertility.
+            It was immediately observed that it was not only one
+            unpopular notion which he had adopted, but a whole
+            headful of them. And every one of these new ideas
+            was a sort of rebel-reformer, a genuine man of war.
+            They had come as a protest against the then existing
+            beliefs and order of things, come as their enemies and
+            destroyers. Each one of them was in a sense a
+            stirrer-up of sedition against old and regnant relations
+            and facts, political, moral, and religious. Whoever
+            espoused them as his own, espoused as his own
+            also the antagonisms, political, moral, and religious
+            which they would excite in the public mind. All of
+            which was directly illustrated in the experience of the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>. Each of these new notions
+            presently appeared in the paper along with Abolitionism.
+            What was his intention timid people began to
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_273" id="P_273" title="P_273"></a>
+            inquire? Did he design to carry them along with the
+            Abolition movement? Suspicious minds fancied they
+            saw "in Mr. Garrison, a decided wish, nay, a firm
+            resolve, in laboring to overthrow slavery, to overthrow
+            the Christian Sabbath and the Christian ministry.
+            His doctrine is that every day is a Sabbath,
+            and every man his own minister. There are no
+            Christian ordinances, there is no visible church." His
+            no-government and non-resistant ideas excited yet
+            further the apprehensions of some of his associates
+            for the safety of that portion of the present order to
+            which they clung. As developed by Garrison they
+            seemed to deny the right of the people "to frame a
+            government of laws to protect themselves against
+            those who would injure them, and that man can
+            apply physical force to man rightfully under no circumstances,
+            and not even the parent can apply the
+            rod to the child, and not be, in the sight of God, a
+            trespasser and a tyrant."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison embraced besides Perfectionism, a sort of
+            political, moral, and religious Come-outerism, and
+            faith in "universal emancipation from sin." His
+            description of himself about this time as "an Ishmaelitish
+            editor" is not bad, nor his quotation of "Woe is
+            me my mother! for I was born a man of strife" as
+            applicable to the growing belligerency of his relations
+            with the anti-slavery brethren in consequence
+            of the new ideas and isms, which were taking possession
+            of his mind and occupying the columns of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Among the strife-producers during this period of
+            the anti-slavery agitation, the woman's question played
+            a principal part. Upon this as upon the Sabbath
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_274" id="P_274" title="P_274"></a>
+            question, Garrison's early position was one of extreme
+            conservatism. As late as 1830, he shared the common
+            opinions in regard to woman's sphere, and was
+            strongly opposed to her stepping outside of it into
+            that occupied by man. A petition of seven hundred
+            women of Pittsburgh, Pa., to Congress in behalf of
+            the Indians gave his masculine prejudices a great
+            shock. "This is, in our opinion," he declared, "an
+            uncalled for interference, though made with holiest
+            intentions. We should be sorry to have this practice
+            become general. There would then be no question
+            agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal
+            and contrariant opinions of the softer sex." This top-lofty
+            sentiment accorded well with the customary
+            assumption and swagger of one of the lords of creation.
+            For the young reformer was evidently a firm
+            believer in the divine right of his sex to rule in the
+            world of politics. But as he grew taller and broader
+            the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere
+            embraced every duty, responsibility, and right for
+            which her gifts and education fitted her. The hard
+            and fast lines of sex disappeared from his geography
+            of the soul. He perceived for a truth that in humanity
+            there was neither male nor female, but that man
+            and woman were one in work and destiny&#8212;equals in
+            bearing the world's burden, equals in building the
+            world's glory. He heard in his heart the injunction of
+            the eternal wisdom saying: "Whom God hath joined
+            together let no man put asunder;" and straightway
+            disposed his opinions and prejudices, his thoughts
+            and purposes in cordial obedience therewith. He saw
+            at once the immense value of woman's influence in
+            the temperance movement, he saw no less quickly her
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_275" id="P_275" title="P_275"></a>
+            importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had
+            appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she
+            had justified his appeal and proven herself the most
+            devoted of coadjutors.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the beginning of the movement against slavery
+            the line of demarcation between the sexes was strictly
+            observed in the formation of societies. The men had
+            theirs, the women theirs. Each, sexually considered,
+            were very exclusive affairs. It did not seem to have
+            occurred to the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery
+            Society, or of the national organization to
+            admit women to membership in them, nor did it seem
+            to enter the mind of any woman to prefer a request
+            to be admitted into them. Anti-slavery women organized
+            themselves into female anti-slavery societies, did
+            their work apart from the men, who plainly regarded
+            themselves as the principals in the contest, and
+            women as their moral seconds. The first shock,
+            which this arrangement, so accordant with the oak-and-ivy
+            notion of the masculine half of mankind,
+            received, came when representatives of the gentler
+            sex dropped the secondary role assigned women in
+            the conflict, and began to enact that of a star. The
+            advent of the sisters Grimk&eacute; upon the anti-slavery
+            stage as public speakers, marked the advent of the
+            idea of women's rights, of their equality with men in
+            the struggle with slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At the start these ladies delivered their message to
+            women only, but by-and-bye as the fame of their eloquence
+            spread men began to appear among their
+            auditories. Soon they were thrilling packed halls
+            and meeting-houses in different parts of the country,
+            comprised of men and women. The lesson which
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_276" id="P_276" title="P_276"></a>
+            their triumph enforced of women's fitness to enact
+            the r&ocirc;le of principals in the conflict with slavery was
+            not lost upon the sex. Women went, saw, and conquered
+            their prejudices against the idea of equality;
+            likewise, many men. The good seed of universal liberty
+            and equality fell into fruitful soil and germinated
+            in due time within the heart of the moral movement
+            against slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The more that Sarah and Angelina Grimk&eacute; reflected
+            upon the sorry position to which men had assigned
+            women in Church and State the more keenly did they
+            feel its injustice and degradation. They beat with
+            their revolutionary idea of equality against the iron
+            bars of the cage-like sphere in which they were born,
+            and within which they were doomed to live and die
+            by the law of masculine might. At heart they were
+            rebels against the foundation principle of masculine
+            supremacy on which society and government rested.
+            While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the
+            sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters
+            rose up before them and revealed itself in bitter questionings.
+            "Are we aliens," asked Angelina, "because
+            we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because
+            we are the <em>mothers, wives, and daughters</em> of a mighty people?
+            Have <em>women</em> no country&#8212;no interests staked on
+            the public weal&#8212;no partnership in a nation's guilt or
+            shame?" This discontent with the existing social
+            establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic
+            responses from many friends to whom the
+            sisters communicated the contagion of their unrest
+            and dissatisfaction. Angelina records that, "At
+            friend Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I
+            had a long talk with the brethren on the rights of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_277" id="P_277" title="P_277"></a>
+            women, and found a very general sentiment prevailing
+            that it is time our fetters were broken. L.M.
+            Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported this
+            view; indeed very many seem to think a new order
+            of things is very desirable in this respect."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women's
+            rights, which Angelina observed in Mrs. Chapman's
+            parlors possessed no general significence. For true
+            to the character of new ideas, this particular new
+            idea did not bring peace but a sword. It set Abolition
+            brethren against Abolition brethren, and blew
+            into a flame the differences of leaders among themselves.
+            But the first irruption of strife which it
+            caused proceeded from without, came from the
+            church or rather from the clergy of the Orthodox
+            Congregational churches of Massachusetts. This clerical
+            opposition to the idea of women's rights found
+            expression in the celebrated "Pastoral Letter," issued
+            by the General Association of Ministers of that
+            denomination to the churches of the same in the summer
+            of 1837. This ecclesiastical bull had two distinct
+            purposes to accomplish; first, to discourage the
+            agitation of the slavery question by excluding anti-slavery
+            agents from lecturing upon that subject in
+            the churches; and, second, to suppress the agitation
+            of the woman's question by setting the seal of the disapproval
+            of the clergy to the appearance of women in
+            their new and revolutionary r&ocirc;le of public speakers
+            and teachers on the burning subjects of the times.
+            The reverend authors threw up their hands and
+            eyes in holy horror at the "widespread and permanent
+            injury" which seemed to them to threaten "the
+            female character." They scorned the new-fangled
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_278" id="P_278" title="P_278"></a>
+            notion of woman's independence, and asked for nothing
+            better than the Pauline definition of her "appropriate
+            duties and influence." "The power of women,"
+            quoth they, "is in her dependence.... When she
+            assumes the place and tone of man as a public
+            reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary;
+            we put ourselves in self-defence against her,
+            she yields the power which God has given her for
+            protection, and her character becomes unnatural!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            These Congregational ministers were not the only
+            representatives of the lordly sex to whom the idea of
+            women's equality was repellent. Anti-slavery brethren,
+            too, were flinging themselves into all postures of
+            self-defence against the dangerous innovation, which
+            the sisters Grimk&eacute; were letting into the social establishment,
+            by itinerating "in the character of public
+            lecturers and teachers." Amos A. Phelps was quite
+            as strongly opposed to women preachers, to women
+            assuming the "place and tone of man as a public
+            reformer," as Nehemiah Adams himself. He remonstrated,
+            with them against their continued assumption
+            of the character of public lecturers and teachers,
+            but to no purpose. Sarah and Angelina were uncompromising,
+            refused to yield one iota of their rights as
+            "moral and responsible beings." They firmly declined
+            to make their Quakerism and not their womenhood
+            their warrant for "exercising the rights and performing
+            the duties" of rational and responsible beings, for
+            the sake of quieting tender consciences, like that of
+            Phelps, among the anti-slavery brethren. They were in
+            earnest and demanded to know "whether there is such
+            a thing as male and female virtues, male and female
+            duties." Angelina writes: "My opinion is that there
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_279" id="P_279" title="P_279"></a>
+            is no difference, and that this false idea has run the
+            ploughshare of ruin over the whole field of morality.
+            My idea is that whatever is morally right for a man
+            to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize
+            no rights but human rights.... I am persuaded
+            that woman is not to be, as she has been, a mere second-hand
+            agent in the regeneration of a fallen world,
+            but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with
+            man in this glorious work."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The debate on the subject threatened for a short
+            season to push the woman's question to the level of
+            the slavery question. The contention became acrimonious,
+            and the alienation of friendships was widespread.
+            John G. Whittier and Theodore D. Weld,
+            who were both avowed believers in the idea of
+            women's rights, nevertheless, felt that the agitation
+            of the subject, under the circumstances, was a grave
+            blunder. "No moral enterprise, when prosecuted
+            with ability and any sort of energy, <em>ever</em> failed under
+            heaven," wrote Weld to Sarah and Angelina, "so
+            long as its conductors pushed the <em>main</em> principle, and
+            did not strike off until they reached the summit level.
+            On the other hand, every reform that ever foundered
+            in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty
+            side-winds." Both Weld and Whittier endeavored
+            to dissuade the sisters from mooting the question of
+            women's rights at all, and to urge them to devote
+            their voice and pen to the "<em>main</em> principle" exclusively.
+            But Angelina confesses that "our judgment
+            is not convinced, and we hardly know what to do
+            about it, for we have just as high an opinion of
+            Brother Garrison's views, and <em>he</em> says '<em>go on</em>.'" The
+            influence of Weld and Whittier finally prevailed with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_280" id="P_280" title="P_280"></a>
+            "Carolina's high-souled daughters," and they refrained
+            from further agitation of the subject of
+            Women's rights lest they should thereby injure the
+            cause of the slave.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But the leaven of equality was not so effectually
+            disposed of. It had secured permanent lodgment in
+            the anti-slavery body, and the fermentation started
+            by it, went briskly on. Such progress did the principle
+            of women's rights make among the Eastern Abolitionists,
+            especially among those of Massachusetts,
+            that in the spring of 1838 the New England Anti-Slavery
+            Society voted to admit women to equal
+            membership with men. This radical action was followed
+            by a clerical secession from the society, which
+            made a stir at the time. For among the seceding
+            members was no less a personage than Amos A.
+            Phelps, who was the general agent of the Massachusetts
+            Society, and therefore one of Garrison's
+            stanchest supporters. The reform instituted by the
+            New England Society, in respect of the character of
+            its membership, was quickly adopted by the Massachusetts
+            Society and by several local organizations,
+            all of which set the ball of discord spinning among
+            the brethren at a great rate. But by this time all the
+            new ideas, Sabbatical, no-government, perfectionist,
+            non-resistance, as well as women's rights, were within
+            the anti-slavery arena, and fencing and fighting for a
+            chance to live, with the old ideas and the old order.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison championed all of the new ideas, and in
+            doing so arrayed against himself all of the special
+            champions of the existing establishments. In his reduced
+            physical state, the reformer was not equal to
+            the tremendous concussions of this "era of activity,"
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_281" id="P_281" title="P_281"></a>
+            as Emerson named it. At moments he appeared bewildered
+            amid the loud, fierce clamor of contending
+            ideas, each asserting in turn its moral primacy.
+            For an instant the vision of the great soul grew dim,
+            the great heart seemed to have lost its bearings. All
+            of the new ideas thawed and melted into each other,
+            dissolved into one vague and grand solidarity of
+            reforms. The voice of the whole was urging him
+            amid the gathering moral confusion to declare himself
+            for all truth, and he hearkened irresolute, with
+            divided mind. "I feel somewhat at a loss to know
+            what to do"&#8212;he confesses at this juncture to George
+            W. Benson, "whether to go into all the principles of
+            holy reform and make the Abolition cause subordinate,
+            or whether still to persevere in the <em>one</em> beaten
+            track as hitherto. Circumstances hereafter must
+            determine this matter." That was written in August,
+            1837; a couple of months later circumstances had
+            not determined the matter, it would seem, from the
+            following extract from a letter to his brother-in-law:
+            "It is not my intention at present to alter either the
+            general character or course of the <i>Liberator</i>. My
+            work in the anti-slavery cause is not wholly done;
+            as soon as it is, I shall know it, and shall be prepared,
+            I trust, to enter upon a mightier work of
+            reform."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Meanwhile the relations between the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> and the managers of the national
+            organization were becoming decidedly strained. For it seemed
+            to them that Garrison had changed the anti-slavery
+            character of his paper by the course which he had
+            taken in regard to the new ideas which were finding
+            their way into its columns to the manifest harm of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_282" id="P_282" title="P_282"></a>
+            the main principle of immediate emancipation. This
+            incipient estrangement between the pioneer and the
+            executive committee of the national society was
+            greatly aggravated by an occurrence, which, at the
+            time, was elevated to an importance that it did not
+            deserve. This occurrence was what is known in anti-slavery
+            annals as the "Clerical Appeal." Five clergymen,
+            who were obviously unfriendly to Garrison, and
+            distrustful of the religious and social heresies which
+            they either saw or fancied that they saw in the
+            <i>Liberator</i>,
+            and withal jealous lest the severities of the paper
+            against particular pro-slavery ministers should diminish
+            the influence and sacred character of their order,
+            published, in August of 1837, in the
+            <i>New England Spectator</i>
+            an acrid arraignment of editor and paper, upon
+            five several charges, designed to bring Garrisonism to
+            the block and speedy death. This document was followed
+            by two other appeals by way of supplement
+            and rejoinder from the same source, an "Andover
+            Appeal" from kindred spirits and a bitter, personal
+            letter from one of the "seventy agents," all of
+            them having a common motive and purpose, viz.,
+            sectarian distrust and dislike of Garrison, and desire
+            to reduce his anti-slavery influence to a nullity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In his diseased and suffering bodily condition, Garrison
+            naturally enough fell into the error of exaggerating
+            the gravity of these attacks upon himself. Insignificant
+            in an historical sense, they really were an episode,
+            an unpleasant one to be sure for the time being,
+            but no more. To Garrison, however, they appeared
+            in a wholly different light. It seemed a rebellion on
+            a pretty grand scale, which called for all his strength,
+            all the batteries of the friends of freedom, all his terrible
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_283" id="P_283" title="P_283"></a>
+            and unsparing severities of speech to quell it.
+            All his artillery he posted promptly in positions commanding
+            the camp of the mutineers, and began to
+            pour, as only he could, broadside after broadside
+            into the works of the wretched little camp of
+            rebels. He could hardly have expended more energy
+            and ammunition in attacking a strategical point of
+            Southern slavery, than was expended in punishing a
+            handful of deserters and insurgents. But, alas! he
+            was not satisfied to draw upon his own resources for
+            crushing the clerical sedition, he demanded reinforcements
+            from the central authorities in New York as
+            well. And then began a contention between him and
+            the Executive Committee of the National Society,
+            which issued only in ill.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison considered it the duty of the Executive
+            Committee to disapprove officially of the action of the
+            Massachusetts recalcitrants, and also the duty of its
+            organ, the <i>Emancipator</i>, to rebuke the authors of
+            the "appeals." Not so, replied Lewis Tappan and Elizur
+            Wright, your request is unreasonable. If you choose
+            to make a mountain out of a molehill, you choose to
+            make a mistake which the Executive Committee will
+            not repeat. Your troubles are wholly local, of no
+            general importance whatever. "What! Shall a whole
+            army stop its aggressive movements into the territories
+            of its enemies to charge bayonets on five soldiers,
+            subalterns, company, or even staff officers, because
+            they stray into a field to pick berries, throw stones or
+            write an 'appeal?' To be frank with you we shall
+            make bold to say that we do not approve of the
+            appeal, it is very censurable, its spirit is bad, but
+            neither do we approve of your action in the premises,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_284" id="P_284" title="P_284"></a>
+            it is also very censurable and its spirit is bad. What
+            then? shall the Executive Committee condemn the
+            authors of the appeal and not condemn the editor of
+            the <i>Liberator</i> also? If strict military justice
+            were done should not both parties be cashiered? Let the
+            Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood
+            alone for the present." "I could have wished, yes, I
+            have wished from the bottom of my soul," it is
+            Wright who now holds the pen, "that you could conduct
+            that dear paper, the <i>Liberator</i>, in the singleness
+            of purpose of its first years, without traveling off
+            from the ground of our true, noble, heart-stirring
+            Declaration of Sentiments&#8212;without breathing sentiments
+            which are novel and shocking to the community,
+            and which seem to me to have no logical sequence
+            from the principles on which we are associated as
+            Abolitionists. I cannot but regard the taking hold of
+            one great moral enterprise while another is in hand
+            and but half achieved, as an outrage upon commonsense,
+            somewhat like that of the dog crossing the
+            river with his meat. But you have seen fit to introduce
+            to the public some novel views&#8212;I refer especially
+            to your sentiments on government and religious
+            perfection&#8212;and they have produced the effect which
+            was to have been expected. And now considering
+            what stuff human nature is made of, is it to be wondered
+            at that some honest-hearted, thorough-going
+            Abolitionists should have lost their equanimity? As
+            you well know I am comparatively no bigot to any
+            creed, political or theological, yet to tell the plain
+            truth, I look upon your notions of government and
+            religious perfection as downright fanaticism&#8212;as
+            harmless as they are absurd. I would not care a pin's
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_285" id="P_285" title="P_285"></a>
+            head if they were preached to all Christendom; for
+            it is not in the human mind (except in a peculiar
+            and, as I think, diseased state) to believe them."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Barring the extreme plainness of speech with which
+            Wright and Tappan gave their advice to Mr. Garrison,
+            it was in the main singularly sound and wise.
+            But the pioneer did not so regard it. He was possessed
+            with his idea of the importance of chastising
+            the clerical critics, and of the duty of the Executive
+            Committee and of the <i>Emancipator</i> to back him
+            in the undertaking. His temper was, under all circumstances,
+            masterful and peremptory. It was never
+            more masterful and peremptory than in its management
+            of this business. The very reasonable course of
+            the Board at New York suggested to his mind a predominance
+            of "sectarianism at headquarters," seemed
+            to him "criminal and extraordinary." As the Executive
+            Committee and its organ would not rebuke the
+            schismatics, he was moved to rebuke the Executive
+            Committee and its organ for their "blind and
+            temporizing policy." And so matters within the
+            movement against slavery went, with increasing
+            momentum, from bad to worse.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The break in the anti-slavery ranks widened as new
+            causes of controversy arose between the management
+            in Boston and the management at New York. The
+            Massachusetts Abolitionists had stood stanchly by
+            Garrison against the clerical schismatics. They also
+            inclined to his side in his trouble with the national
+            board. Instead of one common center of activity and
+            leadership the anti-slavery reform began now to
+            develop two centers of activity and leadership. Garrison
+            and the <i>Liberator</i> formed the moral nucleus at
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_286" id="P_286" title="P_286"></a>
+            one end, the Executive Committee and the
+            <i>Emancipator</i>
+            the moral nucleus at the other. Much of the energies
+            of the two sides were in those circumstances,
+            absorbed in stimulating and completing the processes
+            which were to ultimate in the organic division
+            of the body of the movement against slavery. When
+            men once begin to quarrel they will not stop for lack
+            of subjects to dispute over. There will be no lack,
+            for before one disputed point is settled another has
+            arisen. It is the old story of the box of evils. Beginnings
+            must be avoided, else if one evil escapes, others
+            will follow. The anti-slavery Pandora had let out one
+            little imp of discord and many big and little imps
+            were incontinently following.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Against all of the new ideas except one, viz., the
+            idea of anti-slavery political action, the New York
+            leadership, speaking broadly, had opposed itself. But
+            as if by some strange perversity of fate, this particular
+            new idea was the only one of the new ideas to
+            which the Boston leadership did not take kindly. It
+            became in time as the very apple of the eye to the
+            management of the National Society. And the more
+            ardently it was cherished by them, the more hateful
+            did it become with the Boston Board. It was the
+            only one of the new ideas which had any logical
+            sequence from the Abolition cause. In a country
+            where the principle of popular suffrage obtains, all
+            successful moral movements must sometime ultimate
+            in political action. There is no other way of fixing in
+            laws the changes in public sentiment wrought during
+            this period of agitation. The idea of political action
+            was therefore a perfectly natural growth from the
+            moral movement against slavery. The only reasonable
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_287" id="P_287" title="P_287"></a>
+            objection to it would be one which went to show
+            that it had arrived out of due course, that its appearance
+            at any given time was marked by prematurity in
+            respect of the reasons, so to speak, of the reform.
+            For every movement against a great social wrong
+            as was the anti-slavery movement must have its
+            John-the-Baptist stage, its period of popular awakening
+            to the nature and enormity of sin and the duty
+            of immediate repentance.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The anti-slavery enterprise was at the time of the
+            controversy between the New York and the Boston
+            Boards in this first stage of its growth. It had not
+            yet progressed naturally out of it into its next phase
+            of political agitation. True there were tendencies
+            more or less strong to enter the second stage of its
+            development, but they seem irregular, personal, and
+            forced. The time had not come for the adoption of
+            the principle of associated political action against
+            slavery. But the deep underlying motive of the advocates
+            of the third-party idea was none the less a grand
+            one, viz., "to have a free Northern nucleus," as Elizur
+            Wright put it, "a standard flung to the breeze&#8212;something
+            around which to rally." Garrison probed to
+            the quick the question in a passage of an address to
+            the Abolitionists, which is here given: "Abolitionists!
+            you are now feared and respected by all political
+            parties, not because of the number of votes you
+            can throw, so much as in view of the moral integrity
+            and sacred regard to principle which you have
+            exhibited to the country. It is the religious aspect of
+            your enterprise which impresses and overawes men
+            of every sect and party. Hitherto you have seemed
+            to be actuated by no hope of preferment or love of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_288" id="P_288" title="P_288"></a>
+            power, and therefore have established, even in the
+            minds of your enemies, confidence in your disinterestedness.
+            If you shall now array yourselves as a
+            political party, and hold out mercenary rewards to
+            induce men to rally under your standard, there is
+            reason to fear that you will be regarded as those who
+            have made the anti-slavery cause a hobby to ride into
+            office, however plausible or sound may be your pretexts
+            for such a course. You cannot, you ought not,
+            to expect that the political action of the State will
+            move faster than the religious action of the Church,
+            in favor of the abolition of slavery; and it is a fact
+            not less encouraging than undeniable, that both the
+            Whig and Democratic parties have consulted the
+            wishes of Abolitionists even beyond the measure of
+            their real political strength. More you cannot expect
+            under any circumstances."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Hotly around this point raged the strife among
+            brethren. Actuated by the noblest motives were
+            both sides in the main, yet, both sides displayed in
+            the maintenance of their respective positions an
+            amount of weak human nature, which proves that
+            perfection is not attainable even by the most disinterested
+            of men. Harsh and abusive language
+            good men uttered against good men. Distrust,
+            suspicion, anger, and alienation took possession of
+            the thoughts of the grandest souls. Saints and
+            heroes beseemed themselves like very ordinary folk,
+            who, when they come to differences, come directly
+            afterward to high words and thumping blows. The
+            love of David and Jonathan which once united Garrison
+            and Phelps, has died. Garrison and Stanton
+            meet and only exchange civilities. They, too, have
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_289" id="P_289" title="P_289"></a>
+            become completely alienated, and so on down the
+            long list of the "goodliest fellowship ... whereof
+            this land holds record." To a sweet and gentle
+            spirit like Samuel J. May, the acrimony and scenes
+            of strife among his old associates was unspeakably
+            painful. Writing to Garrison from South Scituate,
+            May 1, 1839, he touches thus upon this head: "I
+            now think I shall not go to New York next week. In
+            the first place, I cannot afford the expense.... But
+            I confess, I do not lament my inability to go so much
+            as I should do if the prospect of an agreeable meeting
+            was fairer. I am apprehensive that it will be not
+            so much an anti-slavery as anti-Garrison and anti-Phelps
+            meeting, or anti-board-of-managers and anti-executive
+            committee meeting. Division has done its
+            work, I fear, effectually. The two parties seem to
+            me to misunderstand, and therefore sadly misrepresent
+            one another. I am not satisfied with the course
+            you and your partisans have pursued. It appears to
+            me not consistent with the non-resistant, patient,
+            long-suffering spirit of the Gospel. And I do not
+            believe that either the cause of the slave, or the cause
+            of peace and righteousness has been advanced."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The situation was further complicated by the discovery
+            of a fresh bone of contention. As if to give
+            just a shade of sordidness to the strife there must
+            needs arise a money difficulty between the two rival
+            boards of leaders. This is how our recent band of
+            brothers happened to stumble upon their new apple
+            of discord. Soon after the formation of the National
+            Society an arrangement was made with each of the
+            State societies whereby they agreed to operate financially
+            their respective territories and to turn into the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_290" id="P_290" title="P_290"></a>
+            national treasury the several sums which at the
+            annual meeting they obligated themselves to contribute
+            to the general work. This arrangement was
+            intended to avoid the expense, conflict, and confusion
+            consequent upon the employment of two sets of
+            agents to work the same territory. Matters went on
+            quite smoothly under this plan between the Massachusetts
+            Board and the National Board until the beginning
+            of the year 1839, when the former fell into
+            arrears in the payment of its instalments to the latter.
+            Money from one cause or another, was hard to get
+            at by the Massachusetts Board, and the treasury in
+            New York was in an extremely low state. The relations
+            between the two boards were, as we have seen,
+            much strained and neither side was in the mood to
+            cover with charity the shortcomings of the other.
+            Perhaps the board at New York was too exacting,
+            perhaps the board at Boston was not sufficiently
+            zealous, under the circumstances. But what were the
+            real irritating causes which kept the two boards
+            at loggerheads over the matter need not here be
+            determined. This fact is clear that the arrangement
+            was rescinded by the New York management, and
+            their agents thrown into Massachusetts. This action
+            only added fuel to a fire which was fast assuming
+            the proportions of a conflagration. All the anti-Garrisonians
+            formed themselves into a new anti-slavery
+            society, and the National Board, as if to burn
+            its bridges, and to make reconciliation impossible,
+            established a new paper in Boston in opposition to
+            the <i>Liberator</i>. The work of division was ended.
+            There was no longer any vital connection between
+            the two warring members of the anti-slavery reform.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_291" id="P_291" title="P_291"></a>
+            To tear the dead tissues asunder which still joined
+            them, all that was wanted was another sharp shock,
+            and this came at the annual meeting of the National
+            Society in 1840 over the woman's question. The
+            issue, "Shall a woman serve with men on a committee?"
+            was precipitated upon the convention by
+            the appointment of that brilliant young Quakeress,
+            Abby Kelley, on the business committee with ten
+            men. The convention confirmed her appointment by
+            about a hundred majority in a total vote of 1,008.
+            Whereupon those opposed to this determination of
+            the question, withdrew from the convention and
+            organized the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
+            Society. Garrison had triumphed and he was
+            immensely elated with his victory. His moral leadership
+            was definitely established, never again to be
+            disputed by his disciples and followers.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_292" id="P_292" title="P_292"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap15"></a>
+            CHAPTER XV.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            RANDOM SHOTS.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            The division of the anti-slavery organization into
+            two distinct societies did not immediately terminate
+            the war between them. From New York and the
+            American society the contest over the woman's
+            question was almost directly shifted after the triumph
+            of the Garrisonians in the convention, to London
+            and the World's Convention, which was held in
+            the month of June of the year 1840. To this anti-slavery
+            congress both of the rival anti-slavery organizations
+            in America elected delegates. These delegates,
+            chosen by the older society and by its auxiliaries
+            of the States of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania,
+            were composed of women and men. Lucretia
+            Mott was not only chosen by the National Society,
+            but by the Pennsylvania Society as well. The Massachusetts
+            Society selected Lydia Maria Child, Maria
+            Weston Chapman, and Ann Green Phillips together
+            with their husbands among its list of delegates. England
+            at this time was much more conservative on the
+            woman's question than America. The managers of
+            the World's Convention did not take kindly to the
+            notion of women members, and signified to the American
+            societies who had placed women among their
+            delegates that the company of the women was not expected.
+            Those societies, however, made no alteration
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_293" id="P_293" title="P_293"></a>
+            in deference to this notice, in the character of their
+            delegations, but stood stoutly by their principle of
+            "the <b>EQUAL BROTHERHOOD</b> of the entire
+            <b>HUMAN FAMILY</b>
+            without distinction of color, sex, or clime."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A contest over the admission of women to membership
+            in the World's Convention was therefore a foregone
+            conclusion. The convention, notwithstanding a
+            brilliant fight under the lead of Wendell Phillips in
+            behalf of their admission, refused to admit the women
+            delegates. The women delegates instead of having
+            seats on the floor were forced in consequence of this
+            decision to look on from the galleries. Garrison,
+            who with Charles Lenox Remond, Nathaniel P. Rogers,
+            and William Adams, was late in arriving in England,
+            finding, on reaching London the women excluded
+            from the convention and sitting as spectators in
+            the galleries, determined to take his place among
+            them, deeming that the act of the convention which
+            discredited the credentials of Lucretia Mott and her
+            sister delegates, had discredited his own also. Remond,
+            Rogers, and Adams followed his example and
+            took their places with the rejected women delegates
+            likewise. The convention was scandalized at such
+            proceedings, and did its best to draw Garrison and
+            his associates from the ladies in the galleries to the
+            men on the floor, but without avail. There they remained
+            an eloquent protest against the masculine
+            narrowness of the convention. Defeated in New York,
+            the delegates of the new American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
+            Society triumphed over their victors in London.
+            But their achievements in the World's Convention,
+            in this regard, was not of a sort to entitle them
+            to point with any special pride in after years; and, as
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_294" id="P_294" title="P_294"></a>
+            a matter of fact, not one of them would have probably
+            cared to have their success alluded to in any sketch
+            of their lives for the perusal of posterity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison and his associates were the recipients of
+            the most cordial and flattering attention from the
+            English Abolitionists. He was quite lionized, in fact,
+            at breakfasts, f&ecirc;tes, and soir&eacute;es. The Duchess of
+            Sunderland paid him marked attention and desired
+            his portrait, which was done for Her Grace by the celebrated
+            artist, Benjamin Robert Haydon, who executed
+            besides a large painting of the convention, in which
+            he grouped the most distinguished members with reference
+            to the seats actually occupied by them during
+            its sessions. Of course to leave Garrison out of such
+            a picture would almost seem like the play of "Hamlet"
+            with <i>Hamlet</i> omitted, a blunder which the artist
+            was by no means disposed to make. Garrison was
+            accordingly invited to sit to him for his portrait.
+            Haydon, who it seems was a student of human nature
+            as well as of the human form, made the discovery of
+            a fact which at first surprised and angered him. In
+            making his groupings of heads he decided to place
+            together the Rev. John Scoble, George Thompson
+            and Charles Lenox Remond. When Scoble sat to
+            him, Haydon told him of his design in this regard.
+            But, remarked Haydon, Scoble "sophisticated immediately
+            on the propriety of placing the negro in the
+            distance, as it would have much greater effect." The
+            painter now applied his test to Thompson who "saw
+            no objection." Thompson did not bear the test to
+            Haydon's satisfaction, who observed that "A man
+            who wishes to place the negro on a level must no
+            longer regard him as having been a slave, and feel
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_295" id="P_295" title="P_295"></a>
+            annoyed at sitting by his side." But when the artist
+            approached Garrison on the subject it was wholly
+            different. "I asked him," Haydon records with obvious
+            pleasure, "and he met me at once directly."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Thompson was not altogether satisfactory to Garrison
+            either during this visit as the following extract
+            from one of his letters to his wife evinces: "Dear
+            Thompson has not been strengthened to do battle for
+            us, as I had confidently hoped he would be. He is
+            placed in a difficult position, and seems disposed to
+            take the ground of non-committal, publicly, respecting
+            the controversy which is going on in the United
+            States."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison, Rogers, and Remond in the company of
+            Thompson made a delightful trip into Scotland at
+            this time. Everywhere the American Abolitionists
+            were met with distinguished attentions. "Though I
+            like England much, on many accounts," Garrison
+            writes home in high spirits, "I can truly say that I
+            like Scotland better." An instance, which may be
+            coupled with that one furnished by Haydon, occurred
+            during this Scottish tour, and illustrates strongly the
+            kind of stuff of which he was made. On his way to
+            the great public reception tendered the American
+            delegates by the Glasgow Emancipation Society, a
+            placard with the caption, <em>"Have we no white slaves?"</em>
+            was put into his hands. Upon acquainting himself
+            with its contents he determined to read it to the meeting,
+            and to make it the text of remarks when he was
+            called upon to address the meeting. He was presently
+            announced and the immense audience greeted him
+            with every manifestation of pleasure and enthusiasm,
+            with loud cheering and waving of handkerchiefs.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_296" id="P_296" title="P_296"></a>
+            Nevertheless he held to his purpose to speak upon
+            the subject of the placard, unwelcome though it
+            should prove to his hearers. "After reading the interrogation,
+            I said in reply: 'No&#8212;broad as is the
+            empire, and extensive as are the possessions of Great
+            Britain, not a single <em>white</em><b> SLAVE</b> can be
+            found in them all;' and I then went on to show the wide difference
+            that exists between the condition of human
+            beings who are held and treated as chattels personal,
+            and that of those who are only suffering from certain
+            forms of political injustice or governmental oppression....
+            'But,' I said, 'although it is not true that
+            England has any <em>white</em> slaves, either at home or
+            abroad, is it not true that there are thousands of her
+            population, both at home and abroad, who are deprived
+            of their just rights, who are grievously oppressed,
+            who are dying even in the midst of abundance,
+            of actual starvation? <b>YES</b>!' and I expressly
+            called upon British Abolitionists to prove themselves
+            the true friends of suffering humanity abroad, by
+            showing that they were the best friend of suffering
+            humanity at home." Truth, justice, duty, always
+            overrode with him the proprieties, however sacredly
+            esteemed by others. Of a piece with this fact of the
+            placard of the <em>white slave</em> was his custom in refusing
+            the wine proffered by some of his British friends to
+            their guests. He was not content with a simple refusal
+            and the implied rebuke which it involved, he
+            must needs couple his declaration with an express rebuke
+            to host and hostess for tempting men into the
+            downward way to drunkenness.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            While in attendance upon the sessions of the
+            World's Convention Garrison received tidings, of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_297" id="P_297" title="P_297"></a>
+            birth of his third child. The second, whom he named
+            for himself, was born in 1838. The third, who was
+            also a son, the fond father named after Wendell Phillips.
+            Three children and a wife did not tend to a solution
+            of the always difficult problem of family maintenance.
+            The pressure of their needs upon the husband
+            sometimes, simple as indeed they were owing to
+            the good sense and prudence of Mrs. Garrison,
+            seemed to exceed the weight of the atmospheric column
+            to the square inch. The fight for bread was one
+            of the bitterest battles of the reformer's life. The arrangement
+            made in 1837, whereby the Massachusetts
+            Anti-Slavery Society assumed the responsibility of the
+            publication of the <i>Liberator</i>, Garrison rescinded
+            at the beginning of 1838, for the sake of giving himself
+            greater freedom in the advocacy in its columns of the
+            several other reforms in which he had enlisted, besides
+            Abolitionism. But Garrison and the paper were
+            now widely recognized as anti-slavery essentials and
+            indispensables. Many of the leaders of the movement
+            perceived, as Gerritt Smith expressed it in a letter enclosing
+            fifty dollars for the editor, that "Among the
+            many things in which the Abolitionists of our country
+            should be agreed, are the two following: (1) The
+            <i>Liberator</i> must be sustained; (2) its editor must
+            be kept above want; not only, nor mainly, for his own
+            or his family's happiness; but that, having his own
+            mind unembarrassed by the cares of griping poverty,
+            he may be a more effective advocate of the cause of
+            the Saviour's enslaved poor." A new arrangement, in
+            accordance with this suggestion for the support of
+            the paper and the preservation of the editor from
+            want, was made in 1839, and its performance taken
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_298" id="P_298" title="P_298"></a>
+            in charge by a committee of gentlemen, who undertook
+            to raise the necessary funds for those objects.
+            Thus it was that Garrison, through the wise and generous
+            provision of friends, was enabled to augment
+            the happiness of an increasing family, and at the same
+            time add to his own effectiveness as an anti-slavery
+            instrument.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison found occasion soon after his return from
+            the World's Convention for the employment of all
+            his added effectiveness for continuing the moral
+            movement against slavery. For what with the strife
+            and schism in the anti-slavery ranks, followed by the
+            excitements of the long Presidential canvass of 1840,
+            wherein the great body of the Abolitionists developed
+            an uncontrollable impulse to political action, some
+            through the medium of the new Liberty party which
+            had nominated James G. Birney for the Presidency,
+            while others reverted to the two old parties with
+            which they had formerly acted&#8212;what with all these
+            causes the pure moral movement started by Garrison
+            was in grave danger of getting abolished or at least
+            of being reduced to a nullity in its influence upon
+            public opinion. John A. Collins, the able and resourceful
+            general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
+            Society, wrote in the deepest anxiety to Garrison
+            from New Bedford, September 1, 1840, on this
+            head. Says he: "I really wish you understood perfectly
+            the exact position the friends of the old organization
+            hold to the two great political parties, and
+            how generally they have been caught up in the whirlwind
+            of political enthusiasm. Could you but go
+            where I have been, and have seen and heard what I
+            have seen and heard; could you see men&#8212;aye, and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_299" id="P_299" title="P_299"></a>
+            women, too&#8212;who have been and still are your warmest
+            advocates, who have eschewed sectarianism, and
+            lost their caste in the circle in which they moved, for
+            their strong adherence to your views and measures,
+            declare that they would sooner forego their Abolitionism
+            than their party.... Now, these are not the
+            views of here and there a straggling Abolitionist, but
+            of seven-tenths of all the voting Abolitionists of the
+            State.... They are entirely unconscious of the
+            demoralizing influence of their course. They need
+            light, warning, entreaty, and rebuke." Besides this demoralization
+            of the Abolitionists, as described by Collins,
+            the parent society at New York fell into bad
+            financial straits. It was absolutely without funds,
+            and without any means of supplying the lack. What
+            should it do in its extremity but appeal to the Massachusetts
+            Society which was already heavily burdened
+            by its own load, the <i>Liberator</i>. The new organ of
+            the national organization,
+            <i>The Anti-Slavery Standard</i>,
+            surely must not be allowed to fail for want of funds
+            in this emergency. The Boston management rose to
+            the occasion. Collins was sent to England in quest
+            of contributions from the Abolitionists of Great
+            Britain. But, great as was the need of money, the
+            relief which it might afford would only prove temporary
+            unless there could be effected a thorough anti-slavery
+            revival. This was vital. And therefore
+            to this end Garrison now bent his remarkable
+            energies.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Agents, during this period when money was scarce,
+            were necessarily few. But the pioneer proved a host
+            in himself. Resigning the editorial charge of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> into the capable hands of Edmund
+            Quincy,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_300" id="P_300" title="P_300"></a>
+            Garrison itinerated in the r&ocirc;le of an anti-slavery lecturer
+            in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire,
+            reviving everywhere the languishing interest of
+            his disciples. On the return of Collins in the summer
+            of 1841, revival meetings and conventions started
+            up with increased activity, the fruits of which were of
+            a most cheering character. At Nantucket, Garrison
+            made a big catch in his anti-slavery net. It was
+            Frederick Douglass, young, callow, and awkward, but
+            with his splendid and inimitable gifts flashing
+            through all as he, for the first time in his life, addressed
+            an audience of white people. Garrison, with
+            the instinct of leadership, saw at once the value of the
+            runaway slave's oratorical possibilities in their relations
+            to the anti-slavery movement. It was at his
+            instance that Collins added Douglass to the band of
+            anti-slavery agents. The new agent has preserved
+            his recollections of the pioneer's speech on that
+            eventful evening in Nantucket. Says he: "Mr.
+            Garrison followed me, taking me as his text; and
+            now, whether I had made an eloquent plea in
+            behalf of freedom or not, his was one never to be
+            forgotten. Those who had heard him oftenest, and
+            had known him longest, were astonished at his masterly
+            effort. For the time he possessed that almost
+            fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom
+            attained, in which a public meeting is transformed,
+            as it were, into a single individuality, the orator
+            swaying a thousand heads and hearts at once, and by
+            the simple majesty of his all-controlling thought,
+            converting his hearers into the express image of his
+            own soul. That night there were, at least, a thousand
+            Garrisonians in Nantucket!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_301" id="P_301" title="P_301"></a>
+            Here is another picture of Garrison in the lecture-field.
+            It is from the pen of N.P. Rogers, with whom
+            he was making a week's tour among the White Mountains,
+            interspersing the same with anti-slavery meetings.
+            At Plymouth, failing to procure the use of a
+            church for their purpose, they fell back upon the
+            temple not made with hands.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Semi-circular seats, backed against a line of magnificent
+            trees to accommodate, we should judge, from
+            two to three hundred," Rogers narrates, "were filled,
+            principally with women, and the men who could not
+            find seats stood on the green sward on either hand;
+            and, at length, when wearied with standing, seated
+            themselves on the ground. Garrison, mounted on a
+            rude platform in front, lifted up his voice and spoke
+            to them in prophet tones and surpassing eloquence,
+            from half-past three till I saw the rays of the setting
+            sun playing through the trees on his head....
+            They (the auditory) heeded it not any more than he,
+            but remained till he ended, apparently indisposed to
+            move, though some came from six, eight, and even
+            twelve miles distance." So bravely prospered the
+            revival agitation, under the vigorous preaching of
+            the indomitable pioneer.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the midst of the growing activities of the revival
+            season of the anti-slavery movement, Garrison had
+            some personal experiences of a distressing nature.
+            One of these was the case of his quondam friend and
+            partner in the publication of the <i>Liberator</i>,
+            Isaac Knapp. He, poor fellow, was no longer the publisher
+            of the paper. His wretched business management of
+            his department tended to keep the <i>Liberator</i> in a
+            state of chronic financial embarrassment. When the committee,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_302" id="P_302" title="P_302"></a>
+            who assumed charge of the finances of the
+            paper, took hold of the problem, they determined to
+            let Knapp go. He was paid $150 or $175 as a <i>quid
+               pro quo</i> for his interest in the <i>Liberator</i>.
+            Unfortunate in the business of a publisher, he was yet more unfortunate
+            in another respect. He had become a victim
+            of intemperance. His inebriety increased upon him,
+            accelerated, no doubt, by his business failure. Notwithstanding
+            Garrison's strong and tender friendship
+            for Knapp, the broken man came to regard him as an
+            enemy, and showed in many ways his jealousy and
+            hatred of his old friend and partner. Very painful
+            was this experience to the pioneer.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            An experience which touched Garrison more
+            nearly arose out of the sad case of his brother James,
+            who, the reader will recall, ran away from his mother
+            in Baltimore and went to sea. He ultimately enlisted
+            in the United States Navy, and what with the brutalities
+            which he suffered at the hands of his superiors,
+            by way of discipline, and with those of his own uncontrolled
+            passions and appetites, he was, when recovered
+            by his brother William, a total moral and physical
+            wreck. But the prodigal was gathered to the
+            reformer's heart, and taken to his home where in
+            memory of a mother long dead, whose darling was
+            James, he was nursed and watched over with deep
+            and pious love. There were sad lapses of the profligate
+            man even in the sanctuary of his brother's home.
+            The craving for liquor was omnipotent in the wretched
+            creature, and he was attacked by uncontrollable
+            desire for drink. But William's patience was infinite,
+            and his yearning and pity at such times were as sweet
+            and strong as a mother's. Death rung the curtain down
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_303" id="P_303" title="P_303"></a>
+            in the fall of 1842, on this miserable life with its sorry
+            and pathetic scenes.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            About this time a trial of a different sort fell to the
+            lot of Garrison to endure. The tongue of detraction
+            was never more busy with his alleged infidel doctrines
+            or to more damaging effect. Collins, in England,
+            seeking to obtain contributions for the support
+            of the agitation in America found Garrison's infidelity
+            the <i>great lion</i> in the way of success. Even the
+            good dispositions of the venerable Clarkson were
+            affected by the injurious reports in this regard, circulated
+            in England mainly by Nathaniel Colver, a narrow
+            and violent sectary of the Baptist denomination
+            of the United States. It was, of course, painful to
+            Garrison to feel that he had become a rock of offence
+            in the path of the great movement, which he had
+            started and to which he was devoting himself so
+            energetically. To Elizabeth Pease, one of the noblest
+            of the English Abolitionists, and one of his stanchest
+            transatlantic friends, he defended himself against the
+            false and cruel statements touching his religious
+            beliefs. "I esteem the Holy Scriptures," he wrote her,
+            "above all other books in the universe, and always
+            appeal to 'the law and the testimony' to prove all my
+            peculiar doctrines." His religious sentiments and
+            Sabbatical views are almost if not quite identical with
+            those held by the Quakers. "I believe in an indwelling
+            Christ," he goes on to furnish a summary of his
+            confession of faith, "and in His righteousness alone;
+            I glory in nothing here below, save in Christ and in
+            Him crucified; I believe all the works of the devil are to
+            be destroyed, and Our Lord is to reign from sea to
+            sea, even to the ends of the earth; and I profess to
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_304" id="P_304" title="P_304"></a>
+            have passed from death unto life, and know by happy
+            experience, that there is no condemnation to them
+            who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
+            but after the spirit." These were the pioneer's articles
+            of faith. Their extreme simplicity and theological
+            conservatism it would seem ought to have satisfied
+            the evangelicals of all denominations. They were in
+            essentials thoroughly orthodox. But in the composition
+            of the shibboleths of beliefs non-essentials as
+            well as essentials enter, the former to the latter in the
+            proportion of two to one. It is not surprising, therefore,
+            that Garrison's essentials proved unequal to the
+            test set up by sectarianism, inasmuch as his spiritual
+            life dropped the aspirate of the non-essentials of religious
+            forms and observances.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But the good man had his compensation as well as
+            his trials. Such of a very noble kind was the great
+            Irish address brought over from Ireland by Remond
+            in December 1841. It was signed by Daniel O'Connell,
+            Father Mathew, and sixty thousand Roman
+            Catholics of Ireland, who called upon the Irish
+            Roman Catholics of America to make the cause of the
+            slaves of the United States their cause. Large expectations
+            of Irish assistance in the anti-slavery agitation
+            were excited in the bosoms of Abolitionists by
+            this imposing appeal. Garrison shared the high hopes
+            of its beneficent influence upon the Ireland of America,
+            with many others. Alas! for the "best laid schemes
+            of mice and men," for the new Ireland was not populated
+            with saints, but a fiercely human race who had
+            come to their new home to better their own condition,
+            not that of the negro. Hardly had they
+            touched these shores before they were Americanized
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_305" id="P_305" title="P_305"></a>
+            in the colorphobia sense, out-Heroded Herod in
+            hatred of the colored people and their anti-slavery
+            friends. Indeed, it was quite one thing to preach Abolitionism
+            with three thousand miles of sea-wall between
+            one and his audience, and quite another to rise and do
+            the preaching with no sea-wall to guard the preacher
+            from the popular consequences of his preaching, as
+            Father Mathew quickly perceived and reduced to
+            practice eight years later, when he made his memorable
+            visit to this country. In vain was the monster document
+            unrolled in Faneuil Hall, and many Abolitionists
+            with Irish blood were put forward to sweep the
+            chords of Erin's heart, and to conjure by their eloquence
+            the disciples of St. Patrick to rally under the
+            banner of freedom. There was no response, except
+            the response of bitter foes. Erin's harp vibrated to
+            no breeze which did not come out of the South. The
+            slave-power had been erected into patron saint by
+            the new Ireland in America, and the new Ireland in
+            America was very well content with his saintship's patronage
+            and service. Thus it happened that the great
+            expectations, which were excited by the Irish address,
+            were never realized. But the pioneer had other fish
+            in his net, had, in fact, meanwhile, got himself in
+            readiness for a launch into a new and startling agitation.
+            As to just what this new and startling agitation
+            was we must refer the reader to the next
+            chapter.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_306" id="P_306" title="P_306"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap16"></a>
+            CHAPTER XVI.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE PIONEER MAKES A NEW AND STARTLING DEPARTURE.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            When Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate
+            emancipation he was over-confident of success
+            through the instrumentality of the church. It did
+            not enter his heart to conceive that after he had delivered
+            his message touching the barbarism of slavery
+            that a church calling itself Christian, or that a ministry
+            arrogating to itself the character of the Christ,
+            could possibly say him nay. But he learned sadly
+            enough the utter folly of such expectations. For
+            from pew and pulpit the first stones were hurled
+            against him, and the most cruel and persistent opposition
+            and persecution issued. Then as the movement
+            which he had started advanced, he saw how it
+            was, why the church had played him false and the
+            cause of freedom. It was because the poison of slavery
+            which the evil one had injected into the nation's
+            arteries had corrupted the springs of justice and
+            mercy in that body. The Church was not free, it, too,
+            was in bonds to slavery, how then could it help to
+            free the slaves? That was the reason that pulpit and
+            pew cried out against him and persecuted him. It
+            was not they but the slave despotism, which ruled
+            them, which wrought its fell purpose within them.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_307" id="P_307" title="P_307"></a>
+            If the reformer cast his eyes about him for other
+            help it was the same; the slime of the serpent was
+            upon State as well as Church. Both of the two great
+            political parties were bound hands and feet, and given
+            over to the will of the slave tyranny. In all departments
+            of Government, State and National, the positive,
+            all-powerful principle was slavery. Its dread
+            <i>nolo me tangere</i> had forced Congress into the
+            denial of the right of petition, and into the imposition of a gag
+            upon its own freedom of debate. It was the grand
+            President-maker, and the judiciary bent without a
+            blush to do its service. What, then, in these circumstances
+            could the friends of freedom hope to achieve?
+            The nation had been caught in the snare of slavery,
+            and was in Church and State helpless in the vast
+            spider-like web of wrong. The more the reformer
+            pondered the problem, the more hopeless did success
+            look under a Constitution which united right and
+            wrong, freedom and slavery. As his reflections deepened,
+            the conviction forced its way into his mind that
+            the Union was the strong tower of the slave-power,
+            which could never be destroyed until the fortress
+            which protected it was first utterly demolished. In
+            the spring of 1842 the pioneer was prepared to strike
+            into this new path to effect his purpose.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We must dissolve all connection with those murderers
+            of fathers," he wrote his brother-in-law, "and
+            murderers of mothers, and murderers of liberty, and
+            traffickers of human flesh, and blasphemers against
+            the Almighty at the South. What have we in common
+            with them? What have we gained? What have we
+            not lost by our alliance with them? Are not their principles,
+            their pursuits, their policies, their interests,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_308" id="P_308" title="P_308"></a>
+            their designs, their feelings, utterly diverse from ours?
+            Why, then, be subject to their dominion? Why not
+            have the Union dissolved in form as it is in fact, especially
+            if the form gives ample protection to the
+            slave system, by securing for it all the physical force
+            of the North? It is not treason against the cause of
+            liberty to cry, "Down with every slave-holding
+            Union!" Therefore, I raise that cry. And O that I
+            had a voice louder than a thousand thunders, that it
+            might shake the land and electrify the dead&#8212;the
+            dead in sin, I mean&#8212;those slain by the hand of
+            slavery."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A few weeks later the first peal of this thunder
+            broke upon the startled ears of the country through
+            the columns of the <i>Liberator</i>. The May meeting of
+            the American Anti-Slavery Society was drawing near,
+            and the reformer, now entirely ready to enter upon
+            an agitation looking to the dissolution of the Union,
+            suggested "the duty of making the <b>REPEAL OF
+               THE UNION</b> between the North and the South the
+            grand rallying point until it be accomplished, or
+            slavery cease to pollute our soil. We are for throwing
+            all the means, energies, actions, purposes, and appliances
+            of the genuine friends of liberty and republicanism
+            into this one channel," he goes on to announce,
+            "and for measuring the humanity, patriotism, and
+            piety of every man by this one standard. This question
+            can no longer be avoided, and a right decision
+            of it will settle the controversy between freedom and
+            slavery." The stern message of Isaiah to the Jews,
+            beginning, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful
+            men that rule this people. Because ye have said, We
+            have made a covenant with <b>DEATH</b>
+            and with <b>HELL</b> are
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_309" id="P_309" title="P_309"></a>
+            we at agreement," seemed to the American Isaiah to
+            describe exactly the character of the National Constitution.
+            "Slavery is a combination of <b>DEATH</b> and
+            <b>HELL</b>," he declares, with righteous wrath,
+            "and with it the North have made a covenant, and are at agreement.
+            As an element of the Government it is omnipotent,
+            omniscient, omnipresent. As a component
+            part of the Union, it is necessarily a national interest.
+            Divorced from Northern protection, it dies; with
+            that protection it enlarges its boundaries, multiplies
+            its victims, and extends its ravages."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The announcement of this new radicalism caused a
+            sensation. Many genuine Garrisonian Abolitionists
+            recoiled from a policy of disunion. Lydia Maria
+            Child and James S. Gibbon of the Executive Committee
+            of the National Society hastened to disavow for
+            the society all responsibility for the disunion sentiment
+            of the editor of the <i>Liberator</i>. His new
+            departure seemed to them "foreign to the purpose for which
+            it was organized." Like all new ideas, it was a sword-bearer,
+            and proved a decided disturber of the peace.
+            The Union-loving portion of the free States had never
+            taken to the Abolition movement, for the reason that
+            it tended to disturb the stability of their idol. But
+            now the popular hatred of Abolitionism was intensified
+            by the avowal of a distinct purpose on the part
+            of its leader to labor for the separation of the sections.
+            The press of the North made the most of this
+            design to render altogether odious the small band of
+            moral reformers, to reduce to a nullity their influence
+            upon public opinion.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Notwithstanding its rejection by James Gibbons
+            and Lydia Maria Child the new idea of the dissolution
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_310" id="P_310" title="P_310"></a>
+            of the Union, as an anti-slavery object, found instant
+            favor with many of the leading Abolitionists,
+            like Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Parker Pillsbury,
+            Stephen S. Foster and Abby Kelley. At the
+            anniversary meeting of the American Society in 1842,
+            the subject was mooted, and, although there was no
+            official action taken, yet it was apparent that a majority
+            of the delegates were favorable to its adoption
+            as the sentiment of the society.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The ultimate object of Garrison was the abolition
+            of slavery. Disunion led directly to this goal, therefore
+            he planted his feet in that way. But while he
+            shot the agitation at a distant mark, he did not mean
+            to miss less remote results. There was remarkable
+            method in his madness. He agitated the question
+            of the dissolution of the Union "in order that the
+            people of the North might be induced to reflect upon
+            their debasement, guilt, and danger in continuing in
+            partnership with heaven-daring oppressors, and thus
+            be led to repentance."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its
+            annual meeting in January, 1843 "dissolved the
+            Union," wrote Quincy to R.D. Webb, "by a handsome
+            vote, after a warm debate. The question was
+            afterward reconsidered and passed in another shape,
+            being wrapped up by Garrison in some of his favorite
+            Old Testament Hebraisms by way of vehicle, as the
+            apothecaries say." This is the final shape which
+            Garrison's "favorite Old Testament Hebraisms"
+            gave to the action of the society:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "<i>Resolved</i>, That the compact which exists between
+            the North and the South is a covenant with death
+            and an agreement with hell&#8212;involving both parties
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_311" id="P_311" title="P_311"></a>
+            in atrocious criminality&#8212;and should be immediately
+            annulled."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American
+            Society resolved likewise that there should
+            be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of the
+            same year the New England Society voted by a large
+            majority to dissolve the 'covenant with death, and the
+            agreement with hell.' Almost the whole number of
+            the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time placed
+            upon their banner of immediate emancipation the
+            revolutionary legend "No Union with slaveholders."
+            <i>Cathago est delenda</i> were now ever on the lips
+            of the pioneer. 'The Union it must and shall be destroyed'
+            became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all
+            his utterances on the slavery question.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the
+            Government which they were seeking to overthrow
+            was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in a letter returning
+            to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission
+            as a justice of the peace. Says he, "To me
+            it appears that the vices of slavery, introduced into the
+            constitution of our body politic by a few slight
+            punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the
+            whole system of our National Government that literally
+            there is no health in it. The only remedy that
+            I can see for the disease is to be found in the <em>dissolution
+               of the patient</em>.... Henceforth it (the Constitution)
+            is dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all
+            profession of allegiance to it, and all my voluntary
+            efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays upon
+            me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to
+            bear patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher
+            law, and distinctly declaring that, while I retain my
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_312" id="P_312" title="P_312"></a>
+            own liberty, I will be a party to no compact which
+            helps to rob any other man of his."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Abolition agitation for the dissolution of the
+            Union was assisted not a little by sundry occurrences
+            of national importance. The increasing arrogance
+            and violence of the South in Congress on all
+            matters relating to the subject of slavery was one of
+            these occurrences. Freedom of debate and the right
+            of petition, Southern intolerance had rendered well
+            nigh worthless in the National Legislature. In this
+            way the North, during several months in every year,
+            was forced to look at the reverse and the obverse
+            faces, of the Union. These object-lessons taught
+            many minds, no doubt, to count the cost which the
+            preservation of the Union entailed upon the free
+            States&#8212;"to reflect upon their debasement, guilt, and
+            danger" in their partnership with slaveholders. Another
+            circumstance which induced to this kind of reflection
+            was the case of George Latimer, who was
+            seized as a fugitive slave in Boston in the autumn of
+            1842. From beginning to end the Latimer case revealed
+            how completely had Massachusetts tied her
+            own hands as a party to the original compact with
+            slavery whose will was the supreme law of the land. In
+            obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused
+            to the captive the writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>, and
+            Judge Story granted the owner possession of the
+            fugitive, and time to procure evidence of his ownership.
+            But worse still Massachusetts officials and one
+            of her jails were employed to aid in the return of a
+            man to slavery. This degradation aroused the greatest
+            indignation in the State and led to the enactment
+            of a law prohibiting its officials from taking part in
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_313" id="P_313" title="P_313"></a>
+            the return of fugitive slaves, and the use of its jails
+            and prisons for their detention. The passage of
+            this personal liberty measure served to increase the
+            activity of the anti-Union working forces in the
+            South.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Then, again, the serious difficulty between Massachusetts
+            and two of the slave States in regard to their
+            treatment of her colored seamen aided Garrison in
+            his agitation for the dissolution of the Union by the
+            keen sense of insult and injury which the trouble
+            begat and left upon the popular mind. Colored men
+            in Massachusetts enjoyed a fair degree of equality
+            before her laws, were endowed with the right to vote,
+            and were, barring the prejudice against color, treated
+            by the commonwealth as citizens. They were
+            employed in the merchant service of her interstate
+            trade. But at two of the Southern ports where her
+            vessels entered, the colored seamen were seized by the
+            local police and confined in houses of detention until
+            the vessels to which they belonged were ready to
+            depart, when they were released and allowed to join
+            the vessels. This was a most outrageous proceeding,
+            outrageous to the colored men who were thus deprived
+            of their liberty, outrageous also to the owners of the
+            vessels who were deprived of the service of their
+            employ&eacute;s. Of what avail was the constitutional guaranty
+            that "the citizens of each State shall be
+            entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens
+            in the several States", many men began to question?
+            The South was evidently disposed to support only that
+            portion of the national compact which sustained the
+            slave system, all the rest upon occasion it trampled
+            on and nullified. This lesson was enforced anew upon
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_314" id="P_314" title="P_314"></a>
+            Massachusetts by the affair of her colored seamen.
+            Unable to obtain redress of the wrong done her citizens,
+            the State appointed agents to go to Charleston
+            and New Orleans and test the constitutionality of the
+            State laws under which the local authorities had
+            acted. But South Carolina and Louisiana, especially
+            the former, to whom Samuel Hoar was accredited,
+            evinced themselves quite equal to the exigency to
+            which the presence of the Massachusetts agents gave
+            rise. To cut a long story short, these gentlemen,
+            honored citizens of a sister State, and covered with
+            the &aelig;gis of the Constitution, found that they could
+            make no success of the business which they had in
+            hand, found indeed that as soon as that business was
+            made public that they stood in imminent peril of
+            their lives. Whereupon, wisely conceiving discretion
+            to be the better part of valor, they beat a hasty
+            retreat back to their native air. The Massachusetts
+            agents were driven out of Charleston and New
+            Orleans. Where was the sacred and glorious union
+            between Massachusetts and South Carolina and Louisiana
+            that such things were possible&#8212;were constantly
+            occurring? The circumstance made a strong impression
+            on the State whose rights were thus grossly violated.
+            It helped to convert Massachusetts to its later
+            opposition to slavery, and to make its public sentiment
+            more tolerant of the Garrisonian opposition to
+            the covenant with death and the agreement with hell.
+            To the agitation growing out of the scheme for the
+            annexation of Texas must, however, be ascribed the
+            premium among all the anti-Union working facts and
+            forces of the first few years after Garrison and his
+            coadjutors had raised the cry of "No union with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_315" id="P_315" title="P_315"></a>
+            slaveholders." This agitation renewed the intensity
+            and sectionalism of the then almost forgotten struggle
+            over the admission of Missouri nearly a quarter
+            of a century before, and which was concluded by the
+            Missouri compromise. This settlement was at the
+            time considered quite satisfactory to the South. But
+            Calhoun took an altogether different view of the matter
+            twenty years later. The arrangement by which
+            the South was excluded from the upper portion of
+            the Louisiana Territory he came to regard as a cardinal
+            blunder on the part of his section. The fact is that
+            within those two decades the slave-holding had been
+            completely outstripped by the non-slave-holding
+            States in wealth, population, and social growth. The
+            latter had obtained over the former States an indisputable
+            supremacy in those respects. Would not the
+            political balance settle also in the natural order of
+            things in the Northern half of the Union unless it
+            could be kept where it then was to the south of
+            Mason and Dixon's line by an artificial political
+            make-weight. This artificial political make-weight
+            was nothing less than the acquisition of new slave
+            territory to supply the demand for new slave States.
+            Texas, with the territorial dimensions of an empire,
+            answered the agrarian needs of the slave system. And
+            the South, under the leadership of Calhoun, determined
+            to make good their fancied loss in the settlement
+            of the Missouri controversy by annexing Texas.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But all the smouldering dread of slave domination,
+            all the passionate opposition to the extension of
+            slavery, to the acquisition of new slave territory and
+            the admission of new slave States, awoke hotly in
+            the heart of the North. "No more slave territory."
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_316" id="P_316" title="P_316"></a>
+            "No more slave States," resounded during this
+            crisis, through the free States. "Texas or disunion,"
+            was the counter cry which reverberated
+            through the slave States. Even Dr. Channing, who
+            had no love for Garrison or his anti-slavery ultraism,
+            was so wrought upon by the scheme for the annexation
+            of Texas as to profess his preference for the
+            dissolution of the Union, "rather than receive Texas
+            into the Confederacy." "This measure, besides entailing
+            on us evils of all sorts," the doctor boldly
+            pointed out, "would have for its chief end to bring
+            the whole country under the slave-power, to make
+            the general Government the agent of slavery; and
+            this we are bound to resist at all hazards. The free
+            States should declare that the very act of admitting
+            Texas will be construed as a dissolution of the Union."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an
+            unwonted defiance of consequences, a fierce contempt
+            of ancient political bugaboos marked the utterances
+            of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions
+            relating to slavery. In the anti-Texas convention
+            held in Faneuil Hall January 29, 1845, all this
+            timidity disappeared in the presence of the new peril.
+            It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison
+            was a member, but of politicians, mostly of the
+            Whig party. "The anti-slavery spirit of the convention,"
+            wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D. Webb, "was
+            surprising. The address and the speeches of the
+            gentlemen, not Abolitionists, were such as caused
+            Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago, and such as
+            we thought thorough three or four years ago. There
+            were no qualifications, or excuses, or <em>twaddle</em>."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_317" id="P_317" title="P_317"></a>
+            with all his customary force and fire. Elected
+            a delegate to the Faneuil Hall Convention by the influence
+            of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part in its
+            proceedings, "created the most stir in the whole matter,"
+            Wendell Phillips thought. Charles Sumner,
+            who heard him speak for the first time, was struck
+            with his "natural eloquence," and described his
+            words as falling "in fiery rain." Again at a mass meeting
+            for Middlesex County, held at Concord, to consider
+            the aggressions of the slave-power, did the words of
+            the pioneer fall "in fiery rain." Apprehensive that the
+            performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency
+            arose, would fall far short of her protestations, he
+            exclaimed, "I have nothing to say, sir, nothing. I
+            am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things
+            said, where there is no heart to carry them out.
+            When we are prepared to state the whole truth, and
+            die for it, if necessary&#8212;when, like our fathers, we are
+            prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it,
+            counting not our lives dear unto us&#8212;when we are
+            prepared to let all earthly hopes go back to the
+            board&#8212;<em>then</em> let us say so;
+            <em>till</em> then, the less we say
+            the better, in such an emergency as this. 'But who
+            are we, will men ask.' that talk of such things? 'Are
+            we enough to make a revolution?' No, sir; but we
+            are enough to <em>begin</em> one, and, once begun, it never
+            can be turned back. I am for revolution were I
+            utterly alone. I am there because I <em>must</em> be there.
+            I <em>must</em> cleave to the right. I cannot choose but obey
+            the voice of God.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            " ... Do not tell me of our past Union, and for
+            how many years we have been one. We were only
+            one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_318" id="P_318" title="P_318"></a>
+            deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to
+            form an oligarchy on the floor of Congress! The
+            moment we say no to this, the Union ceases&#8212;the
+            Government falls."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The Texan struggle terminated in the usual way,
+            in the triumph of the slave-power. Texas was
+            annexed and admitted into the sisterhood of States,
+            giving to the Southern section increased slave representation
+            in both branches of Congress, and thereby
+            aiding to fasten, what at the moment appeared to be
+            its permanent domination in national affairs. As
+            Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the
+            North fell far short of its protestations when the
+            crisis came. It swallowed all its brave words, and
+            collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to
+            its jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The
+            whole North except the small and irrepressible band
+            of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down by the
+            revulsive wave of this disastrous event. Writing to
+            his friend Webb, Garrison discourses thus upon the
+            great defeat: "Apparently the slave-holding power
+            has never been so strong, has never seemed to be so
+            invincible, has never held such complete mastery over
+            the whole, has never so successfully hurled defiance at
+            the Eternal and Just One, as at the present time; and
+            yet never has it in reality been so weak, never has it
+            had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it
+            been so filled with doubt and consternation, never
+            has it been so near its downfall, as at this moment.
+            Upon the face of it, this statement looks absurdly
+            paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are
+            groping in thick darkness; but it is that darkest
+            hour which is said to precede the dawn of day."
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_319" id="P_319" title="P_319"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap17"></a>
+            CHAPTER XVII.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the
+            most earnest of men. It was almost next to impossible
+            for him to understand that his way was not the
+            only way to attain a given end. A position reached
+            by him, he was curiously apt to look upon as a sort
+            of <i>ultima thule</i> of human endeavor in that
+            direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances
+            of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung
+            around his personality an air and assumption of
+            moral infallibility, as a reformer. His was not a
+            tolerant mind. Differences with him he was prone to
+            treat as gross departures from principle, as evidences
+            of faithlessness to freedom. He fell upon the men
+            who did not see eye to eye with him with tomahawk
+            and scalping knife. He was strangely deficient in a
+            sense of proportion in such matters. His terrible
+            severities of speech, he visited upon the slave-power
+            and the Liberty party alike. And although a non-resistent,
+            in that he eschewed the use of physical
+            force, yet there never was born among the sons of
+            men a more militant soul in the use of moral force,
+            in the quickness with which he would whip out the
+            rapiers, or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother
+            tongue at opponents. The pioneer must have been
+            an unconscious believer in the annihilation of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_320" id="P_320" title="P_320"></a>
+            wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer
+            in the wickedness of all opposition to his idea of
+            right and duty. This, of course, must be taken only
+            as a broad description of the reformer's character.
+            He was a man, one of the grandest America has
+            given to the world, but still a man with his tendon of
+            Achilles, like the rest of his kind.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            His narrow intolerance of the idea of anti-slavery
+            political action, and his fierce and unjust censure of
+            the champions of that idea, well illustrate the trait in
+            point. Birney and Whittier, and Wright and Gerritt
+            Smith, and Joshua Leavitt, he apparently quite forgot,
+            were actuated by motives singularly noble, were in
+            their way as true to their convictions as he was to his.
+            No, there was but one right way, and in that way
+            stood the feet of the pioneer. His way led directly,
+            unerringly, to the land of freedom. All other ways,
+            and especially the Liberty party way, twisted, doubled
+            upon themselves, branched into labyrinths of folly
+            and self-seeking. "Ho! all ye that desire the freedom
+            of the slave, who would labor for liberty, follow
+            me and I will show you the only true way," was the
+            tone which the editor of the <i>Liberator</i> held
+            to men, who were battering with might and main to breach
+            the walls of the Southern Bastile. They were plainly
+            not against the slave, although opposed to Mr. Garrison,
+            narrowly, unjustly opposed to him, without
+            doubt, but working strenuously according to their
+            lights for the destruction of a common enemy and
+            tyrant. This was the test, which Garrison should
+            have taken as conclusive. The leaders of the Liberty
+            party, though personally opposed to him and to his
+            line of action, were, nevertheless, friends of the slaves,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_321" id="P_321" title="P_321"></a>
+            and ought to have been so accounted and treated by
+            the man who more than any other was devoted to the
+            abolition of slavery.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But the whole mental and moral frame of the man
+            precluded such liberality of treatment of opponents.
+            They had rejected his way, which was the only true
+            way, and were, therefore, anathema maranatha. When
+            a moral idea which has been the subject of widespread
+            agitation, and has thereby gained a numerous
+            following, reaches out, as reach out it must, sooner or
+            later, for incorporation into law, it will, in a republic
+            like ours, do so naturally and necessarily through
+            political action&#8212;along the lines of an organized party
+            movement. The Liberty party formation was the
+            product of this strong tendency in America. Premature
+            it possibly was, but none the less perfectly natural.
+            Now every political party, that is worthy of
+            the name, is a compound rather than a simple fact,
+            consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single
+            idea. Parties depend upon the people for success,
+            upon the people not of one interest but of many
+            interests and of diversities of views upon public questions.
+            One plank is not broad enough to accommodate
+            their differences and multiplicity of desires.
+            There must be a platform built of many planks to
+            support the number of votes requisite to victory at
+            the polls. There will always be one idea or interest
+            of the many ideas or interests, that will dominate the
+            organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon
+            which the party throws itself upon the country, but
+            the secondary ideas or interests must be there all the
+            same to give strength and support to the main idea
+            and interest.
+
+         </p>
+         <p><a class="newpage" name="P_322" id="P_322" title="P_322"></a>
+            Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the
+            great political parties in America, there is another not
+            less distinct and marked, and that is the Constitutional
+            limitations of the Federal political power.
+            Every party which looks for ultimate success at the
+            polls must observe strictly these limitations in its aims
+            and issues. Accordingly when the moral movement
+            against slavery sought a political expression of the
+            idea of Abolition it was constrained within the metes
+            and bounds set up by the National Constitution.
+            Slavery within the States lay outside of the political
+            boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within
+            the States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty
+            party leaders placed not among its bundle of
+            ideas, into its platform of national issues. But it was
+            otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia, in
+            the national territories, under the national flag on the
+            high seas, for it lay within the constitutional reach of
+            the federal political power, and its abolition was
+            demanded in the Third party platform. These
+            leaders were confident that the existence of slavery
+            depended upon its connection with the National Government.
+            Their aim was to destroy the evil by cutting
+            this connection through which it drew its blood
+            and nerve supplies. They planted themselves upon
+            the anti-slavery character of the Constitution, believing
+            that it "does not sanction nor nationalize slavery
+            but condemns and localizes it."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This last position of the Liberty party leaders
+            struck Garrison as a kind of mental and moral
+            enormity. At it and its authors, the anti-slavery
+            Jupiter, launched his bolts, fast and furious. Here
+            is a specimen of his chain lightning: "We have
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_323" id="P_323" title="P_323"></a>
+            a very poor opinion of the intelligence of any
+            man, and very great distrust of his candor or
+            honesty, who tries to make it appear that no pro-slavery
+            compromise was made between the North and
+            the South, at the adoption of the Constitution. We
+            cherish feelings of profound contempt for the quibbling
+            spirit of criticism which is endeavoring to explain
+            away the meaning of language, the design of
+            which as a matter of practice, and the adoption of
+            which as a matter of bargain, were intelligently and
+            clearly understood by the contracting parties. The
+            truth is the misnamed 'Liberty party' is under the
+            control of as ambitious, unprincipled, and crafty leaders
+            as is either the Whig or Democratic party; and
+            no other proof of this assertion is needed than their
+            unblushing denial of the great object of the national
+            compact, namely, union at the sacrifice of the colored
+            population of the United States. Their new interpretations
+            of the Constitution are a bold rejection of
+            the facts of history, and a gross insult to the intelligence
+            of the age, and certainly never can be carried
+            into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking
+            a civil war." All the same, the pioneer to the contrary
+            notwithstanding, many of these very Liberty party
+            leaders were men of the most undoubted candor and
+            honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison was never able to see the Liberty party,
+            and for that matter Wendell Phillips, Edmund
+            Quincy, and others of the old organization leaders
+            could not either, except through the darkened glass
+            of personal antagonisms growing out of the schism
+            of 1840. It was always, under all circumstances, to
+            borrow a phrase of Phillips, "Our old enemy, Liberty
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_324" id="P_324" title="P_324"></a>
+            party." And, as Quincy na&iuml;vely confesses in an article
+            in the <i>Liberator</i> pointing out the
+            reasons why Abolitionists should give to the Free-soil party
+            incidental aid and comfort, which were forbidden to their
+            "old enemy, Liberty party," the significant and
+            amusing fact that the latter was "officered by deserters."
+            Ay, there was indeed the rub! The military
+            principle of the great leader forbade him to
+            recognize deserters as allies. Discipline must be
+            maintained, and so he proceeded to maintain the
+            anti-slavery discipline of his army by keeping up a
+            constant fusillade into the ranks of the deserter band,
+            who, in turn, were every whit as blinded by the old
+            quarrel and separation, and who slyly cherished the
+            modest conviction that, when they seceded, the salt
+            of old organization lost its savor, and was thenceforth
+            fit only to be trampled under the Liberty party's feet.
+            Without doubt, those old Abolitionists and Liberty
+            party people belonged to the category of "humans."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The scales of the old grudge dropped from Garrison's
+            eyes directly the Free-Soil party loomed upon
+            the political horizon. He recognized at once that, if
+            it was not against the slave, it was for the slave; apprehended
+            clearly that, in so far as the new party,
+            which, by the way, was only the second stage in the
+            development of the central idea of his old enemy,
+            Liberty party, as the then future Republican party
+            was to be its third and final expression, apprehended
+            clearly I say that, in so far as the new party resisted
+            the aggressions and pretensions of the slave-power, it
+            was fighting for Abolition&#8212;was an ally of Abolitionism.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the summer of 1848, from Northampton, whither
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_325" id="P_325" title="P_325"></a>
+            he had gone to take the water cure, Garrison counseled
+            Quincy, who was filling the editorial chair, in
+            the interim, at the <i>Liberator</i> office,
+            in this sage fashion:
+            "As for the Free-Soil movement, I feel that great
+            care is demanded of us disunionists, both in the
+            <i>Standard</i> and the
+            <i>Liberator</i>, in giving credit to whom
+            credit is due, and yet in no case even seeming to be
+            satisfied with it." In the winter of 1848 in a letter to
+            Samuel May, Jr., he is more explicit on this head. "As
+            for the Free-Soil movement," he observes, "I am
+            for hailing it as a cheering sign of the times, and an
+            unmistakable proof of the progress we have made,
+            under God, in changing public sentiment. Those
+            who have left the Whig and Democratic parties for
+            conscience's sake, and joined the movement, deserve
+            our commendation and sympathy; at the same time,
+            it is our duty to show them, and all others, that there
+            is a higher position to be attained by them or they
+            will have the blood of the slave staining their garments.
+            This can be done charitably yet faithfully. On
+            the two old parties, especially the Whig-Taylor party,
+            I would expend&#8212;<i>pro tempore</i>,
+            at least&#8212;our heaviest
+            ammunition." This is as it should be, the tone of
+            wise and vigilant leadership, the application of the
+            true test to the circumstances, viz., for freedom if
+            against slavery; not to be satisfied, to be sure, with
+            any thing less than the whole but disposed to give
+            credit to whom it was due, whether much or little.
+            Pity that the pioneer could not have placed himself
+            in this just and discriminating point of view in respect
+            of his old enemy, Liberty party, praising in it
+            what he found praiseworthy, while blaming it for
+            what he felt was blameworthy. But perfection weak
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_326" id="P_326" title="P_326"></a>
+            human nature doth not attain to in this terrestrial
+            garden of the passions, and so very likely the magnanimity
+            which we have desired of Garrison is not for
+            that garden to grow but another and a heavenly.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison ill brooked opposition, came it from friends
+            or foes. He was so confident in his own positions
+            that he could not but distrust their opposites. Of
+            course, if his were right, and of that doubt in his mind
+            there was apparently none, then the positions of all
+            others had to be wrong. This masterful quality of
+            the man was constantly betrayed in the acts of
+            his life and felt by his closest friends and associates
+            in the anti-slavery movement. Quincy, writing to
+            Richard Webb, narrates how, at the annual meeting
+            of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843, Garrison
+            was for removing it to Boston, but that he and
+            Wendell Phillips were for keeping it where it then
+            was in New York, giving at the same time sundry
+            good and sufficient reasons for the faith that was in
+            them, and how, thereupon, "Garrison dilated his nostrils
+            like a war-horse, and snuffed indignation at us."
+            "If the Boston friends were unwilling to take the
+            trouble and responsibility," were the petulant, accusative
+            words put by Quincy into his chief's mouth on
+            the occasion, "then there was nothing more to be
+            said; we must try to get along as well as we could in
+            the old way." And how they disclaimed "any unwillingness
+            to take trouble and responsibility," while
+            affirming "the necessity of their acting on their own
+            idea."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Another characteristic of the pioneer is touched
+            upon by the same writer in a relation which he was
+            making to Webb of Garrison's election to the presidency
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_327" id="P_327" title="P_327"></a>
+            of the parent society. Says Quincy: "Garrison
+            makes an excellent president at a public meeting
+            where the order of speakers is in some measure arranged,
+            as he has great felicity in introducing and interlocuting
+            remarks; but at a meeting for debate he
+            does not answer so well, as he is rather too apt, with
+            all the innocence and simplicity in the world, to do
+            all the talking himself."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The same friendly critic has left his judgment of
+            other traits of the leader, traits not so much of the
+            man as of the editor. It is delivered in a private
+            letter of Quincy to Garrison on resigning the temporary
+            editorship of the <i>Liberator</i> to
+            "its legitimate
+            possessor." who had been for several months health-hunting
+            at Northampton in the beautiful Connecticut
+            Valley. Quincy made bold to beard the Abolition
+            lion in his lair, and twist his tail in an extremely
+            lively manner. "Now, my dear friend," wrote the
+            disciple to the master, "you must know that to the
+            microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic
+            eyes of its enemies, <em>the</em><i>Liberator</i><em>has faults</em>,
+            these they keep to themselves as much as they honestly
+            may, but they are not the less sensible of them,
+            and are all the more desirous to see them immediately
+            abolished. Luckily, they are not faults of principle&#8212;neither
+            moral nor intellectual deficiencies&#8212;but faults
+            the cure of which rests solely with yourself.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are
+            that we find with it, lest you should think them
+            none at all, or else unavoidable. But no matter, of
+            that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen
+            to our opinion. We think the paper often bears
+            the mark of haste and carelessness in its getting up;
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_328" id="P_328" title="P_328"></a>
+            that the matter seems to be hastily selected and put
+            in <i>higgledy-piggledy</i>,
+            without any very apparent reason
+            why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the
+            place where it is. I suppose this is often caused by
+            your selecting articles with a view to connect remarks
+            of your own with them, which afterward in your
+            haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper
+            is not so nearly a complete work in itself as it might
+            be made, but that things are often left at loose ends,
+            and important matters broken off in the middle. I
+            assure you, that Brother Harriman is not the only
+            one of the friends of the <i>Liberator</i>
+            who grieves over
+            your 'more anon' and 'more next week'&#8212;which
+            'anon' and 'next week' never arrive.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Then we complain that your editorials are too
+            often wanting, or else such, from apparent haste, as
+            those who love your fame cannot wish to see; that
+            important topics, which you feel to be such, are too
+            often either entirely passed over or very cursorily
+            treated, and important moments like the present
+            neglected....
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "We have our suspicions, too, that good friends
+            have been disaffected by the neglect of their communications;
+            but of this we can only speak by conjecture.
+            In short, it appears to those who are your
+            warmest friends and the stanchest supporters of the
+            paper, that you might make the <i>Liberator</i>
+            a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful
+            and useful as it is, by additional exertions on
+            your part. It is very unpleasant to hear invidious
+            comparisons drawn between the
+            <i>Liberator</i> and
+            <i>Emancipator</i>
+            with regard to the manner of getting it up,
+            and to have not to deny but to excuse them&#8212;and we
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_329" id="P_329" title="P_329"></a>
+            knowing all the time that you have all the tact and
+            technical talent for getting up a good newspaper that
+            Leavitt has, with as much more, intellectual ability
+            as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting
+            some of his (pardon me) industry, application, and
+            method."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison, to his honor, did not allow the exceeding
+            candor of his mentor to disturb their friendship.
+            The pioneer was not wholly without defence to the
+            impeachment. He might have pleaded ill health, of
+            which he had had <i>quantum suf.</i>
+            since 1836 for himself
+            and family. He might have pleaded also the dissipation
+            of too much of his energies in consequence of
+            more or less pecuniary embarrassments from which
+            he was never wholly freed; but, above all, he might
+            have pleaded his increasing activity as an anti-slavery
+            lecturer. His contributions to the movement against
+            slavery were of a notable character in this direction,
+            both in respect of quantity and quality. He was not
+            alone the editor of the <i>Liberator</i>,
+            he was unquestionably
+            besides one of the most effective and interesting
+            of the anti-slavery speakers&#8212;indeed in the judgment
+            of so competent an authority as James Russell
+            Lowell, he was regarded as the most effective of the
+            anti-slavery speakers. Still, after all is placed to his
+            credit that can possibly be, Quincy's complaints
+            would be supported by an altogether too solid basis
+            of fact. The pioneer was much given to procrastination.
+            What was not urgent he was strongly tempted
+            to put off for a more convenient time. His work
+            accumulated. He labored hard and he accomplished
+            much, but because of this habit of postponing
+            for to-morrow what need not be done to-day, he was
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_330" id="P_330" title="P_330"></a>
+            necessarily forced to leave undone many things which
+            he ought to have done and which he might have
+            accomplished had he been given to putting off for
+            to-morrow nothing which might be finished to-day.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The pioneer was a man of sorrows and acquainted
+            with grief, but never was he wholly cast down by his
+            misfortunes. His cheerful and bouyant spirit kept
+            him afloat above his sorrows, above his griefs. The
+            organ of mirthfulness in him was very large. He
+            was an optimist in the best sense of that word, viz.,
+            that all things work together for good to them that
+            love goodness. In the darkest moments which the
+            Abolition cause encountered his own countenance was
+            full of light, his own heart pierced through the
+            gloom and communicated its glow to those about
+            him, his own voice rang bugle-like through reverse
+            and disaster.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In his family the reformer was seen at his best.
+            His wife was his friend and equal, his children his
+            playfellows and companions. The dust of the great
+            conflict he never carried with him into his home to
+            choke the love which burned ever brightly on its
+            hearth and in the hearts which it contained. What
+            he professed in the <i>Liberator</i>,
+            what he preached in the world, of non-resistance,
+            woman's rights, perfectionism,
+            he practiced in his home, he embodied as
+            father, and husband, and host. Never lived reformer
+            who more completely realized his own ideals to
+            those nearest and dearest to him than William Lloyd
+            Garrison.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He had seven children, five boys and two girls.
+            The last, Francis Jackson, was born to him in the
+            year 1848. Two of them died in childhood, a boy
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_331" id="P_331" title="P_331"></a>
+            and a girl. The loss of the boy, whom the father
+            had "named admiringly, gratefully, reverently,"
+            Charles Pollen, was a terrible blow to the reformer,
+            and a life-long grief to the mother. He seemed to
+            have been a singularly beautiful, winning, and affectionate
+            little man and to have inspired sweet hopes
+            of future "usefulness and excellence" in the breasts
+            of his parents. "He seemed born to take a century
+            on his shoulders, without stooping; his eyes were
+            large, lustrous, and charged with electric light; his
+            voice was clear as a bugle, melodious, and ever ringing
+            in our ears, from the dawn of day to the ushering
+            in of night, so that since it has been stilled, our dwelling
+            has seemed to be almost without an occupant,"
+            lamented the stricken father to Elizabeth Pease, of
+            Darlington, England.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Death itself to me is not terrible, is not repulsive,"
+            poured the heartbroken pioneer into the ears of his
+            English friend, "is not to be deplored. I see in it as
+            clear an evidence of Divine wisdom and beneficence
+            as I do in the birth of a child, in the works of creation,
+            in all the arrangements and operations of nature.
+            I neither fear nor regret its power. I neither expect
+            nor supplicate to be exempted from its legitimate
+            action. It is not to be chronicled among calamities;
+            it is not to be styled "a mysterious dispensation of
+            Divine Providence"; it is scarcely rational to talk of
+            being resigned to it. For what is more rational, what
+            more universal, what more impartial, what more serviceable,
+            what more desirable, in God's own time,
+            hastened neither by our ignorance or folly?...
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "When, therefore, my dear friend, I tell you that
+            the loss of my dear boy has overwhelmed me with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_332" id="P_332" title="P_332"></a>
+            sadness, has affected my peace by day and my repose
+            by night, has been a staggering blow, from the shock
+            of which I find it very difficult to recover, you will
+            not understand me as referring to anything pertaining
+            to another state of existence, or as gloomily affected
+            by a change inevitable to all; far from it. Where
+            the cherished one who has been snatched from us is,
+            what is his situation, or what his employment, I
+            know not, of course; and it gives me no anxiety
+            whatever. Until I join him at least my responsibility
+            to him as his guardian and protector has ceased; he
+            does not need my aid, he cannot be benefited by my
+            counsel. That he will still be kindly cared for by
+            Him who numbers the very hairs of our heads, and
+            without whose notice a sparrow cannot fall to the
+            ground; that he is still living, having thrown aside
+            his mortal drapery, and occupying a higher sphere of
+            existence, I do not entertain a doubt. My grief
+            arises mainly from the conviction that his death was
+            premature; that he was actually defrauded of his
+            life through unskillful treatment; that he might have
+            been saved, if we had not been so unfortunately situated
+            at that time. This to be sure, is not certain;
+            and not being certain, it is only an ingredient of consolation
+            that we find in our cup of bitterness."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The pioneer was one of the most generous of givers.
+            Poor indeed he was, much beyond the common allotment
+            of men of his intelligence and abilities, but he
+            was never too indigent to answer the appeals of
+            poverty. If the asker's needs were greater than his
+            own he divided with him the little which he had. To
+            his home all sorts of people were attracted, Abolitionists,
+            peace men, temperance reformers, perfectionists,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_333" id="P_333" title="P_333"></a>
+            homoeopathists, hydropathists, mesmerists, spiritualists,
+            Grahamites, clairvoyants, whom he received with
+            unfailing hospitality, giving welcome and sympathy
+            to the new ideas, food and shelter for the material
+            sustenance of the fleshly vehicles of the new ideas.
+            He evidently was strongly of the opinion that there
+            are "more things in heaven and earth than are
+            dreamt of" in the philosophy of any particular period
+            in the intellectual development of man. No age
+            knows it all. It was almost a lo, here, and a lo,
+            there, with him, so large was his bump of wonder, so
+            unlimited was his appetite for the incredible and the
+            improbable in the domain of human knowledge and
+            speculation. Great was the man's faith, great was
+            his hope, great was his charity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He was one of the most observant of men in all
+            matters affecting the rights of others; he was one of
+            the least observant in all matters appertaining to himself.
+            With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual
+            knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from
+            day to day was amusingly inexact, as the following
+            incident shows: Before wearing out an only pair of
+            trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury
+            of a new pair. But as there was still considerable
+            service to be got out of the old pair, he, like a prudent
+            man, laid aside the new ones for future use. His
+            wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic
+            business, determined, without consulting him,
+            the morning when the new trousers should be donned.
+            She made the necessary changes when her lord was
+            in bed, putting the new in the place of the old. Garrison
+            wore for several days the new trousers, thinking
+            all the time that they were his old ones until his illusions
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_334" id="P_334" title="P_334"></a>
+            in this regard were dispelled by an incident
+            which cost him the former. Some poor wretch of a
+            tramp, knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer's door
+            and asking for clothes, decided the magnificent possessor
+            of two pairs of trousers, to don his new ones
+            and to pass the old ones on to the tramp. But when
+            he communicated the transaction to his wife, she
+            hoped, with a good deal of emphasis, that he had not
+            given away the pair of breeches which he was wearing,
+            for if he had she would beg to inform him that
+            he had given away his best ones! But the pioneer's
+            splendid indifference to <i>meum</i> and
+            <i>tuum</i> where his own
+            possessions were concerned was equal to the occasion.
+            He got his compensation in the thought that his loss
+            was another's gain. That, indeed, was not to be accounted
+            loss which had gone to a brother-man whose
+            needs were greater than his own.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_335" id="P_335" title="P_335"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap18"></a>
+            CHAPTER XVIII.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's forecast of the future, directly after the
+            annexation of Texas, proved singularly correct.
+            Never, as at that moment, had the slave-power
+            seemed so secure in its ascendency, yet never, at any
+            previous period, was it so near its downfall. Freedom
+            had reached that darkest hour just before dawn; and
+            this, events were speedily to make clear. If the South
+            could have trammeled up the consequences of annexation,
+            secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held
+            its political supremacy in America? But omnipotent
+            as was the slave-power in the Government, it was not
+            equal to this labor. In the great game, in which
+            Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into
+            the seat between the gamesters with hands full of
+            loaded dice. At the first throw the South got Texas,
+            at the second the war with Mexico fell out, and at
+            the third new national territory lay piled upon the
+            boards.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Calhoun, the arch-annexationist, struggled desperately
+            to avert the war. He saw as no other Southern
+            leader saw its tremendous significance in the conflict
+            between the two halves of the Union for the political
+            balance. The admission of Texas had made an adjustment
+            of this balance in favor of the South. Calhoun's
+            plan was to conciliate Mexico, to sweep with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_336" id="P_336" title="P_336"></a>
+            our diplomatic broom the gathering war-clouds from
+            the national firmament. War, he knew, would imperil
+            the freshly fortified position of his section&#8212;war
+            which meant at its close the acquisition of new national
+            territory, with which the North would insist
+            upon retrieving its reverse in the controversy over
+            Texas. War, therefore, the great nullifier resolved
+            against. He cried halt to his army, but the army
+            heard not his voice, heeded not his orders, in the wild
+            uproar and clamor which arose at the sight of helpless
+            Mexico, and the temptation of adding fresh slave
+            soil to the United States South, through her spoliation;
+            Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out
+            of hostilities between the two republics an impenetrable
+            curtain had shut from his eyes the future. The
+            great plot for maintaining the political domination of
+            the South had miscarried. New national territory
+            had become inevitable with the firing of the first gun.
+            Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to postpone the evil
+            day for the South by proposing a military policy of
+            "masterly inactivity" whereby time might be gained
+            for his side to prepare to meet the blow when it fell.
+            But his "masterly inactivity" policy was swept aside
+            by the momentum of the national passion which
+            the war had aroused.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            California and New Mexico became the strategic
+            points of the slavery struggle at the close of the war.
+            To open both to the immigration of slave-labor was
+            thenceforth the grand design of the South. Over
+            Oregon occurred a fierce preliminary trial of strength
+            between the sections. The South was thrown in the
+            contest, and the anti-slavery principle of the Ordinance
+            of 1787 applied to the Territory. Calhoun,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_337" id="P_337" title="P_337"></a>
+            who was apparently of the mind that as Oregon went
+            so would go California and New Mexico, was violently
+            agitated by this reverse. "The great strife between
+            the North and the South is ended," he passionately
+            declared. Immediately the charge was made and
+            widely circulated through the slave States that the
+            stronger was oppressing the weaker section, wresting
+            from it its just share in the common fruits of common
+            victories. For had not California and New Mexico
+            been won by the bravery and blood of the South as
+            of the North, and how then was the North to deprive
+            the South of its joint ownership of them without
+            destroying the federal equality of the two halves of
+            the Union? What was it but to subvert the Union
+            existing among the States?
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Disunion sentiment was thenceforth ladled out to
+            the slave States in increasing quantities. The turning
+            of the long lane in the domination of the slave-power
+            was visibly near. With Garrison at one end and
+            Calhoun at the other the work of dissolution advanced
+            apace. The latter announced, in 1848, that the separation
+            of the two sections was complete. Ten years
+            before, Garrison had made proclamation that the
+            Union, though not in form, was, nevertheless, in fact
+            dissolved. And possibly they were right. The line
+            of cleavage had at the date of Calhoun's announcement
+            passed entirely through the grand strata of
+            national life, industrial, moral, political, and religious.
+            There remained indeed but a single bond of connection
+            between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding
+            States, viz., fealty to party. But in 1848
+            not even this slender link was intact.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The anti-slavery uprising was a fast growing factor
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_338" id="P_338" title="P_338"></a>
+            in the politics of the free States. This was evinced
+            by the aggressiveness of anti-slavery legislation, the
+            repeal of slave sojournment laws, the enactment of
+            personal liberty laws, the increasing preference manifested
+            by Whig and by Democratic electors for anti-slavery
+            Whig, and anti-slavery Democratic leaders.
+            Seward and Chase, and Hale and Hamlin, Thaddeus
+            Stevens and Joshua R. Giddings, were all in Congress
+            in 1849. A revolution was working in the North; a
+            revolution was working in the South. New and
+            bolder spirits were rising to leadership in both sections.
+            On the Southern stage were Jefferson Davis,
+            Barnwell Rhett, David Atchison, Howell Cobb,
+            Robert Toombs, and James M. Mason. The outlook
+            was portentous, tempestuous.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The tide of excitement culminated in the crisis
+            of 1850. The extraordinary activity of the under-ground
+            railroad system, and its failure to open the
+            national Territories to slave immigration had transported
+            the South to the verge of disunion. California,
+            fought over by the two foes, was in the act of withdrawing
+            herself from the field of contention to a
+            position of independent Statehood. It was her rap
+            for admission into the Union as a free State which precipitated
+            upon the country the last of the compromises
+            between freedom and slavery. It sounded the opening
+            of the final act of Southern domination in the
+            republic.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The compromise of 1850, a series of five acts, three
+            of which it took to conciliate the South, while two
+            were considered sufficient to satisfy the North, was,
+            after prolonged and stormy debate, adopted to save
+            Webster's glorious Union. These five acts were, in
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_339" id="P_339" title="P_339"></a>
+            the agonized accents of Clay, to heal "the five fire
+            gaping wounds" of the country. But the wounds
+            were immedicable, as events were soon to prove.
+            Besides, two at least of the remedies failed to operate
+            as emollients. They irritated and inflamed the
+            national ulcers and provoked fresh paroxysms of the
+            disease. The admission of California as a free State
+            was a sort of perpetual <i>memento mori</i>
+            to the slave-power.
+            It hung forever over the South the Damoclean
+            blade of Northern political ascendency in the
+            Union. The fugitive slave law on the other hand
+            produced results undreamt of by its authors. Who
+            would have ventured to predict the spontaneous, irresistible
+            insurrection of the humane forces and passions
+            of the North which broke out on the passage of the
+            infamous bill? Who could have foretold the moral
+            and political consequences of its execution, for instance,
+            in Boston, which fifteen years before had
+            mobbed anti-slavery women and dragged Garrison
+            through its streets? The moral indignation aroused
+            by the law in Massachusetts swept Webster and the
+            Whigs from power, carried Sumner to the Senate and
+            crowned Liberty on Beacon Hill. It worked a revolution
+            in Massachusetts, it wrought changes of the
+            greatest magnitude in the free States.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            From this time the reign of discord became universal.
+            The conflict between the sections increased
+            in virulence. At the door of every man sat the fierce
+            figure of strife. It fulmined from the pulpit and
+            frowned from the pews. The platforms of the free
+            States resounded with the thunder of tongues. The
+            press exploded with the hot passions of the hour.
+            Parties warred against each other. Factions arose
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_340" id="P_340" title="P_340"></a>
+            within parties and fought among themselves with no
+            less bitterness. Wrath is infectious and the wrathful
+            temper of the nation became epidemic. The Ishmaelitish
+            impulse to strike something or someone, was
+            irresistible. The bonds which had bound men to one
+            another seemed everywhere loosening, and people in
+            masses were slipping away from old to enter into
+            new combinations of political activity. It was a period
+            of tumultuous transition and confusion. The
+            times were topsy-turvy and old Night and Chaos were
+            the angels who sat by the bubbling abysses of the
+            revolution.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In the midst of this universal and violent agitation
+            of the public mind the old dread of disunion returned
+            to torment the American <i>bourgeoisie</i>,
+            who through
+            their presses, especially those of the metropolis of the
+            Union, turned fiercely upon the Abolitionists. While
+            the compromise measures were the subject of excited
+            debate before Congress, the anniversary meeting of
+            the American Anti-Slavery Society fell due. But the
+            New York journals, the <i>Herald</i> in
+            particular, had no
+            mind to allow the meeting to take place without
+            renewing the reign of terror of fifteen years before.
+            Garrison was depicted as worse than Robespierre, with
+            an insatiable appetite for the destruction of established
+            institutions, both human and divine. The dissolution
+            of the Union, the "overthrow of the churches,
+            the Sabbath, and the Bible," all were required to glut
+            his malevolent passion. "Will the men of sense allow
+            meetings to be held in this city which are calculated
+            to make our country the arena of blood and murder,"
+            roared the <i>Herald</i>,
+            "and render our city an object of
+            horror to the whole South?... Public opinion
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_341" id="P_341" title="P_341"></a>
+            should be regulated. These Abolitionists should not
+            be allowed to misrepresent New York." In order to
+            suppress the Abolitionists that paper did not blink at
+            any means, however extreme or revolutionary, but
+            declared boldly in favor of throttling free discussion.
+            "When free discussion does not promote the public
+            good," argued the editor, "it has no more right to
+            exist than a bad government that is dangerous and
+            oppressive to the common weal. It should be overthrown."
+            The mob thus invoked came forward on
+            the opening of the convention to overthrow free discussion.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The storm which the New York press was at so
+            much labor to brew, Garrison did not doubt would
+            break over the convention. He went to it in a truly
+            apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. "Not knowing the
+            things that shall befall me there, saving that bonds
+            and afflictions abide with me in every city," he wrote
+            his wife an hour before the commencement of the
+            convention. His prevision of violence was quickly
+            fulfilled. He had called Francis Jackson to the chair
+            during the delivery of the opening speech which fell
+            to the pioneer to make as the president of the society.
+            His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which
+            he was paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian
+            fashion. Belief in Jesus in the United States had no
+            vital influence on conduct or character. The chief
+            religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery,
+            they had uttered no protest against the national sin.
+            There was the Roman Catholic Church whose "priests
+            and members held slaves without incurring the rebuke
+            of the Church." At this point the orator was interrupted
+            by one of those monstrous products of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_342" id="P_342" title="P_342"></a>
+            slums of the American metropolis, compounded of the
+            bully, the blackleg, and the demagogue in about
+            equal proportions. It was the notorious Captain
+            Isaiah Rynders, perched with his band of blackguards
+            in the organ loft of the tabernacle and ready
+            to do the will of the metropolitan journals by over-throwing
+            the right of free discussion. He was not disposed
+            to permit Mr. Garrison's censure of the Roman
+            Catholic Church to pass unchallenged, so he begged
+            to ask "whether there are no other churches as well as
+            the Catholic Church, whose clergy and lay members
+            hold slaves?" To which the anti-slavery leader
+            replied with the utmost composure, not inclined to
+            let even Captain Rynders interrupt the even and
+            orderly progression of his discourse: "Will the
+            friend wait for a moment, and I will answer him in
+            reference to other churches?" "The friend" thereupon
+            resumed his seat in the organ loft, and Garrison
+            proceeded with his indictment of the churches. There
+            was the Episcopal Church, whose clergy and laity
+            dealt with impunity in human flesh, and the Presbyterians,
+            whose ministers and members did likewise
+            without apparently any compunctious visitings of
+            conscience, ditto the Baptist, ditto the Methodist. In
+            fact "all the sects are combined," the orator sternly
+            continued, "to prevent that jubilee which it is the
+            will of God should come."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But the bully in the organ loft, who was not content
+            for long to play the part of Patience on a monument,
+            interrupted the speaker with a second question
+            which he looked upon, doubtless, as a hard nut to
+            crack. "Are you aware," inquired the blackleg
+            "that the slaves in the South have their prayer-meetings
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_343" id="P_343" title="P_343"></a>
+            in honor of Christ?" The nut was quickly
+            crushed between the sharp teeth of the orator's scathing
+            retort. Mr. Garrison&#8212;"Not a slave-holding or
+            a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.) The slaves believe
+            in a Jesus that strikes off chains. In this country
+            Jesus has become obsolete. A profession in him
+            is no longer a test. Who objects to his course in
+            Jud&aelig;a? The old Pharisees are extinct, and may
+            safely be denounced. Jesus is the most respectable
+            person in the United States. (Great sensation and
+            murmurs of disapprobation.) Jesus sits in the President's
+            chair of the United States. (A thrill of horror
+            here seemed to run through the assembly.) Zachary
+            Taylor sits there, which is the same thing, for he believes
+            in Jesus. He believes in war, and the Jesus
+            that 'gave the Mexicans hell.'" (Sensation, uproar,
+            and confusion.)
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This rather sulphurous allusion to the President of
+            the glorious Union, albeit in language used by himself
+            in a famous order during the Mexican War, acted
+            as a red rag upon the human bull in the organ loft,
+            who, now beside himself with passion, plunged madly
+            down to the platform with his howling mob at his
+            heels. "I will not allow you to assail the President of
+            the United States. You shan't do it!" bellowed the
+            blackguard, shaking his fist at Mr. Garrison. But
+            Mr. Garrison, with that extraordinary serenity of
+            manner which was all his own, parleyed with the
+            ruffian, as if he was no ruffian and had no mob at his
+            back. "You ought not to interrupt us," he remonstrated
+            with gentle dignity. "We go upon the principle
+            of hearing everybody. If you wish to speak, I
+            will keep order, and you shall be heard." Rynders
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_344" id="P_344" title="P_344"></a>
+            was finally quieted by the offer of Francis Jackson to
+            give him a hearing as soon as Mr. Garrison had
+            brought his address to an end.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Rev. W.H. Furness, of Philadelphia, who was a
+            member of the convention and also one of the speakers,
+            has preserved for us the contrasts of the occasion.
+            "The close of Mr. Garrison's address," says he,
+            "brought down Rynders again, who vociferated and
+            harangued at one time on the platform, and then
+            pushing down into the aisles, like a madman followed
+            by his keepers. Through the whole, nothing could
+            be more patient and serene than the bearing of Mr.
+            Garrison. I have always revered Mr. Garrison for
+            his devoted, uncompromising fidelity to his great
+            cause. Today I was touched to the heart by his
+            calm and gentle manners. There was no agitation,
+            no scorn, no heat, but the quietness of a man engaged
+            in simple duties."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The madman and his keepers were quite vanquished
+            on the first day of the convention by the wit, repartee,
+            and eloquence of Frederick Douglass, Dr. Furness,
+            and Rev. Samuel R. Ward, whom Wendell Phillips
+            described as so black that "when he shut his eyes
+            you could not see him." But it was otherwise on the
+            second day when public opinion was "regulated,"
+            and free discussion overthrown by Captain Rynders
+            and his villainous gang, who were resolved, with the
+            authors of the compromise, that the Union as it was
+            should be preserved.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But, notwithstanding the high authority and
+            achievements of this noble band of patriots and
+            brothers, Garrison's detestation of the Union but
+            increased, and his cry for its dissolution grew deeper
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_345" id="P_345" title="P_345"></a>
+            and louder. And no wonder. For never had the
+            compact between freedom and slavery seemed more
+            hateful than after the passage of the Fugitive Slave
+            Bill. The state of panic which it created among the
+            colored people in the free States will form, if ever
+            written down, one of the most heartrending chapters
+            in human history. Hundreds and thousands fled
+            from their homes into the jaws of a Canadian winter
+            to escape the jaws of the slave-hounds, whose fierce
+            baying began presently to fill the land from Massachusetts
+            to Ohio. It made no difference whether
+            these miserable people had been always free or were
+            fugitives from slavery, the terror spread among
+            them all the same. The aged and the young turned
+            their backs upon their homes and hurried precipitately
+            into a strange country. Fathers with wives
+            and children dependant upon them for their daily
+            bread, were forced by the dread of being captured
+            and returned to bondage to abandon their homes
+            and loved ones, sometimes without so much as a
+            touch of their hands or a tone of their voices in
+            token of farewell. Perhaps on his way to work in
+            the morning some husband or son has caught a
+            glimpse among the faces on the street of one face,
+            the remembrance of which to the day of death,
+            he can never lose, a face he had known in some far
+            away Southern town or plantation, and with which
+            are connected in the poor fellow's brain the most
+            frightful sufferings and associations. Crazed at the
+            sight, with no thought of home, of the labors which
+            are awaiting him, oblivious of everything but the
+            abject terror which has suddenly taken possession of
+            him, he hastens away to hide and fly, fly and hide, until
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_346" id="P_346" title="P_346"></a>
+            he reaches a land where slave-hounds enter not, and
+            panting fugitives find freedom. Wendell Phillips
+            tells of an old woman of seventy who asked his
+            advice about flying, though originally free, and fearful
+            only of being caught up by mistake. The distress
+            everywhere was awful, the excitement indescribable.
+            From Boston alone in the brief space of
+            three weeks after the rescue of Shadrach, nearly a
+            hundred of these panic stricken creatures had fled.
+            The whole number escaping into Canada Charles
+            Sumner placed as high as six thousand souls. But
+            in addition to this large band of fugitives, others
+            emigrated to the interior of New England away from
+            the seaboard centers of trade and commerce where
+            the men-hunters abounded.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The excitement and the perils of this period were
+            not confined to the colored people. Their white
+            friends shared both with them. We are indebted to Mr.
+            Phillips for the following graphic account of these
+            excitements and perils in Boston in March, 1851.
+            He has been describing the situation in the city, in
+            respect of the execution of the infamous law, to
+            Elizabeth Pease, and goes on thus: "I need not
+            enlarge on this; but the long evening sessions&#8212;debates
+            about secret escapes&#8212;plans to evade where we
+            can't resist&#8212;the door watched that no spy may enter&#8212;the
+            whispering consultations of the morning&#8212;some
+            putting property out of their hands, planning to
+            incur penalties, and planning also that, in case of
+            conviction, the Government may get nothing from
+            them&#8212;the doing, and answering no questions&#8212;intimates
+            forbearing to ask the knowledge which it
+            may be dangerous to have&#8212;all remind one of those
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_347" id="P_347" title="P_347"></a>
+            foreign scenes which have hitherto been known to us,
+            transatlantic republicans, only in books."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            On the passage of the Black Bill, as the Abolitionists
+            stigmatised the law, it was not believed that the
+            moral sentiment of Boston would execute it, so horrified
+            did the community seem. But it was soon apparent
+            to the venerable Josiah Quincy that "The
+            Boston of 1851 is not the Boston of 1775. Boston,"
+            the sage goes on to remark, "has now become a
+            mere shop&#8212;a place for buying and selling goods;
+            and, I suppose, also of <em>buying and selling men</em>." The
+            great idol of her shopkeepers, Daniel Webster,
+            having striven mightily for the enactment of the
+            hateful bill while Senator of the United States, had
+            gone into Millard Fillmore's Cabinet, to labor yet
+            more mightily for its enforcement. The rescue of
+            Shadrach, which Mr. Secretary of State characterized
+            "as a case of treason," set him to thundering
+            for the Union as it was, and against the "fanatics,"
+            who were stirring up the people of the free States
+            to resist the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law.
+            But he was no longer "the God-like" Webster, for
+            he appeared to the editor of the
+            <i>Liberator</i> as "an
+            ordinary-looking, poor, decrepit old man, whose limbs
+            could scarce support him; lank with age; whose
+            sluggish legs were somewhat concealed by an over-shadowing
+            abdomen; with head downcast and arms
+            shriveled, and dangling almost helpless by his side,
+            and incapable of being magnetized for the use of
+            the orator." The voice and the front of "the God-like"
+            had preceded the "poor decrepit old man" to
+            the grave. Garrison dealt no less roughly and irreverently
+            with another of the authors of the wicked
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_348" id="P_348" title="P_348"></a>
+            law and another of the superannuated divinities of a
+            shopkeeping North, Henry Clay.
+            "<b>HENRY CLAY</b>,
+            with one foot in the grave," exclaimed the reformer,
+            "and just ready to have both body and soul cast into
+            hell, as if eager to make his damnation doubly sure,
+            rises in the United States Senate and proposes an
+            inquiry into the expediency of passing yet another
+            law, by which every one who shall dare peep or
+            mutter against the execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill
+            shall have his life crushed out."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In those trial times words from the mouth or the
+            pen of Abolitionists had the force of deadly missiles.
+            Incapacitated as Garrison was to resort to physical
+            resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law by his non-resistant
+            doctrine, it seemed that all the energy and
+            belligerency of the man went into the most tremendous
+            verbal expressions. They were like adamantine
+            projectiles flung with the savage strength of a catapult
+            against the walls of slavery. The big sinners, like Webster
+            and Clay, he singled out for condign punishment,
+            were objects of his utmost severities of speech. It was
+            thus that he essayed to breach the iron dungeon in
+            which the national iniquity had shut the national conscience.
+            Saturated was the reformer's mind with the
+            thought of the Bible, its solemn and awful imagery,
+            its fiery and prophetic abhorrence and denunciations
+            of national sins, all of which furnished him an unfailing
+            magazine whence were drawn the bolts which
+            he launched against the giant sin and the giant sinners
+            of his time. And so Clay had not only "one
+            foot in the grave," but was "just ready to have both
+            body and soul cast into hell."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            While physical resistance of the Slave Law was
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_349" id="P_349" title="P_349"></a>
+            wholly out of the question with Garrison, he, nevertheless,
+            refused to condemn the men with whom it
+            was otherwise. Here he was anything but a fanatic.
+            All that he required was that each should be consistent
+            with his principles. If those principles bade him
+            resist the enforcement of the Black Bill, the apostle
+            of non-resistance was sorry enough, but in this emergency,
+            though he possessed the gentleness of the
+            dove, he also practised the wisdom of the serpent.
+            That truth moves with men upon lower as well as
+            higher planes he well knew. It is always partial and
+            many-colored, refracted as it is through the prisms
+            of human passion and prejudice. If it appear unto
+            some minds in the red bar of strife and blood, so be
+            it. Each must follow the light which it is given him
+            to discern, whether the blue of love or the red of
+            war. Great coadjutors, like Wendell Phillips, Theodore
+            Parker, and Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, were for
+            forcible resistance to the execution of the law. So
+            were the colored people. Preparations to this end
+            went on vigorously in Boston under the direction of
+            the Vigilance Committee. The Crafts escaped the
+            clutches of the slave-hunters, so did Shadrach escape
+            them, but Sims and Burns fell into them and were
+            returned to bondage.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            From this time on Wendell Phillips became in Boston
+            and in the North more distinctly the leader of the
+            Abolition sentiment. The period of pure moral agitation
+            ended with the passage of the Fugitive Slave
+            Law. That act opened a new era in the movement, an
+            era in which non-resistance had no place, an era in
+            which a resort to physical force in settlement of
+            sectional differences, the whole trend of things were
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_350" id="P_350" title="P_350"></a>
+            making inevitable. Fighting, the Anglo-Saxon
+            method, as Theodore Parker characterized it, of making
+            a final settlement of just such controversies as
+            was the slavery question, was in the air, had become
+            without any general consciousness of it at the time
+            appearing in the popular mind, a foregone conclusion,
+            from the moment that the South wrested from
+            the National Government the right to defy and
+            override the moral sentiment of free State communities.
+            With this advance of the anti-slavery
+            agitation a stage nearer the end, when fighting would
+            supersede all other methods, the fighters gravitated
+            naturally to the front of the conflict, and the apostle
+            of non-resistance fell somewhat into the background
+            of the great movement started by him.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison had begun, indeed, to recognize that there
+            were other ways besides his way of abolishing slavery&#8212;had
+            begun to see that these with his led to Rome,
+            to the ultimate extinction of the evil, to which anti-slavery
+            unionists and disunionists were alike devoted.
+            His innate sagacity and strong sense of justice
+            lifted the reformer to larger toleration of mind.
+            At a dinner given in Boston in May, 1853, by the Free
+            Democracy to John P. Hale, he was not only present
+            to testify his appreciation of the courage and services
+            of Mr. Hale to the common cause, but while there
+            was able to speak thus tolerantly&#8212;tolerantly for him
+            certainly&#8212;of a Union dear to the company about the
+            table yet hateful beyond measure to himself: "Sir,
+            you will pardon me," spoke the arch anti-slavery disunionist,
+            "for the reference. I have heard something
+            here about our Union, about the value of the Union,
+            and the importance of preserving the Union, Gentlemen,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_351" id="P_351" title="P_351"></a>
+            if you have been so fortunate as to find a
+            Union worth preserving, I heartily congratulate you.
+            Cling to it with all your souls!" For himself, he has
+            not been so fortunate. With a price set on his head in
+            one of the Southern States, and outlawed in all of
+            them, he begs to be pardoned if found lacking in
+            loyalty to the existing Union, which to him, alas: "is
+            but another name for the iron reign of the slave-power.
+            We have no common country as yet. God grant we
+            may have. We shall have it when the jubilee comes&#8212;and
+            not till then," he declared, mindful of the convictions
+            of others, yet bravely true to his own. The seeds
+            of liberty, of hatred of the slave-power, planted by
+            Garrison were springing up in a splendid crop through
+            the North. Much of the political anti-slavery of the
+            times were the fruit of his endeavor. Wendell Phillips
+            has pointed out how the Liberty party was benefited
+            by the meetings and speeches of Garrisonian
+            Abolitionists. What was true of the Liberty party
+            was equally true of Free Soil and Free Democracy.
+            Although the little band remained small, it was potent
+            in swelling, year after year, the anti-slavery membership
+            of all the parties, Whig and Democratic, as
+            well as of those already mentioned. "Uncle Tom's
+            Cabin" might fairly be classed among the large indirect
+            results produced by Garrison. "But," as Phillips
+            justly remarked, "'Uncle Tom' would never
+            have been written had not Garrison developed the
+            facts; and never would have succeeded had he not
+            created readers and purchasers." Garrisonism had
+            become an influence, a power that made for liberty
+            and against slavery in the United States. It had become
+            such also in Great Britain. George Thompson,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_352" id="P_352" title="P_352"></a>
+            writing the pioneer of the marvelous sale of "Uncle
+            Tom" in England, and of the unprecedented demand
+            for anti-slavery literature, traced their source to his
+            friend: "Behold the fruit of your labors," he exclaimed,
+            "and rejoice."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Mr. Garrison's pungent characterization of the
+            "Union" at the dinner of the Free Democracy as
+            "but another name for the iron reign of the slave-power,"
+            found almost instant illustration of its truth
+            in the startling demand of that power for the repeal
+            of the Missouri Compromise. In 1850 the South lost
+            California, but it received at the time an advantage
+            of far-reaching consequence, viz., the admission of
+            the principle of federal non-intervention upon the
+            subject of slavery in the national Territories into the
+            bill organizing Territorial Governments for New Mexico
+            and Utah. The train which was to blow down
+            the slave wall of 1820 and open to slave immigration
+            the northern half of the Louisiana Territory, was laid
+            in the compromise measures of 1850.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Calhoun, strongly dissatisfied as he was with the
+            Missouri settlement, recoiled from countenancing any
+            agitation on the part of the South looking to its
+            repeal on the ground that such action was calculated
+            to disturb "the peace and harmony of the Union."
+            But four years after the death of the great nullifier,
+            his disciples and followers dared to consummate a
+            crime, the consequences of which he shrank from
+            inviting. The political conditions four years had
+            indeed modified in one important particular at least.
+            In Calhoun's lifetime, there was no Northern leader
+            bold enough to undertake to engineer an act of abrogation
+            through Congress. If the North were willing,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_353" id="P_353" title="P_353"></a>
+            possessed sufficient magnanimity, to surrender, in the
+            interest of brotherly love between the sections, the
+            benefits which inured to it under the Missouri Compromise,
+            neither Calhoun nor the South would have
+            declined the proffered sacrifice. The selection of
+            Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 as the leader of the
+            movement for repeal put a new face on the business,
+            which was thereby made to appear to proceed from
+            the free, not from the slave States. This was
+            adroit, the fixing upon the losing section the initiative
+            and the responsibility of the act of abrogation.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Besides this element, there was another not less
+            specious which lent to the scheme an air of fairness,
+            and that was the application to the Territories of the
+            American principle of local self-government, in other
+            words, the leaving to the people of the Territories the
+            right to vote slavery up or vote it down, as they
+            might elect. The game was a deep one, worthy of
+            the machinations of its Northern and Southern
+            authors. But, like other elaborate schemes of mice
+            and men, it went to pieces under the fatal stroke of
+            an unexpected circumstance. The act which abrogated
+            the Missouri Compromise broke the much-enduring
+            back of Northern patience at the same
+            time. In the struggle for the repeal Southern Whigs
+            and Southern Democrats forgot their traditionary
+            party differences in battling for Southern interests,
+            which was not more or less than the extension to
+            the national Territories of the peculiar institution.
+            The final recognition of this ugly fact on the part of
+            the free States, raised a popular flood in them big
+            enough to whelm the Whig party and to float a great
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_354" id="P_354" title="P_354"></a>
+            political organization, devoted to uncompromising
+            opposition to the farther extension of slavery. The
+            sectionalism of slavery was at last met by the sectionalism
+            of freedom. From that moment the old Union,
+            with its slave compromises, was doomed. In the
+            conflict then impending its dissolution was merely
+            a matter of time, unless indeed the North should
+            prove strong enough to preserve it by the might of its
+            arms, seeing that the North still clung passionately to
+            the idea of national unity.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Not so, however, was it with Garrison. Sharper
+            and sterner rose his voice against any union with
+            Slaveholders. On the Fourth of July following the
+            repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the reformer at
+            Framingham, Mass., gave a fresh and startling sign
+            of his hatred of the Union by burning publicly the
+            Constitution of the United States. Before doing so
+            however, he consigned to the flames a copy of the
+            <i>Fugitive Slave Law</i>,
+            next the decision of Judge Loring
+            remanding Anthony Burns to slavery, also the
+            charge of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis to the Grand
+            Jury touching the assault upon the court-house for the
+            rescue of Burns. Then holding up the United States
+            Constitution, he branded it as the source and parent
+            of all the other atrocities&#8212;a covenant with death
+            and an agreement with hell&#8212;and consumed it to
+            ashes on the spot, exclaiming, "So perish all compromises
+            with tyranny! And let all the people say,
+            Amen!" This dramatic act and the "tremendous
+            shout" which "went up to heaven in ratification of
+            the deed" from the assembled multitude, what were
+            they but the prophecy of a fiercer fire already burning
+            in the land, soon to blaze about the pillars of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_355" id="P_355" title="P_355"></a>
+            Union, of a more tremendous shout soon to burst
+            with the wrath of a divided people over that
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_356" id="P_356" title="P_356"></a></p>
+         <div class="lg">"perfidious bark<br>Built i' th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."<br><br></div>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap19"></a>
+            CHAPTER XIX.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            FACE TO FACE.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            Face to face at last were freedom and slavery.
+            The final struggle between them for mastery had
+            come. Narrow, indeed, was the issue that divided
+            the combatants, slavery extension on the one side,
+            and slavery restriction on the other, not total and
+            immediate emancipation, but it was none the less
+            vital and supreme to the two enemies. Back of the
+            Southern demand for "More slave soil" stood a solid
+            South, back of the Northern position, "No more slave
+            soil" was rallying a fast uniting North. The political
+            revolution, produced by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
+            advanced apace through the free States from Maine
+            to Michigan. A flood-tide of Northern resistance
+            had suddenly risen against the slave-power.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Higher than anywhere else rose this flood-tide in
+            Massachusetts. The judge who remanded Anthony
+            Burns to slavery was removed from office, and a Personal
+            Liberty Law, with provisions as bold as they
+            were thorough, enacted for the protection of fugitive
+            slaves. Mr. Garrison sat beside the President of the
+            State Senate when that body voted to remove Judge
+            Loring from his office. Such was Massachusetts's
+            answer to the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise,
+            and a triumphant slave-power. Its instant
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_357" id="P_357" title="P_357"></a>
+            effect was to accelerate in the South the action of the
+            disunion working forces there, to hurry the inevitable
+            moment when the two sections would rush
+            together in a death-grapple within or without Webster's
+            once glorious Union.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Indeed the foes had already closed in a frightful
+            wrestle for the possession of Kansas. When the
+            National Government adopted the popular sovereignty
+            doctrine in solution of the Territorial problem
+            between the two halves of the Union, freedom and
+            slavery thereupon precipitated their forces upon the
+            debatable land, and, for the first time, the men of the
+            North and the men of the South came into actual
+            physical collision in defence of their respective ideas
+            and institutions. The possession of land is nine
+            points of the law among Anglo-Saxons, and for this
+            immense advantage both sides flung themselves into
+            Kansas&#8212;the North by means of emigrant aid societies,
+            the South by means of bands of Border ruffians
+            under the direction of a United States Senator. It
+            was distinctly understood and ordained in connection
+            with the repeal of the compromise of 1820, that final
+            possession of the Territories then thrown open to
+            slave labor should be determined by the people
+            inhabiting the same. In the contest for peopling
+            Kansas the superior colonizing resources of the free
+            States was presently made manifest. They, in any
+            fair contest with ballots, had a majority of the polls,
+            and were, therefore, able to vote slavery down.
+            Worsted as the South clearly was in a show of heads,
+            it threw itself back upon fraud and force to decide
+            the issue in its favor. The cartridge-box took the
+            place of the ballot-box in bleeding Kansas, and violence
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_358" id="P_358" title="P_358"></a>
+            and anarchy, as a consequence, reigned therein
+            for the space of several years.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This is no place to depict those scenes of slave-holding
+            outrages, supported as they were by a Northern
+            President with Southern principles. The sight of
+            them rapidly changed the pacific character of the
+            free States. Many a peace man dropped his peace
+            principles before this bloody duel between the civilization
+            of the South and that of the North. Ministers
+            and churches took up collections to send, not Bibles,
+            but Sharp's rifles to their brethren in Kansas. The
+            South had appealed to the sword, and the North had
+            sternly accepted the challenge. War was in the air,
+            and the Northern temper, without there being any
+            general consciousness of it, was fast mounting to the
+            war point in the thermometer of the passions, thanks
+            to the perfidy and ruffianism of the slave-power in
+            Congress and Kansas.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This trend and strong undertow of the nation
+            toward a civil outbreak and commotion, though
+            unnoted by the multitude, was yet, nevertheless, seen
+            and felt by many thoughtful and far-seeing minds;
+            and by no one more clearly than by T.W. Higginson,
+            who at the twentieth anniversary of the Boston
+            mob, discoursed thus on this head: "Mr. Phillips
+            told us that on this day, twenty years ago, the military
+            could not protect the meeting, because the guns
+            were outside in the mob&#8212;or the men who should
+            have carried them! There has been a time since
+            when the men were on the outside and the guns too;
+            and as surely as this earth turns on its axis, that time
+            will come again! And it is for you, men, who
+            hear me, to think what you will do when that time
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_359" id="P_359" title="P_359"></a>
+            comes; and it is for you, women, who hear me, to
+            think what you will do, and what you are willing&#8212;I
+            will not say, to <em>consent</em> that those you love
+            should do, but what you are willing to
+            <em>urge</em> them to do, and to
+            send them from your homes, knowing that they will
+            do it, whether they live or die." The murderous
+            assault upon Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber
+            at Washington by Preston S. Brooks, served to intensify
+            the increasing belligerency of the Northern
+            temper, to deepen the spreading conviction that the
+            irrepressible conflict would be settled not with the
+            pen through any more fruitless compromises, but in
+            Anglo-Saxon fashion by blood and iron.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Amid this general access of the fighting propensity,
+            Garrison preserved the integrity of his non-resistant
+            principles, his aversion to the use of physical
+            force as an anti-slavery weapon. Men like Charles
+            Stearns talked of shouldering their Sharp's rifles
+            against the Border ruffians as they would against wild
+            beasts. For himself, he could not class any of his
+            fellow-creatures, however vicious and wicked, on the
+            same level with wild beasts. Those wretches were,
+            he granted, as bad and brutal as they were represented
+            by the free State men of Kansas, but to him
+            they were less blameworthy than were their employers
+            and indorsers, the pro-slavery President and his
+            Cabinet, pro-slavery Congressmen, and judges, and
+            doctors of divinity, and editors. Incomparably guilty
+            as these "colossal conspirators against the liberty,
+            peace, happiness, and safety of the republic" were;
+            and, though his moral indignation "against their
+            treasonable course" burned like fire, he, nevertheless,
+            wished them no harm. He shrank from the idea of
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_360" id="P_360" title="P_360"></a>
+            the physical collision of man with a brother man,
+            and with him all mankind were brothers. No one is
+            able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member
+            of the human family, "in a Christian state of mind."
+            He held to Jesus, who condemned violence, forbade
+            the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory feelings
+            and the use of retaliatory weapons. When Jesus
+            said "Love your enemies," he did not mean, "Kill
+            them if they go too far."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison's moral radicalism and political sagacity
+            were never exhibited to better advantage than during
+            these tremendous years of the crisis. He saw the
+            sudden rise of a great political organization opposed
+            to the farther extension of slavery to national territory.
+            It was by no means a party after his heart, and
+            for total and immediate emancipation, and the dissolution
+            of the Union, yet he perceived that while this
+            was true, it was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose,
+            battling against the slave-power, fighting the slave
+            system, and to this extent was worthy of the commendation
+            of Abolitionists. "It helps to disseminate no
+            small amount of light and knowledge," the reformer
+            acutely observed, "in regard to the nature and workings
+            of the slave system, being necessitated to do
+            this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time
+            being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right
+            direction, though with no purpose to aid us in the
+            specific work we are striving to accomplish, namely,
+            the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of
+            slavery throughout the land." While bating no jot
+            of his anti-slavery principles, he all the same put in
+            practice the apostolic injunction to give credit to
+            whom credit is due, by cordially commending what
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_361" id="P_361" title="P_361"></a>
+            he found worthy of commendation in the purpose
+            and policy of the Republican party, and by urging a
+            like conduct upon his followers. In the Presidential
+            canvass of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with
+            Fr&eacute;mont as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although
+            his Abolition principles precluded him from voting
+            for the Republican candidate or from urging his disciples
+            to vote for him. But, barring this moral barrier,
+            had he "a million votes to bestow" he "would
+            cast them all for Fr&eacute;mont ... not because he is an
+            Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is
+            for the non-extension of slavery, in common with the
+            great body of the people of the North, whose attachment
+            to the Union amounts to idolatry."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            When the election was over the motto of the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            was still "No union with slaveholders," and
+            would have remained the same though Fr&eacute;mont instead
+            of Buchanan had triumphed at the polls, until
+            indeed the domination of the slave-power had ended,
+            and the North and the National Constitution had
+            been divorced from all criminal connection with slavery.
+            The anti-slavery agitation for the dissolution of
+            the Union went on with increased zeal. A State convention,
+            called by T.W. Higginson and others, "to
+            consider the practicability, probability, and expediency
+            of a separation between the free and slave States,
+            and to take such other measures as the condition of the
+            times may require," met at Worcester, Mass., January
+            15, 1857, with Frank W. Bird in the chair, and
+            William Lloyd Garrison among the vice-presidents.
+            The pioneer's speech on the occasion was a characteristic
+            and noteworthy utterance. Its tone throughout
+            was grave and argumentative. Here is a specimen
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_362" id="P_362" title="P_362"></a>
+            of it, and of the way in which he met the most serious
+            objection to the Abolition movement for disunion:
+            "The air is filled with objections to a movement of this
+            kind. I am neither surprised nor disquieted at this.
+            One of these is of a very singular nature, and it is
+            gravely urged that it is conclusive against disunion.
+            It is to this effect: We must remain in the Union
+            because it would be inhuman in us to turn our backs
+            upon millions of slaves in the Southern States, and to
+            leave them to their fate! Men who have never been
+            heard of in the anti-slavery ranks, or who are ever
+            submitting to a compromise of principle, have their
+            bowels wonderfully moved all at once with sympathy
+            for the suffering slave! Even our esteemed friend,
+            Theodore Parker (who deals in no cant) says, in his
+            letter, that he cannot consent to cut himself off from
+            the slave population. Now, we who are engaged in
+            this movement claim to be equally concerned for the
+            liberation of the slave. If we have not yet proved our
+            willingness to suffer the loss of all things, rather than
+            turn and flee, God knows that we are prepared to
+            bear any new cross that He, in His Providence, may
+            be disposed to lay upon us. For one, I make no parade
+            of my anxiety for the deliverance of those in bondage;
+            but I do say that it strikes me as remarkable
+            that those who, for a quarter of a century, have borne
+            the heat and burden of the day, should have the imputation
+            cast upon them of intending to leave four
+            millions of slaves in their chains, by seeking the overthrow
+            of this Union!...
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            " ... I declare that this talk of leaving the slave
+            to his fate is not a true representation of the case;
+            and it indicates a strange dullness of comprehension
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_363" id="P_363" title="P_363"></a>
+            with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is
+            it to forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider
+            and abettor of his master? What! When the North
+            is pressing down upon four millions of slaves like an
+            avalanche, and we say to her, 'Take off that pressure&#8212;stand
+            aside&#8212;give the slave a chance to regain his
+            feet and assert his freedom!' is that turning our
+            backs upon him? Here, for example, is a man engaged
+            in highway robbery, and another man is acting
+            as an accessory, without whose aid the robber cannot
+            succeed. In saying to the accomplice. 'Hands off!
+            Don't aid the villain!' shall I be told that this is enabling
+            the highwayman to rob with impunity? What
+            an absurdity! Are we not trying to save the pockets
+            of all travelers from being picked in seeking to break
+            up all connection with highway robbery?"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The convention projected a general convention of
+            the free States to consider the subject, and
+            "<i>Resolved</i>,
+            That the sooner the separation takes place,
+            the more peaceful it will be; but that peace or war is
+            <em>a secondary consideration</em> in view of our
+            present perils.
+            Slavery must be conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly
+            if we must." The projected general convention,
+            owing to the monetary crisis of 1857, did not take
+            place; but the extraordinary public excitement on
+            the slavery question increased rather than diminished
+            during the year. The increasing menace to the domination
+            of the slave-power from this source had become
+            so great that it was deemed prudent on the
+            part of the upholders of that power to allay it by
+            means of an authoritative utterance upon the vexed
+            question of slavery in the national Territories from
+            the highest judicial tribunal in the Land. The Northern
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_364" id="P_364" title="P_364"></a>
+            respect for the opinion of the Supreme Court, the
+            South and her allies in the free States counted upon
+            as the vehicle of the quieting medicament. For, if
+            the Missouri Compromise were pronounced by that
+            Court unconstitutional and, therefore,
+            <i>ab initio</i>, null
+            and void, no wrong was done the North through its
+            formal repeal by Congress. The act of abrogation,
+            in this view, added nothing to the South which did
+            not belong to it as well before as after its passage,
+            detracted nothing from the North which was justly
+            its due in the premises. In pursuance of this cunningly
+            devised scheme the Supreme Court delivered
+            itself of an opinion in the famous "Dred Scott Case."
+            So abhorrent it was to the intelligence and moral sense
+            of the free States, that it produced results altogether
+            opposed to those designed by the men who invoked
+            it. Instead of checking, the execrated judgment
+            augmented enormously the existing excitement. Garrison's
+            bitter taunt that "the Union is but another
+            name for the iron reign of the slave-power," was
+            driven home to the North, by the Dred Scott decision,
+            with the logic of another unanswerable fact. Confidence
+            in the independence and impartiality of the
+            Supreme Court was seriously shaken, and widespread
+            suspicion struck root at the North touching the subserviency
+            of that tribunal to the interests and designs
+            of the slave-power.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The popular agitation at this fresh and alarming
+            evidence of the purpose and power of the South upset
+            the machinations of the schemers, swelled the numerical
+            strength of the new Northern party opposed to
+            the Territorial aggressions and pretensions of the
+            slave section. So rapid was the growth of the Republican
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_365" id="P_365" title="P_365"></a>
+            party that the slave leaders anticipated its
+            accession to power at the then next Presidential election.
+            So certain were they in their forebodings of defeat
+            that they set about in dead earnest to put their
+            side of the divided house in order for the impending
+            struggle for Southern independence. Military preparations
+            went forward with a vengeance, arms and
+            munitions of war which were the property of the
+            General Government began to move southward, to
+            Southern military depots and posts for the defence of
+            the United States South, when at last the word
+            "<b>DISUNION</b>" should be pronounced
+            over the Republic.
+            The Lincoln-Douglass debate augmented
+            everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty
+            numbers of the new party. More and more the public
+            consciousness and conviction were squaring with
+            Mr. Lincoln's oracular words in respect that the
+            Union could not "endure permanently half slave and
+            half free."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The darkness and tumult of the rising tempest
+            were advancing apace, when suddenly there burst
+            from the national firmament the first warning peal of
+            thunder, and over Virginia there sped the first bolt of
+            the storm. John Brown with his brave little band,
+            at Harper's Ferry, had struck for the freedom of the
+            slave. Tired of words, the believer in blood and iron
+            as a deliverer, had crossed from Pennsylvania into
+            Virginia on the evening of October 16, 1859, and
+            seized the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry.
+            Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and
+            hanged for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had
+            builded better than he knew. For the blow struck by
+            him then and there ended almost abruptly the period
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_366" id="P_366" title="P_366"></a>
+            of argument and ushered in the period of arms. The
+            jar from that battle-ax at the roots of the slave system
+            hurled together in a death struggle right and
+            wrong, freedom and slavery, in the republic.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This attempt on the part of John Brown to liberate
+            the slaves seemed to Garrison "misguided, wild, and
+            apparently insane, though disinterested and well-intended."
+            On non-resistant grounds he deplored
+            this use of the sword to effect emancipation, and condemned
+            the leader. But, judging him according to
+            the standard of Bunker Hill and the men of 1776, he
+            did not doubt that Brown deserved "to be held in
+            grateful and honorable remembrance to the latest posterity,
+            by all those who glory in the deeds of a Wallace
+            or Tell, a Washington or Warren."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The raid of Brown and his subsequent execution,
+            and their reception at the North revealed how vast
+            was the revolution in public sentiment on the slavery
+            question which had taken place there, since the
+            murder of Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy
+            died defending the right of free speech and the
+            liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of
+            Massachusetts declared that "he died as the fool
+            dieth." Brown died in an invasion of a slave State,
+            and in an effort to emancipate the slaves with a band
+            of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one
+            end of the free States to the other, hero and martyr.
+            Mr. Garrison commenting on this immensely significant
+            fact, acutely and justly observed that: "The
+            sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him,
+            prove how marvelous has been the change affected in
+            public opinion during the thirty years of moral
+            agitation&#8212;a change so great indeed, that whereas,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_367" id="P_367" title="P_367"></a>
+            ten years since, there were thousands who could not
+            endure my lightest word of rebuke of the South, they
+            can now easily swallow John Brown whole and his
+            rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has
+            merely told us what time of day it is. It is high noon,
+            thank God!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But there is another circumstance hardly less significant
+            of another change at the North even more
+            momentous than the one just noted.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            On December 2d, the day on which Brown was
+            hung, solemn funeral observances were held throughout
+            the North by Abolitionists. At the great meeting
+            in Boston, held in Tremont Temple, and presided
+            over by Samuel E. Sewall, Garrison inquired as to the
+            number of non-resistants who were present. To this
+            question there came a solitary reply. There was but
+            one non-resistant beside himself in the hall. Where
+            were his followers? Why had they forsaken their
+            principles? The tide of Northern belligerency, which
+            was everywhere rising to its flood, everywhere rushing
+            and mounting to the tops of those dams which
+            separate war and peace had swept away his followers,
+            had caused them to forsake their principles.
+            True to their Anglo-Saxon instinct, they had reverted
+            to the more human, if less Christian method
+            of cutting the Gordian knot of the republic with the
+            sword.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The irresistible drift of the North toward the point
+            where peace ends and war begins, which that solitary
+            "I" at the John Brown meeting denoted, was still
+            further indicated by what appeared not wholly unlike
+            a change in Mr. Garrison's attitude on the same subject.
+            His non-resistant position was the same, but
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_368" id="P_368" title="P_368"></a>
+            somehow his face seemed to turn warward too, with
+            the rest of the nation, in the following passage taken
+            from his address at that John Brown meeting:
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Nevertheless, I am a non-resistant," said he,
+            speaking to that solitary confession of non-resistance
+            principles, "and I not only desire, but have labored
+            unremittingly to effect the peaceful abolition of slavery,
+            by an appeal to the reason and conscience of the
+            slaveholder; yet, as a peace man, an ultra peace
+            man, I am prepared to say: Success to every slave
+            insurrection at the South, and in every slave country.
+            And I do not see how I compromise or stain my peace
+            profession in making that declaration. Whenever
+            there is a contest between the oppressed and the
+            oppressor, the weapons being equal between the parties,
+            God knows that my heart must be with the
+            oppressed, and always against the oppressor. Therefore,
+            whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success
+            to all slave insurrections.... Rather than see men
+            wearing their chains, in a cowardly and servile spirit,
+            I would as an advocate of peace, much rather see them
+            breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains.
+            Give me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington,
+            and Concord, rather than the cowardice and
+            servility of a Southern slave plantation."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The unmistakable signs of disintegration, the swift
+            action of the national tragedy, the Charleston Convention,
+            the disruption of the Democratic party, the
+            last bond between the North and the South, filled
+            the heart of the pioneer with solemn joy. "Only
+            think of it!" he exulted at the anniversary of the
+            American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, May 8,
+            1860; "only think of it! the party which has for so
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_369" id="P_369" title="P_369"></a>
+            many years cried out, 'There must be no agitation on
+            this subject' is now the most agitated of all the
+            parties in the country. The party which declares that
+            there ought not to be any sectionalism as against
+            slavery, has now been sundered geographically, and
+            on this very question! The party which had said,
+            'Let discussions cease forever,' is busily engaged in
+            the discussion, so that, possibly, the American Anti-Slavery
+            Society might adjourn <i>sine die</i>, after we get
+            through with our present meetings, and leave its work
+            to be carried on in the other direction!" This was all
+            true enough. The sections were at last sundered,
+            and a day of wrath was rising dark and dreadful over
+            "States dissevered, discordant, belligerent."
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_370" id="P_370" title="P_370"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap20"></a>
+            CHAPTER XX.
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            The triumph of the Republican party at the polls
+            was the signal for the work of dissolution to begin.
+            Webster's terrific vision of "a land rent with civil
+            feuds" became reality in the short space of six
+            weeks after Lincoln's election, by the secession of
+            South Carolina from the Union. Quickly other
+            Southern States followed, until a United States South
+            was organized, the chief stone in the corner of the
+            new political edifice being Negro slavery. It was not
+            six weeks after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln,
+            when the roar of cannon in Charleston Harbor announced
+            to the startled country that war between the
+            States had begun. The first call of the new President
+            for troops to put down the rebellion and to save
+            the Union, and the patriotic uprising which it evoked
+            made it plain that the struggle thus opened was to
+            be nothing less than a death-grapple between the two
+            sections.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Before the attack on Fort Sumter, Garrison was
+            opposed to coercing the rebel States back into the
+            Union. He admitted the Constitutional power of
+            the National Government to employ force in maintaining
+            the integrity of the Republic. "The Federal
+            Government must not pretend to be in actual operation,
+            embracing thirty-four States," the editor of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_371" id="P_371" title="P_371"></a><i>Liberator</i> commented, "and then allow
+            the seceding States to trample upon its flag, steal its property, and
+            defy its authority with impunity; for it would then
+            be (as it is at this moment) a mockery and a laughing-stock.
+            Nevertheless to think of whipping the South
+            (for she will be a unit on the question of slavery) into
+            subjection, and extorting allegiance from millions of
+            people at the cannon's mouth, is utterly chimerical.
+            True, it is in the power of the North to deluge her
+            soil with blood, and inflict upon her the most terrible
+            sufferings; but not to conquer her spirit, or change
+            her determination."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            He, therefore, proposed that "the people of the
+            North should recognize the fact that
+            <b>THE UNION IS DISSOLVED</b>,
+            and act accordingly. They should see, in
+            the madness of the South, the hand of God, liberating
+            them from 'a covenant with death' and an 'agreement
+            with hell,' made in a time of terrible peril, and
+            without a conception of its inevitable consequences,
+            and which has corrupted their morals, poisoned their
+            religion, petrified their humanity as towards the millions
+            in bondage, tarnished their character, harassed
+            their peace, burdened them with taxation, shackled
+            their prosperity, and brought them into abject
+            vassalage."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under
+            the circumstances, was for speeding the South rather
+            than obstructing her way out of the Union. For
+            hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater
+            peril than that which hung over it during the months
+            which elapsed between Lincoln's election and the
+            attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions
+            to which the free States fell a prey in view of the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_372" id="P_372" title="P_372"></a>
+            then impending disruption of their glorious Union.
+            Indeed no sacrifice of anti-slavery accomplishments,
+            policy, and purpose of those States were esteemed too
+            important or sacred to make, if thereby the dissolution
+            of the Union might be averted. Many, Republicans
+            as well as Democrats, were for repealing the
+            Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of
+            New Mexico as a State, with or without slavery, for
+            the enforcement of the Fugitive State Law, for suppressing
+            the right of free speech and the freedom of
+            the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering
+            the Northern position in opposition to the extension
+            of slavery to national Territories, in order to
+            placate the South and keep it in the Union. Nothing
+            could have possibly been more disastrous to the
+            anti-slavery movement in America than a Union
+            saved on the terms proposed by such Republican
+            leaders as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams,
+            Thomas Corwin, and Andrew G. Curtin. The Union,
+            under the circumstances, was sure death to the slave,
+            in disunion lay his great life-giving hope. Therefore
+            his tried and sagacious friend was for sacrificing
+            the Union to win for him freedom.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            As the friends of the Union were disposed to haggle
+            at no price to preserve it, so was Garrison disposed
+            to barter the Union itself in exchange for the abolition
+            of slavery. "Now, then, let there be a <b>CONVENTION
+               OF THE FREE STATES</b>," he suggested, "called to
+            organize an independent government on free and
+            just principles; and let them say to the slave States:
+            Though you are without excuse for your treasonable
+            conduct, depart in peace! Though you have
+            laid piratical hands on property not your own, we
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_373" id="P_373" title="P_373"></a>
+            surrender it all in the spirit of magnanimity! And
+            if nothing but the possession of the Capitol will
+            appease you, take even that without a struggle! Let
+            the line be drawn between us where free institutions
+            end and slave institutions begin!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But the thunder of the rebel guns in Charleston
+            Harbor wrought in the reformer a complete revolution
+            in this regard. In the tremendous popular uprising
+            which followed that insult to the national
+            flag he perceived that the old order with its compromises
+            and dispositions to agree to anything, to do
+            anything for the sake of preserving the Union had
+            passed away forever. When it was suggested as an
+            objection to his change of base that the "Administration
+            is endeavoring to uphold the Union, the Constitution,
+            and the Laws, even as from the formation
+            of the Government," he was not for a moment deceived
+            by its apparent force, but replied sagely that
+            "this is a verbal and technical view of the case."
+            "Facts are more potential than words," he remarked
+            with philosophic composure, "and events greater
+            than parchment arrangements. The truth is, the
+            old Union is <i>nan est invenius</i>,
+            and its restoration, with
+            its pro-slavery compromises, well-nigh impossible.
+            The conflict is really between the civilization of
+            freedom and the barbarism of slavery&#8212;between the
+            principles of democracy and the doctrines of absolutism&#8212;between
+            the free North and the man-imbruting
+            South; therefore, to this extent hopeful for the cause
+            of impartial liberty."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            With the instinct of wise leadership, he adjusted
+            himself and his little band of Abolitionists, as far as
+            he was able, to the exigencies of the revolution. In
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_374" id="P_374" title="P_374"></a>
+            his madness there was always remarkable method.
+            When the nation was apathetic, dead on the subject
+            of slavery, he used every power which he possessed
+            or could invent to galvanize it into life. But with the
+            prodigious excitement which swept over the free
+            States at the outbreak of the war, Garrison saw that
+            the crisis demanded different treatment. Abolitionists
+            and their moral machinery he felt should be withdrawn,
+            for a season at least, from their conspicuous
+            place before the public gaze, lest it happen that they
+            should divert the current of public opinion from the
+            South to themselves, and thus injure the cause of
+            the slave. He accordingly deemed it highly expedient
+            that the usual anniversary of the American
+            Anti-Slavery Society, held in New York, ought,
+            under the circumstances, to be postponed, coming
+            as it would but a few weeks after the attack on
+            Sumter, and in the midst of the tremendous loyal
+            uprising against the rebels. This he did, adding, by
+            way of caution, this timely counsel: "Let nothing be
+            done at this solemn crisis needlessly to check or divert
+            the mighty current of popular feeling which is now
+            sweeping southward with the strength and impetuosity
+            of a thousand Niagaras, in direct conflict with
+            that haughty and perfidious slave-power which has
+            so long ruled the republic with a rod of iron, for its
+            own base and satanic purposes."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The singular tact and sagacity of the pioneer in
+            this emergency may be again seen in a letter to Oliver
+            Johnson, who was at the time editing the
+            <i>Anti-Slavery Standard</i>.
+            Says the pioneer: "Now that civil war
+            has begun, and a whirlwind of violence and excitement
+            is to sweep through the country, every day increasing
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_375" id="P_375" title="P_375"></a>
+            in interest until its bloodiest culmination, it
+            is for the Abolitionists to 'stand still and see the salvation
+            of God,' rather than to attempt to add anything
+            to the general commotion. It is no time for
+            minute criticism of Lincoln, Republicanism, or even
+            the other parties, now that they are fusing, for a
+            death-grapple with the Southern slave oligarchy; for
+            they are instruments in the hands of God to carry
+            forward and help achieve the great object of emancipation
+            for which we have so long been striving....
+            We need great circumspection and consummate
+            wisdom in regard to what we may say and do under
+            these unparalleled circumstances. We are rather, for
+            the time being, to note the events transpiring than
+            seek to control them. There must be no needless
+            turning of popular violence upon ourselves by any
+            false step of our own."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The circumspection, the tact, and sagacity which
+            marked his conduct at the beginning of the rebellion
+            characterized it to the close of the war, albeit at no
+            time doing or saying aught to compromise his anti-slavery
+            principle of total and immediate emancipation.
+            On the contrary, he urged, early and late, upon
+            Congress and the President the exercise of the war
+            power to put an end for ever to slavery. Radical
+            Abolitionists like Stephen S. Foster were for denying
+            to the Administration anti-slavery support and countenance,
+            and for continuing to heap upon the Government
+            their denunciations until it placed itself
+            "openly and unequivocally on the side of freedom,"
+            by issuing the edict of emancipation. Against this
+            zeal without discretion Garrison warmly protested.
+            "I cannot say that I do not sympathize with the Government,"
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_376" id="P_376" title="P_376"></a>
+            said he, "as against Jefferson Davis and
+            his piratical associates. There is not a drop of blood
+            in my veins, both as an Abolitionist and a peace man,
+            that does not flow with the Northern tide of sentiment;
+            for I see, in this grand uprising of the manhood
+            of the North, which has been so long groveling
+            in the dust, a growing appreciation of the value of
+            liberty and free institutions, and a willingness to
+            make any sacrifice in their defence against the barbaric
+            and tyrannical power which avows its purpose,
+            if it can, to crush them entirely out of existence.
+            When the Government shall succeed (if it shall succeed)
+            in conquering a peace, in subjugating the South,
+            and shall undertake to carry out the Constitution as
+            of old, with all its pro-slavery compromises, then will
+            be my time to criticise, reprove, and condemn; then
+            will be the time for me to open all the guns that I
+            can bring to bear upon it. But blessed be God that
+            'covenant with death' has been annulled, and that
+            'agreement with hell' no longer stands. I joyfully
+            accept the fact, and leave all verbal criticism until a
+            more suitable opportunity."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            But it must be confessed that at times during the
+            struggle, Lincoln's timidity and apparent indifference
+            as to the fate of slavery, in his anxiety to save the
+            Union, weakened Garrison's confidence in him, and
+            excited his keenest apprehensions "at the possibility
+            of the war terminating without the utter extinction
+            of slavery, by a new and more atrocious compromise
+            on the part of the North than any that has yet been
+            made." The pioneer therefore adjudged it prudent
+            to get his battery into position and to visit upon the
+            President for particular acts, such as the revocation
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_377" id="P_377" title="P_377"></a>
+            of anti-slavery orders by sundry of his generals in the
+            field, and upon particular members of his Cabinet
+            who were understood to be responsible for the shuffling,
+            hesitating action of the Government in its relation
+            to slavery, an effective fire of criticism and
+            rebuke.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Nevertheless Mr. Garrison maintained toward the
+            Government a uniform tone of sympathy and moderation.
+            "I hold," said he, in reply to strictures of Mr.
+            Phillips upon the President at the annual meeting of
+            the Massachusetts Society in 1862; "I hold that it is
+            not wise for us to be too microscopic in endeavoring
+            to find disagreeable and annoying things, still less to
+            assume that everything is waxing worse and worse,
+            and that there is little or no hope." He himself was full
+            of hope which no shortcomings of the Government
+            was able to quench. He was besides beginning to
+            understand the perplexities which beset the administration,
+            to appreciate the problem which confronted
+            the great statesman who was at the head of the
+            nation. He was getting a clear insight into the workings
+            of Lincoln's mind, and into the causes which
+            gave to his political pilotage an air of timidity and
+            indecision.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "Supposing Mr. Lincoln could answer to-night,"
+            continued the pioneer in reply to his less patient and
+            hopeful coadjutors, "and we should say to him:
+            'Sir, with the power in your hands, slavery being the
+            cause of the rebellion beyond all controversy, why
+            don't you put the trump of jubilee to your lips, and
+            proclaim universal freedom?'&#8212;possibly he might
+            answer: 'Gentlemen, I understand this matter quite
+            as well as you do. I do not know that I differ in
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_378" id="P_378" title="P_378"></a>
+            opinion from you; but will you insure me the support
+            of a united North if I do as you bid me? Are all
+            parties and all sects at the North so convinced and so
+            united on this point that they will stand by the Government?
+            If so, give me the evidence of it, and I will
+            strike the blow. But, gentlemen, looking over the
+            entire North, and seeing in all your towns and cities
+            papers representing a considerable, if not a formidable
+            portion of the people, menacing and bullying the
+            Government in case it dared to liberate the slaves,
+            even as a matter of self-preservation, I do not feel
+            that the hour has yet come that will render it safe for
+            the Government to take that step.' I am willing to
+            believe that something of this kind weighs in the
+            mind of the President and the Cabinet, and that there
+            is some ground for hesitancy as a mere matter of
+            political expediency." This admirable and discriminating
+            support of the President finds another capital
+            illustration in weighty words of his in answer to animadversions
+            of Prof. Francis W. Newman, of England,
+            directed against Mr. Lincoln. Says Garrison:
+            "In no instance, however, have I censured him (Lincoln)
+            for not acting upon the highest abstract principles
+            of justice and humanity, and disregarding his
+            Constitutional obligations. His freedom to follow
+            his convictions of duty as an individual is one thing&#8212;as
+            the President of the United States, it is limited by
+            the functions of his office, for the people do not elect
+            a President to play the part of reformer or philanthropist,
+            nor to enforce upon the nation his own
+            peculiar ethical or humanitary ideas without regard
+            to his oath or their will."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Great indeed was the joy of the pioneer when President
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_379" id="P_379" title="P_379"></a>
+            Lincoln on January 1, 1863, issued his Emancipation
+            Proclamation. The same sagacious and statesmanlike
+            handling of men and things distinguished
+            his conduct after the edict of freedom was made as
+            before. When the question of Reconstruction was
+            broached in an administrative initiative in Louisiana,
+            the President gave great offence to the more
+            radical members of his party, and to many Abolitionists
+            by his proposal to readmit Louisiana to Statehood
+            in the Union with no provision for the extension of
+            the suffrage to the negro. This exhibition of the
+            habitual caution and conservatism of Mr. Lincoln
+            brought upon him a storm of criticism and remonstrances,
+            but not from Garrison. There was
+            that in him which appreciated and approved the
+            evident disposition of the President to make haste
+            slowly in departing from the American principle of
+            local self-government even in the interest of liberty.
+            Then, too, he had his misgivings in relation to the virtue
+            of the fiat method of transforming chattels into
+            citizens. "Chattels personal may be instantly translated
+            from the auction-block into freemen," he remarked
+            in defence of the administrative policy in the
+            reconstruction of Louisiana, "but when were they
+            ever taken at the same time to the ballot-box, and invested
+            with all political rights and immunities? According
+            to the laws of development and progress it is
+            not practicable.... Besides, I doubt whether he has
+            the Constitutional right to decide this matter. Ever
+            since the Government was organized, the right of suffrage
+            has been determined by each State in the Union
+            for itself, so that there is no uniformity in regard to it.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            " ... In honestly seeking to preserve the Union, it
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_380" id="P_380" title="P_380"></a>
+            is not for President Lincoln to seek, by a special
+            edict applied to a particular State or locality, to do
+            violence to a universal rule, accepted and acted upon
+            from the beginning till now by the States in their individual
+            sovereignty.... Nor, if the freed blacks
+            were admitted to the polls by Presidential fiat do I
+            see any permanent advantage likely to be secured by
+            it; for, submitted to as a necessity at the outset, as
+            soon as the State was organized and left to manage
+            its own affairs, the white population with their superior
+            intelligence, wealth, and power, would unquestionably
+            alter the franchise in accordance with their
+            prejudices, and exclude those thus summarily brought
+            to the polls. Coercion would gain nothing." A very
+            remarkable prophecy, which has since been exactly
+            fulfilled in the Southern States. Garrison, however,
+            in the subsequent struggle between Congress and Mr.
+            Lincoln's successor over this selfsame point in its
+            wider relation to all of the Southern States, took
+            sides against Andrew Johnson and in favor of the Congressional
+            fiat method of transforming chattels personal
+            into citizens. The elimination of Abraham Lincoln
+            from, and the introduction of Andrew Johnson
+            upon the National stage at this juncture, did undoubtedly
+            effect such a change of circumstances, as
+            to make the Congressional fiat method a political necessity.
+            It was distinctly the less of two evils which
+            at the moment was thrust upon the choice of the
+            Northern people.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The same breadth and liberality of view, which
+            marked his treatment of Mr. Lincoln upon the subject
+            of emancipation and of that of reconstruction,
+            marked his treatment also of other questions which
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_381" id="P_381" title="P_381"></a>
+            the suppression of the rebellion presented to his consideration.
+            Although a radical peace man, how just
+            was his attitude toward the men and the measures
+            of the War for the Union. Nothing that he did
+            evinced on his part greater tact or toleration than his
+            admirable behavior in this respect. To his eldest son,
+            George Thompson, who was no adherent of the doctrine
+            of non-resistance, and who was commissioned by
+            Governor Andrew, a second lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth
+            Massachusetts Regiment, the pioneer wrote expressing
+            his regret that the young lieutenant had not
+            been able "to adopt those principles of peace which
+            are so sacred and divine to my soul, yet you will bear
+            me witness that I have not laid a straw in your way
+            to prevent your acting up to your own highest convictions
+            of duty." Such was precisely his attitude
+            toward the North who, he believed, in waging war
+            against the South for the maintenance of the Union,
+            was acting up to her own highest convictions of duty.
+            And not a straw would he place across her path, under
+            those circumstances, though every step bore witness
+            to one of the most gigantic and destructive wars in
+            history.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Garrison did not have to wait for posthumous appreciation
+            from his countrymen. His steady and
+            discriminating support of the Government, and his
+            ardent sympathy with the arms of the North won him
+            appreciation in his lifetime. Indeed, there came to him,
+            if not popularity, something closely akin to it during
+            the war. His visit to the capital in June, 1864, well
+            illustrates the marvelous changes which had taken
+            place in the Union touching himself and his cause.
+            On his way to Washington the pioneer stopped over
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_382" id="P_382" title="P_382"></a>
+            at Baltimore, which he had not revisited for thirty-four
+            years, and where the Republican Convention,
+            which renominated Lincoln was in session. He
+            watched the proceedings from the gallery, and witnessed
+            with indescribable emotions the enthusiastic
+            demonstrations of joy with which the whole body of
+            delegates greeted the radical anti-slavery resolution
+            of the Convention. To the reformer it was "a full
+            indorsement of all the Abolition fanaticism and
+            incendiarism" with which he had been branded for
+            years. The jail where he had been held a prisoner
+            for seven weeks, like the evil which he had denounced,
+            was gone, and a new one stood in its place,
+            which knew not Garrison. In the court-house where
+            he was tried and sentenced he was received by a
+            United States judge as an illustrious visitor. Judge
+            Bond hunted up the old indictment against the junior
+            editor of the
+            <i>Genius of Universal Emancipation</i>, where
+            it had lain for a generation, during which that guiltless
+            prisoner had started a movement which had
+            shaken the nation by its mighty power, and slavery
+            out of it. "Eight or nine of the original jurymen
+            who gave the verdict against Mr. Garrison are still
+            living," wrote Theodore Tilton, at the time, to the
+            <i>Independent</i>, "and Judge Bond jocosely
+            threatened to summon them all into Court, that Mr. Garrison might
+            forgive them in public."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At Washington the pioneer's reception seemed to
+            him like a dream. And no wonder. He was heartily
+            received by President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton.
+            He was accorded the most marked attentions on the
+            floor of both branches of Congress. On every side
+            there rose up witnesses to the vastness of the revolution
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_383" id="P_383" title="P_383"></a>
+            which had taken place, and to the fact that the
+            great Abolitionist was no longer esteemed an enemy
+            of the Republic but one of its illustrious citizens.
+            This was evinced in a signal and memorable manner
+            a little later when the National Government extended
+            to him an invitation to visit Fort Sumter as its guest
+            on the occasion of the re-raising over it of the Stars
+            and Stripes. He went, and so also went George
+            Thompson, his lifelong friend and coadjutor, who
+            was the recipient of a similar invitation from the
+            Secretary of War.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            This visit of Mr. Garrison, taken in all its dramatic
+            features, is more like a chapter of fiction, with its
+            strange and improbable incidents and situations, than
+            a story of real life. The pioneer entered Georgia
+            and trod the streets of Savannah, whose legislature
+            thirty-three years before had set a price upon his
+            head. In Charleston he witnessed the vast ruin which
+            the war had wrought, realized how tremendous had
+            been the death-struggle between Freedom and
+            Slavery, and saw everywhere he turned that slavery
+            was beaten, was dead in its proud, rebellious center.
+            Thousands upon thousands of the people whose
+            wrongs he had made his own, whose woes he had
+            carried in his soul for thirty-five years, greeted him,
+            their deliverer, in all stages of joy and thanksgiving.
+            They poured out at his feet their overflowing love and
+            gratitude. They covered him with flowers, bunches
+            of jessamines, and honeysuckles and roses in the
+            streets of Charleston, hard by the grave where Calhoun
+            lay buried. "'Only listen to that in Charleston
+            streets!' exclaimed Garrison, on hearing the band of
+            one of the black regiments playing the air of 'Old
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_384" id="P_384" title="P_384"></a>
+            John Brown', and we both broke into tears," relates
+            Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, who stood by the side of
+            the pioneer that April morning under the spire of
+            St. Michael's church.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "The Government has its hold upon the throat of
+            the monster, slavery," Mr. Garrison assured an audience
+            of nearly four thousand freedmen, "and is
+            strangling the life out of it." It was even so. Richmond
+            had fallen, and Lee had surrendered. The
+            early and total collapse of the rebellion was impending.
+            The Government was, indeed, strangling the
+            life out of it and out of slavery, its cause and mainspring.
+            The monster had, however, a crowning horror
+            to add to a long list of horrors before fetching its
+            last gasp. The assassination of President Lincoln
+            was the dying blow of slavery, aimed through him at
+            the Union which he had maintained. Appalling as
+            was the deed, it was vain, for the Union was saved,
+            and liberty forever secured to the new-born nation.
+            As Garrison remarked at the tomb of Calhoun, on
+            the morning that Lincoln died, "Down into a deeper
+            grave than this slavery has gone, and for it there is
+            no resurrection."
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_385" id="P_385" title="P_385"></a></p>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="chap21"></a>
+            CHAPTER XXI
+            <br><br><br><br><br><br>
+            THE LAST.
+
+         </h2>
+         <p>
+            "Garrison," said George Thompson on the steamer
+            which was conveying the Government party out of
+            Charleston Harbor on their return trip; "Garrison
+            you began your warfare at the North in the face of
+            rotten eggs and brickbats. Behold you end it at
+            Charleston on a bed of roses!" The period of persecution
+            had indeed ended, the reign of missiles had
+            ceased, but with the roses there came to the pioneer
+            not a few thorns. Bitter was the sorrow which visited
+            him in the winter of 1863. Without warning his
+            wife was on the night of December 29th, stricken with
+            paralysis, which crippled her for the rest of her life.
+            No words can adequately express all that she had
+            been to the reformer in his struggle with slavery.
+            She was a providential woman raised up to be the wife
+            and helpmate of her husband, the strenuous man
+            of God. "As a wife for a period of more
+            than twenty-six years," he wrote her on the completion
+            of her fiftieth year, "you have left nothing
+            undone to smooth the rugged pathway of my public
+            career&#8212;to render home the all-powerful magnet of
+            attraction, and the focal point of domestic enjoyment&#8212;to
+            make my welfare and happiness at all times
+            a matter of tender solicitude&#8212;and to demonstrate the
+            depth and fixedness of that love which you so long
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_386" id="P_386" title="P_386"></a>
+            ago plighted to me.... Whatever of human
+            infirmity we may have seen in each other, I believe
+            few have enjoyed more unalloyed bliss in wedded
+            life than ourselves." For twelve years after that sad
+            December night the lovely invalid was the object of
+            her husband's most tender and assiduous care. And
+            when at last she left him in January, 1876, the loneliness
+            which fell upon his heart seemed more than he
+            could bear.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Differences with old associates was a grievous thorn
+            which came to the pioneer during the progress of the
+            war. The first marked disagreement between him
+            and them occurred at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts
+            Anti-Slavery Society not a month after
+            his wife's prostration. The clash came between the
+            leader and his great coadjutor Wendell Phillips over
+            a resolution introduced by the latter, condemning the
+            Government and declaring its readiness "to sacrifice
+            the interest and honor of the North to secure a sham
+            peace." Garrison objected to the severity of this
+            charge. He believed that there was but one party at
+            the North of which it was true, and that was the
+            party of Copperheads. He endeavored, therefore, to
+            modify the harshness of the resolution by giving it
+            a more moderate tone. But the anti-Lincoln feeling
+            of the Convention proved too strong for his resistance,
+            and Mr. Phillips's resolution was finally adopted
+            as the sentiment of the society.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The discordant note thus struck grew sharper and
+            louder during the year. The divergence of views in
+            the ranks of the Abolitionists touching the Southern
+            policy of the Administration grew wider, until the
+            subject of Mr. Lincoln's renomination sundered the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_387" id="P_387" title="P_387"></a>
+            little band into two wings&#8212;one for renomination,
+            headed by Garrison, the other against renomination,
+            and led by Phillips. These differences presently
+            developed into, if not positive antagonism, then something
+            closely akin to it between the two wings and
+            the two leaders. No little heat was generated from
+            the strong, sharp things said on both sides. Garrison
+            was wiser than Phillips in his unwillingness to have
+            the country, in the homely speech of the President,
+            "swap horses while crossing a stream."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Serious differences of opinion sprang up also between
+            the two leaders and the two wings in relation
+            to the proper time for dissolving the anti-slavery
+            organizations. Garrison held on one side that this
+            time had come with the adoption of the thirteenth
+            amendment abolishing slavery, while Phillips held on
+            the other that the societies should continue their
+            operations until the negro was invested with the right
+            to vote. And here it seems that Phillips was wiser
+            than Garrison in his purpose not to abandon in 1865
+            the old machinery for influencing public sentiment
+            in the negro's interest.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            At the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery
+            Society, in May, 1865, Garrison contended for its dissolution,
+            declaring that "Nothing is more clear in
+            my own mind, nothing has ever been more clear, than
+            that this is the fitting time to dissolve our organization,
+            and to mingle with the millions of our fellow-countrymen
+            in one common effort to establish justice
+            and liberty throughout the land." For two days the
+            debate upon this question raged in the convention,
+            but when the vote was taken it was found that a large
+            majority of the delegates agreed with Mr. Phillips.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_388" id="P_388" title="P_388"></a>
+            Mr. Garrison was, nevertheless, re&euml;lected President,
+            but declined and withdrew from the society. The
+            controversy was renewed at the annual meeting of the
+            Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in January, 1866.
+            But here again a large majority voted against dissolution.
+            Warm words fell from both Garrison and
+            Phillips and their respective supporters, which tried
+            sorely the friendship of the two leaders.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In accordance with his views touching the discontinuance
+            of the anti-slavery societies, Garrison discontinued
+            the publication of the <i>Liberator</i> after the
+            completion of its thirty-fifth volume in December,
+            1865. He did not mean by this act to cease his
+            labors for the negro. Far from it. For he, like
+            Phillips, stood for his absolute equality before the
+            law. But he perceived that old things had passed
+            away, and with them the need of the old instruments,
+            and that what remained to be done for the black man
+            required to be done with new means. "The object,"
+            said he in his valedictory, "for which the
+            <i>Liberator</i>
+            was commenced, the extermination of chattel slavery,
+            having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me
+            specially appropriate to let its existence cover the
+            historic period of the great struggle; leaving what
+            remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation
+            to other instrumentalites (of which I hope to
+            avail myself), under new auspices, with more abundant
+            means, and with millions instead of hundreds
+            for allies."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            With the discontinuance of the <i>Liberator</i>
+            Garrison's occupation, from which he had derived a regular
+            though somewhat uncertain income for the support
+            of his family, was gone. He was not in destitute circumstances,
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_389" id="P_389" title="P_389"></a>
+            however, thanks to the generosity of
+            friends, who had already secured him the home in
+            Roxbury, where he spent the remaining years of his
+            life. He had also been one of the legatees under the
+            will of Charles F. Hovey, who left about forty thousand
+            dollars to the anti-slavery cause. But the age
+            of the reformer, he was then sixty, and the state of
+            his health, which was much impaired, together with
+            the helplessness of his wife, made some provision for
+            his and her support, other than the little which he
+            possessed, a matter of anxious thought on the part
+            of himself and his friends. He had given thirty-five
+            years of his life to the public good. His services to
+            his country and to the world were above all price, all
+            money considerations. It was felt that to him who
+            had given so much to the world, the world should in
+            his need make some substantial acknowledgement in
+            return.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            Some of his countrymen, accordingly, conceived
+            the plan of a national testimonial to the philanthropist,
+            which should ensure to him during the rest of
+            his life a competence.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            A committee having this end in view was organized
+            March 28, 1866, at the house of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch.
+            John A. Andrew, who was its chairman, wrote
+            the address to the public, to which were appended
+            the chief names in the politics and literature of the
+            land. Nearly two years afterward, on March 10, 1868,
+            the committee were able to place in Mr. Garrison's
+            hands the handsome sum of thirty-one thousand dollars
+            with a promise of possibly one or two thousand
+            more a little later. To the energy and devotedness of
+            one man, the Rev. Samuel May, Jr., more than to any
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_390" id="P_390" title="P_390"></a>
+            other, and perhaps than all others put together, this
+            noble achievement was due. The pioneer was
+            deeply moved at the high and generous character of
+            the recognition accorded his labors. "Little, indeed,
+            did I know or anticipate how prolonged or how virulent
+            would be the struggle," said he in his reply to
+            the committee, "when I lifted up the standard of
+            immediate emancipation, and essayed to rouse the
+            nation to a sense of its guilt and danger. But having
+            put my hands to the plow, how could I look
+            back? For, in a cause so righteous, I could not
+            doubt that, having turned the furrows, if I sowed in
+            tears I should one day reap in joy. But, whether
+            permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery
+            or not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing
+            that was not clearly in accordance with justice and
+            humanity, sometime or other, if remembered at all,
+            I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen."
+            The names of John Bright, John Stuart Mill,
+            William E. Foster, and Samuel Morley, among the
+            contributors to the fund, lent to the testimonial an
+            international character.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            In May, 1867, Garrison went abroad the fourth
+            time, and traveled in Great Britain and on the Continent.
+            Everywhere that he went he was received as
+            an illustrious visitor and as a benefactor of mankind.
+            At a breakfast in London which "was intended to commemorate
+            one of the greatest of the great triumphs
+            of freedom, and to do honor to a most eminent instrument
+            in the achievement of that freedom," and at
+            which were gathered the genius, the wealth, and
+            aristocracy of England and Scotland, John Bright,
+            who presided, welcomed the illustrious guest "with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_391" id="P_391" title="P_391"></a>
+            a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for
+            him and for his noble associates, both men and
+            women," and ventured to speak a verdict which he
+            believed would be sanctioned by all mankind, viz.,
+            that "William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow-laborers
+            in that world's work&#8212;are they not
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="lg">"On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed?"<br><br></div>
+         <p>
+            With the discontinuance of the <i>Liberator</i>
+            Garrison's active career came to a close. But his sympathetic
+            interest in the freedmen, temperance, the cause of
+            women, and in other reformatory enterprises continued
+            unabated. He watched with stern and vigilant
+            eye, and bleeding heart the new rebellion at the
+            South whose purpose was the nullification of the civil
+            and political rights of the blacks, and the overthrow
+            of the military rule of the National Government in
+            the Southern States. He did not see what time has
+            since made clear that a genuine reconstruction
+            of the South, and the ultimate solution of
+            the Southern problem had, in accordance with
+            social laws, to proceed from within, from the South
+            itself, not from without and from Washington. The
+            old fire again burned in his speech as tidings of the
+            violence of the whites and the sufferings of the blacks
+            reached him from the former slave section. Indeed,
+            the last written words of his, addressed to the public,
+            were words in defence of the race to whose freedom
+            he had devoted his life&#8212;words which, trumpet-tongued
+            raised anew the rallying-cry of "Liberty and
+            equal rights for each, for all, and for ever, wherever
+            the lot of man is cast within our broad domains!"
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            True to his grand motto "My country is the world!
+            my countrymen are all mankind," he espoused the
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_392" id="P_392" title="P_392"></a>
+            cause of the Chinese, and denounced the National policy
+            of excluding them on the ground of race from the
+            republic but a few months before his death. The anti-Chinese
+            movement appeared to him "narrow, conceited,
+            selfish, anti-human, anti-Christian." "Against
+            this hateful spirit of caste," wrote the dying philanthropist,
+            "I have earnestly protested for the last fifty
+            years, wherever it has developed itself, especially in
+            the case of another class, for many generations still
+            more contemned, degraded, and oppressed; and the
+            time has fully come to deal with it as an offence to
+            God, and a curse to the world wherever it seeks to
+            bear sway."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            On the same grand principle of human fraternity
+            Mr. Garrison dealt with the questions of trade and
+            tariffs also. He believed in liberty, civil, religious,
+            and commercial. He was in fact a radical free trader
+            on moral and humanitary grounds. "He is the most
+            sagacious political economist," was a remark of his,
+            "who contends for the highest justice, the most far-reaching
+            equality, a close adherence to natural laws,
+            and the removal of all those restrictions which foster
+            national pride and selfishness." And here is another
+            like unto it: "Believing that the interests of the
+            American people in no wise materially differ from
+            those of the people of any other country, and denying
+            the rectitude or feasibility of building ourselves up
+            at their expense by an exclusive policy, obstructing
+            the natural flow of material exchanges, I avow myself
+            to be a radical free trader, even to the extent of
+            desiring the abolition of all custom-houses, as now
+            constituted, throughout the world. That event is far
+            distant, undoubtedly, but I believe it will come with
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_393" id="P_393" title="P_393"></a>
+            the freedom and enlightenment of mankind. My
+            faith is absolute that it will prove advantageous to
+            every branch of industry, whether at home or abroad."
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            The closing years of the reformer's life were years
+            of great bodily suffering. A disease of the kidneys
+            and a chronic catarrh of the head made steady
+            inroads upon the resources of his constitution, made
+            life at times a wheel on which he was racked with
+            physical tortures, all of which he bore with the utmost
+            fortitude and serenity of spirit. "The longer I
+            live, the longer I desire to live," he wrote Samuel J.
+            May, "and the more I see the desirableness of living;
+            yet certainly not in this frail body, but just as it shall
+            please the dear Father of us all." One by one he
+            saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle
+            as now one and now another dropped by the way.
+            And it was he or Mr. Phillips, or both, who spoke the
+            last loving words over their coffins. As the little
+            band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy
+            awoke in the soul of the leader left behind, the joy of
+            anticipation, of glad reunion beyond the grave. "How
+            unspeakably pleasant it will be to greet them, and to
+            be greeted by them on the other side of the line," it
+            seemed to him as he, too, began to descend toward
+            the shore of the swift, silent river. The deep, sweet
+            love for his mother returned with youthful freshness
+            and force to him, the man of seventy-three years, at
+            the thought of coming again into her presence. A
+            strange yearning was tugging at his heart for all the
+            dear ones gone before. The fond mother, who had
+            watched over his childhood, and the fond wife, who
+            had been the stay of his manhood, were the first two
+            whom he yearned to meet after crossing the river.
+            <a class="newpage" name="P_394" id="P_394" title="P_394"></a>
+            The joyous thought of his approaching meeting
+            with those white-souled women cheered and comforted
+            the reformer amid excruciating physical sufferings.
+            Worn out by heroic and Herculean labors for
+            mankind and by a complication of diseases, he more
+            and more longed for rest, to go home to beloved
+            ones as he expressed it. To the question, "What do
+            you want, Mr. Garrison?" asked by the attending
+            physician on the day before his death, he replied,
+            weariedly, "To finish it up!" And this he did at the
+            home of his daughter, Mrs. Henry Villard, in New
+            York, in the midst of children and grandchildren,
+            near midnight, on May 24, 1879.
+
+         </p>
+         <p>
+            "While that ear could listen," said Wendell
+            Phillips over the illustrious champion of liberty as
+            he lay dead in the old church in Roxbury; "While
+            that ear could listen, God gave what he has rarely
+            given to man, the plaudits and prayers of four millions
+            of victims." But as he lay there he had, besides,
+            the plaudits and praise of an emancipated nation.
+            The plaudits and praise of an emancipated race, mingling
+            melodiously with those of an emancipated nation
+            made noble music about his bier. In the city, where
+            forty-three years before he was mobbed, the flags
+            floated at half-mast in his honor; and on Beacon
+            Hill, where the Government once desired his destruction,
+            the voice of appreciation was heard and tokens
+            of the State's sorrow met the eye. Great in life
+            great also in death was William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+         </p>
+         <div class="poem">
+            <h3><a name="Lowell"></a></h3>
+            <div class="lg">"Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!<br>See one straightforward conscience put in pawn<br>To win a world; see the obedient sphere<br>By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!<br><br></div>
+            <div class="lg"><a class="newpage" name="P_395" id="P_395" title="P_395"></a>Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,<br>And by the present's lips repeated still,<br>In our own single manhood to be bold,<br>Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"<br><br></div>
+         </div>
+      </div>
+      <div class="teidiv">
+         <h2><a name="index"></a>
+            INDEX.
+
+         </h2>
+         <table summary="index">
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_396" id="P_396" title="P_396"></a><a class="newpage" name="P_397" id="P_397" title="P_397"></a>
+                  Adams, Charles Francis,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_372" class="ref">372</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Adams, John Quincy,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_054" class="ref">54</a>, <a href="#P_250" class="ref">250</a>-<a href="#P_251" class="ref">251</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Adams, Nehemiah,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_278" class="ref">278</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Adams, William,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_292" class="ref">292</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Alcott, A. Bronson,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_090" class="ref">90</a>, <a href="#P_091" class="ref">91</a>, <a href="#P_134" class="ref">134</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  American Anti-Slavery Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_174" class="ref">174</a>, <a href="#P_311" class="ref">311</a>, <a href="#P_340" class="ref">340</a>, <a href="#P_373" class="ref">373</a>, <a href="#P_387" class="ref">387</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Andover Seminary,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_190" class="ref">190</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Andrew, John A.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_381" class="ref">381</a>, <a href="#P_389" class="ref">389</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Annexation of Texas,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_335" class="ref">335</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Anti-Slavery Standard</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_299" class="ref">299</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Atchison, David,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>, <a href="#P_374" class="ref">374</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Attucks, Crispus,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_227" class="ref">227</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Bacon, Leonard W.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_162" class="ref">162</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Bartlett, Ezekiel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_018" class="ref">18</a>, <a href="#P_020" class="ref">20</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Beecher, Lyman,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_110" class="ref">110</a>, <a href="#P_111" class="ref">111</a>, <a href="#P_161" class="ref">161</a>, <a href="#P_189" class="ref">189</a>, <a href="#P_190" class="ref">190</a>, <a href="#P_269" class="ref">269</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Benson, George,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_194" class="ref">194</a>, <a href="#P_263" class="ref">263</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Benson, George W.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_168" class="ref">168</a>, <a href="#P_178" class="ref">178</a>, <a href="#P_234" class="ref">234</a>, <a href="#P_260" class="ref">260</a>, <a href="#P_281" class="ref">281</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Benson, Henry E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_212" class="ref">212</a>, <a href="#P_263" class="ref">263</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Benton, Thomas H.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_105" class="ref">105</a>-<a href="#P_106" class="ref">106</a>, <a href="#P_252" class="ref">252</a>, <a href="#P_253" class="ref">253</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Bird, Frank W.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_361" class="ref">361</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Birney, James G.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>, <a href="#P_298" class="ref">298</a>, <a href="#P_320" class="ref">320</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Bond, Judge,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_382" class="ref">382</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_217" class="ref">217</a>, <a href="#P_233" class="ref">233</a>, <a href="#P_240" class="ref">240</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Bourne, Rev. George,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_108" class="ref">108</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_398" id="P_398" title="P_398"></a>
+                  Bowditch, Henry I.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_233" class="ref">233</a>, <a href="#P_349" class="ref">349</a>, <a href="#P_389" class="ref">389</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Bright, John,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_390" class="ref">390</a>, <a href="#P_391" class="ref">391</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Brooks, Preston S.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_359" class="ref">359</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Brown, John,
+                  <a href="#P_365" class="ref">365</a>-<a href="#P_368" class="ref">368</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Buffum, Arnold,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_139" class="ref">139</a>, <a href="#P_177" class="ref">177</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Burleigh, Charles C.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_221" class="ref">221</a>, <a href="#P_223" class="ref">223</a>, <a href="#P_235" class="ref">235</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Buxton, Thomas Fowell,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_152" class="ref">152</a>, <a href="#P_154" class="ref">154</a>, <a href="#P_204" class="ref">204</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Calhoun, John C.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_246" class="ref">246</a>, <a href="#P_252" class="ref">252</a>, <a href="#P_315" class="ref">315</a>, <a href="#P_335" class="ref">335</a>, <a href="#P_336" class="ref">336</a>, <a href="#P_337" class="ref">337</a>, <a href="#P_352" class="ref">352</a>, <a href="#P_353" class="ref">353</a>, <a href="#P_384" class="ref">384</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Campbell, John Reid,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_225" class="ref">225</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Channing, Dr. W.E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_110" class="ref">110</a>, <a href="#P_111" class="ref">111</a>, <a href="#P_256" class="ref">256</a>, <a href="#P_316" class="ref">316</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Chapman, Maria Weston,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_223" class="ref">223</a>, <a href="#P_258" class="ref">258</a>, <a href="#P_259" class="ref">259</a>, <a href="#P_277" class="ref">277</a>, <a href="#P_292" class="ref">292</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Chase, Salmon P.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Child, David Lee,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_134" class="ref">134</a>, <a href="#P_136" class="ref">136</a>, <a href="#P_138" class="ref">138</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Child, Lydia Maria,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>, <a href="#P_210" class="ref">210</a>, <a href="#P_277" class="ref">277</a>, <a href="#P_292" class="ref">292</a>, <a href="#P_309" class="ref">309</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Clay, Henry,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_339" class="ref">339</a>, <a href="#P_348" class="ref">348</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Clerical Appeal,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_282" class="ref">282</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Clarkson, Thomas,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_155" class="ref">155</a>, <a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Coffin, Joshua,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_139" class="ref">139</a>, <a href="#P_198" class="ref">198</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Cobb, Howell,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Collier, Rev. William,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_040" class="ref">40</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Collins, John A.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_298" class="ref">298</a>, <a href="#P_299" class="ref">299</a>, <a href="#P_300" class="ref">300</a>, <a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Colonization Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_060" class="ref">60</a>, <a href="#P_072" class="ref">72</a>, <a href="#P_144" class="ref">144</a>-<a href="#P_156" class="ref">156</a>, <a href="#P_162" class="ref">162</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Colored Seaman,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_313" class="ref">313</a>-<a href="#P_314" class="ref">314</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Colorphobia,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_157" class="ref">157</a>-<a href="#P_169" class="ref">169</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Colver, Nathaniel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Commercial Advertiser</i>, New York,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_170" class="ref">170</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Courier</i>, Boston,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_128" class="ref">128</a>, <a href="#P_129" class="ref">129</a>, <a href="#P_217" class="ref">217</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Courier and Enquirer</i>, New York,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_171" class="ref">171</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Corwin, Thomas,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_372" class="ref">372</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Cox, Abraham L.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_185" class="ref">185</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>, <a href="#P_209" class="ref">209</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Crandall, Prudence,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_165" class="ref">165</a>-<a href="#P_168" class="ref">168</a>, <a href="#P_199" class="ref">199</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Cresson, Elliott,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_150" class="ref">150</a>, <a href="#P_151" class="ref">151</a>, <a href="#P_153" class="ref">153</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Cropper, James,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_154" class="ref">154</a>, <a href="#P_205" class="ref">205</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Curtin, Andrew G.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_372" class="ref">372</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Curtis, Benjamin R.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_354" class="ref">354</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Cuyler, Rev. Theodore L.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_384" class="ref">384</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_399" id="P_399" title="P_399"></a>
+                  Davis, Jefferson,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>, <a href="#P_376" class="ref">376</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Disunion Convention at Worcester,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_361" class="ref">361</a>-<a href="#P_363" class="ref">363</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Dole, Ebenezer,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_086" class="ref">86</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Douglas, Stephen A.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_353" class="ref">353</a>, <a href="#P_365" class="ref">365</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Douglass, Frederick,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_300" class="ref">300</a>, <a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Dred Scott Case,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_364" class="ref">364</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Duncan, Rev, James,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_108" class="ref">108</a>-<a href="#P_109" class="ref">109</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Emancipator, The</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_283" class="ref">283</a>, <a href="#P_285" class="ref">285</a>, <a href="#P_286" class="ref">286</a>, <a href="#P_328" class="ref">328</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Emerson, Ralph Waldo,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_281" class="ref">281</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Evening Post</i>, New York,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_208" class="ref">208</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Everett, Edward,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_030" class="ref">30</a>, <a href="#P_031" class="ref">31</a>, <a href="#P_243" class="ref">243</a>, <a href="#P_244" class="ref">244</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Farnham, Martha,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_016" class="ref">16</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Fessenden, Samuel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_141" class="ref">141</a>, <a href="#P_148" class="ref">148</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Follen, Prof. Charles,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_201" class="ref">201</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>, <a href="#P_247" class="ref">247</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Forten, James,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_144" class="ref">144</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Foster, Stephen S.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>, <a href="#P_375" class="ref">375</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Foster, William E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_390" class="ref">390</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Fr&eacute;mont, John C.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_361" class="ref">361</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Free Press</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_027" class="ref">27</a>, <a href="#P_034" class="ref">34</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Fugitive Slave Law, effect of,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_345" class="ref">345</a>-<a href="#P_347" class="ref">347</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Fugitive Slaves, The Crafts, Shadrach, Sims, Burns,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_349" class="ref">349</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Fuller, John E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_219" class="ref">219</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Furness, Rev. W.H.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, Abijah,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_012" class="ref">12</a>-<a href="#P_015" class="ref">15</a>, <a href="#P_018" class="ref">18</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, Charles Follen,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_331" class="ref">331</a>-<a href="#P_332" class="ref">332</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, Francis Jackson,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_330" class="ref">330</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, George Thompson,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_381" class="ref">381</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, Helen Eliza,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_194" class="ref">194</a>-<a href="#P_196" class="ref">196</a>, <a href="#P_219" class="ref">219</a>, <a href="#P_297" class="ref">297</a>, <a href="#P_331" class="ref">331</a>, <a href="#P_385" class="ref">385</a>-<a href="#P_386" class="ref">386</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, James,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_019" class="ref">19</a>, <a href="#P_020" class="ref">20</a>, <a href="#P_302" class="ref">302</a>-<a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, Joseph,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_011" class="ref">11</a>, <a href="#P_012" class="ref">12</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, Wendell Phillips,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_297" class="ref">297</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, William Lloyd,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Early years,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_011" class="ref">11</a>-<a href="#P_026" class="ref">26</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Publishes <i>Free Press,</i></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_027" class="ref">27</a>-<a href="#P_034" class="ref">34</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;seeks work in Boston,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_035" class="ref">35</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;nominates Harrison Gray Otis for Congress,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_035" class="ref">35</a>-<a href="#P_036" class="ref">36</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;temperance and the <i>Philanthropist</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_039" class="ref">39</a>-<a href="#P_044" class="ref">44</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_400" id="P_400" title="P_400"></a>
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;meets Lundy,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_044" class="ref">44</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;early attitude on the slavery question,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_046" class="ref">46</a>-<a href="#P_050" class="ref">50</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;on war,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_051" class="ref">51</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;first experience with ministers on the subject of slavery,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_052" class="ref">52</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Anti-slavery Committee of twenty,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_053" class="ref">53</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;goes to Bennington, Vt., to edit the <i>Journal of the Times</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_054" class="ref">54</a>-<a href="#P_055" class="ref">55</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;monster anti-slavery petition to Congress,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_055" class="ref">55</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;anticipates trouble with the South,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_056" class="ref">56</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;begins to preach freedom,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_056" class="ref">56</a>-<a href="#P_057" class="ref">57</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;agrees to help Lundy edit the <i>Genius of Universal Emancipation</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_058" class="ref">58</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Congregational Societies of Boston invite him to deliver Fourth-of-July oration,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_060" class="ref">60</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the address,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_061" class="ref">61</a>-<a href="#P_067" class="ref">67</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;goes to Baltimore,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_069" class="ref">69</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;raises the standard of immediate emancipation,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_070" class="ref">70</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Lundy and he agree to differ,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_071" class="ref">71</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;defends Free People of Color,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_073" class="ref">73</a>-<a href="#P_074" class="ref">74</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;makes acquaintance with barbarism of slavery,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_074" class="ref">74</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;ship <i>Francis</i> and Francis Todd,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_075" class="ref">75</a>-<a href="#P_077" class="ref">77</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;prosecuted and imprisoned,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_077" class="ref">77</a>-<a href="#P_083" class="ref">83</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;released,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_083" class="ref">83</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;visits the North,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_084" class="ref">84</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;returns to Baltimore but leaves it again for good,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_087" class="ref">87</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;lectures on slavery,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_088" class="ref">88</a>-<a href="#P_091" class="ref">91</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;character,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_092" class="ref">92</a>-<a href="#P_094" class="ref">94</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;incarnation of immediate emancipation,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_109" class="ref">109</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Dr. Lyman Beecher,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_110" class="ref">110</a>-<a href="#P_111" class="ref">111</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;difficulties in the way of publishing the <i>Liberator</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_112" class="ref">112</a>-<a href="#P_115" class="ref">115</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;his method of attacking slavery,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_118" class="ref">118</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;he is heard,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_120" class="ref">120</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Walker's appeal,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_121" class="ref">121</a>-<a href="#P_122" class="ref">122</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Nat Turner,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_125" class="ref">125</a>-<a href="#P_126" class="ref">126</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;southern excitement,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_127" class="ref">127</a>-<a href="#P_128" class="ref">128</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;New England Anti-Slavery Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_137" class="ref">137</a>-<a href="#P_138" class="ref">138</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;appointed agent,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_141" class="ref">141</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;thoughts on African colonization,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_143" class="ref">143</a>-<a href="#P_150" class="ref">150</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;first visit to England,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_152" class="ref">152</a>-<a href="#P_156" class="ref">156</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Mr. Buxton's mistake,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_152" class="ref">152</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;prejudice against color,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_157" class="ref">157</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Prudence Crandall,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_166" class="ref">166</a>, <a href="#P_168" class="ref">168</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;organization of New York City Anti-Slavery Society and beginning of the mob period,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_170" class="ref">170</a>-<a href="#P_172" class="ref">172</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;formation of American Anti-Slavery Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_174" class="ref">174</a>-<a href="#P_185" class="ref">185</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;declaration of sentiments,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_182" class="ref">182</a>-<a href="#P_184" class="ref">184</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;increased agitation,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_185" class="ref">185</a>-<a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;marriage,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_193" class="ref">193</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the wife,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_194" class="ref">194</a>-<a href="#P_196" class="ref">196</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;poverty of the <i>Liberator</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_197" class="ref">197</a>-<a href="#P_200" class="ref">200</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the paper displeases friends,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_201" class="ref">201</a>-<a href="#P_204" class="ref">204</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;George Thompson,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_204" class="ref">204</a>-<a href="#P_206" class="ref">206</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Faneuil Hall meeting to put the Abolitionists down,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_211" class="ref">211</a>-<a href="#P_215" class="ref">215</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;gallows for two,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_215" class="ref">215</a>-<a href="#P_216" class="ref">216</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the Broad-Cloth Mob,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_218" class="ref">218</a>-<a href="#P_232" class="ref">232</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Thompson leaves the country,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_238" class="ref">238</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;appears before a committee of Massachusetts legislature,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_245" class="ref">245</a>-<a href="#P_246" class="ref">246</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Pennsylvania Hall,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_257" class="ref">257</a>-<a href="#P_260" class="ref">260</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Marlboro Chapel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_260" class="ref">260</a>-<a href="#P_261" class="ref">261</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;ill health,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_263" class="ref">263</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Educational Convention of anti-slavery agents,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_264" class="ref">264</a>-<a href="#P_265" class="ref">265</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_401" id="P_401" title="P_401"></a>
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the Sabbath question,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_265" class="ref">265</a>-<a href="#P_272" class="ref">272</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;The woman's question,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_273" class="ref">273</a>-<a href="#P_280" class="ref">280</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;clerical appeal,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_282" class="ref">282</a>-<a href="#P_285" class="ref">285</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;anti-slavery political action,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_286" class="ref">286</a>-<a href="#P_288" class="ref">288</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;conflict between the New York and the Boston boards,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_289" class="ref">289</a>-<a href="#P_291" class="ref">291</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the World's Convention,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_292" class="ref">292</a>-<a href="#P_295" class="ref">295</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;visit to Scotland,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_295" class="ref">295</a>-<a href="#P_296" class="ref">296</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;in the lecture field,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_300" class="ref">300</a>-<a href="#P_301" class="ref">301</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;his brother James,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_302" class="ref">302</a>-<a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;meets charges of infidelity,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>-<a href="#P_304" class="ref">304</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Irish Address,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_304" class="ref">304</a>-<a href="#P_305" class="ref">305</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;no union with slaveholders,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_306" class="ref">306</a>-<a href="#P_312" class="ref">312</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Texas agitation,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_316" class="ref">316</a>-<a href="#P_318" class="ref">318</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;dislikes Liberty party,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_319" class="ref">319</a>-<a href="#P_323" class="ref">323</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;some characteristics,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_326" class="ref">326</a>-<a href="#P_334" class="ref">334</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;the Rynders Mob,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_340" class="ref">340</a>-<a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;publicly burns the United States Constitution,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_354" class="ref">354</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;answers objections to his disunionism,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_362" class="ref">362</a>-<a href="#P_363" class="ref">363</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Harper's Ferry,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_365" class="ref">365</a>-<a href="#P_367" class="ref">367</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;secession: first attitude to it,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_370" class="ref">370</a>-<a href="#P_373" class="ref">373</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;second attitude,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_373" class="ref">373</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;adapts himself to circumstances,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_373" class="ref">373</a>-<a href="#P_381" class="ref">381</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;Lincoln and emancipation,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_379" class="ref">379</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;visits Baltimore, Washington, Charleston,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_381" class="ref">381</a>-<a href="#P_384" class="ref">384</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;illness and death of his wife,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_385" class="ref">385</a>-<a href="#P_386" class="ref">386</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;differences with anti-slavery associates,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_386" class="ref">386</a>-<a href="#P_388" class="ref">388</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;discontinues the <i>Liberator</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_388" class="ref">388</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;national testimonial,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_389" class="ref">389</a>-<a href="#P_390" class="ref">390</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;fourth visit to England,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_390" class="ref">390</a>-<a href="#P_391" class="ref">391</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;champions cause of Southern negroes,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_391" class="ref">391</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;champions cause of Chinese,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_392" class="ref">392</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;believes in Free Trade,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_392" class="ref">392</a>-<a href="#P_393" class="ref">393</a>;
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  &nbsp;&nbsp;illness and death,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_393" class="ref">393</a>-<a href="#P_395" class="ref">395</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Garrison, William Lloyd, Jr.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_297" class="ref">297</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Gazette</i>, Boston,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_217" class="ref">217</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Genius of Universal Emancipation</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_058" class="ref">58</a>, <a href="#P_069" class="ref">69</a>, <a href="#P_071" class="ref">71</a>-<a href="#P_075" class="ref">75</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Gibbons, James S.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_309" class="ref">309</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Giddings, Joshua R.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Goodell, William,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>, <a href="#P_247" class="ref">247</a>, <a href="#P_248" class="ref">248</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Green, William, Jr.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_184" class="ref">184</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Grimk&eacute;, Angelina E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_235" class="ref">235</a>, <a href="#P_258" class="ref">258</a>-<a href="#P_259" class="ref">259</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Grimk&eacute;, Sisters,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_275" class="ref">275</a>-<a href="#P_280" class="ref">280</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Hale, John P.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>, <a href="#P_350" class="ref">350</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Hamilton, Alexander,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_104" class="ref">104</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Hamlin, Hannibal,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Haydon, Benjamin Robert,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_294" class="ref">294</a>, <a href="#P_295" class="ref">295</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Hayne, Robert Y.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_209" class="ref">209</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Herald</i>, Newburyport,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_021" class="ref">21</a>, <a href="#P_026" class="ref">26</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_402" id="P_402" title="P_402"></a><i>Herald</i>, New York,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_340" class="ref">340</a>, <a href="#P_341" class="ref">341</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Higginson, T.W.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_358" class="ref">358</a>-<a href="#P_359" class="ref">359</a>, <a href="#P_361" class="ref">361</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Hoar, Samuel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_314" class="ref">314</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Horton, Jacob,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_061" class="ref">61</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Hovey, Charles F.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_389" class="ref">389</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Jackson, Francis,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_233" class="ref">233</a>, <a href="#P_240" class="ref">240</a>-<a href="#P_241" class="ref">241</a>, <a href="#P_311" class="ref">311</a>-<a href="#P_312" class="ref">312</a>, <a href="#P_317" class="ref">317</a>, <a href="#P_341" class="ref">341</a>, <a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Jewett, Daniel E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_175" class="ref">175</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Jocelyn, Rev. Simeon Smith,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Johnson, Andrew,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_380" class="ref">380</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Johnson, Oliver,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_114" class="ref">114</a>, <a href="#P_134" class="ref">134</a>, <a href="#P_137" class="ref">137</a>, <a href="#P_139" class="ref">139</a>, <a href="#P_160" class="ref">160</a>-<a href="#P_161" class="ref">161</a>, <a href="#P_374" class="ref">374</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Journal</i>, Camden (S.C.),
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_128" class="ref">128</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Journal</i>, Louisville (Ky.),
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_120" class="ref">120</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Kansas, Struggle over,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_357" class="ref">357</a>-<a href="#P_358" class="ref">358</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Kelley, Abby,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_259" class="ref">259</a>, <a href="#P_291" class="ref">291</a>, <a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Kimball, David T.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_175" class="ref">175</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Knapp, Isaac,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_113" class="ref">113</a>, <a href="#P_127" class="ref">127</a>, <a href="#P_139" class="ref">139</a>, <a href="#P_197" class="ref">197</a>, <a href="#P_200" class="ref">200</a>, <a href="#P_265" class="ref">265</a>, <a href="#P_301" class="ref">301</a>-<a href="#P_302" class="ref">302</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Kneeland, Abner,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_090" class="ref">90</a>, <a href="#P_268" class="ref">268</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lane Seminary,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_189" class="ref">189</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Latimer, George,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_312" class="ref">312</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Leavitt, Joshua,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_320" class="ref">320</a>, <a href="#P_329" class="ref">329</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Leggett, Samuel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_086" class="ref">86</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Liberator, The</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_111" class="ref">111</a>-<a href="#P_120" class="ref">120</a>, <a href="#P_126" class="ref">126</a>-<a href="#P_129" class="ref">129</a>, <a href="#P_131" class="ref">131</a>, <a href="#P_141" class="ref">141</a>, <a href="#P_163" class="ref">163</a>, <a href="#P_165" class="ref">165</a>, <a href="#P_169" class="ref">169</a>, <a href="#P_176" class="ref">176</a>, <a href="#P_197" class="ref">197</a>-<a href="#P_204" class="ref">204</a>, <a href="#P_236" class="ref">236</a>, <a href="#P_237" class="ref">237</a>, <a href="#P_265" class="ref">265</a>, <a href="#P_284" class="ref">284</a>, <a href="#P_297" class="ref">297</a>, <a href="#P_327" class="ref">327</a>-<a href="#P_329" class="ref">329</a>, <a href="#P_388" class="ref">388</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lincoln, Abraham,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_365" class="ref">365</a>, <a href="#P_370" class="ref">370</a>, <a href="#P_375" class="ref">375</a>, <a href="#P_376" class="ref">376</a>, <a href="#P_377" class="ref">377</a>, <a href="#P_378" class="ref">378</a>, <a href="#P_379" class="ref">379</a>, <a href="#P_380" class="ref">380</a>, <a href="#P_382" class="ref">382</a>, <a href="#P_384" class="ref">384</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lloyd, Fanny,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_013" class="ref">13</a>-<a href="#P_020" class="ref">20</a>, <a href="#P_024" class="ref">24</a>-<a href="#P_026" class="ref">26</a>, <a href="#P_044" class="ref">44</a>-<a href="#P_045" class="ref">45</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Longfellow, Stephen,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_148" class="ref">148</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Loring, Edward Greeley,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_354" class="ref">354</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Loring, Ellis Grey,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_134" class="ref">134</a>, <a href="#P_135" class="ref">135</a>, <a href="#P_136" class="ref">136</a>, <a href="#P_138" class="ref">138</a>, <a href="#P_245" class="ref">245</a>, <a href="#P_264" class="ref">264</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lovejoy, Elijah P.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_254" class="ref">254</a>-<a href="#P_257" class="ref">257</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lowell, James Russell,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_136" class="ref">136</a>, <a href="#P_329" class="ref">329</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lumpkin, Wilson,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_128" class="ref">128</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lundy, Benjamin,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_044" class="ref">44</a>, <a href="#P_045" class="ref">45</a>, <a href="#P_046" class="ref">46</a>, <a href="#P_048" class="ref">48</a>-<a href="#P_054" class="ref">54</a>, <a href="#P_057" class="ref">57</a>, <a href="#P_058" class="ref">58</a>, <a href="#P_069" class="ref">69</a>, <a href="#P_071" class="ref">71</a>, <a href="#P_072" class="ref">72</a>, <a href="#P_075" class="ref">75</a>, <a href="#P_108" class="ref">108</a>, <a href="#P_133" class="ref">133</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lunt, George,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_244" class="ref">244</a>, <a href="#P_247" class="ref">247</a>, <a href="#P_248" class="ref">248</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Lyman, Theodore,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_223" class="ref">223</a>, <a href="#P_224" class="ref">224</a>, <a href="#P_227" class="ref">227</a>, <a href="#P_228" class="ref">228</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_403" id="P_403" title="P_403"></a>
+                  Macaulay, Zachary,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_154" class="ref">154</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Malcolm, Rev. Howard,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_052" class="ref">52</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Martineau, Harriet,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_094" class="ref">94</a>, <a href="#P_240" class="ref">240</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Mason, James M.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Mason, Jeremiah,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_111" class="ref">111</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_265" class="ref">265</a>, <a href="#P_280" class="ref">280</a>, <a href="#P_297" class="ref">297</a>, <a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Mathew, Father,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_304" class="ref">304</a>, <a href="#P_305" class="ref">305</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  May, Samuel, Jr.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_325" class="ref">325</a>, <a href="#P_389" class="ref">389</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  May, Samuel J.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_090" class="ref">90</a>, <a href="#P_093" class="ref">93</a>, <a href="#P_094" class="ref">94</a>, <a href="#P_134" class="ref">134</a>, <a href="#P_166" class="ref">166</a>, <a href="#P_167" class="ref">167</a>, <a href="#P_179" class="ref">179</a>, <a href="#P_180" class="ref">180</a>, <a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>, <a href="#P_199" class="ref">199</a>, <a href="#P_245" class="ref">245</a>, <a href="#P_272" class="ref">272</a>, <a href="#P_289" class="ref">289</a>, <a href="#P_393" class="ref">393</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  McDowell, James,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_124" class="ref">124</a>, <a href="#P_125" class="ref">125</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  McKim, James Miller,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  McDuffie, Governor,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_243" class="ref">243</a>, <a href="#P_246" class="ref">246</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>Mercury</i>, Charleston,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_126" class="ref">126</a>,
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Mill, John Stuart,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_390" class="ref">390</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Missouri Compromise, Repeal of,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_352" class="ref">352</a>-<a href="#P_354" class="ref">354</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Moore, Esther,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_259" class="ref">259</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Morley, Samuel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_390" class="ref">390</a>,
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Mott, Lucretia,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_178" class="ref">178</a>, <a href="#P_259" class="ref">259</a>, <a href="#P_292" class="ref">292</a>, <a href="#P_293" class="ref">293</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>National Intelligencer</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_128" class="ref">128</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  New England Anti-Slavery Society,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_137" class="ref">137</a>-<a href="#P_141" class="ref">141</a>, <a href="#P_200" class="ref">200</a>, <a href="#P_280" class="ref">280</a>, <a href="#P_311" class="ref">311</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><i>New England Spectator</i>,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_282" class="ref">282</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Newman, Prof. Francis W.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_378" class="ref">378</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  O'Connell, Daniel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_154" class="ref">154</a>, <a href="#P_170" class="ref">170</a>, <a href="#P_171" class="ref">171</a>, <a href="#P_304" class="ref">304</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Otis, Harrison Gray,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_035" class="ref">35</a>, <a href="#P_129" class="ref">129</a>, <a href="#P_130" class="ref">130</a>, <a href="#P_131" class="ref">131</a>, <a href="#P_213" class="ref">213</a>, <a href="#P_214" class="ref">214</a>, <a href="#P_215" class="ref">215</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Palmer, Daniel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_011" class="ref">11</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Palmer, Mary,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_011" class="ref">11</a>, <a href="#P_012" class="ref">12</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Parker, Mary S.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_222" class="ref">222</a>, <a href="#P_234" class="ref">234</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Parker, Theodore,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_121" class="ref">121</a>, <a href="#P_349" class="ref">349</a>, <a href="#P_350" class="ref">350</a>, <a href="#P_362" class="ref">362</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Pastoral Letter,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_277" class="ref">277</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Paxton, Rev. J.D.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Pease, Elizabeth,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_303" class="ref">303</a>, <a href="#P_331" class="ref">331</a>, <a href="#P_346" class="ref">346</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Pennsylvania Hall,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_257" class="ref">257</a>-<a href="#P_260" class="ref">260</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Phelps, Amos A.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>, <a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>, <a href="#P_278" class="ref">278</a>, <a href="#P_280" class="ref">280</a>, <a href="#P_288" class="ref">288</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_404" id="P_404" title="P_404"></a>
+                  Phillips Academy (Andover),
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_190" class="ref">190</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Phillips, Ann Green,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_292" class="ref">292</a>, <a href="#P_293" class="ref">293</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Phillips, Wendell,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_190" class="ref">190</a>, <a href="#P_257" class="ref">257</a>, <a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>, <a href="#P_317" class="ref">317</a>, <a href="#P_323" class="ref">323</a>, <a href="#P_326" class="ref">326</a>, <a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>, <a href="#P_346" class="ref">346</a>-<a href="#P_347" class="ref">347</a>, <a href="#P_349" class="ref">349</a>, <a href="#P_351" class="ref">351</a>, <a href="#P_386" class="ref">386</a>, <a href="#P_387" class="ref">387</a>, <a href="#P_388" class="ref">388</a>, <a href="#P_393" class="ref">393</a>, <a href="#P_394" class="ref">394</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Pillsbury, Parker,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>,
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Prentice, George D.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_120" class="ref">120</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Purvis, Robert,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_144" class="ref">144</a>, <a href="#P_162" class="ref">162</a>, <a href="#P_178" class="ref">178</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Quincy, Edmund,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_299" class="ref">299</a>, <a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>, <a href="#P_316" class="ref">316</a>, <a href="#P_323" class="ref">323</a>, <a href="#P_324" class="ref">324</a>, <a href="#P_325" class="ref">325</a>, <a href="#P_326" class="ref">326</a>, <a href="#P_327" class="ref">327</a>-<a href="#P_329" class="ref">329</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Quincy, Josiah,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_347" class="ref">347</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Rankin, John,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_177" class="ref">177</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Remond, Charles Lenox,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_293" class="ref">293</a>, <a href="#P_295" class="ref">295</a>, <a href="#P_304" class="ref">304</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Rhett, Barnwell,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Rogers, Nathaniel P.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_293" class="ref">293</a>, <a href="#P_295" class="ref">295</a>, <a href="#P_301" class="ref">301</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Rynders, Isaiah,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_341" class="ref">341</a>-<a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Scoble, Rev. John,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_294" class="ref">294</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Sewall, Samuel E.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_090" class="ref">90</a>, <a href="#P_091" class="ref">91</a>, <a href="#P_134" class="ref">134</a>, <a href="#P_135" class="ref">135</a>, <a href="#P_136" class="ref">136</a>, <a href="#P_137" class="ref">137</a>, <a href="#P_138" class="ref">138</a>, <a href="#P_175" class="ref">175</a>, <a href="#P_236" class="ref">236</a>, <a href="#P_367" class="ref">367</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Seward, William H.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>, <a href="#P_372" class="ref">372</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Shaw, Chief-Justice,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_312" class="ref">312</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Slavery, Rise and Progress of,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_095" class="ref">95</a>-<a href="#P_107" class="ref">107</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Smith, Gerritt,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_147" class="ref">147</a>, <a href="#P_236" class="ref">236</a>, <a href="#P_297" class="ref">297</a>, <a href="#P_320" class="ref">320</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Sprague, Peleg,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_213" class="ref">213</a>, <a href="#P_214" class="ref">214</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Stanton, Edwin M.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_382" class="ref">382</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Stanton, Henry B.
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_253" class="ref">253</a>, <a href="#P_288" class="ref">288</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Stearns, Charles,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_359" class="ref">359</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Stevens, Thaddeus,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Stuart, Charles,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_201" class="ref">201</a>, <a href="#P_202" class="ref">202</a>, <a href="#P_264" class="ref">264</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Sumner, Charles,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_234" class="ref">234</a>, <a href="#P_317" class="ref">317</a>, <a href="#P_339" class="ref">339</a>, <a href="#P_346" class="ref">346</a>, <a href="#P_359" class="ref">359</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Tappan, Arthur,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_083" class="ref">83</a>, <a href="#P_084" class="ref">84</a>, <a href="#P_164" class="ref">164</a>, <a href="#P_171" class="ref">171</a>, <a href="#P_184" class="ref">184</a>, <a href="#P_209" class="ref">209</a>, <a href="#P_210" class="ref">210</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Tappan, Lewis,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_177" class="ref">177</a>, <a href="#P_201" class="ref">201</a>, <a href="#P_209" class="ref">209</a>, <a href="#P_283" class="ref">283</a>, <a href="#P_285" class="ref">285</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Texas Agitation,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_314" class="ref">314</a>-<a href="#P_318" class="ref">318</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Thompson, George,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_204" class="ref">204</a>-<a href="#P_206" class="ref">206</a>, <a href="#P_210" class="ref">210</a>, <a href="#P_212" class="ref">212</a>, <a href="#P_213" class="ref">213</a>, <a href="#P_216" class="ref">216</a>, <a href="#P_217" class="ref">217</a>, <a href="#P_218" class="ref">218</a>, <a href="#P_238" class="ref">238</a>, <a href="#P_294" class="ref">294</a>, <a href="#P_295" class="ref">295</a>, <a href="#P_351" class="ref">351</a>, <a href="#P_383" class="ref">383</a>, <a href="#P_385" class="ref">385</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Thurston, David,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_180" class="ref">180</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a class="newpage" name="P_405" id="P_405" title="P_405"></a>
+                  Tilton, Theodore,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_382" class="ref">382</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Todd, Francis,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_075" class="ref">75</a>, <a href="#P_076" class="ref">76</a>, <a href="#P_077" class="ref">77</a>, <a href="#P_081" class="ref">81</a>, <a href="#P_082" class="ref">82</a>, <a href="#P_087" class="ref">87</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Toombs, Robert,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Travis, Joseph,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_124" class="ref">124</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Turner, Nat.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_124" class="ref">124</a>-<a href="#P_125" class="ref">125</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Uncle Tom's Cabin,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_351" class="ref">351</a>-<a href="#P_352" class="ref">352</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Villard, Mrs. Henry,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_394" class="ref">394</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Walker, David,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_121" class="ref">121</a>, <a href="#P_122" class="ref">122</a>, <a href="#P_123" class="ref">123</a>, <a href="#P_126" class="ref">126</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Ward, Rev. Samuel R.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_344" class="ref">344</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Ware, Rev. Henry, Jr.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_203" class="ref">203</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Webb, Richard D.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_310" class="ref">310</a>, <a href="#P_316" class="ref">316</a>, <a href="#P_318" class="ref">318</a>, <a href="#P_326" class="ref">326</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Webster, Daniel,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_035" class="ref">35</a>, <a href="#P_101" class="ref">101</a>, <a href="#P_110" class="ref">110</a>, <a href="#P_111" class="ref">111</a>, <a href="#P_117" class="ref">117</a>, <a href="#P_249" class="ref">249</a>, <a href="#P_338" class="ref">338</a>, <a href="#P_339" class="ref">339</a>, <a href="#P_347" class="ref">347</a>, <a href="#P_348" class="ref">348</a>, <a href="#P_370" class="ref">370</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Weld, Theodore D.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_190" class="ref">190</a>, <a href="#P_264" class="ref">264</a>, <a href="#P_279" class="ref">279</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Wesley, John,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_070" class="ref">70</a>, <a href="#P_107" class="ref">107</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  White, Nathaniel H.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_041" class="ref">41</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Whitney, Eli,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_098" class="ref">98</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Whittier, John Greenleaf,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_034" class="ref">34</a>, <a href="#P_175" class="ref">175</a>, <a href="#P_179" class="ref">179</a>, <a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>, <a href="#P_202" class="ref">202</a>, <a href="#P_234" class="ref">234</a>, <a href="#P_279" class="ref">279</a>, <a href="#P_320" class="ref">320</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Wilberforce, William,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_152" class="ref">152</a>, <a href="#P_154" class="ref">154</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Winslow, Isaac,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_177" class="ref">177</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Winslow, Nathan,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_177" class="ref">177</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Wright, Elizur,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_147" class="ref">147</a>, <a href="#P_149" class="ref">149</a>, <a href="#P_185" class="ref">185</a>, <a href="#P_186" class="ref">186</a>, <a href="#P_202" class="ref">202</a>, <a href="#P_210" class="ref">210</a>, <a href="#P_283" class="ref">283</a>-<a href="#P_285" class="ref">285</a>, <a href="#P_287" class="ref">287</a>, <a href="#P_320" class="ref">320</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""></td>
+            </tr>
+            <tr class="">
+               <td valign="top" class="">
+                  Yerrington, James B.,
+
+               </td>
+               <td valign="top" class=""><a href="#P_113" class="ref">113</a>.
+
+               </td>
+            </tr>
+         </table>
+      </div>
+      <hr>
+      <address>&nbsp;  By Grimke, Archibald H. (1849-1930).
+          <br>
+         <!--
+Generated from projectID40b515c186349 using an XSLT version 1 stylesheet
+based on c:\downloads\saxon6_5_3teihtml.xsl
+processed using SAXON 6.5.3 from Michael Kay
+on 2004-11-11T00:15:50-06:00--></address>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's William Lloyd Garrison, by Archibald H. Grimke
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+   </body>
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+
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@@ -0,0 +1,11060 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of William Lloyd Garrison, by Archibald H. Grimke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: William Lloyd Garrison
+       The Abolitionist
+
+Author: Archibald H. Grimke
+
+Release Date: January 1, 2005 [EBook #14555]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Amy Overmyer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Wm. Lloyd Garrison]
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
+
+
+
+
+
+_THE ABOLITIONIST_
+
+BY ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE, M.A.
+
+
+
+Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
+
+Grimke, Archibald Henry, 1849-1930.
+
+William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist.
+
+Reprint of the 1891 ed. published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York.
+
+1. Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879.
+
+Reprinted from the edition of 1891, New York First AMS edition published
+in 1974
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Anna M. Day, who has been a mother to my little girl, and a
+sister to me, this book is gratefully and affectionately dedicated, by_
+
+_The Author_.
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The author of this volume desires by way of preface to say just two
+things:--firstly, that it is his earnest hope that this record of a hero
+may be an aid to brave and true living in the Republic, so that the
+problems knocking at its door for solution may find the heads, the
+hands, and the hearts equal to the performance of the duties imposed by
+them upon the men and women of this generation. William Lloyd Garrison
+was brave and true. Bravery and truth were the secret of his marvelous
+career and achievements. May his countrymen and countrywomen imitate his
+example and be brave and true, not alone in emergent moments, but in
+everyday things as well.
+
+So much for the author's firstly, now for his secondly, which is to
+acknowledge his large indebtedness in the preparation of this book to
+that storehouse of anti-slavery material, the story of the life of
+William Lloyd Garrison by his children. Out of its garnered riches he
+has filled his sack.
+
+HYDE PARK, MASS., May 10, 1891.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+Dedication                                          III
+
+Preface                                               V
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The Father of the Man                                11
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Man Hears a Voice: Samuel, Samuel!               38
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The Man Begins his Ministry                          69
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Hour and the Man                                 92
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Day of Small Things                             110
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Heavy World is Moved                            118
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Master Strokes                                      133
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Colorphobia                                         157
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Agitation and Repression                            170
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Between the Acts                                    192
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Mischief Let Loose                                  208
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Flotsam and Jetsam                                  233
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The Barometer Continues to Fall                     242
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Brotherly Love Fails, and Ideas Abound              263
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Random Shots                                        292
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The Pioneer Makes a New and Startling Departure     306
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+As in a Looking Glass                               319
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+The Turning of a Long Lane                          335
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Face to Face                                        356
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The Death-Grapple                                   370
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The Last                                            385
+
+Index                                               397
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+THE FATHER OF THE MAN.
+
+
+William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, December
+10, 1805. Forty years before, Daniel Palmer, his great-grandfather,
+emigrated from Massachusetts and settled with three sons and a daughter
+on the St. John River, in Nova Scotia. The daughter's name was Mary, and
+it was she who was to be the future grandmother of our hero. One of the
+neighbors of Daniel Palmer was Joseph Garrison, who was probably an
+Englishman. He was certainly a bachelor. The Acadian solitude of five
+hundred acres and Mary Palmer's charms proved too much for the
+susceptible heart of Joseph Garrison. He wooed and won her, and on his
+thirtieth birthday she became his wife. The bride herself was but
+twenty-three, a woman of resources and of presence of mind, as she
+needed to be in that primitive settlement. Children and cares came apace
+to the young wife, and we may be sure confined her more and more closely
+to her house. But in the midst of a fast-increasing family and of
+multiplying cares a day's outing did occasionally come to the busy
+housewife, when she would go down the river to spend it at her father's
+farm. Once, ten years after her marriage, she had a narrow escape on one
+of those rare days. She had started in a boat with her youngest child,
+Abijah, and a lad who worked in her household. It was spring and the St.
+John was not yet clear of ice. Higher up the river the ice broke that
+morning and came floating down with the current. The boat in which Mary
+Garrison and her baby rode was overtaken by the fragments and wrecked.
+The mother with her child sought refuge on a piece of ice and was driven
+shoreward. Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could spare she threw
+him ashore. She and the lad followed by the aid of an overhanging willow
+bough. The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him into a snow-bank.
+But the perils of the river gave place to the perils of the woods. In
+them Mary Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less a personage
+than the father of William Lloyd Garrison, until at length she found the
+hut of a friendly Indian, who took her in and "entertained her with his
+best words and deeds, and the next morning conducted her safely to her
+father's."
+
+The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of farmers, and Joseph
+Garrison was a man of unusual force and independence of character. The
+life which these early settlers lived was a life lived partly on the
+land and partly on the river. They were equally at home with scythe or
+oar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the
+children should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them
+took to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The
+amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, roving
+character. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. He
+was a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain of
+romance and adventure in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life he
+probably craved strong excitement. This craving was in part appeased no
+doubt by travel and drink. He took to the sea and he took to the cup.
+But he was more than a creature of appetites, he was a man of sentiment.
+Being a man of sentiment what should he do but fall in love. The woman
+who inspired his love was no ordinary woman, but a genuine Acadian
+beauty. She was a splendid specimen of womankind. Tall she was, graceful
+and admirably proportioned. Never before had Abijah in all his
+wanderings seen a creature of such charms of person. Her face matched
+the attractions of her form and her mind matched the beauty of her face.
+She possessed a nature almost Puritanic in its abhorrence of sin, and in
+the strength of its moral convictions. She feared to do wrong more than
+she feared any man. With this supremacy of the moral sense there went
+along singular firmness of purpose and independence of character. When a
+mere slip of a girl she was called upon to choose between regard for her
+religious convictions and regard for her family. It happened in this
+wise. Fanny Lloyd's parents were Episcopalians, who were inclined to
+view with contempt fellow-Christians of the Baptist persuasion. To have
+a child of theirs identify herself with this despised sect was one of
+those crosses which they could not and would not bear. But Fanny had in
+a fit of girlish frolic entered one of the meetings of these low-caste
+Christians. What she heard changed the current of her life. She knew
+thenceforth that God was no respecter of persons, and that the crucified
+Nazarene looked not upon the splendor of ceremonies but upon the
+thoughts of the heart of His disciples. Here in a barn, amid vulgar
+folk, and uncouth, dim surroundings, He had appeared, He, her Lord and
+Master. He had touched her with that white unspeakable appeal. The
+laughter died upon the fair girlish face and prayer issued from the
+beautiful lips. If vulgar folk, the despised Baptists, were good enough
+for the Christ, were they not good enough for her? Among them she had
+felt His consecrating touch and among them she determined to devote
+herself to Him. Her parents commanded and threatened but Fanny Lloyd was
+bent on obeying the heavenly voice of duty rather than father and
+mother. They had threatened that if she allowed herself to be baptised
+they would turn her out of doors. Fanny was baptised and her parents
+made good the threat. Their home was no longer her home. She had the
+courage of her conviction--ability to suffer for a belief.
+
+Such was the woman who subsequently became the wife of Abijah Garrison,
+and the mother of one of the greatest moral heroes of the century.
+Abijah followed the sea, and she for several years with an increasing
+family followed Abijah. First from one place and then another she glided
+after him in her early married life. He loved her and his little ones
+but the love of travel and change was strong within him. He was ever
+restless and changeful. During one of his roving fits he emigrated with
+his family from Nova Scotia to the United States. It was in the spring
+of 1805 that he and they landed in Newburyport. The following December
+his wife presented him with a boy, whom they called William Lloyd
+Garrison. Three years afterward Abijah deserted his wife and children.
+Of the causes which led to this act nothing is now known. Soon after his
+arrival in Newburyport he had found employment. He made several voyages
+as sailing-master in 1805-8 from that port. He was apparently during
+these years successful after the manner of his craft. But he was not a
+man to remain long in one place. What was the immediate occasion of his
+strange behavior we can only conjecture. Possibly an increasing love for
+liquor had led to domestic differences, which his pleasure-loving nature
+would not brook. Certain it was that he was not like his wife. He was
+not a man in whom the moral sense was uppermost. He was governed by
+impulse and she by fixed moral and religious principles. He drank and
+she abhorred the habit. She tried first moral suasion to induce him to
+abandon the habit, and once, in a moment of wifely and motherly
+indignation, she broke up one of his drinking parties in her house by
+trying the efficacy of a little physical suasion. She turned the company
+out of doors and smashed the bottles of liquor. This was not the kind of
+woman whom Abijah cared to live with as a wife. He was not the sort of
+man whom the most romantic love could attach to the apron-strings of any
+woman. And in the matter of his cup he probably saw that this was what
+he would be obliged to do as the condition of domestic peace. The
+condition he rejected and, rejecting it, rejected and cast-off his wife
+and family and the legal and moral responsibilities of husband and
+father.
+
+Bitter days now followed and Fanny Garrison became acquainted with grief
+and want. She had the mouths of three children to fill--the youngest an
+infant at her breast. The battle of this broken-hearted woman for their
+daily bread was as heroic as it was pathetic. She still lived in the
+little house on School street where Lloyd was born. The owner, Martha
+Farnham, proved herself a friend indeed to the poor harassed soul. Now
+she kept the wolf from the door by going out as a monthly nurse--"Aunt
+Farnham" looking after the little ones in her absence. She was put to
+all her possibles during those anxious years of struggle and want. Even
+Lloyd, wee bit of a boy, was pressed into the service. She would make
+molasses candies and send him upon the streets to sell them. But with
+all her industry and resource what could she do with three children
+weighing her down in the fierce struggle for existence, rendered tenfold
+fiercer after the industrial crisis preceding and following the War of
+1812. Then it was that she was forced to supplement her scant earnings
+with refuse food from the table of "a certain mansion on State street."
+It was Lloyd who went for this food, and it was he who had to run the
+gauntlet of mischievous and inquisitive children whom he met and who
+longed for a peep into his tin pail. But the future apostle of
+non-resistance was intensely resistant, we may be sure, on such
+occasions. For, as his children have said in the story of his life:
+"Lloyd was a thorough boy, fond of games and of all boyish sport.
+Barefooted, he trundled his hoop all over Newburyport; he swam in the
+Merrimac in summer, and skated on it in winter; he was good at sculling
+a boat; he played at bat and ball and snowball, and sometimes led the
+'Southend boys' against the Northenders in the numerous conflicts
+between the youngsters of the two sections; he was expert with marbles.
+Once, with a playmate, he swam across the river to 'Great Rock,' a
+distance of three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against the
+tide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life by breaking through
+the ice on the river and reached the shore only after a desperate
+struggle, the ice yielding as often as he attempted to climb upon its
+surface. It was favorite pastime of the boys of that day to swim from
+one wharf to another adjacent, where vessels from the West Indies
+discharged their freight of molasses, and there to indulge in stolen
+sweetness, extracted by a smooth stick inserted through the bung-hole.
+When detected and chased, they would plunge into the water and escape to
+the wharf on which they had left their clothes." Such was the little man
+with a boy's irrepressible passion for frolic and fun. His passion for
+music was hardly less pronounced, and this he inherited from his mother,
+and exercised to his heart's content in the choir of the Baptist Church.
+These were the bright lines and spots in his strenuous young life. He
+played and sang the gathering brood of cares out of his own and his
+mother's heart. He needed to play and he needed to sing to charm away
+from his spirit the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever over
+his childhood. It was able to do many hard things to him, break up his
+home, sunder him from his mother, force him at a tender age to earn his
+bread, still there was another bird in the boy's heart, which sang out
+of it the shadow and into it the sunshine. Whatever was his lot there
+sang the bird within his breast, and there shone the sun over his head
+and into his soul. The boy had unconsciously drawn around him a circle
+of sunbeams, and how could the vulture of poverty strike him with its
+wings or stab him with its beak. When he was about eight he was parted
+from his mother, she going to Lynn, and he, wee mite of a man, remaining
+in Newburyport. It was during the War of 1812, and pinching times, when
+Fanny Garrison was at her wit's end to keep the wolf from devouring her
+three little ones and herself into the bargain. With what tearing of the
+heart-strings she left Lloyd and his little sister Elizabeth behind we
+can now only imagine. She had no choice, poor soul, for unless she
+toiled they would starve. So with James, her eldest son, she went forth
+into the world to better theirs and her own condition. Lloyd went to
+live in Deacon Ezekiel Bartlett's family. They were good to the little
+fellow, but they, too, were poor. The Deacon, among other things, sawed
+wood for a living, and Lloyd hardly turned eight years, followed him in
+his peregrinations from house to house doing with his tiny hands what he
+could to help the kind old man. Soon Fanny Lloyd's health, which had
+supported her as a magic staff in all those bitter years since Abijah's
+desertion of wife and children, began in the battle for bread in Lynn,
+to fail her. And so, in her weakness, and with a great fear in her heart
+for her babies, when she was gone from them into the dark unknown
+forever, she bethought her of making them as fast as possible
+self-supporting. And what better way was there than to have the boys
+learn some trade. James she had already apprenticed to learn the mystery
+of shoemaking. And for Lloyd she now sent and apprenticed him, too, to
+the same trade. Oh! but it was hard for the little man, the heavy
+lapstone and all this thumping and pounding to make a shoe. Oh! how the
+stiff waxen threads cut into his soft fingers, how all his body ached
+with the constrained position and the rough work of shoemaking. But one
+day the little nine-year-old, who was "not much bigger than a last," was
+able to produce a real shoe. Then it was probably that a dawning
+consciousness of power awoke within the child's mind. He himself by
+patience and industry had created a something where before was nothing.
+The eye of the boy got for the first time a glimpse of the man, who was
+still afar off, shadowy in the dim approaches of the hereafter. But the
+work proved altogether beyond the strength of the boy. The shoemaker's
+bench was not his place, and the making of shoes for his kind was not
+the mission for which he was sent into the world. And now again poverty,
+the great scene-shifter, steps upon the stage, and Fanny Lloyd and her
+two boys are in Baltimore on that never-ending quest for bread. She had
+gone to work in a shoe factory established by an enterprising Yankee in
+that city. The work lasted but a few months, when the proprietor failed
+and the factory was closed. In a strange city mother and children were
+left without employment. In her anxiety and distress a new trouble, the
+greatest and most poignant since Abijah's desertion, wrung her with a
+supreme grief. James, the light and pride of her life, had run away from
+his master and gone to sea. Lloyd, poor little homesick Lloyd, was the
+only consolation left the broken heart. And he did not want to live in
+Baltimore, and longed to return to Newburyport. So, mindful of her
+child's happiness, and all unmindful of her own, she sent him from her
+to Newburyport, which he loved inexpressibly. He was now in his eleventh
+year. Very happy he was to see once more the streets and landmarks of
+the old town--the river, and the old house where he was born, and the
+church next door and the school-house across the way and the dear
+friends whom he loved and who loved him. He went again to live with the
+Bartletts, doing with his might all that he could to earn his daily
+bread, and to repay the kindness of the dear old deacon and his family.
+It was at this time that he received his last scrap of schooling. He
+was, as we have seen, but eleven, but precious little of that brief and
+tender time had he been able to spend in a school-house. He had gone to
+the primary school, where, as his children tell us, he did not show
+himself "an apt scholar, being slow in mastering the alphabet, and
+surpassed even by his little sister Elizabeth." During his stay with
+Deacon Bartlett the first time, he was sent three months to the
+grammar-school, and now on his return to this good friend, a few more
+weeks were added to his scant school term. They proved the last of his
+school-days, and the boy went forth from the little brick building on
+the Mall to finish his education in the great workaday world, under
+those stern old masters, poverty and experience. By and by Lloyd was a
+second time apprenticed to learn a trade. It was to a cabinetmaker in
+Haverhill, Mass. He made good progress in the craft, but his young heart
+still turned to Newburyport and yearned for the friends left there. He
+bore up against the homesickness as best he could, and when he could
+bear it no longer, resolved to run away from the making of toy bureaus,
+to be once more with the Bartletts. He had partly executed this
+resolution, being several miles on the road to his old home, when his
+master, the cabinetmaker, caught up to him and returned him to
+Haverhill. But when he heard the little fellow's story of homesickness
+and yearning for loved places and faces, he was not angry with him, but
+did presently release him from his apprenticeship. And so the boy to his
+great joy found himself again in Newburyport and with the good old
+wood-sawyer. Poverty and experience were teaching the child what he
+never could have learned in a grammar-school, a certain acquaintance
+with himself and the world around him. There was growing within his
+breast a self-care and a self-reliance. It was the autumn of 1818, when,
+so to speak, the boy's primary education in the school of experience
+terminated, and he entered on the second stage of his training under the
+same rough tutelage. At the age of thirteen he entered the office of the
+Newburyport _Herald_ to learn to set types. At last his boy's hands had
+found work which his boy's heart did joy to have done. He soon mastered
+the compositor's art, became a remarkably rapid composer. As he set up
+the thoughts of others, he was not slow in discovering thoughts of his
+own demanding utterance. The printer's apprentice felt the stirrings of
+a new life. A passion for self-improvement took possession of him. He
+began to read the English classics, study American history, follow the
+currents of party politics. No longer could it be said of him that he
+was not an apt pupil. He was indeed singularly apt. His intelligence
+quickened marvelously. The maturing process was sudden and swift. Almost
+before one knows it the boy in years has become a man in judgment and
+character. This precipitate development of the intellectual life in him,
+produced naturally enough an appreciable enlargement of the _ego_. The
+young eagle had abruptly awakened to the knowledge that he possessed
+wings; and wings were for use--to soar with. Ambition, the desire to
+mount aloft, touched and fired the boy's mind. As he read, studied, and
+observed, while his hands were busy with his work, there was a constant
+fluttering going on in the eyrie of his thoughts. By an instinct
+analogous to that which sends a duck to the water, the boy took to the
+discussion of public questions. It was as if an innate force was
+directing him toward his mission--the reformation of great public
+wrongs. At sixteen he made his first contribution to the press. It was a
+discussion of a quasi-social subject, the relation of the sexes in
+society. He was at the impressionable age, when the rosy god of love is
+at his tricks. He was also at a stage of development, when boys are
+least attractive, when they are disagreeably virile, full of their own
+importance and the superiority of their sex. In the "Breach of the
+Marriage Promise," by "An Old Bachelor," these signs of adolescence are
+by no means wanting, they are, on the contrary, distinctly present and
+palpable. But there were other signs besides these, signs that the youth
+had had his eyes wide open to certain difficulties which beset the
+matrimonial state and to the conventional steps which lead to it, and
+that he had thought quite soberly, if not altogether wisely upon them.
+The writer was verdant, to be sure, and self-conscious, and partial in
+his view of the relations of the sexes, but there was withal a serious
+purpose in the writing. He meant to expose and correct what he conceived
+to be reprehensible conduct on the part of the gentler sex, bad feminine
+manners. Just now he sees the man's side of the shield, a few years
+later he will see the woman's side also. He ungallantly concludes "to
+lead the '_single life_,' and not," as he puts it, "trouble myself about
+the ladies." A most sapient conclusion, considering that this veteran
+misogynist was but sixteen years old. During the year following the
+publication of this article, he plied his pen with no little
+industry--producing in all fifteen articles on a variety of topics, such
+as "South American Affairs," "State Politics," "A Glance at Europe,"
+etc., all of which are interesting now chiefly as showing the range of
+his growing intelligence, and as the earliest steps by which he acquired
+his later mastery of the pen and powerful style of composition. In a
+letter addressed to his mother about this time, the boy is full of
+Lloyd, undisguisedly proud of Lloyd, believes in Lloyd. "When I peruse
+them over" (_i.e._ those fifteen communications to the press), "I feel
+absolutely astonished," he naively confesses, "at the different subjects
+which I have discussed, and the style in which they are written. Indeed
+it is altogether a matter of surprise that I have met with such signal
+success, seeing I do not understand _one single rule of grammar_, and
+having a very inferior education." The printer's lad was plainly not
+lacking in the bump of approbativeness, or the quality of
+self-assertiveness. The quick mother instinct of Fanny Garrison took
+alarm at the tone of her boy's letter. Possibly there was something in
+Lloyd's florid sentences, in his facility of expression, which reminded
+her of Abijah. He, too, poor fellow, had had gifts in the use of the
+pen, and what had he done, what had he come to? Had he not forsaken wife
+and children by first forsaking the path of holiness? So she pricks the
+boy's bubble, and points him to the one thing needful--God in the soul.
+But in her closing words she betrays what we all along suspected, her
+own secret pleasure in her son's success, when she asks, "Will you be so
+kind as to bring on your pieces that you have written for me to see?"
+Ah! was she not every inch a mother, and how Lloyd did love her. But she
+was no longer what she had been. And no wonder, for few women have been
+called to endure such heavy burdens, fight so hopelessly the battle for
+bread, all the while her heart was breaking with grief. Disease had made
+terrible inroads upon her once strong and beautiful person. Not the
+shadow of the strength and beauty of her young womanhood remained. She
+was far away from her early home and friends, far away from her darling
+boy, in Baltimore. James, her pride, was at sea, Elizabeth, a sweet
+little maiden of twelve, had left her to take that last voyage beyond
+another sea, and Abijah, without one word of farewell, with the silence
+of long years unbroken, he, too, also! had hoisted sail and was gone
+forever. And now in her loneliness and sorrow, knowing that she, too,
+must shortly follow, a great yearning rose up in her poor wounded heart
+to see once more her child, the comfort and stay of her bitter life. And
+as she had written to him her wish and longing, the boy went to her, saw
+the striking change, saw that the broken spirit of the saintly woman was
+day by day nearing the margin of the dark hereafter, into whose healing
+waters it would bathe and be whole again. The unspeakable experience of
+mother and son, during this last meeting is not for you and me, reader,
+to look into. Soon after Lloyd's return to Newburyport a cancerous tumor
+developed on her shoulder, from the effects of which she died September
+3, 1823, at the age of forty-five. More than a decade after her death
+her son wrote: "She has been dead almost eleven years; but my grief at
+her loss is as fresh and poignant now as it was at that period;" and he
+breaks out in praise of her personal charms in the following original
+lines:
+
+  "She was the masterpiece of womankind--
+  In shape and height majestically fine;
+  Her cheeks the lily and the rose combined;
+  Her lips--more opulently red than wine;
+  Her raven locks hung tastefully entwined;
+  Her aspect fair as Nature could design;
+  And then her eyes! so eloquently bright!
+  An eagle would recoil before her light."
+
+
+The influence of this superb woman was a lasting power for truth and
+righteousness in the son's stormy life. For a whole year after her
+death, the grief of the printer's lad over his loss, seemed to have
+checked the activity of his pen. For during that period nothing of his
+appeared in the _Herald_. But after the sharp edge of his sorrow had
+worn off, his pen became active again in the discussion of public men
+and public questions. It was a period of bitter personal and political
+feuds and animosities. The ancient Federal party was _in articulo
+mortis_. The death-bed of a great political organization proves
+oftentimes the graveyard of lifelong friendships. For it is a scene of
+crimination and recrimination. And so it happened that the partisans of
+John Adams, and the partisans of John Adams's old Secretary of State,
+Timothy Pickering, were in 1824 doing a thriving business in this
+particular line. Into this funereal performance our printer's apprentice
+entered with pick and spade. He had thus early a _penchant_ for
+controversy, a soldier's scent for battle. If there was any fighting
+going on he proceeded directly to have a hand in it. And it cannot be
+denied that that hand was beginning to deal some manly and sturdy blows,
+whose resound was heard quite distinctly beyond the limits of his
+birthplace. His communications appeared now, not only in the _Herald_,
+but in the Salem _Gazette_ as well. Now it was the Adams-Pickering
+controversy, now the discussion of General Jackson as a presidential
+candidate, now the state of the country in respect of parties, now the
+merits of "American Writers," which afforded his 'prentice hand the
+requisite practice in the use of the pen. He had already acquired a
+perfect knowledge of typesetting and the mechanical makeup of a
+newspaper. During his apprenticeship he took his first lesson in the art
+of thinking on his feet in the presence of an audience. The audience to
+be sure were the members of a debating club, which he had organized. He
+was very ambitious and was doubtless looking forward to a political
+career. He saw the value of extempore speech to the man with a future,
+and he wisely determined to possess himself of its advantage. He little
+dreamt, however, to what great use he was to devote it in later years.
+There were other points worth noting at this time, and which seemed to
+prophecy for him a future of distinction. He possessed a most attractive
+personality. His energy and geniality, his keen sense of humor, his
+social and bouyant disposition, even his positive and opinionated
+temper, were sources of popular strength to him. People were strongly
+drawn to him. His friends were devoted to him. He had that quality,
+which we vaguely term magnetic, the quality of attaching others to us,
+and maintaining over them the ascendency of our character and ideas.
+
+In the midst of all this progress along so many lines, the days of his
+apprenticeship in the _Herald_ office came to an end. He was just
+twenty. With true Yankee enterprise and pluck, he proceeded to do for
+himself what for seven years he had helped to do for another--publish a
+newspaper. And with a brave heart the boy makes his launch on the
+uncertain sea of local journalism and becomes editor and publisher of a
+real, wide-awake sheet, which he calls the _Free Press._ The paper was
+independent in politics and proved worthy of its name during the six
+months that Garrison sat in the managerial chair. Here is the tone which
+the initial number of the paper holds to the public: "As to the
+political course of the _Free Press_, it shall be, in the widest sense
+of the term, _independent_. The publisher does not mean by this, to rank
+amongst those who are of everybody's and of nobody's opinion; ... nor
+one of whom the old French proverb says: _Il ne soit sur quel pied
+danser_. [He knows not on which leg to dance.] Its principles shall be
+open, magnanimous and free. It shall be subservient to no party or body
+of men; and neither the craven fear of loss, nor the threats of the
+disappointed, nor the influence of power, shall ever awe one single
+opinion into silence. Honest and fair discussion it will court; and its
+columns will be open to all temperate and intelligent communications
+emanating from whatever political source. In fine we will say with
+Cicero: 'Reason shall prevail with him more than popular opinion.' They
+who like this avowal may extend their encouragement; and if any feel
+dissatisfied with it, they must act accordingly. The publisher cannot
+condescend to solicit their support." This was admirable enough in its
+way, but it was poor journalism some will say. And without doubt when
+judged by the common commercial standard it _was_ poor journalism. In
+this view it is a remarkable production, but in another aspect it is
+still more remarkable in that it took with absolute accuracy the measure
+of the man. As a mental likeness it is simply perfect. At no time during
+his later life did the picture cease to be an exact moral representation
+of his character. It seems quite unnecessary, therefore, to record that
+he proceeded immediately to demonstrate that it was no high sounding and
+insincere declaration. For in the second number, he mentions with that
+singular serenity, which ever distinguished him on such occasions, the
+discontinuance of the paper on account of matter contained in the first
+issue, by ten indignant subscribers. "Nevertheless," he adds, "our
+happiness at the loss of such subscribers is not a whit abated. We _beg_
+no man's patronage, and shall ever erase with the same cheerfulness that
+we insert the name of any individual.... Personal or political offence
+we shall studiously avoid--truth _never_." Here was plainly a wholly new
+species of the _genus homo_ in the editorial seat. What, expect to make
+a newspaper pay and not beg for patronage? Why the very idea was enough
+to make newspaperdom go to pieces with laughter. Begging for patronage,
+howling for subscribers, cringing, crawling, changing color like the
+chameleon, howling for Barabbas or bellowing against Jesus, all these
+things must your newspaper do to prosper. On them verily hang the whole
+law and all the profits of modern journalism. This is what the devil of
+competition was doing in that world when William Lloyd Garrison entered
+it. It took him up into an exceedingly high mountain, we may be certain,
+and offered him wealth, position, and power, if he would do what all
+others were doing. And he would not. He went on editing and publishing
+his paper for six months regardful only of what his reason
+approved--regardless always of the disapproval of others. Not once did
+he palter with his convictions or juggle with his self-respect for the
+sake of pelf or applause. His human horizon was contracted, to be sure.
+It could hardly be otherwise in one so young. His world was his country,
+and patriotism imposed limits upon his affections. "Our country, our
+whole country, and nothing but our country," was the ardent motto of the
+_Free Press_. The love of family comes, in the order of growth, before
+the love of country; and the love of country precedes the love of all
+mankind. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear,"
+is the great law of love in the soul as of corn in the soil. Besides
+this contraction of the affections, there was also manifest in his first
+journalistic venture a deficiency in the organ of vision, a failure to
+see into things and their relations. What he saw he reported faithfully,
+suppressing nothing, adding nothing. But the objects which passed across
+the disk of his editoral intelligence were confined almost entirely to
+the surface of things, to the superficies of national life. He had not
+the ken at twenty to penetrate beneath the happenings of current
+politics. Of the existence of slavery as a supreme reality, we do not
+think that he then had the faintest suspicion. No shadow of its
+tremendous influence as a political power seemed to have arrested for a
+brief instant his attention. He could copy into his paper this atrocious
+sentiment which Edward Everett delivered in Congress, without the
+slightest comment or allusion. "Sir, I am no soldier. My habits and
+education are very unmilitary, but there is no cause in which I would
+sooner buckle a knapsack on my back, and put a musket on my shoulder
+than that of putting down a servile insurrection at the South." The
+reason is plain enough. Slavery was a _terra incognito_ to him then, a
+book of which he had not learned the ABC. Mr. Everett's language made no
+impression on him, because he had not the key to interpret its
+significance. What he saw, that he set down for his readers, without
+fear or favor. He had not seen slavery, knew nothing of the evil.
+Acquaintance with the deeper things of life, individual or national,
+comes only with increasing years, they are hardly for him who has not
+yet reached his majority. Slavery was the very deepest thing in the life
+of the nation sixty-four years ago. And if Garrison did not then so
+understand it, neither did his contemporaries, the wisest and greatest
+of them so understand it. The subject of all others which attracted his
+attention, and kept his editorial pen busy, was the claim of
+Massachusetts for indemnity from the general government, for certain
+disbursements made by her for the defence of her sea-coast during the
+war of 1812. This matter, which forms but a mere dust point in the
+perspective of history, his ardent young mind mistook for a principal
+object, erected into a permanent question in the politics of the times.
+But the expenditure of enormous energies upon things of secondary and of
+even tertiary importance, to the neglect of others of prime and lasting
+interest, is supremely human. He was errant where all men go astray. But
+the schoolmaster of the nation was abroad, and was training this young
+man for the work he was born to do. These six months were, therefore,
+not wasted, for in the university of experience he did ever prove
+himself an apt scholar. One lesson he had learned, which he never needed
+to relearn. Just what that lesson was, he tells in his valedictory to
+the subscribers of the _Free Press_, as follows: "This is a time-serving
+age; and he who attempts to walk uprightly or speak honestly, cannot
+rationally calculate upon speedy wealth or preferment." A sad lesson, to
+be sure, for one so young to learn so thoroughly. Perhaps some reader
+will say that this was cynical, the result of disappointment. But it was
+not cynical, neither was it the result of disappointment. It was
+unvarnished truth, and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less.
+It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men, needed to know at
+the threshold of his experience with the world. Such a revelation proves
+disastrous to the many who go down to do business in that world.
+Ordinary and weak and neutral moral constitutions are wrecked on this
+reef set in the human sea. Like a true mariner he had written it boldly
+on his chart. There at such and such a point in the voyage for the
+golden fleece, were the rocks and the soul-devouring dragons of the way.
+Therefore, oh! my soul, beware. What, indeed, would this argonaut of the
+press take in exchange for his soul? Certainly not speedy wealth nor
+preferment. Ah! he could not praise where he ought to reprobate; could
+not reprobate where praise should be the meed. He had no money and
+little learning, but he had a conscience and he knew that he must be
+true to that conscience, come to him either weal or woe. Want renders
+most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age,
+absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent
+inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon
+any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee
+that the young recusant could never be starved into silence or
+conformity to popular standards. And with this stern, sad lesson
+treasured up in his heart, Garrison graduated from another room in the
+school-house of experience. All the discoveries of the young journalist
+were not of this grim character. He made another discovery altogether
+different, a real gem of its kind. The drag-net of a newspaper catches
+all sorts of poets and poetry, good, bad, and indifferent--oftener the
+bad and indifferent, rarely the good. The drag-net of the _Free Press_
+was no exception to this rule; but, one day, it fetched up from the
+depths of the hard commonplaces of our New England town life a genuine
+pearl. We will let Mr. Garrison tell the story in his own way:
+
+
+    "Going up-stairs to my office, one day, I observed a letter
+    lying near the door, to my address; which, on opening, I found
+    to contain an original piece of poetry for my paper, the _Free
+    Press_. The ink was very pale, the handwriting very small; and,
+    having at that time a horror of newspaper original poetry--which
+    has rather increased than diminished with the lapse of time--my
+    first impulse was to tear it in pieces, without reading it; the
+    chances of rejection, after its perusal, being as ninety-nine to
+    one; ... but summoning resolution to read it, I was equally
+    surprised and gratified to find it above mediocrity, and so gave
+    it a place in my journal.... As I was anxious to find out the
+    writer, my post-rider, one day, divulged the secret, stating
+    that he had dropped the letter in the manner described, and that
+    it was written by a Quaker lad, named Whittier, who was daily at
+    work on the shoemaker's bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East
+    Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time in driving to
+    see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with
+    shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like
+    a maiden. Giving him some words of encouragement, I addressed
+    myself more particularly to his parents, and urged them with
+    great earnestness to grant him every possible facility for the
+    development of his remarkable genius."
+
+
+Garrison had not only found a true poet, but a true friend as well, in
+the Quaker lad, John Greenleaf Whittier. The friendship which sprang up
+between the two was to last during the lifetime of the former. Neither
+of them in those days of small things could have possibly by any flight
+of the imagination foreseen how their two lives, moving in parallel
+lines, would run deep their shining furrows through one of the greatest
+chapters of human history. But I am anticipating, and that is a vice of
+which no good storyteller ought to be guilty. So, then, let me
+incontinently return from this excursion and pursue the even tenor of my
+tale.
+
+Garrison had stepped down from his elevated position as the publisher
+and editor of the _Free Press_. He was without work, and, being
+penniless, it behooved him to find some means of support. With the
+instinct of the bright New England boy, he determined to seek his
+fortunes in Boston. If his honesty and independence put him at a
+disadvantage, as publisher and editor, in the struggle for existence, he
+had still his trade as a compositor to fall back upon As a journeyman
+printer he would earn his bread, and preserve the integrity of an
+upright spirit. And so without a murmur, and with cheerfulness and
+persistency, he hunted for weeks on the streets of Boston for a chance
+to set types. This hunting for a job in a strange city was discouraging
+enough. Twice before had he visited the place, which was to be his
+future home. Once when on his way to Baltimore to see his mother, and
+once afterward when on a sort of pleasure tramp with three companions.
+But the slight knowledge which he was able to obtain of the town and its
+inhabitants under these circumstances did not now help him, when from
+office to office he went in quest of something to do. After many
+failures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, an
+opportunity to practice his trade. Business was dull, which kept our
+journeyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at another
+printing office we find him setting types for a living during the year
+1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was not ashamed to
+work, neither was he afraid of hard work. During this year, he found
+time to take a hand in a little practical politics. There was in July,
+1827, a caucus of the Federal party to nominate a successor to Daniel
+Webster in the House of Representatives. Young Garrison attended this
+caucus, and made havoc of its cut and dried programme, by moving the
+nomination of Harrison Gray Otis, instead of the candidate, a Mr.
+Benjamin Gorham, agreed upon by the leaders. Harrison Gray Otis was one
+of Garrison's early and particular idols. He was, perhaps, the one
+Massachusetts politician whom the young Federalist had placed on a
+pedestal. And so on this occasion he went into the caucus with a written
+speech in his hat, eulogistic of his favorite. He had meant to have the
+speech at his tongue's end, and to get it off as if on the spur of the
+moment. But the speech stayed where it was put, in the speaker's hat,
+and failed to materialize where and when it was wanted on the speaker's
+tongue. As the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet like a sensible
+prophet went to the mountain. Our orator in imitation of this
+illustrious example, bowed to the inevitable and went to his mountain.
+Pulling his extempore remarks out of his hat, he delivered himself of
+them to such effect as to create quite an Otis sentiment in the meeting.
+This performance was, of course, a shocking offence in the eyes of
+those, whose plans it had disturbed. With one particular old fogy he got
+into something of a newspaper controversy in consequence. The
+"consummate assurance" of one so young fairly knocked the breath out of
+this Mr. Eminent Respectability; it was absolutely revolting to all his
+"ideas of propriety, to see a stranger, a man who never paid a tax in
+our city, and perhaps no where else, to possess the impudence to take
+the lead and nominate a candidate for the electors of Boston!" The
+"young gentleman of six months standing," was not a whit abashed or awed
+by the commotion which he had produced. That was simply a case of cause
+and effect. But he seemed in turn astonished at his opponent's evident
+ignorance of William Lloyd Garrison. "It is true," he replied, with the
+proud dignity of conscious power, "it is true that my acquaintance in
+this city is limited. I have sought none. Let me assure him, however,
+that if my life be spared, my name shall one day be known to the
+world--at least to such extent that common inquiry shall be unnecessary.
+This, I know will be deemed excessive vanity--but time shall prove it
+prophetic." To the charge of youth he makes this stinging rejoinder,
+which evinces the progress he was making in the tournament of language:
+"The little, paltry sneers at my youth by your correspondent have long
+since become pointless. It is the privileged abuse of old age--the
+hackneyed allegation of a thousand centuries--the damning _crime_ to
+which all men have been subjected. I leave it to metaphysicians to
+determine the precise moment when wisdom and experience leap into
+existence, when, for the first time, the mind distinguishes truth from
+error, selfishness from patriotism, and passion from reason. It is
+sufficient for me that I am understood." This was Garrison's first
+experience with "gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston. It was
+not his last, as future chapters will abundantly show.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+
+THE MAN HEARS A VOICE: SAMUEL, SAMUEL!
+
+
+There is a moment in the life of every serious soul, when things, which
+were before unseen and unheard in the world around him become visible
+and audible. This startling moment comes to some sooner, to others
+later, but to all, who are not totally given up to the service of self,
+at sometime surely. From that moment a change passes over such an one,
+for more and more he hears mysterious voices, and clearer and more clear
+he sees apparitional forms floating up from the depths above which he
+kneels. Whence come they, what mean they? He leans over the abyss, and
+lo! the sounds to which he hearkens are the voices of human weeping and
+the forms at which he gazes are the apparitions of human woe; they
+beckon to him, and the voices beseech him in multitudinous accent and
+heart-break: "Come over, come down, oh! friend and brother, and help
+us." Then he straightway puts away the things and the thoughts of the
+past and girding himself with the things, and the thoughts of the divine
+OUGHT and the almighty MUST, he goes over and down to the rescue.
+
+Such an epochal first moment came to William Lloyd Garrison in the
+streets of Boston. Amid the hard struggle for bread he heard the abysmal
+voices, saw the gaunt forms of misery. He was a constant witness of the
+ravages of the demon of drink--saw how strong men succumbed, and weak
+ones turned to brutes in its clutch. And were they not his brothers, the
+strong men and the weak ones alike? And how could he, their keeper, see
+them desperately beset and not fly to their help? Ah! he could not and
+did not walk by on the other side, but, stripling though he was, rushed
+to do battle with the giant vice, which was slaying the souls and the
+bodies of his fellow citizens. Rum during the three first decades of the
+present century was, like death, no respecter of persons, entering with
+equal freedom the homes of the rich, and the hovels of the poor. It was
+in universal demand by all classes and conditions of men. No occasion
+was esteemed too sacred for its presence and use. It was an honored
+guest at a wedding, a christening, or a funeral. The minister whose
+hands were laid in baptismal blessing on babes, or raised in the holy
+sacrament of love over brides, lifted also the glass; and the selfsame
+lips which had spoken the last words over the dead, drank and made merry
+presently afterward among the decanters on the side-board. It mattered
+not for what the building was intended--whether for church, school, or
+parsonage, rum was the grand master of ceremonies, the indispensable
+celebrant at the various stages of its completion. The party who dug the
+parson out after a snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort of
+prelibation of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing not, according
+to the Jewish notion, with milk and _honey_, but according to the
+revised version of Yankeedom, with milk and _rum_. Rum was, forsooth, a
+very decent devil, if judged by the exalted character of the company it
+kept. It stood high on the rungs of the social ladder and pulled and
+pushed men from it by thousands to wretchedness and ruin. So flagrant
+and universal was the drinking customs of Boston then that dealers
+offered on the commons during holidays, without let or hindrance, the
+drunkard's glass to the crowds thronging by extemporized booths and
+bars. Shocking as was the excesses of this period "nothing comparatively
+was heard on the subject of intemperance--it was seldom a theme for the
+essayist--the newspapers scarcely acknowledged its existence, excepting
+occasionally in connection with some catastrophes or crimes--the
+Christian and patriot, while they perceived its ravages, formed no plans
+for its overthrow--and it did not occur to any that a paper devoted
+mainly to its suppression, might be made a direct and successful engine
+in the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individual
+confessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts were
+adopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments of
+the people." Such was the state of public morals and the state of public
+sentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This change
+was brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist city
+missionary, the Rev. William Collier. His labors among the poor of
+Boston had doubtless revealed to him the bestial character of
+intemperance, and the necessity of doing something to check and put an
+end to the havoc it was working. With this design he established the
+_National Philanthropist_ in Boston, March 4, 1826. The editor was one
+of Garrison's earliest acquaintances in the city. Garrison went after
+awhile to board with him, and still later entered the office of the
+_Philanthropist_ as a type-setter. The printer of the paper, Nathaniel
+H. White and young Garrison, occupied the same room at Mr. Collier's.
+And so almost before our hero was aware, he had launched his bark upon
+the sea of the temperance reform. Presently, when the founder of the
+paper retired, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, that the
+young journeyman printer, with his editorial experience and ability,
+should succeed him as editor. His room-mate, White, bought the
+_Philanthropist_, and in April 1828, formally installed Garrison into
+its editorship. Into this new work he carried all his moral earnestness
+and enthusiasm of purpose. The paper grew under his hand in size,
+typographical appearance, and in editorial force and capacity. It was a
+wide-awake sentinel on the wall of society; and week after week its
+columns bristled and flashed with apposite facts, telling arguments,
+shrewd suggestions, cogent appeals to the community to destroy the
+accursed thing. No better education could he have had as the preparation
+for his life work. He began to understand then the strength of
+deep-seated public evils, to acquaint himself with the methods and
+instruments with which to attack them. The _Philanthropist_ was a sort
+of forerunner, so far as the training in intelligent and effective
+agitation was concerned, of the _Genius of Universal Emancipation_ and
+of the _Liberator_. One cannot read his sketch of the progress made by
+the temperance reform, from which I have already quoted, and published
+by him in the _Philanthropist_ in April, 1828, without being struck by
+the strong similitude of the temperance to the anti-slavery movement in
+their beginnings. "When this paper was first proposed," the young
+temperance editor records, "it met with a repulsion which would have
+utterly discouraged a less zealous and persevering man than our
+predecessor. The moralist looked on doubtfully--the whole community
+esteemed the enterprise desperate. Mountains of prejudice, overtopping
+the Alps, were to be beaten down to a level--strong interest, connected
+by a thousand links, severed--new habits formed; Every house, and almost
+every individual, in a greater or less degree, reclaimed. Derision and
+contumely were busy in crushing this sublime project in its
+birth--coldness and apathy encompassed it on every side--but our
+predecessor, nevertheless, went boldly forward with a giant's strength
+and more than a giant's heart--conscious of difficulties and perils,
+though not disheartened, armed with the weapons of truth--full of
+meekness, yet certain of a splendid victory--and relying on the promises
+of God for the issue." What an inestimable object-lesson to Garrison was
+the example of this good man going forth singlehanded to do battle with
+one of the greatest evils of the age! It was not numerical strength, but
+the faith of one earnest soul that is able in the world of ideas and
+human passions to remove mountains out of the way of the onward march of
+mankind. This truth, we may be sure, sunk many fathoms deep into the
+mind of the young moralist. And no wonder. For the results of two years
+agitation and seed sowing were of the most astonishing character. "The
+change which has taken place in public sentiment," he continues, "is
+indeed remarkable ... incorporated as intemperance _was_, and still
+_is_, into our very existence as a people.... A regenerating spirit is
+everywhere seen; a strong impulse to action has been given, which,
+beginning in the breasts of a few individuals, and then affecting
+villages, and cities, and finally whole States, has rolled onward
+triumphantly through the remotest sections of the republic. As union and
+example are the levers adopted to remove this gigantic vice, temperance
+societies have been rapidly multiplied, many on the principle of entire
+abstinence, and others making it a duty to abstain from encouraging the
+distillation and consumption of spirituous liquors. Expressions of the
+deep abhorrence and sympathy which are felt in regard to the awful
+prevalence of drunkenness are constantly emanating from legislative
+bodies down to various religious conventions, medical associations,
+grand juries, etc., etc. But nothing has more clearly evinced the
+strength of this excitement than the general interest taken in this
+subject by the conductors of the press. From Maine to the Mississippi,
+and as far as printing has penetrated--even among the Cherokee
+Indians--but one sentiment seems to pervade the public papers, viz., the
+necessity of strenuous exertion for the suppression of intemperance."
+Such a demonstration of the tremendous power of a single righteous soul
+for good, we may be sure, exerted upon Garrison lasting influences. What
+a revelation it was also of the transcendent part which the press was
+capable of playing in the revolution of popular sentiment upon moral
+questions; and of the supreme service of organization as a factor in
+reformatory movements. The seeds sowed were faith in the convictions of
+one man against the opinions, the prejudices, and the practices of the
+multitude; and knowledge of and skill in the use of the instruments by
+which the individual conscience may be made to correct and renovate the
+moral sense of a nation. But there was another seed corn dropped at this
+time in his mind, and that is the immense utility of woman in the work
+of regenerating society. She it is who feels even more than man the
+effects of social vices and sins, and to her the moral reformer should
+strenuously appeal for aid. And this, with the instinct of genius,
+Garrison did in the temperance reform, nearly seventy years ago. His
+editorials in the _Philanthropist_ in the year 1828 on "Female
+Influence" may be said to be the _courier avant_ of the Woman's
+Christian Temperance Union of to-day, as they were certainly the
+precursors of the female anti-slavery societies of a few years later.
+
+But now, without his knowing it, a stranger from a distant city entered
+Boston with a message, which was to change the whole purpose of the
+young editor's life. It was Benjamin Lundy, the indefatigable friend of
+the Southern slave, the man who carried within his breast the whole
+menagerie of Southern slavery. He was fresh from the city which held the
+dust of Fanny Garrison, who had once written to her boy in Newburyport,
+how the good God had cared for her in the person of a colored woman.
+Yes, she had written: "The ladies are all kind to me, and I have a
+colored woman that waits on me, that is so kind no one can tell how kind
+she is; and although a slave to man, yet a free-born soul, by the grace
+of God. Her name is Henny, and should I never see you again, and you
+should come where she is, remember her, for your poor mother's sake."
+And now, without his dreaming of it, this devoted Samaritan in black,
+who, perhaps, had long ago joined her dear friend in the grave, was
+coming to that very boy, now grown to manhood, to claim for her race
+what the mother had asked for her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of all
+those little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansioned
+heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism of
+slavery. "My heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross
+abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of
+distress, and the iron entered my soul." With apostolic faith and zeal
+he had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his
+bruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great love, he had gone about the
+country on his self-imposed task. To do this work he had given up the
+business of a saddler, in which he had prospered, had sacrificed his
+possessions, and renounced the ease that comes with wealth; had courted
+unheard-of hardships, and wedded himself for better and worse to poverty
+and unremitting endeavor. Nothing did he esteem too dear to relinquish
+for the slave. Neither wife nor children did he withhold. Neither the
+summer's heat nor the winter's cold was able to daunt him or turn him
+from his object. Though diminutive and delicate of body, no distance or
+difficulty of travel was ever able to deter him from doing what his
+humanity had bidden him do. From place to place, through nineteen
+States, he had traveled, sowing as he went the seeds of his holy
+purpose, and watering them with his life's blood. Not Livingstone nor
+Stanley on the dark continent exceeded in sheer physical exertion and
+endurance the labors of this wonderful man. He belongs in the category
+of great explorers, only the irresistible passion and purpose, which
+pushed him forward, had humanity, not geography, as their goal. Where,
+in the lives of either Stanley or Livingstone do we find a record of
+more astonishing activity and achievement than what is contained in
+these sentences, written by Garrison of Lundy, in the winter of 1828?
+"Within a few months he has traveled about twenty-four hundred miles, of
+which upwards of nineteen hundred were performed _on foot!_ during which
+time he has held nearly fifty public meetings. Rivers and mountains
+vanish in his path; midnight finds him wending his solitary way over an
+unfrequented road; the sun is anticipated in his rising. Never was moral
+sublimity of character better illustrated." Such was the marvelous man,
+whose visit to Boston, in the month of March, of the year 1828, dates
+the beginning of a new epoch in the history of America. The event of
+that year was not the "Bill of Abominations," great as was the national
+excitement which it produced; nor was it yet the then impending
+political struggle between Jackson and Adams, but the unnoticed meeting
+of Lundy and Garrison. Great historic movements are born not in the
+whirlwinds, the earthquakes, and the pomps of human splendor and power,
+but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits. Up to this
+time Garrison had had, as the religious revivalist would say, no
+"realizing sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. Occasionally an
+utterance had dropped from his pen which indicated that his heart was
+right on the subject, but which evinced no more than the ordinary
+opposition to its existence, nor any profound convictions as to his own
+or the nation's duty in regard to its extinction. His first reference to
+the question appeared in connection with a notice made by him in the
+_Free Press_ of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa," in which the
+authoress sings of:
+
+  "The wild and mingling groans of writhing millions,
+  Calling for vengeance on my guilty land."
+
+
+He commended the verses "to all those who wish to cherish female genius,
+and whose best feelings are enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressed
+sons of Africa." He was evidently impressed, but the impression belonged
+to the ordinary, transitory sort. His next recorded utterance on the
+subject was also in the _Free Press_. It was made in relation with some
+just and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth of July oration,
+with its "ceaseless apostrophes to liberty, and fierce denunciations of
+tyranny." Such a tone was false and mischievous--the occasion was for
+other and graver matter. "There is one theme," he declares, "which
+should be dwelt upon, till our whole country is free from the curse--it
+is slavery." The emphasis and energy of the rebuke and exhortation lifts
+this second allusion to slavery, quite outside of merely ordinary
+occurrences. It was not an ordinary personal occurrence for it served to
+reveal in its lightning-like flash the glow and glare of a conscience
+taking fire. The fire slumbered until a few weeks before Lundy entered
+Boston, when there were again the glow and glare of a moral sense in the
+first stages of ignition on the enormity of slave institutions. The act
+of South Carolina in making it illegal to teach a colored person to read
+and write struck this spark from his pen: "There is something
+unspeakably pitiable and alarming," he writes in the _Philanthropist_,
+"in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary, for
+self-preservation, to seal up the mind and debase the intellect of man
+to brutal incapacity.... Truly the alternatives of oppression are
+terrible. But this state of things cannot always last, nor ignorance
+alone shield us from destruction." His interest in the question was
+clearly growing. But it was still in the gristle of sentiment waiting to
+be transmuted into the bone and muscle of a definite and determined
+purpose, when first he met Lundy. This meeting of the two men, was to
+Garrison what the fourth call of God was to Samuel, the Hebrew lad, who
+afterward became a prophet. As the three previous calls of God and the
+conversations with Eli had prepared the Jewish boy to receive and
+understand the next summons of Jehovah, so had Garrison's former
+experience and education made him ready for the divine message when
+uttered in his ears by Lundy. All the sense of truth and the passion for
+righteousness of the young man replied to the voice, "Here am I." The
+hardening process of growth became immediately manifest in him. Whereas
+before there was sentimental opposition to slavery, there began then an
+opposition, active and practical. When Lundy convened many of the
+ministers of the city to expose to them the barbarism of slavery,
+Garrison sat in the room, and as Lundy himself records, "expressed his
+approbation of my doctrines." The young reformer must needs stand up and
+make public profession of his new faith and of his agreement with the
+anti-slavery principles of the older. But it was altogether different
+with the assembled ministers. Lundy, as was his wont on such occasions,
+desired and urged the formation of an anti-slavery society, but these
+sons of Eli of that generation were not willing to offend their
+slave-holding brethren in the South. Eyes they had, but they refused to
+see; ears, which they stopped to the cry of the slave breaking in
+anguish and appeal from the lips of this modern man of God. Garrison,
+eleven years later, after the lips, which were eloquent then with their
+great sorrow, were speechless in the grave, told the story of that
+ministers' meeting. And here is the story:
+
+"He (Lundy) might as well have urged the stones in the streets to cry
+out in behalf of the perishing captives. Oh, the moral cowardice, the
+chilling apathy, the criminal unbelief, the cruel skepticism, that were
+revealed on that memorable occasion! My soul was on fire then, as it is
+now, in view of such a development. Every soul in the room was heartily
+opposed to slavery, but, it would terribly alarm and enrage the South to
+know that an anti-slavery society existed in Boston. But it would do
+harm rather than good openly to agitate the subject. But _perhaps a
+select_ committee might be formed, to be called by some name that would
+neither give offence, nor excite suspicion as to its real design! One or
+two only were for bold and decisive action; but as they had neither
+station nor influence, and did not rank among the wise and prudent,
+their opinion did not weigh very heavily, and the project was finally
+abandoned. Poor Lundy! that meeting was a damper to his feelings." There
+is no doubt that Garrison was one of the very few present, who "were for
+bold and decisive action" against the iniquity. The grief and
+disappointment of his brave friend touched his heart with a brother's
+affection and pity. The worldly wisdom and lukewarmness of the clergy
+kindled a righteous indignation within his freedom-loving soul. This was
+his first bitter lesson from the clergy. There were, alas, many and
+bitterer experiences to follow, but of them he little recked at the
+time. As this nineteenth-century prophet mused upon the horrible thing
+the fires of a life purpose burned within him. And oftener thenceforth
+we catch glimpses of the glow and glare of a soul bursting into flame.
+The editorials in the _Philanthropist_, which swiftly followed Lundy's
+visit, began to throw off more heat as the revolving wheels of an
+electrical machine throw off sparks. The evil that there was in the
+world, under which, wherever he turned, he saw his brother man
+staggering and bleeding, was no longer what it had been, a vague and
+shadowy apparition, but rather a terrible and tremendous reality against
+which he must go forth to fight the fight of a lifetime. And so he
+girded him with his life purpose and flung his moral earnestness against
+the triple-headed curse of intemperance, slavery, and war. A mighty
+human love had begun to flow inward and over him. And as the tide
+steadily rose it swallowed and drowned all the egoism of self and race
+in the altruism of an all-embracing humanity. When an apprentice in the
+office of the Newburyport _Herald_, and writing on the subject of South
+American affairs he grew hot over the wrongs suffered by American
+vessels at Valparaiso and Lima. He was for finishing "with cannon what
+cannot be done in a conciliatory and equitable manner, where justice
+demands such proceedings." This was at seventeen when he was a boy with
+the thoughts of a boy. Six years later he is a man who has looked upon
+the sorrows of men. His old boy-world is far behind him, and the
+ever-present sufferings of his kind are in front of him. War now is no
+longer glorious, for it adds immeasurably to the sum of human misery.
+War ought to be abolished with intemperance and slavery. And this duty
+he began to utter in the ears of his country. "The brightest traits in
+the American character will derive their luster, not from the laurels
+picked from the field of blood, not from the magnitude of our navy and
+the success of our arms," he proclaimed, "but from our exertions to
+banish war from the earth, to stay the ravages of intemperance among all
+that is beautiful and fair, to unfetter those who have been enthralled
+by chains, which we have forged, and to spread the light of knowledge
+and religious liberty, wherever darkness and superstition reign.... The
+struggle is full of sublimity, the conquest embraces the world." Lundy
+himself did not fully appreciate the immense gain, which his cause had
+made in the conversion of Garrison into an active friend of the slave.
+Not at once certainly. Later he knew. The discovery of a kindred spirit
+in Boston exerted probably no little influence in turning for the second
+time his indefatigable feet toward that city. He made it a second visit
+in July, 1828, where again he met Garrison. His experience with the
+ministers did not deter him from repeating the horrible tale wherever he
+could get together an audience. This time he secured his first public
+hearing in Boston. It was in the Federal Street Baptist Church. He spoke
+not only on the subject of slavery itself, the growth of anti-slavery
+societies, but on a new phase of the general subject, viz., the futility
+of the Colonization Society as an abolition instrument. Garrison was
+present, and treasured up in his heart the words of his friend. He did
+not forget how Lundy had pressed upon his hearers the importance of
+petitioning Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of
+Columbia, as we shall see further on. But poor Lundy was unfortunate
+with the ministers. He got this time not the cold shoulder alone but a
+clerical slap in the face as well. He had just sat down when the pastor
+of the church, Rev. Howard Malcolm, uprose in wrath and inveighed
+against any intermeddling of the North with slavery, and brought the
+meeting with a high hand to a close. This incident was the first
+collision with the church of the forlorn hope of the Abolition movement.
+Trained as Garrison was in the orthodox creed and sound in that creed
+almost to bigotry, this behavior of a standard-bearer of the church,
+together with the apathy displayed by the clergy on a former occasion,
+caused probably the first "little rift within the lute" of his creed,
+"that by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowly
+silence all." For in religion as in love, "Unfaith in aught is want of
+faith in all." The Rev. Howard Malcolm's arbitrary proceeding had
+prevented the organization of an anti-slavery committee. But this was
+affected at a second meeting of the friends of the slave. Garrison was
+one of the twenty gentlemen who were appointed such a committee. His
+zeal and energy far exceeded the zeal and energy of the remaining
+nineteen. He did not need the earnest exhortation of Lundy to impress
+upon his memory the importance of "activity and steady perseverance." He
+perceived almost at once that everything depended on them. And so he had
+formed plans for a vigorous campaign against the existence of slavery in
+the District of Columbia. But before he was ready to set out along the
+line of work, which he had laid down for Massachusetts, the scene of his
+labors shifted to Bennington, Vermont. Before he left Boston, Lundy had
+recognized him as "a valuable coadjutor." The relationship between the
+two men was becoming beautifully close. The more Lundy saw of Garrison,
+the more he must have seemed to him a man after his own heart. And so no
+wonder that he was solicitous of fastening him to his cause with hooks
+of steel. The older had written the younger reformer a letter almost
+paternal in tone--he must do thus and thus, he must not be disappointed
+if he finds the heavy end of the burthen borne by himself, while those
+associated with him do little to keep the wheels moving, he must
+remember that "a few will have the labor to perform and the honor to
+share." Then there creeps into his words a grain of doubt, a vague fear
+lest his young ally should take his hands from the plough and go the way
+of all men, and here are the words which Paul might have written to
+Timothy: "I hope you will persevere in your work, steadily, but not make
+too large calculations on what may be accomplished in a particularly
+stated time. You have now girded on a holy warfare. Lay not down your
+weapons until honorable terms are obtained. _The God of hosts is on your
+side._ Steadiness and faithfulness will most assuredly overcome every
+obstacle." The older apostle had yet to learn that the younger always
+did what he undertook in the field of morals and philanthropy.
+
+But the scene had shifted from Boston to Bennington, and with the young
+reformer goes also his plan of campaign for anti-slavery work. The
+committee of twenty, now nineteen since his departure, slumbered and
+slept in the land of benevolent intentions, a practical illustration of
+Lundy's pungent saying, that "philanthropists are the slowest creatures
+breathing. They think forty times before they act." The committee never
+acted, but its one member in Vermont did act, and that promptly and
+powerfully as shall shortly appear. Garrison had gone to Bennington to
+edit the _Journal of the Times_ in the interest of the reelection of
+John Quincy Adams to the Presidency. For this object he was engaged as
+editor of the paper. What he was engaged to do he performed faithfully
+and ably, but along with his fulfillment of his contract with the
+friends of Mr. Adams, he carried the one which he had made with humanity
+likewise. In his salutatory he outlined his intentions in this regard
+thus: "We have three objects in view, which we shall pursue through
+life, whether in this place or elsewhere--namely, the suppression of
+intemperance and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation of every
+slave in the republic, and the perpetuity of national peace. In
+discussing these topics what is wanting in vigor shall be made up in
+zeal." From the issue of that first number if the friends of Adams had
+no cause to complain of the character of his zeal and vigor in their
+service, neither had the friends of humanity. What he had proposed doing
+in Massachusetts as a member of the anti-slavery committee of twenty, he
+performed with remarkable energy and success in Vermont. It was to
+obtain signatures not by the hundred to a petition for the abolition of
+slavery in the District of Columbia, but by the thousands, and that from
+all parts of the State. He sent copies of the petition to every
+postmaster in Vermont with the request that he obtain signatures in his
+neighborhood. Through his exertions a public meeting of citizens of
+Bennington was held and indorsed the petition. The plan for polling the
+anti-slavery sentiment of the State worked admirably. The result was a
+monster petition with 2,352 names appended. This he forwarded to the
+seat of Government. It was a powerful prayer, but as to its effect,
+Garrison had no delusions. He possessed even then singularly clear ideas
+as to how the South would receive such petitions, and of the course
+which it would pursue to discourage their presentation. He was no less
+clear as to how the friends of freedom ought to carry themselves under
+the circumstances. In the _Journal of the Times_ of November, 1828, he
+thus expressed himself: "It requires no spirit of prophecy to predict
+that it (the petition) will create great opposition. An attempt will be
+made to frighten Northern 'dough-faces' as in case of the Missouri
+question. There will be an abundance of furious declamation, menace, and
+taunt. Are we, therefore, to approach the subject timidly--with half a
+heart--as if we were treading on forbidden ground? No, indeed, but
+earnestly, fearlessly, as becomes men, who are determined to clear their
+country and themselves from the guilt of oppressing God's free and
+lawful creatures." About the same time he began to make his assaults on
+the personal representatives of the slave-power in Congress, cauterizing
+in the first instance three Northern "dough-faces," who had voted
+against some resolutions, looking to the abolition of the slave-trade
+and slavery itself in the District of Columbia. So while the South thus
+early was seeking to frighten the North from the agitation of the
+slavery question in Congress, Garrison was unconsciously preparing a
+countercheck by making it dangerous for a Northern man to practice
+Southern principles in the National Legislature. He did not mince his
+words, but called a spade a spade, and sin, sin. He perceived at once
+that if he would kill the sin of slave-holding, he could not spare the
+sinner. And so he spoke the names of the delinquents from the housetop of
+the _Journal of the Times_, stamping upon their brows the scarlet letter
+of their crime against liberty. He had said in the October before: "It
+is time that a voice of remonstrance went forth from the North, that
+should peal in the ears of every slaveholder like a roar of thunder....
+For ourselves, we are resolved to agitate this subject to the utmost;
+nothing but death shall prevent us from denouncing a crime which has no
+parallel in human depravity; we shall take high ground. _The alarm must
+be perpetual._" A voice of remonstrance, with thunder growl
+accompaniment, was rising higher and clearer from the pen of the young
+editor. His tone of earnestness was deepening to the stern bass of the
+moral reformer, and the storm breath of enthusiasm was blowing to a
+blaze the glowing coals of his humanity. The wail of the fleeing
+fugitive from the house of bondage sounded no longer far away and unreal
+in his ears, but thrilled now right under the windows of his soul. The
+masonic excitement and the commotion created by the abduction of Morgan
+he caught up and shook before the eyes of his countrymen as an object
+lesson of the million-times greater wrong daily done the slaves. "All
+this fearful commotion," he pealed, "has arisen from the abduction of
+_one man_. More than two millions of unhappy beings are groaning out
+their lives in bondage, and scarcely a pulse quickens, or a heart leaps,
+or a tongue pleads in their behalf. 'Tis a trifling affair, which
+concerns nobody. Oh! for the spirit that rages, to break every fetter of
+oppression!" Such a spirit was fast taking possession of the writer.
+
+Of this Lundy was well informed. He had not lost sight of his young
+coadjutor, but had watched his course with great hope and growing
+confidence. In him he found what he had discovered in no one else,
+anti-slavery activity and perseverance. He had often found men who
+protested loudly their benevolence for the negro, but who made not the
+slightest exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes. "They will
+pen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or so--and then--_the subject is
+exhausted!_" It was not so with his young friend, the Bennington editor.
+He saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject of African
+emancipation can never be exhausted until the system of slavery itself
+be totally annihilated." He was faithful among the faithless found by
+Lundy. To reassure his doubting leader, Garrison took upon himself
+publicly a vow of perpetual consecration to the slave. "Before God and
+our country," he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation of
+the enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost in our pursuits. The
+people of New England are interested in this matter, and they must be
+aroused from their lethargy as by a trumpet-call. They shall not quietly
+slumber while we have the management of a press, or strength to hold a
+pen." The question of slavery had at length obtained the ascendency over
+all other questions in his regard. And when Lundy perceived this he set
+out from Baltimore to Bennington to invite Garrison to join hands with
+him in his emancipation movement at Baltimore. He performed the long
+journey on foot, with staff in hand in true apostolic fashion. The two
+men of God met among the mountains of Vermont, and when the elder
+returned from the heights the younger had resolved to follow him to the
+vales where men needed his help, the utmost which he could give them. He
+agreed to join his friend in Baltimore and there edit with him his
+little paper with the grand name (_The Genius of Universal
+Emancipation_), devoted to preaching the gospel of the gradual
+abolishment of American slavery. Garrison was to take the position of
+managing editor, and Lundy to look after the subscription list. The
+younger to be resident, the elder itinerant partner in the publication
+of the paper. Garrison closed his relations with the _Journal of the
+Times_, March 27, 1829, and delivered his valedictory to its readers.
+This valedictory strikes with stern hammer-stroke the subject of his
+thoughts. "Hereafter," it reads, "the editorial charge of this paper
+will devolve on another person. I am invited to occupy a broader field,
+and to engage in a higher enterprise; that field embraces the whole
+country--that enterprise is in behalf of the slave population."
+
+"To my apprehension, the subject of slavery involves interests of
+greater moment to our welfare as a republic, and demands a more prudent
+and minute investigation than any other which has come before the
+American people since the Revolutionary struggle--than all others which
+now occupy their attention. No body of men on the face of the earth
+deserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much as
+the slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected.
+It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our national
+inconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African. It is
+true examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices are
+numerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic,
+vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow this
+fabric of oppression. I trust in God that I may be the humble instrument
+of breaking at least one chain, and restoring one captive to liberty; it
+will amply repay a life of severe toil." The causes of temperance and
+peace came in also for an earnest parting word, but they had clearly
+declined to a place of secondary importance in the writer's regard. To
+be more exact, they had not really declined, but the slavery question
+had risen in his mind above both. They were great questions, but it was
+_the_ question--had become _his_ cause.
+
+Lundy, after his visit to Garrison at Bennington, started on a trip to
+Hayti with twelve emancipated slaves, whom he had undertaken to colonize
+there. Garrison awaited in Boston the return of his partner to
+Baltimore. The former, meanwhile, was out of employment, and sorely in
+need of money. Never had he been favored with a surplusage of the root
+of all evil. He was deficient in the money-getting and money-saving
+instinct. Such was plainly not his vocation, and so it happened that
+wherever he turned, he and poverty walked arm in arm, and the
+interrogatory, "wherewithal shall I be fed and clothed on the morrow?"
+was never satisfactorily answered until the morrow arrived. This led him
+at times into no little embarrassment and difficulty. But since he was
+always willing to work at the case, and to send his "pride on a
+pilgrimage to Mecca," the embarrassment was not protracted, nor did the
+difficulty prove insuperable.
+
+The Congregational societies of Boston invited him in June to deliver
+before them a Fourth of July address in the interest of the Colonization
+Society. The exercises took place in Park Street Church. Ten days before
+this event he was called upon to pay a bill of four dollars for failure
+to appear at the May muster. Refusing to do so, he was thereupon
+summoned to come into the Police Court on the glorious Fourth to show
+cause why he ought not to pay the amercement. He was in a quandary. He
+did not owe the money, but as he could not be in two places at the same
+time, and, inasmuch as he wanted very much to deliver his address before
+the Congregational Societies, and did not at all long to make the
+acquaintance of his honor, the Police Court Judge, he determined to pay
+the fine. But, alack and alas! he had "not a farthing" with which to
+discharge him from his embarrassment. Fortunately, if he wanted money he
+did not want friends. And one of these, Jacob Horton, of Newburyport,
+who had married his "old friend and playmate, Harriet Farnham," came to
+his rescue with the requisite amount.
+
+On the day and place appointed Garrison appeared before the
+Congregational Societies with an address, to the like of which, it is
+safe to say, they had never before listened. It was the Fourth of July,
+but the orator was in no holiday humor. There was not, in a single
+sentence of the oration the slightest endeavor to be playful with his
+audience. It was rather an eruption of human suffering, and of the
+humanity of one man to man. What the Boston clergy saw that afternoon,
+in the pulpit of Park Street Church, was the vision of a soul on fire.
+Garrison burned and blazed as the sun that July afternoon burned and
+blazed in the city's streets. None without escaped the scorching rays of
+the latter, none within was able to shun the fervid heat of the former.
+Those of my readers who have watched the effects of the summer's sun on
+a track of sandy land and have noted how, about midday, the heat seems
+to rise in sparkling particles and exhalations out of the hot,
+surcharged surface, can form some notion of the moral fervor and passion
+of this Fourth of July address, delivered more than sixty years ago, in
+Boston. Through all the pores of it, over all the length and breadth of
+it, there went up bright, burning particles from the sunlit sympathy and
+humanity of the young reformer.
+
+In beginning, he animadverted, among other things, on the spread of
+intemperance, of political corruption, on the profligacy of the press,
+and, amid them all, the self-complacency and boastfulness of the
+national spirit, as if it bore a charmed life.
+
+"But," he continued, "there is another evil which, if we had to contend
+against nothing else, should make us quake for the issue. It is a
+gangrene preying upon our vitals--an earthquake rumbling under our
+feet--a mine accumulating material for a national catastrophe. It should
+make this a day of fasting and prayer, not of boisterous merriment and
+idle pageantry--a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory joy.
+It should spike every cannon, and haul down every banner. Our garb
+should be sack-cloth--our heads bowed in the dust--our supplications for
+the pardon and assistance of Heaven.
+
+"Sirs, I am not come to tell you that slavery is a curse, debasing in
+its effects, cruel in its operations, fatal in its continuance. The day
+and the occasion require no such revelation. I do not claim the
+discovery as my own, that 'all men are born equal,' and that among their
+inalienable rights are 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
+Were I addressing any other than a free and Christian assembly, the
+enforcement of this truth might be pertinent. Neither do I intend to
+analyze the horrors of slavery for your inspection, nor to freeze your
+blood with authentic recitals of savage cruelty. Nor will time allow me
+to explore even a furlong of that immense wilderness of suffering which
+remains unsubdued in our land. I take it for granted that the existence
+of these evils is acknowledged, if not rightly understood. My object is
+to define and enforce our duty, as Christians and philanthropists."
+
+This was, by way of exordium, the powerful skirmish line of the address.
+Assuming the existence of the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme,
+viz., the duty of abolishing it. To this end he laid down four
+propositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon on the heights
+overlooking and commanding his enemies' works. The first, broadly
+stated, asserted the kinship of the slave to the free population of the
+republic. They were men; they were natives of the country; they were in
+dire need. They were ignorant, degraded, morally and socially. They were
+the heathen at home, whose claims far outranked those in foreign lands;
+they were higher than those of the "Turks or Chinese, for they have the
+privileges of instruction; higher than the Pagans, for they are not
+dwellers in a Gospel land; higher than our red men of the forest, for we
+do not bind them with gyves, nor treat them as chattels."
+
+Then he turned hotly upon the Church, exclaiming: "What has Christianity
+done by direct effort for our slave population? Comparatively nothing.
+She has explored the isles of the ocean for objects of commiseration;
+but, amazing stupidity! she can gaze without emotion on a multitude of
+miserable beings at home, large enough to constitute a nation of
+freemen, whom tyranny has heathenized by law. In her public services
+they are seldom remembered, and in her private donations they are
+forgotten. From one end of the country to the other her charitable
+societies form golden links of benevolence, and scatter their
+contributions like rain drops over a parched heath; but they bring no
+sustenance to the perishing slave. The blood of souls is upon her
+garments, yet she heeds not the stain. The clanking of the prisoner's
+chains strike upon her ear, but they cannot penetrate her heart."
+
+Then, with holy wrath upon the nation, thus:
+
+"Every Fourth of July our Declaration of Independence is produced, with
+a sublime indignation, to set forth the tyranny of the mother country,
+and to challenge the admiration of the world. But what a pitiful detail
+of grievances does this document present, in comparison with the wrongs
+which our slaves endure? In the one case it is hardly the plucking of a
+hair from the head; in the other, it is the crushing of a live body on
+the wheel--the stings of the wasp contrasted with the tortures of the
+Inquisition. Before God I must say that such a glaring contradiction as
+exists between our creed and practice the annals of six thousand years
+cannot parallel. In view of it I am ashamed of my country. I am sick of
+our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our
+hypocritical cant about the inalienable rights of man. I would not for
+my right hand stand up before a European assembly, and exult that I am
+an American citizen, and denounce the usurpations of a kingly government
+as wicked and unjust; or, should I make the attempt, the recollection of
+my country's barbarity and despotism would blister my lips, and cover my
+cheeks with burning blushes of shame."
+
+Passing to his second proposition, which affirmed the right of the free
+States to be in at the death of slavery, he pointed out that slavery was
+not sectional but national in its influence. If the consequences of
+slave-holding did not flow beyond the limits of the slave section, the
+right would still exist, on the principle that what affected injuriously
+one part must ultimately hurt the whole body politic. But it was not
+true that slavery concerned only the States where it existed--the parts
+where it did not exist were involved by their constitutional liability
+to be called on for aid in case of a slave insurrection, as they were in
+the slave representation clause of the national compact, through which
+the North was deprived of its "just influence in the councils of the
+nation." And, furthermore, the right of the free States to agitate the
+question inhered in the principle of majority rule--the white population
+of the free States being almost double that of the slave States, "and
+the voice of this overwhelming majority should be potential." He
+repelled in strong language the wrongfulness of allowing the South to
+multiply the votes of those freemen by the master's right to count three
+for every five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican to
+suffer property to be represented as men, and _vice versa_, because it
+gives the South an unjust ascendancy over other portions of territory,
+and a power which may be perverted on every occasion."
+
+He looked without shrinking upon the possibility of disunion even then.
+
+"Now I say that, on the broad system of equal rights," he declared,
+"this inequality should no longer be tolerated. If it cannot be speedily
+put down--not by force but by fair persuasion--if we are always to
+remain shackled by unjust, constitutional provisions, when the emergency
+that imposed them has long since passed away; if we must share in the
+guilt and danger of destroying the bodies and souls of men _as the price
+of our Union_; if the slave States will haughtily spurn our assistance,
+and refuse to consult the general welfare, then the fault is not ours if
+a separation eventually takes place."
+
+Considering that he was in his twenty-fourth year, and that the
+Abolition movement had then no actual existence, the orator evinced
+surprising prescience in his forecast of the future, and of the strife
+and hostility which the agitation was destined to engender.
+
+"But the plea is prevalent," he said, "that any interference by the free
+States, however benevolent or cautious it might be, would only irritate
+and inflame the jealousies of the South, and retard the cause of
+emancipation. If any man believes that slavery can be abolished without
+a struggle with the worst passions of human nature, quietly,
+harmoniously, he cherishes a delusion. It can never be done, unless the
+age of miracles returns. No; we must expect a collision, full of sharp
+asperities and bitterness. We shall have to contend with the insolence,
+and pride, and selfishness of many a heartless being.
+
+"Sirs, the prejudices of the North are stronger than those of the South;
+they bristle like so many bayonets around the slaves; they forge and
+rivet the chains of the nation. Conquer them and the victory is won. The
+enemies of emancipation take courage from our criminal timidity.... We
+are ... afraid of our own shadows, who have been driven back to the wall
+again and again; who stand trembling under their whips; who turn pale,
+retreat, and surrender at a talismanic threat to dissolve the Union...."
+But the difficulties did not daunt him, nor the dangers cow him. He did
+not doubt, but was assured, that truth was mighty and would prevail.
+"Moral influence when in vigorous exercise," he said, "is irresistible.
+It has an immortal essence. It can no more be trod out of existence by
+the iron foot of time, or by the ponderous march of iniquity, than
+matter can be annihilated. It may disappear for a time; but it lives in
+some shape or other, in some place or other, and will rise with
+renovated strength. Let us then be up and doing. In the simple and
+stirring language of the stout-hearted Lundy, all the friends of the
+cause must go to work, keep to work, hold on, and never give up." The
+closing paragraph is this powerful peroration: "I will say, finally,
+that I despair of the republic while slavery exists therein. If I look
+up to God for success, no smile of mercy or forgiveness dispels the
+gloom of futurity; if to our own resources, they are daily diminishing;
+if to all history our destruction is not only possible but almost
+certain. Why should we slumber at this momentous crisis? If our hearts
+were dead to every thought of humanity; if it were lawful to oppress,
+where power is ample; still, if we had any regard for our safety and
+happiness, we should strive to crush the vampire which is feeding upon
+our life-blood. All the selfishness of our nature cries aloud for a
+better security. Our own vices are too strong for us, and keep us in
+perpetual alarm; how, in addition to these, shall we be able to contend
+successfully with millions of armed and desperate men, as we must,
+eventually, if slavery do not cease?" Exit the apprentice, enter the
+master. The period of preparation is ended, the time of action begun.
+The address was the fiery cry of the young prophet ere he plunged into
+the unsubdued wilderness of American slavery.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+
+THE MAN BEGINS HIS MINISTRY.
+
+
+Some time in August, 1829, Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began with
+Lundy the editorship of _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_. Radical
+as the Park Street Church address was, it had, nevertheless, ceased to
+represent in one essential matter his anti-slavery convictions and
+principles. The moral impetus and ground-swell of the address had
+carried him beyond the position where its first flood of feeling had for
+the moment left him. During the composition of the address he was
+transported with grief and indignation at the monstrous wrong which
+slavery did the slaves and the nation. He had not thought out for
+himself any means to rid both of the curse. The white heat of the
+address destroyed for the instant all capacity for such thinking. "Who
+can be amazed, temperate, and furious--in a moment? No man. The
+expedition of his violent love outran the pauser reason" He had accepted
+the colonization scheme as an instrument for removing the evil, and
+called on all good citizens "to assist in establishing auxiliary
+colonization societies in every State, county, and town"; and implored
+"their direct and liberal patronage to the parent society." He had not
+apparently, so much as dreamed of any other than gradual emancipation.
+"The emancipation of all the slaves of this generation is most assuredly
+out of the question," he said; "the fabric which now towers above the
+Alps, must be taken away brick by brick, and foot by foot, till it is
+reduced so low that it may be overturned without burying the nation in
+its ruins. Years may elapse before the completion of the achievement;
+generations of blacks may go down to the grave, manacled and lacerated,
+without a hope for their children." He was on the Fourth of July a firm
+and earnest believer in the equity and efficacy of gradualism. But after
+that day, and some time before his departure for Baltimore, he began to
+think on this subject. The more he thought the less did gradualism seem
+defensible on moral grounds. John Wesley had said that slavery was the
+"sum of all villainies"; it was indeed the sin of sins, and as such
+ought to be abandoned not gradually but immediately. Slave-holding was
+sin and slaveholders were sinners. The sin and sinner should both be
+denounced as such and the latter called to instant repentance, and the
+duty of making immediate restitution of the stolen liberties of their
+slaves. This was the tone ministers of religion held every where toward
+sin and sinners, and this should be the tone held by the preachers of
+Abolition toward slavery, and slaveholders. To admit the principle of
+gradualism was for Abolition to emasculate itself of its most virile
+quality. Garrison, consequently rejected gradualism as a weapon, and
+took up instead the great and quickening doctrine of immediatism. Lundy
+did not know of this change in the convictions of his coadjutor until
+his arrival in Baltimore. Then Garrison frankly unburdened himself and
+declared his decision to conduct his campaign against the national
+iniquity along the lines of immediate and unconditional emancipation.
+The two on this new radicalism did not see eye to eye. But Lundy with
+sententious shrewdness and liberality suggested to the young radical:
+"Thee may put thy initials to thy articles and I will put my initials to
+mine, and each will bear his own burden." And the arrangement pleased
+the young radical, for it enabled him to free his soul of the necessity
+which was then sitting heavily upon it. The precise state of his mind in
+respect of the question at this juncture in its history and in his own
+is made plain enough in his salutatory address in _The Genius of
+Universal Emancipation_. The vow made in Bennington ten months before to
+devote his life to philanthrophy, and the dedication of himself made six
+months afterward to the extirpation of American slavery, he solemnly
+renews and reseals in Baltimore. He does not hate intemperance and war
+less, but slavery more, and those, therefore, he formally relegates
+thenceforth to a place of secondary importance in the endeavors of the
+future. It is obvious that the colonization scheme has no strong hold
+upon his intelligence. He does not conceal his respect for it as an
+instrument of freedom, but he puts no high value on its utility. "It may
+pluck a few leaves," he remarks, "from the Bohon Upas, but can neither
+extract its roots nor destroy its withering properties. Viewed as an
+auxiliary, it deserves encouragement; but as a remedy it is altogether
+inadequate." But this was not all. As a remedy, colonization was not
+only altogether inadequate, its influence was indirectly pernicious, in
+that it lulled the popular mind into "a belief that the monster has
+received his mortal wound." He perceived that this resultant
+indifference and apathy operated to the advantage of slavery, and to the
+injury of freedom. Small, therefore, as was the good which the
+Colonization Society was able to achieve, it was mixed with no little
+ill. Although Garrison has not yet begun to think on the subject, to
+examine into the motives and purposes of the society, it does not take a
+prophet to foresee that some day he will. He had already arrived at
+conclusions in respect of the rights of the colored people "to choose
+their own dwelling place," and against the iniquity of their
+expatriation, which cut directly at the roots of the colonization
+scheme. Later the pro-slavery character of the society will be wholly
+revealed to him. But truth in the breast of a reformer as of others must
+needs follow the great law of moral growth, first the blade, then the
+ear, and then the full corn in the ear. It is enough that he has made
+the tremendous step from gradual to immediate and unconditional
+emancipation on the soil.
+
+At this period he tested the disposition of slaveholders to manumit
+their slaves. The Colonization Society had given it out that there was
+no little desire on the part of many masters to set their slaves free.
+All that was wanted for a practical demonstration in this direction was
+the assurance of free transportation out of the country for the
+emancipated slaves. Lundy had made arrangement for the transportation of
+fifty slaves to Hayti and their settlement in that country. So he and
+Garrison advertised this fact in the _Genius_, but they waited in vain
+for a favorable response from the South--notwithstanding the following
+humane inducement which this advertisement offered: "THE PRICE OF
+PASSAGE WILL BE ADVANCED, and everything furnished of which they may
+stand in need, until they shall have time to prepare their houses and
+set in to work." No master was moved to take advantage of the
+opportunity. This was discouraging to the believers in the efficacy of
+colonization as a potent anti-slavery instrument. But Garrison was no
+such believer. With unerring moral instinct he had from the start placed
+his reliance "on nothing but the eternal principles of justice for the
+speedy overthrow of slavery."
+
+He obtained at this period an intimate personal knowledge of the free
+colored people. He saw that they were not essentially unlike other
+races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about
+them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common
+property of mankind in similar circumstances. He forthwith became their
+brave defender against the common slanders of the times. "There is a
+prevalent disposition among all classes to traduce the habits and morals
+of our free blacks," he remarked in the _Genius_. "The most scandalous
+exaggerations in regard to their condition are circulated by a thousand
+mischievous tongues, and no reproach seems to them too deep or
+unmerited. Vile and malignant indeed is this practice, and culpable are
+they who follow it. We do not pretend to say that crime, intemperance,
+and suffering, to a considerable extent, cannot be found among the free
+blacks; but we do assert that they are as moral, peaceable, and
+industrious as that class of the whites who are, like them, in indigent
+circumstances--and far less intemperate than the great body of foreign
+immigrants who infest and corrupt our shores." This idea of the natural
+equality of the races he presented in the _Genius_ a few weeks before
+with Darwinian breadth in the following admirable sentences: "I deny the
+postulate that God has made, by an irreversible decree, or any inherent
+qualities, one portion of the human race superior to another. No matter
+how many breeds are amalgamated--no matter how many shades of color
+intervene between tribes or nations give them the same chances to
+improve, and a fair start at the same time, and the result will be
+equally brilliant, equally productive, equally grand."
+
+At the same time that he was making active, personal acquaintance with
+the free colored people, he was making actual personal acquaintance with
+the barbarism of slavery also. "The distinct application of a whip, and
+the shrieks of anguish" of the slave, his residence in Baltimore had
+taught him was "nothing uncommon" in that city. Such an instance had
+come to him while in the street where the office of the _Genius_ was
+located. It was what was occurring at almost all hours of the day and in
+almost all parts of the town. He had not been in Baltimore a month when
+he saw a specimen of the brutality of slavery on the person of a negro,
+who had been mercilessly flogged. On his back were thirty-seven gashes
+made with a cowskin, while on his head were many bruises besides. It was
+a Sunday morning, fresh from his terrible punishment, that the poor
+fellow had found the editors of the _Genius_, who, with the compassion
+of brothers, took him in, dressed his wounds, and cared for him for two
+days. Such an experience was no new horror to Lundy, but it was
+doubtless Garrison's first lesson in that line, and it sank many fathoms
+deep into his heart.
+
+Maryland was one of the slave-breeding States and Baltimore a slave
+emporium. There was enacted the whole business of slavery as a
+commercial enterprise. Here the human chattels were brought and here
+warehoused in jails and other places of storage and detention. Here they
+were put up at public auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder,
+and from here they were shipped to New Orleans, the great distributing
+center for such merchandise. He heard what Lundy had years before heard,
+the wail of captive mothers and fathers, wives, husbands and children,
+torn from each other; like Lundy, "he felt their pang of distress; and
+the iron entered his soul." He could not hold his peace in the midst of
+such abominations, but boldly exposed and denounced them. His
+indignation grew hot when he saw that Northern vessels were largely
+engaged in the coastwise slave-trade; and when, to his amazement, he
+learned that the ship _Francis_, owned by Francis Todd, a Newburyport
+merchant, had sailed for New Orleans with a gang of seventy-five slaves,
+his indignation burst into blaze. He blazoned the act and the name of
+Francis Todd in the _Genius_, and did verily what he had resolved to do,
+viz., "to cover with thick infamy all who were concerned in this
+nefarious business," the captain as well as the owner of the
+ill-freighted ship. He did literally point at these men the finger of
+scorn. Every device known to the printer's art for concentrating the
+reader's attention upon particular words and sentences, Garrison made
+skillful use of in his articles--from the deep damnation of the heavy
+black capitals in which he printed the name Francis Todd, to the small
+caps in which appeared the words, "sentenced to solitary confinement for
+life," and which he flanked with two terrible indices. But the articles
+did not need such embellishment. They were red hot branding irons
+without them. One can almost smell the odor of burning flesh as he reads
+the words: "It is no worse to fit out piratical cruisers or to engage in
+the foreign slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade along our coast;
+and the men who have the wickedness to participate therein, for the
+purpose of keeping up wealth should be ==>SENTENCED TO SOLITARY
+CONFINEMENT FOR LIFE; <==_they are the enemies of their own
+species--highway robbers, and murderers_; and their final doom will be,
+unless they speedily repent, _to occupy the lowest depths of perdition_.
+I know that our laws make a distinction in this matter. I know that the
+man who is allowed to freight his vessel with slaves at home, for a
+distant market, would be thought worthy of death if he should take a
+similar freight on the coast of Africa; but I know, too, that this
+distinction is absurd, and at war with the common sense of mankind, and
+that God and good men regard it with abhorrence.
+
+"I recollect that it was always a mystery in Newburyport how Mr. Todd
+contrived to make profitable voyages to New Orleans and other places,
+when other merchants, with as fair an opportunity to make money, and
+sending to the same ports at the same time invariably made fewer
+successful speculations. The mystery seems to be unravelled. Any man can
+gather up riches if he does not care by what means they are obtained."
+
+A copy of the _Genius_, containing this article Garrison sent to the
+owner of the ship _Francis_. What followed made it immediately manifest
+that the branding irons of the reformer had burned home with scarifying
+effect. Mr. Todd's answer to the strictures was a suit at law against
+the editors of the _Genius_ for five thousand dollars in damages. But
+this was not all. The Grand Jury for Baltimore indicted them for
+publishing "a gross and malicious libel against Francis Todd and
+Nicholas Brown." This was at the February Term, 1830. On the first day
+of March following, Garrison was tried. He was ably and eloquently
+defended by Charles Mitchell, a young lawyer of the Baltimore Bar. But
+the prejudice of judge and jury rendered the verdict of guilty a
+foregone conclusion. April 17, 1830, the Court imposed a penalty of
+fifty dollars and costs, which, with the fine amounted in all to nearly
+one hundred dollars. The fine and costs Garrison could not pay, and he
+was therefore committed to jail as a common malefactor. His confinement
+lasted seven weeks. He did not languish during this period. His head and
+hands were in fact hardly ever more active than during the term of his
+imprisonment. Shut out by Maryland justice from work without the jail,
+he found and did that which needed to be done within "high walls and
+huge." He was an extraordinary prisoner and was treated with
+extraordinary consideration by the Warden. He proved himself a genuine
+evangel to the prisoners, visiting them in their cells, cheering them by
+his bouyant and benevolent words, giving them what he had, a brother's
+sympathy, which to these ill-fated ones, was more than gold or silver.
+He indited for such of them as he deemed deserving, letters and
+petitions to the Governor praying their pardon; and he had the great
+satisfaction of seeing many of his efforts in this regard crowned with
+success.
+
+But more than this his imprisonment afforded him an opportunity for a
+closer acquaintance with the barbarism of slavery than he could possibly
+have made had he lived otherwise in Baltimore. A Southern jail was not
+only the place of detention of offenders against social justice, but of
+slaves waiting for the next market-day, of recaptured fugitives waiting
+for their owners to reclaim them. Here they were huddled and caged,
+pitiful and despairing in their misery. Such scenes sickened the young
+reformer every day. God had opened to him the darkest chapter in the
+book of the negroes' wrongs. Here is a page from that black volume of
+oppression and cruelty, the record of which he has preserved in the
+following graphic narrative: "During my late incarceration in Baltimore
+prison, four men came to obtain a runaway slave. He was brought out of
+his cell to confront his master, but pretended not to know him--did not
+know that he had ever seen him before--could not recollect his name. Of
+course the master was exceedingly irritated. 'Don't you remember,' said
+he, 'when I gave you not long since thirty-nine lashes under the
+apple-tree? Another time when I gave you a sound flogging in the barn?
+Another time when you was scourged for giving me the lie, by saying that
+the horse was in a good condition?' 'Yes,' replied the slave, whose
+memory was thus quickened, 'I do recollect. You have beaten me cruelly
+without cause; you have not given me enough to eat and drink; and I
+don't want to go back again. I wish you to sell me to another master. I
+had rather even go to Georgia than to return home!'
+
+"'I'll let you know, you villain,' said the master, 'that my wishes and
+not _yours_, are to be consulted. I'll learn you how to run away
+again.'"
+
+The other men advised him to take the black home, and cut him up in inch
+pieces for his impudence, obstinacy, and desertion--swearing
+tremendously all the while. The slave was ordered back to his cell. Then
+ensued the following colloquy between Garrison and the master:
+
+G.--"Sir, what right have you to that poor creature?"
+
+M.--"My father left him to me."
+
+G.--"Suppose your father had broken into a bank and stolen ten thousand
+dollars, and safely bequeathed that as a legacy; could you
+conscientiously keep the money? For myself, I had rather rob any bank to
+an indefinite amount than kidnap a fellow-being, or hold him in bondage;
+the sin would be less injurious to society, and less sinful in the sight
+of God."
+
+M.--"Perhaps you would like to buy the slave and give him his liberty?"
+
+G.--"Sir, I am a poor man; and were I ever so opulent, it would be
+necessary, on your part, to make out a clear title to the services of
+the slave before I could conscientiously make a bargain."
+
+M--"Well, sir, I can prove from the Bible that slavery is right."
+
+G.--"Ah! that is a precious book--the rule of conduct. I have always
+supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape
+of fraud and oppression. However, sir, I should be glad to hear your
+text."
+
+M. (hesitatingly)--"Ham--Noah's curse, you know."
+
+G. (hastily)--"Oh, sir, you build on a very slender foundation. Granting
+even--what remains to be proved--that the Africans are the descendants
+of Ham, Noah's curse was a _prediction_ of future servitude, and not an
+injunction to oppress. Pray, sir, is it a careful desire to fulfill the
+Scriptures, or to make money, that induces you to hold your fellow-men
+in bondage?"
+
+M. (excitedly)--"Why, sir, do you really think that the slaves are
+beings like ourselves?--that is, I mean do you believe that they possess
+the same faculties and capacities as the whites?"
+
+G. (energetically)--"Certainly, sir, I do not know that there is any
+moral or intellectual quality in the curl of the hair, or the color of
+the skin. I cannot conceive why a black man may not as reasonably object
+to my color, as I to his. Sir, it is not a black face that I detest, but
+a black heart--and I find it very often under a white skin."
+
+M. (derisively)--"Well, sir, how should you like to see a black man
+President of the United States?"
+
+G. (severely)--"As to that, sir, I am a true Republican, and bow to the
+will of the majority. If the people prefer a black President, I should
+cheerfully submit; and if he be qualified for the station, may
+peradventure give him my vote."
+
+M. (triumphantly)--"How should you like to have a black man marry your
+daughter?"
+
+G. (making a home thrust and an end of the dialogue)--"I am not
+married--I have no daughter. Sir, I am not familiar with _your_
+practices; but allow me to say, that slaveholders generally should be
+the last persons to affect fastidiousness on that point; for they seem
+to be enamored with _amalgamation_."
+
+Garrison's pen was particularly busy during the term of his
+imprisonment. He paid his respects to the State's Attorney who
+prosecuted him, to the judge who condemned him, and to Francis Todd, the
+owner of the ship _Francis_. He prepared and scattered broadcast a true
+account of his trial, showing how the liberty of the press had been
+violated in the case. He did not doubt that it would astonish Europe if
+it were known there "that _an American citizen lies incarcerated in
+prison, for having denounced slavery and its abettors in his own
+country_." The fact created no little astonishment in America. Slavery
+became distinctly connected for the first time with abridgments of the
+freedom of the press, and the right of free speech. And the cause of the
+slave became involved with the Constitutional liberties of the republic.
+In punishing Garrison, the Abolitionist, the rights of Garrison the
+white freeman were trampled on. And white freemen in the North, who
+cared nothing for Abolitionism, but a great deal for their right to
+speak and write freely, resented the outrage. This fact was the most
+important consequence, which flowed from the trial and imprisonment of
+the young editor of _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_. "As the news
+of my imprisonment became extensively known," he wrote, "and the merits
+of the case understood, not a mail rolled into the city but it brought
+me consolatary letters from individuals hitherto unknown to me, and
+periodicals of all kinds from every section of the Union (not even
+excepting the South), all uniting to give me a triumphant acquittal--all
+severely reprehending the conduct of Mr. Todd--and all regarding my
+trial as a mockery of justice." This unexpected result was one of those
+accidents of history, which "have laws as fixed as planets have."
+
+The prosecution and imprisonment of Garrison was without doubt designed
+to terrorize him into silence on the subject of slavery. But his
+persecutors had reckoned without a knowledge of their victim. Garrison
+had the martyr's temperament and invincibility of purpose. His
+earnestness burned the more intensely with the growth of opposition and
+peril. Within "gloomy walls close pent," he warbled gay as a bird of a
+freedom which tyrants could not touch, nor bolts confine:
+
+  "No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose,
+  Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole,
+  And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes!"
+
+
+or with deep, stern gladness sang he to "The Guiltless Prisoner" how:
+
+  "A martyr's crown is richer than a king's!
+  Think it an honor with thy Lord to bleed,
+  And glory 'midst intensest sufferings;
+  Though beat--imprisoned--put to open shame
+  Time shall embalm and magnify thy name."
+
+
+"Is it supposed by Judge Brice," the guiltless prisoner wrote from his
+cell, "that his frowns can intimidate me, or his sentence stifle my
+voice on the subject of African oppression? He does not know me. So long
+as a good Providence gives me strength and intellect, I will not cease
+to declare that the existence of slavery in this country is a foul
+reproach to the American name; nor will I hesitate to proclaim the guilt
+of kidnappers, slave abettors, or slaveowners, wheresoever they may
+reside, or however high they may be exalted. I am only in the _alphabet_
+of my task; time shall perfect a useful work. It is my shame that I have
+done so little for the people of color; yea, before God, I feel humbled
+that my feelings are so cold, and my language so weak. A few white
+victims must be sacrificed to open the eyes of this nation, and to show
+the tyranny of our laws. I expect and am willing to be persecuted,
+imprisoned, and bound for advocating African rights; and I should
+deserve to be a slave myself if I shrunk from that duty or danger." The
+story of the trial of William Lloyd Garrison, from which the above brave
+words are taken, fell into the hands of that noble man and munificent
+merchant, Arthur Tappan, of New York. From the reading of it he rose
+"with that deep feeling of abhorrence of slavery and its abettors which
+every one must feel who is capable of appreciating the blessings of
+liberty," and thereupon notified Lundy to draw upon him for one hundred
+dollars if that amount would give the young editor his liberty. The fine
+and costs of court were accordingly paid and just forty-nine days after
+entering Baltimore jail a prisoner, Garrison recovered his freedom. The
+civil action of Todd against him was still pending. Nothing daunted
+Garrison went North two days after his discharge to obtain certain
+evidence deemed important by his counsel to his defence. He took with
+him an open letter from Lundy looking to the renewal of the weekly
+_Genius_ under their joint control. Prior to Garrison's trial the paper
+had fallen into great stress for want of money. Lundy and he had made a
+division of their labors, the latter doing the editorial and office
+work, while the former traveled from place to place soliciting
+subscriptions and collecting generally the sinews of war. But the
+experiment was not successful from a business standpoint. For as
+Garrison playfully observed subsequently: "Where friend Lundy could get
+one new subscriber, I could knock a _dozen_ off, and I did so. It was
+the old experiment of the frog in the well, that went two feet up and
+fell three feet back, at every jump." Where the income of the paper did
+not exceed fifty dollars in four months and the weekly expenditure
+amounted to at least that sum, the financial failure of the enterprise
+was inevitable. This unhappy event did actually occur six weeks before
+the junior editor went to jail; and the partnership was formally
+dissolved in the issue of the _Genius_ of March 5, 1830. But when Arthur
+Tappan made his generous offer of a hundred dollars to effect Garrison's
+release, he made at the same time an offer of an equal amount to aid the
+editors in reestablishing the _Genius_. This proposition led to hopes on
+the part of the two friends to a renewal of their partnership in the
+cause of emancipation. And so Garrison's visit to the North was taken
+advantage of to test the disposition of Northern philanthropy to support
+such a paper. But what he found was a sad lack of interest in the slave.
+Everywhere he went he encountered what appeared to him to be the most
+monstrous indifference and apathy on the subject. The prejudices of the
+free States seemed to him stronger than were those of the South. Instead
+of receiving aid and encouragement to continue the good work of himself
+and coadjutor, and for the doing of which he had served a term of seven
+weeks in prison, men, even his best friends sought to influence him to
+give it up, and to persuade him to forsake the slave, and to turn his
+time and talents to safer and more profitable enterprises nearer home.
+He was informed by these worldly wise men and Job's counselors that his
+"scheme was visionary, fanatical, unattainable." "Why should he make
+himself," they argued, "an exile from home and all that he held dear on
+earth, and sojourn in a strange land, among enemies whose hearts were
+dead to every noble sentiment?" Ah! he himself confessed that all were
+against his return to Baltimore. But his love of the slave was stronger
+than the strength of the temptation. He put all these selfish objections
+behind him. As he has recorded the result of this experience:
+"Opposition served only to increase my ardor, and confirm my purpose."
+Strange and incomprehensible to his fellows is the man who prefers
+"persecution, reproach, and poverty" with duty, to worldly ease and
+honor and riches without it. When a man appears in society who is not
+controlled by motives which usually govern the conduct of other men he
+becomes at first an object of pity, then of contempt, and, lastly, of
+hate. Garrison we may be sure at the end of this visit had made rapid
+transit from the first to the second of these stages in the esteem of
+his generation.
+
+His experience was not all of this deplorable kind. He left Baltimore
+without the money required to pay his way North, depending literally
+upon the good God to provide for him the necessary means to complete his
+journey. And such help was more than once providentially afforded the
+young apostle of liberty. At New York, when he did not know how he was
+to go farther for want of means, he met a Mr. Samuel Leggett who gave
+him a pass on the "splendid steamboat _President_." It seems that this
+friend in his need had read with indignation the story of his trial. The
+bread which he had scattered from his prison on the waters of public
+sentiment had thus returned to him after many days in the timely
+assistance of a sympathetic soul. And then, again, when he was in Boston
+in sore distress for a little money, suddenly, beautifully, the desire
+of his heart was satisfied. But let him tell the incident in his own
+touching way. His face was turned toward Baltimore: "But how was I to
+return?" he asks. "I had not a dollar in my pocket, and my time was
+expired. No one understood my circumstances. I was too proud to beg, and
+ashamed to borrow. My friends were prodigal of pity, but of nothing
+else. In the extremity of my uneasiness, I went to the Boston
+post-office, and found a letter from my friend Lundy, inclosing a draft
+for $100 from a stranger and as a remuneration for my poor inefficient
+services in behalf of the slaves!" The munificent stranger was Ebenezer
+Dole, of Hallowell, Maine. Money thus acquired was a sacred trust to
+this child of Providence. "After deducting the expenses of traveling,"
+he goes on to say, "the remainder of the above-named sum was applied in
+discharging a few of the debts incurred by the unproductiveness of the
+_Genius_."
+
+Garrison returned to Baltimore, but he did not tarry long in that
+slave-ruled city. Todd's suit against him was tried after his departure,
+and the jury soothed the Newburyport merchant's wounded pride with a
+verdict for a thousand dollars. He never attempted, however, to enforce
+the payment of the same being content probably with the "vindication,"
+which his legal victory gave him.
+
+Before the reformer left Baltimore he had definitely abandoned the plans
+looking to a revival of his interest in the _Genius_. He determined
+instead to publish a sheet devoted to the abolition of slavery under his
+sole management and control. This paper he proposed to call the _Public
+Liberator_, and to issue from Washington. The prospectus of this
+journalistic project bearing date, August, 1830, declares in its opening
+sentence its "primary object" to be "the abolition of slavery, and the
+moral and intellectual elevation of our colored population." "I shall
+spare no efforts," he pledged himself, "to delineate the withering
+influence of slavery upon our national prosperity and happiness, its
+awful impiety, its rapid extension, and its inevitable consequences if
+it be suffered to exist without hindrance. It will also be my purpose to
+point out the path of safety, and a remedy for the disease." This
+comprehensive and aggressive plan of campaign signalized the rise of an
+Abolitionism wholly unlike the Abolitionism of any previous time in the
+history of the country. It did in fact date the opening of a new era in
+the slavery struggle in America.
+
+With Northern indifference and apathy on the subject of emancipation,
+Garrison's previous visit to the North had acquainted him. Their
+existence he saw interposed the main obstacle to the success of his new
+venture in journalism. "The cause of this callous state of feeling," he
+believed, "was owing to their exceeding ignorance of the horrors of
+slavery." He accordingly made up his mind to throw the light which he
+possessed into the midst of this darkness. He had written in prison
+three lectures on "Slavery and Colonization." What better could he now
+do than to deliver those lectures at the North? If the good people and
+their religious leaders knew what he knew, they would presently feel as
+he did on the question. He was loath to leave Baltimore without giving
+this testimony against slavery. But unable to procure a room for this
+purpose was finally compelled to content himself with the witness he had
+already borne in the _Genius_ and in prison in behalf of the slave. In
+Philadelphia he well-nigh failed to obtain a hall for his lectures, but
+did finally succeed in getting the Franklin Institute, where, to small
+audiences, he lifted up his voice against the iniquity of the times. He
+repeated his lectures in New York, New Haven, and Hartford. But not many
+came out to hear him. The nation, its churches, and politicians had
+thrust their fingers in their ears to every cry coming up from the
+slave. Why should they go to sup with a madman on horrors, with which as
+patriotic people they were forbidden to concern themselves. And so for
+the most part Garrison could do nothing with communities, which had
+eyes, but obstinately refused to see with them upon any subject relating
+to the abominations of slavery. In his own town of Newburyport, officers
+of Christian churches not only refused to hear his message themselves,
+but debarred others from listening to the woes and wrongs of
+fellow-creatures in bondage. As Mr. Garrison truly said at the time: "If
+I had visited Newburyport to plead the cause of twenty white men in
+chains, every hall and every meeting-house would have been thrown open,
+and the fervor of my discourses anticipated and exceeded by my
+fellow-townsmen. The fact that two millions of colored beings are
+groaning in bondage, in this land of liberty, excites no interest nor
+pity." If these damning facts are remembered sixty years after their
+occurrence to the shame of the trustees of the two churches, viz., the
+Presbyterian Church on Harris street and the Second Congregational
+Church, it is also remembered to the honor of the two pastors, Rev. Dr.
+Daniel Dana, and the Rev. Dr. Luther F. Dimmick, that they had thrown
+open to the prophet the doors of their meeting-houses, which the
+trustees afterward slammed in his face.
+
+In Boston the same hard luck followed him. In all that city of Christian
+churches he could not obtain the use of a single meeting-house, "in
+which to vindicate the rights of TWO MILLIONS of American citizens, who
+are now groaning in servile chains in this boasted land of liberty; and
+also to propose just, benevolent, and constitutional measures for their
+relief." So ran an advertisement in the Boston _Courier_ of the sorely
+tried soul. For two weeks he had gone up and down the town in search of
+a room free of cost, in which to deliver his message. The door of every
+sanctuary was locked against his cause. It was then, as a final
+recourse, that he turned to the _Courier_, and made his last appeal to
+the Christian charity of the city. The prayer of the prophet was
+answered from an unexpected quarter. It was that ecclesiastical dragon
+of the times, Abner Kneeland, and his society of "blasphemers," who
+proved afresh the truth of that scripture which says: "Not every one
+that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;
+but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." It was they
+that gave to liberty a hearing, to the prophet of righteousness a chance
+to deliver his message. It was in their meeting-house, in Julian Hall,
+that Garrison gave his lectures, giving the first one on the evening of
+October 15, 1830.
+
+Samuel J. May, who was present, has preserved his impressions of the
+lecture and lecturer. "Never before," he records many years afterward,
+"was I so affected by the speech of man. When he had ceased speaking I
+said to those around me: 'That is a providential man; he is a prophet;
+he will shake our nation to its center, but he will shake slavery out of
+it. We ought to know him, we ought to help him. Come, let us go and give
+him our hands.' Mr. Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up with me and we
+introduced each other. I said to him, 'Mr. Garrison, I am not sure that
+I can indorse all you have said this evening. Much of it requires
+careful consideration. But I am prepared to embrace you. I am sure you
+are called to a great work, and I mean to help you.' Mr. Sewall
+cordially assured him of his readiness also to cooperate with him. Mr.
+Alcott invited him to his home. He went and we sat with him until twelve
+that night, listening to his discourse, in which he showed plainly that
+_immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation, was the
+right of every slave, and could not be withheld by his master an hour
+without sin_. That night my soul was baptised in his spirit, and ever
+since I have been a disciple and fellow-laborer of William Lloyd
+Garrison." A new force had arisen in our history, and a new epoch had
+broken bolts for humanity.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+
+THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
+
+
+The providential man was not yet twenty-five. In personal appearance he
+was quite the reverse of his friend Lundy. Garrison was gifted with a
+body that matched his mind, strong, straight, sound in every part, and
+proportioned in every member. As he stood he was much above the medium
+height. His dark hair had already partially left the crown of the high
+dome-shaped head. His forehead combined height with breadth, which,
+taken in connection with the brown eyes covered with the now habitual
+glasses, lent to his countenance a striking air of moral serenity and
+elevation. Force, firmness, no ordinary self-reliance and courage found
+masterly expression in the rest of the face. There was through the whole
+physical man a nice blending of strength and delicacy of structure. The
+impression of fineness and finish was perhaps mainly owing to the
+woman-like purity and freshness of skin and color, which overspread the
+virile lines and features of the face from brow to chin. What one saw in
+that face was the quality of justice made flesh, good-will to men
+personified.
+
+This characterization of the reformer's countenance may be considered
+absurd by some readers. But absurd it is not. People who had read his
+stern denunciations of slave-holding and slaveholders, and who had
+formed their image of the man from his "hard language" and their own
+prejudices could not recognize the original when they met him. His
+manner was peculiarly winning and attractive, and in personal
+intercourse almost instantly disarmed hostility. The even gentleness of
+his rich voice, his unfailing courtesy and good temper, his quick eye
+for harmless pleasantries, his hearty laugh, the Quaker-like calmness,
+deliberateness, and meekness, with which he would meet objections and
+argue the righteousness of his cause, his sweet reasonableness and
+companionableness were in strange contrast to popular misconceptions and
+caricatures of him. No one needed to be persuaded, who had once
+conversed with him, that there was no hatred or vindictiveness in his
+severities of language toward slaveholders. That he was no Jacobin, no
+enemy of society, was perceived the moment one looked into his grave,
+kind face, or caught the warm accents of his pacific tones, or listened
+to the sedate intensity, and humanity of his discourses on the enormity
+of American slavery as they fell from him in conversations between man
+and man. Here is a case in point, a typical incident in the life of the
+reformer; it occurred, it is true, when he was twenty-seven, but it
+might have occurred at twenty-five quite as well; it is narrated by
+Samuel J. May in his recollections of the anti-slavery conflict: On his
+way from New York to Philadelphia with Garrison, Mr. May fell into a
+discussion with a pro-slavery passenger on the vexed question of the
+day. There was the common pro-slavery reasoning, which May answered as
+well as he was able. Presently Mr. Garrison drew near the disputants,
+whereupon May took the opportunity to shift the anti-slavery burden of
+the contention to his leader's shoulders. All of his most radical and
+unpopular Abolition doctrines Garrison immediately proceeded to expound
+to his opponent. "After a long conversation," says Mr. May, "which
+attracted as many as could get within hearing, the gentleman said,
+courteously: 'I have been much interested, sir, in what you have said,
+and in the exceedingly frank and temperate manner in which you have
+treated the subject. If all Abolitionists were like you, there would be
+much less opposition to your enterprise. But, sir, depend upon it, that
+hair-brained, reckless, violent fanatic, Garrison, will damage, if he
+does not shipwreck, any cause.' Stepping forward, I replied, 'Allow me,
+sir, to introduce you to Mr. Garrison, of whom you entertain so bad an
+opinion. The gentleman you have been talking with is he.'"
+
+Or take Harriet Martineau's first impressions on seeing him. "His aspect
+put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in
+me. I was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance glowing with
+health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation and gentleness. I did
+not wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop
+window without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it as the
+most saintlike of countenances."
+
+The appearance of such a man on the stage of our history as a nation, at
+this hour, was providential. His coming was in the fulness of time. A
+rapid review of events anterior to the advent of Garrison will serve to
+place this matter more clearly before the general reader. To begin,
+then, at the beginning we have two ships off the American coast, the one
+casting anchor in Plymouth harbor, the other discharging its cargo at
+Jamestown. They were both freighted with human souls. But how different!
+Despotism landed at Jamestown, democracy at Plymouth. Here in the germ
+was the Southern idea, slave labor, slave institutions; and here also
+was the Northern idea, free labor, free institutions. Once planted they
+grew, each seed idea multiplying after its kind. In course of time there
+arose on one side an industrial system in which the plantation
+principle, race-rule and race-slavery, were organic centers; and, on the
+other, a social system in which the principle of popular power and
+government, the town meeting, and the common school were the ganglia of
+social expansion. Contrary ideas beget naturally enough contrary
+interests and institutions. So it is no matter for surprise that the
+local interests and institutions of the thirteen revolted colonies
+lacked homogeneity and identity. What was calculated to promote the
+general welfare of the Northern one, it was quite possible might work a
+totally opposite result in the Southern. For, indeed, while there were
+slaves in them all, the slave system had taken root in Southern soil
+only; and while on the other hand the spirit of freedom was existent in
+each, free labor had rooted itself in Northern ground solely.
+
+As the war of the Revolution was an uprising against arbitrary power,
+and for the establishment of political liberty, it pushed easily into
+the foreground the larger subject of human rights. Most of the leading
+actors felt the inconsistency of keeping some men in bondage, when they
+were fighting to rid themselves of a tyranny which, in comparison to the
+other, was a state of honorable freedom. Their humanity condemned
+African slavery, and they earnestly desired its extinction. The
+Declaration of Independence proves to how high a level the tide of
+freedom rose in the colonies. The grand truths by it proclaimed the
+signers of that instrument did not restrict in their application to some
+men to the exclusion of other men. They wrote "All men," and they meant
+exactly what they wrote. Too simply honest and great they were to mean
+less than their solemn and deliberate words.
+
+On political as well as on moral grounds they desired emancipation. But
+there was a difficulty which at the time proved insuperable. The
+nation-making principle, the idea of country, was just emerging out of
+the nebulous civil conditions and relations of the ante-Revolutionary
+epoch. There was no existent central authority to reach the evil within
+the States except the local governments of the States respectively. And
+States in revolt against the central authority of the mother country
+would hardly be disposed to divest themselves of any part of their newly
+asserted right to govern themselves for the purpose of conferring the
+same upon any other political body. To each State, then, the question
+was necessarily left for settlement.
+
+The war, during its continuance, absorbed the united resources and
+energies of the people and their leaders. The anti-slavery movement made
+accordingly but small progress. Reforms thrive only when they get a
+hearing. Public attention is the food on which they thrive. But precious
+little of this food was the Abolition cause able to snatch in those
+bitter years. It could not grow. It remained in the gristle--hardly more
+than a sentiment. But the sentiment was a seed, the promise and potency
+of kindlier times. With the close of the long struggle other questions
+arose; got the people's ears; fixed the attention of the leaders. Scant
+notice could emancipation extort from men who had to repair the ravages
+of an exhausting war, reconstruct shattered fortunes, restore civil
+society in parts tumbling into ruinous disorder. The instinct of
+self-preservation was altogether too masterful for the moral starveling.
+It succumbed to circumstances, content to obtain an occasional sermon,
+an annual address, a few scattered societies to keep a human glow in the
+bosom of the infant Confederacy.
+
+The Confederation failed. The formation of a more perfect union was
+demanded and undertaken. This transcendent task straightway thrust into
+the background every other enterprise and interest. The feeble activity
+of the freedom-making principle was checked, for the time being, by the
+energy of the nation-making power. They were not antagonistic
+forces--only in the natural order of things, the earliest stages in the
+evolution of the former had to come after the first steps were taken in
+the development of the latter. Before there could start a general
+movement against American slavery there must needs be an American
+nation. An American nation was, in the year 1787, in process of
+successful development. With the adoption of the Constitution, the
+national principle entered on a period of marvelous expansion and
+activity.
+
+Let it not, however, be hastily concluded that freedom meanwhile was in
+total eclipse, that the anti-slavery sentiment was absolutely without
+influence. For it unquestionably inspired the Ordinance of 1787. The
+Northwest Territory, out of which were subsequently organized the States
+of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was thereby,
+forever secured to the Northern idea, and free labor. Supplementary to
+this grand act was the Constitutional prohibition of the African
+slave-trade after the year 1808. Together they were intended to
+discourage the growth of slavery--the first by restricting its
+territorial extension, the second, by arresting its numerical increase.
+And without doubt they would have placed the evil in the way of ultimate
+extinction had other and far reaching causes not intervened to produce
+adverse social and political conditions.
+
+The first of these causes, in point of time, were certain labor-saving
+inventions in England, which vastly enhanced the demand for raw cotton.
+Arkwright's invention of the spinning machine about twenty years prior
+to the adoption of the Constitution, perfected by the spinning-jenny of
+Hargreaves, and the mule of Crompton, "turned Lancashire," the historian
+Green says, "into a hive of industry." The then rapid demand for cotton
+operated in time as a stimulus to its production in America. Increased
+productivity raised the value of slave property and slave soil. But the
+slow and tedious hand method of separating the fiber of the cotton bulb
+from the seed greatly limited the ability of the Cotton States to meet
+and satisfy the fast growing demand of the English manufacturers, until
+Eli Whitney, in 1793, by an ingenious invention solved the problem of
+supply for these States. The cotton gin was not long in proving itself
+the other half--the other hand of the spinning machine.
+
+From that year the slave interests of the South rose in market value,
+and its industrial system assumed unexpected importance in the economic
+world. The increased production of cotton led directly to increased
+demand for slave labor and slave soil. The increased demand for slave
+labor the Constitutional provision relating to the African slave trade
+operated in part to satisfy. The increased demand for slave soil was
+likewise satisfied by the cession to the United States by Georgia and
+North Carolina of the Southwest Territory, with provisos practically
+securing it to slavery. Out of this new national territory were
+subsequently carved the slave States of Tennessee, Mississippi, and
+Alabama.
+
+Slave soil unlike free soil, is incapable of sustaining a dense
+population. Slave labor calls for large spaces within which to multiply
+and prosper. The purchase of Louisiana and the acquisition of Florida
+met this agrarian necessity on the part of the South. Immense, unsettled
+areas thus fell to the lot of the slave system at the crisis of its
+material expansion and prosperity. The domestic slave-trade under the
+impetus of settling these vast regions according to the plantation
+principle, became an enormous and spreading industry. The crop of slaves
+was not less profitable than the crop of cotton. A Southern white man
+had but to buy a score of slaves and a few hundred acres to get "rich
+beyond the dreams of avarice." So at least calculated the average
+Southern man.
+
+This revival of slavery disappointed the humane expectation of its
+decline and ultimate extinction entertained by the founders of the
+republic. It built up instead a growing and formidable slave class, and
+interest in the Union. With the rise of giant slave interests, there
+followed the rise of a power devoted to their encouragement and
+protection.
+
+Three far-reaching concessions the slave States obtained in the
+convention of 1787, viz., the right to import slaves from Africa until
+1808; the rendition of fugitive slaves escaping into the free States,
+and the three-fifths slave representation clause of the
+Constitution--all of which added vastly to the security and value of
+this species of property, and as a consequence contributed to the slave
+revival.
+
+The equality of the States in the upper branch of the National
+Legislature, taken in connection with the right of the slave States to
+count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of
+representatives to the lower House of Congress, gave the Southern
+section an almost immediate ascendency in the Federal Government. To the
+South was thus opened by an unexpected combination of circumstances a
+wide avenue for the acquisition of fabulous wealth, and to Southern
+public men an incomparable arena for the exercise of political abilities
+and leadership. An institution, which thus ministered to two of the
+strongest passions of mankind--avarice and ambition--was certain to
+excite the most intense attachment. Its safety naturally, therefore,
+became among the slave class an object of prime importance. Southern
+jealousy in this regard ultimated inevitably in Southern narrowness,
+Southern sectionalism, which early manifested themselves in the
+exclusion from lead in national affairs of Northern public men, reputed
+to be unfriendly to slavery. Webster as late as 1830, protested warmly
+against this intolerance. Like begets like. And the proscribing of
+anti-slavery politicians by the South, created in turn not a little
+sectional feeling at the North, and helped to stimulate there a
+consciousness of sectional differences, of antagonism of interests
+between the two halves of the Union.
+
+Discontent with the original basis of the Union, which had given the
+South its political coign of vantage, broke out first in New England.
+The occasion, though not the cause, of this discontent was, perhaps, the
+downfall of the Federal party, whose stronghold was in the East. The
+commercial and industrial crisis brought on by the embargo, and which
+beggared, on the authority of Webster, "thousands of families and
+hundreds of thousands of individuals" fanned this Eastern
+dissatisfaction into almost open disaffection towards a government
+dominated by Southern influence, and directed by Southern statesmanship.
+To the preponderance of this Southern element in national legislation
+New England traced her misfortunes. She was opposed to the War of 1812,
+but was overruled to her hurt by the South. In these circumstances New
+England went for correcting the inequalities of the original basis of
+the Union, which gave to the South its undue preponderance in shaping
+national laws and policies. This was the purpose of the Hartford
+Convention, which proposed the abrogation of the slave representation
+clause of the Constitution, and the imposition of a check upon the
+admission of new States into the Union. The second proposition did not
+say "new slave States," but new slave States was, nevertheless, intended
+by the Convention. Here in point of time and magnitude, was the first
+distinct collision of the two sets of ideas and interests of the
+Republic.
+
+Following the Treaty of Ghent other and imperious questions engaged the
+public attention--questions of the tariff, of finance, internal
+improvements, national defence, a new navy, forts and fortifications.
+Hard times, too, engrossed an enormous share of this attention. The
+immediate needs and problems of the hour pushed into the background all
+less pressing ones. The slavery question amidst the clamor and babel of
+emergent and material interests, lost something of its sectional heat
+and character. But its fires were not extinguished, only banked as
+events were speedily to reveal.
+
+The application of Missouri for admission into the Union as a slave
+State four years after the Hartford Convention blew to a blaze the
+covered embers of strife between the sections. The North was violently
+agitated. For the admission of a new slave State meant two more slave
+votes in the Senate, and an increase on the old inequitable basis of
+slave representation in the lower House of Congress. It meant to the
+Northern section indefinite Southern ascendency, prolonged Southern lead
+in national legislation. All the smouldering passions of the earlier
+period, of embargo, and non-intercourse, and the war of 1812, flamed
+suddenly and fiercely in the heart of the free States.
+
+The length and bitterness of that controversy excited the gravest
+apprehensions for the stability of the Union. The dread of disunion led
+to mutual concessions, to the Missouri Compromise. The slave-holding
+section got its immediate claim allowed, and the free States secured the
+erection of a line to the north of which slavery was forever prohibited.
+And besides this, the admission of Maine was supposed to neutralize
+whatever political advantages, which would accrue to the South from the
+admission of Missouri as a slave State. Both sections were content, and
+the slavery question was thought to be permanently settled. With this
+final disposition of an ugly problem, the peace and permanence of the
+Union were viewed universally as fixed facts. Still, considering the
+gravity of the case, a little precaution would not go amiss. The slavery
+question had shaken men's faith in the durability of the republic. It
+was therefore adjudged a highly dangerous subject. The political
+physicians with one accord prescribed on the ounce-of-prevention
+principle, _quiet_, SILENCE, and OBLIVION, to be administered in large
+and increasing doses to both sections. Mum was the word, and mum the
+country solemnly and suddenly became from Maine to Georgia. But, alas!
+beneath the ashes of this Missouri business, deep below the unnatural
+silence and quiet, inextinguishable fires were burning and working again
+to the surface of politics. In such circumstances a fresh outbreak of
+old animosities must occur as soon as the subterranean heat should reach
+the point of highest combustibility in the federal system. The tariff
+proved to be that point of highest combustibility.
+
+Alexander Hamilton inaugurated the policy of giving governmental aid to
+infant manufactures. The wisdom of diversifying the industries of the
+young nation was acquiesced in by the leading statesmen of both
+sections. Beset as the republic then was by international forces hostile
+to democratic institutions, it was natural enough that the great men who
+presided over its early years should seek by Federal legislation to
+render it, as speedily and completely as possible, industrially
+self-dependent and self-supporting. The war of 1812 enforced anew upon
+the attention of statesmen the importance of industrial independence.
+The war debt, together with certain governmental enterprises and
+expenditures growing out of the war, was largely, if not wholly,
+responsible for the tariff of 1816. This act dates the rise of our
+American system of protection. It is curious to note that Southern men
+were the leaders of this new departure in the national fiscal policy.
+Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes were the guiding spirits of that period of
+industrial ferment and activity. They little dreamt what economic evils
+were to fall in consequence upon the South. That section was not slow to
+feel the unequal action of the protective principle. The character of
+its labor incapacitated the South from dividing the benefits of the new
+revenue policy with its free rival. The South of necessity was
+restricted to a single industry, the tillage of the earth. Slave labor
+did not possess the intelligence, the skill, the patience, the
+mechanical versatility to embark successfully in manufacturing
+enterprises. Free labor monopolised the protected industries, and
+Northern capital caught all the golden showers of fiscal legislation.
+What the South needed, from an economic point of view, was unrestricted
+access to the markets of the world for her products, and the freest
+competition of the world in her own markets. The limitations imposed
+upon the slave States by their industrial system was in itself a
+tremendous handicap in their struggle for an advantageous place in the
+New World of the nineteenth century; in their struggle with their free
+sisters for political leadership in the Union. But with the development
+of the protective principle those States fell into sore financial
+distress, were ground between the upper millstone of the protective
+system and the nether millstone of their own industrial system.
+Prosperity and plenty did presently disappear from that section and
+settled in the North. In 1828 Benton drew this dark picture of the state
+of the South:
+
+"In place of wealth, a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough
+for common expenses; the price of all property down; the country
+drooping and languishing; towns and cities decaying, and the frugal
+habits of the people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial for
+the preservation of their family estates."
+
+He did not hesitate to charge to Federal legislation the responsibility
+for all this poverty and distress, for he proceeds to remark that:
+
+"Under this legislation the exports of the South have been made the
+basis of the Federal revenue. The twenty odd millions annually levied
+upon imported goods are deducted out of the price of their cotton, rice,
+and tobacco, either in the diminished prices which they receive for
+those staples in foreign ports, or in the increased price which they pay
+for the articles they have to consume at home."
+
+A suffering people are not apt to reason clearly or justly on the causes
+which have brought them to indigence. They feel their wretchedness and
+reach out for a victim. And the law-making power usually happens to be
+that victim. As the distress of the South increased, the belief that
+Federal legislation was responsible for it increased likewise. The
+spread and deepening of this conviction in the Southern States
+precipitated among them an ominous crisis in their attachment to the
+Union. Nullification and an embittered sectionalism was the hateful
+legacy bequeathed to the republic by the tariff controversy. It left the
+South in a hyper-sensitive state in all matters relating to her domestic
+interests. It left the North in a hyper-sensitive condition on all
+matters touching the peace and stability of the Union. The silence and
+oblivion policy on the subject of slavery was renewed with tenfold
+intensity. Ulysses-like the free States bound themselves, their right of
+free speech, and their freedom of the press on this subject, for fear of
+the Siren voices which came thrilling on every breeze from the South.
+Quiet was the word, and quiet the leaders in Church and State sought to
+enforce upon the people, to the end that the vision of "States
+dissevered, discordant, belligerent, of a land rent with civil feuds, or
+drenched it may be, in fraternal blood," might not come to pass for
+their "glorious Union."
+
+The increasing friction and heat between the sections during twenty-five
+years, had effected every portion of the Federal system, and created
+conditions favorable to a violent explosion. Sectional differences of a
+political and industrial complexion, forty years had sufficed to
+develop. Sectional differences of a moral and social character forty
+years had also sufficed to generate. To kindle all those differences,
+all that mass of combustible feelings and forces into a general
+conflagration a spark only was wanted. And out of the glowing humanity
+of one man the spark was suddenly struck.
+
+It is curious to note that in the year 1829, the very year in which
+William Lloyd Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began the editorship of
+_The Genius of Universal Emancipation_, the American Convention, or
+national assembly of the old State societies for the abolition of
+slavery, fell into desuetude. It was as if Providence was clearing the
+debris of an old dispensation out of the way of the new one which his
+prophet was beginning to herald, as if guarding against all possibility
+of having the new wine, then soon to be pressed from the moral vintage
+of the nation, put into old bottles. The Hour for a new movement against
+slavery had come, and with its arrival the Man to hail it had also come.
+
+Other men had spoken and written against slavery, and labored for the
+freedom of the slave before Garrison had thought upon the subject at
+all. Washington and Jefferson, Franklin, Jay, and Hamilton had been
+Abolitionists before he was born, but theirs was a divided interest. The
+establishment of a more perfect union was the paramount object of their
+lives. John Wesley had denounced slavery in language quite as harsh as
+Garrison's, but his, too, was a divided interest, the religious revival
+of the eighteenth century being his distinctive mission. Benezet,
+Woolman, and Lundy were saints, who had yearned with unspeakable
+sympathy for the black bondmen, and were indefatigable in good works in
+his behalf, but they had not that stern and iron quality without which
+reforms cannot be launched upon the attention of mankind. What his
+predecessors lacked, Garrison possessed to a marvelous degree--the
+undivided interest, the supremacy of a single purpose, the stern stuff
+out of which the moral reformer is made, and in which he is panoplied.
+They were all his, but there was another besides--immediatism. This
+element distinguished the movement against slavery, started by him, from
+all other movements begun before he arrived on the stage, for the
+emancipation of the slaves in the Union.
+
+This doctrine of immediate as opposed to gradual emancipation, was not
+original with Garrison, nor was he the first to enunciate it. More than
+a dozen years before he was converted to it, Rev. George Bourne, in "The
+Book and Slavery Irreconcilable," had shown that "the system (of
+slavery) is so entirely corrupt that it admits of no cure but by a
+_total and immediate abolition_. For a gradual emancipation is a virtual
+recognition of the right, and establishes the rectitude of the practice.
+If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be
+inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated." In 1824, eight years
+after the publication of Bourne's book, and five years before Garrison
+announced the doctrine in the _Genius_, the Rev. James Duncan maintained
+it, in his "Treatise on Slavery," with no uncertainty of sense or
+conviction. But neither Bourne nor Duncan had been able to effect an
+incarnation of the doctrine, without which the good which it aimed at
+could not be achieved. What they failed to effect, it is the glory of
+Garrison that he achieved in his own person. He was "_total and
+immediate Abolition_" personified. "Truth is mighty and will prevail,"
+is a wise saying and worthy of acceptation. But this ultimate prevailing
+of TRUTH depends mainly upon individual effort, applied not
+intermittently, but steadily to a particular segment of the circle of
+conduct. It is the long, strong, never-ending pull and tug upon the
+wheels of conduct, which marks the great reformer. He finds his age or
+country stuck in some Serbonian bog of iniquity. He prays, but he prays
+with his shoulders braced strenuously against the body of society, and
+he does not cease his endeavors until a revolution in conduct places his
+age or country on firm ground beyond its Serbonian bog. The coming of
+such a man is no accident. When the Hour is ready and the Man comes, a
+new epoch in the life of a people arises from the conjunction. Of such
+vast consequence verily was the coming into American history of William
+Lloyd Garrison.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
+
+
+After leaving Baltimore, Garrison clung pathetically to the belief that,
+if he told what he had seen of the barbarism of slavery to the North, he
+would be certain to enlist the sympathy and aid of its leaders,
+political and ecclesiastical, in the cause of emancipation. The sequel
+to his efforts in this regard proved that he was never more mistaken in
+his life. He addressed letters to men like Webster, Jeremiah Mason,
+Lyman Beecher, and Dr. Channing, "holding up to their view the
+tremendous iniquity of the land, and begging them, ere it should be too
+late, to interpose their great power in the Church and State, to save
+our country from the terrible calamities which the sin of slavery was
+bringing upon us." But there is no evidence that this appeal produced
+the feeblest ripple in the lives of the two first; and upon the two last
+it was equally barren of result. Dr. Channing, indeed, did not take the
+trouble to hear any one of the three lectures of the young
+philanthropist. Dr. Beecher, however, was at the pains to be present at
+the first lecture given at Julien Hall. But he betrayed no real interest
+in the subject. He had no time to devote to anti-slavery, had, in fine,
+too many irons in the fire already. To this impotent apology of the
+great preacher of immediatism in his dealing with all kinds of sin,
+except the sin of slave-holding, for not espousing the cause of the
+slave, Mr. Garrison made his famous retort:
+
+
+    "Then you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your
+    duty to the slave."
+
+
+What more did this poor and friendless man, with his one idea and his
+harsh language, know of duties and dangers than Daniel Webster, who was
+busy saving the Union; than Lyman Beecher, who was not less busy saving
+souls; or than Dr. Channing, who was quite as busy saving liberalism in
+matters of religion? What folly and presumption it must have seemed to
+these mighty men this attempt of Garrison to impress upon them a proper
+sense of their obligations to their country.
+
+"Your zeal," said Dr. Beecher to him, with unlimited condescension of
+tone--"your zeal is commendable, but you are misguided. If you will give
+up your fanatical notions and be guided by us (the clergy) we will make
+you the Wilberforce of America."
+
+And so what was the young man, burning up with his one idea, to do in
+presence of such a failure to win these men to the leadership of the
+anti-slavery movement? He could not hold his peace; his message he was
+compelled to deliver in the ears of the nation whether its leaders would
+hear or forbear. Perhaps the common people would hearken to what the
+wise and powerful had rejected. At any rate they should hear what was
+resting upon his soul with the weight of a great woe, the force of a
+supreme command. But how was he, penniless and friendless, to roll from
+his bosom the burden which was crushing it; to pause long enough in the
+battle for bread to fight the battle of the slave? Ah, if he had money!
+but no money did he have, not a dollar in his pocket! Oh, if he had rich
+friends who would dedicate their riches to the preaching of the gospel
+of freedom! but alas! rich friends there were none. Oh, if he could cry
+to the Church for help in this hour of his need! but it was slowly
+dawning on him that not from the Church would help come to his cause;
+for a grievous thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon sat
+staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits to stone, turning also to
+stone the hearts of the people.
+
+Undismayed by the difficulties which were closing in around him,
+Garrison resolutely set himself to accomplish his purpose touching the
+establishment of a weekly paper devoted to the abolition of slavery. He
+had promised in his _Prospectus_ to issue the first number of the
+_Public Liberator_ "as soon as subscriptions thereto may authorize the
+attempt." But had he waited for the fulfillment of this condition, the
+experiment could never have been tried. When subscribers did not come
+in, the paper, he determined should go forth all the same. But there are
+some things in the publication of a paper which no man can dispense
+with, which indispensable somethings are: types, a press, an office, and
+an assistant. All these requisites were wanting to the man whose sole
+possession seemed an indomitable will, a faith in himself, and in the
+righteousness of his cause, which nothing could shake, nor
+disappointment nor difficulty, however great, was able to daunt or
+deter. To such an unconquerable will, to such an invincible faith
+obstacles vanish; the impossible becomes the attainable. As Garrison
+burned to be about his work, help came to him from a man quite as
+penniless and friendless as himself. The man was Isaac Knapp, an old
+companion of his in Newburyport, who had also worked with him in the
+office of the _Genius_, in Baltimore. He was a practical printer, and
+was precisely the sort of assistant that the young reformer needed at
+this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a man like himself
+acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited capacity for the endurance of
+unlimited hardships. Together they worked out the financial problems
+which blocked the way to the publication of the paper. The partners took
+an office in Merchants' Hall building, then standing on the corner of
+Congress and Water streets, Boston, which gave their joint enterprise a
+local habitation. It had already a name. They obtained the use of types
+in the printing office of the _Christian Examiner_, situated in the same
+building. The foreman, Stephen Foster, through his ardent interest in
+Abolition, made the three first numbers of the paper possible. The
+publishers paid for the use of the types by working during the day at
+the case in the _Examiner's_ office. They got the use of a press from
+another foreman with Abolition sympathies, viz., James B. Yerrington,
+then the printer of the Boston _Daily Advocate_. Thus were obtained the
+four indispensables to the publication of the _Liberator_--types, a
+press, an office, and an assistant.
+
+When at length the offspring of such labor and sacrifices made its
+appearance in the world, which was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point
+of size, insignificant enough. It did not look as if its voice would
+ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it saw the light.
+Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet with four columns to the page,
+measuring fourteen inches one way and nine and a quarter the other, and
+you will get an idea of the diminutiveness of the _Liberator_ on the day
+of its birth. The very paper on which it was printed was procured on
+credit. To the ordinary observer it must have seemed such a weakling as
+was certain to perish from inanition in the first few months of its
+struggle for existence in the world of journalism. It was domiciled
+during successive periods in four different rooms of the Merchant's Hall
+building, until it reached No. 11, "under the eaves," whence it issued
+weekly for many years to call the nation to repentance. A photographic
+impression of this cradle-room of the anti-slavery movement has been
+left by Oliver Johnson, an eye-witness. Says Mr. Johnson: "The dingy
+walls; the small windows, bespattered with printer's ink; the press
+standing in one corner; the composing-stands opposite; the long
+editorial and mailing table, covered with newspapers; the bed of the
+editor and publisher on the floor--all these make a picture never to be
+forgotten." For the first eighteen months the partners toiled fourteen
+hours a day, and subsisted "chiefly upon bread and milk, a few cakes,
+and a little fruit, obtained from a baker's shop opposite, and a petty
+cake and fruit shop in the basement," and, alas, "were on short commons
+even at that." Amid such hard and grinding poverty was the _Liberator_
+born. But the great end of the reformer glorified the mean surroundings:
+
+  "O truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born
+  In the rude stable, in the manger nursed;
+  What humble hands unbar those gates of morn
+  Through which the splendors of the New Day burst."
+
+
+About the brow of this "infant crying in the night," shone aureole-like
+the sunlit legend: _Our country is the world--our countrymen are
+mankind._ The difference between this motto of the _Liberator_ and that
+of the _Free Press_: _Our country, our whole country, and nothing but
+our country_--measures the greatness of the revolution which had taken
+place in the young editor. The grand lesson he had learned, than which
+there is none greater, that beneath diversities of race, color, creed,
+language, there is the one human principle, which makes all men kin. He
+had learned at the age of twenty-five to know the mark of brotherhood
+made by the Deity Himself: "Behold! my brother is man, not because he is
+American or Anglo-Saxon, or white or black, but because he is a
+fellow-man," is the simple, sublime acknowledgment, which thenceforth he
+was to make in his word and life.
+
+It was Mr. Garrison's original design, as we have seen, to publish the
+_Liberator_ from Washington. Lundy had, since the issue of the
+_Prospectus_ for the new paper, removed the _Genius_ to the capital of
+the nation. This move of Lundy rendered the establishment of a second
+paper devoted to the abolition of slavery in the same place, of doubtful
+utility, but, weighty as was this consideration from a mere business
+point of view, in determining Garrison to locate the _Liberator_ in
+another quarter, it was not decisive. Just what was the decisive
+consideration, he reveals in his salutatory address in the _Liberator_.
+Here it is:
+
+"During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the
+people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery," he confides
+to the reader, "every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the
+fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected
+in the free States--_and particularly in New England_--than at the
+South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction
+more relentless; prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than
+among slaveowners themselves. Of course there were individual exceptions
+to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten
+me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of
+emancipation in the eyes of the nation, _within sight of Bunker Hill,
+and in the birthplace of liberty_." This final choice of Boston as a
+base from which to operate against slavery was sagacious, and of the
+greatest moment to the success of the experiment and to its effective
+service to the cause.
+
+If the reformer changed his original intention respecting the place of
+publication for his paper, he made no alteration of his position on the
+subject of slavery. "I shall strenuously contend," he declares in the
+salutatory, "for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population."
+"In Park Street Church," he goes on to add, "on the Fourth of July,
+1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular
+but pernicious doctrine of _gradual_ abolition. I seize this opportunity
+to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask
+pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves,
+for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and
+absurdity."
+
+To those who find fault with his harsh language he makes reply: "I
+_will_ be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this
+subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.
+No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell
+him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell
+the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it
+has fallen--but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the
+present. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I
+will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD." Martin Luther's
+"Here I take my stand," was not braver or grander than the "I will be
+heard," of the American reformer. It did not seem possible that a young
+man, without influence, without money, standing almost alone, could ever
+make good those courageous words. The country, in Church and State, had
+decreed silence on the subject of slavery; the patriotism of the North,
+its commerce, its piety, its labor and capital had all joined hands to
+smother agitation, and stifle the discussion of a question that
+imperilled the peace and durability of Webster's glorious Union. But one
+man, tearing the gag from his lips, defying all these, cried, "Silence,
+there shall not be!" and forthwith the whole land began to talk on the
+forbidden theme:
+
+  "O small beginnings ye are great and strong,
+  Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!
+  Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong.
+  Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+
+THE HEAVY WORLD IS MOVED.
+
+
+Archimedes with his lever desired a place to stand that he might move
+the world of matter. Garrison with his paper, having found a place for
+his feet, demonstrated speedily his ability to push from its solid base
+the world of mind. His plan was very simple, viz., to reveal slavery as
+it then existed in its naked enormity, to the conscience of the North,
+to be "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." And so, week
+after week, he packed in the columns of the _Liberator_ facts, the most
+damning facts, against slaveholders, their cruelty and tyranny. He
+painted the woes of the slaves as if he, too, had been a slave. For the
+first time the masters found a man who rebuked them as not before had
+they been rebuked. Others may have equivocated, but this man called
+things by their proper names, a spade, a spade, and sin, sin. Others may
+have contented themselves with denunciations of the sins and with
+excuses for the sinner, as a creature of circumstances, the victim of
+ancestral transgressions, but this man offered no excuses for the
+slave-holding sinner. Him and his sin he denounced in language, which
+the Eternal puts only into the mouths of His prophets. It was, as he had
+said, "On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with
+moderation." The strength and resources of his mother-tongue seemed to
+him wholly inadequate for his needs, to express the transcendent
+wickedness of slave-holding. All the harsh, the stern, the terrible and
+tremendous energies of the English speech he drew upon, and launched at
+slaveholders. Amid all of this excess of the enthusiast there was the
+method of a calculating mind. He aimed to kindle a conflagration because
+he had icebergs to melt. "The public shall not be imposed upon," he
+replied to one of his critics, "and men and things shall be called by
+their right names. I retract nothing, I blot out nothing. My language is
+exactly such as suits me; it will displease many, I know; to displease
+them is my intention." He was philosopher enough to see that he could
+reach the national conscience only by exciting the national anger. It
+was not popular rage, which he feared but popular apathy. If he could
+goad the people to anger on the subject of slavery he would soon be rid
+of their apathy. And so week after week he piled every sort of
+combustible material, which he was able to collect on board the
+_Liberator_ and lighting it all, sent the fiery messenger blazing among
+the icebergs of the Union. Slaveholders were robbers, murderers,
+oppressors; they were guilty of all the sins of the decalogue, were in a
+word the chief of sinners. At the same moment that the reformer denied
+their right of property in the slave, he attacked their character also,
+held them up in their relation of masters to the reprobation of the
+nation and of mankind as monsters of injustice and inhumanity. The tone
+which he held toward them, steadily, without shadow of change, was the
+tone of a righteous man toward the workers of iniquity. The
+indifference, the apathy, the pro-slavery sympathy and prejudice of the
+free States rendered the people of the North hardly less culpable. They
+were working iniquity with the people of the South. This was the long,
+sharp goad, which the young editor thrust in between the bars of the
+Union and stirred the guilty sections to quick and savage outbursts of
+temper against him and the bitter truths which he preached. Almost
+directly the proofs came to him that he was HEARD at the South and at
+the North alike. Angry growls reached his ears in the first month of the
+publication of the _Liberator_ from some heartless New England editors
+in denunciation of his "violent and intemperate attacks on
+slaveholders." The _Journal_, published at Louisville, Kentucky, and
+edited by George D. Prentice, declared that, "some of his opinions with
+regard to slavery in the United States are no better than lunacy." The
+_American Spectator_ published at the seat of the National Government,
+had hoped that the good sense of the "late talented and persecuted
+junior editor" of the _Genius_, "would erelong withdraw him even from
+the side of the Abolitionists." And from farther South the growl which
+the reformer heard was unmistakably ferocious. It was from the State of
+South Carolina and the Camden _Journal_, which pronounced the
+_Liberator_ "a scandalous and incendiary budget of sedition." These were
+the beginning of the chorus of curses, which soon were to sing their
+serpent songs about his head. Profane and abusive letters from irate
+slaveholders and their Northern sympathisers began to pour into the
+sanctum of the editor. Within a few months after the first issue of the
+_Liberator_ the whole aspect of the world without had changed toward
+him. "Foes are on my right hand, and on my left," he reported to some
+friends. "The tongue of detraction is busy against me. I have no
+communion with the world--the world none with me. The timid, the
+lukewarm, the base, affect to believe that my brains are disordered, and
+my words the ravings of a maniac. Even many of my friends--they who have
+grown up with me from my childhood--are transformed into scoffers and
+enemies." The apathy of the press, and the apathy of the people were
+putting forth signs that the long winter of the land was passing away.
+
+To a colored man belongs the high honor of having been the _courier
+avant_ of the slavery agitation. This man was David Walker, who lived in
+Boston, and who published in 1829 a religio-political discussion of the
+status of the negroes of the United States in four articles. The
+wretchedness of the blacks in consequence of slavery he depicted in dark
+and bitter language. Theodore Parker, many years afterward, said that
+the negro was deficient in vengeance, the lowest form of justice.
+"Walker's Appeal" evinced no deficiency in this respect in its author.
+The pamphlet found its way South, and was the cause of no little
+commotion among the master-class. It was looked upon as an instigation
+to servile insurrection. The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put
+upon the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the sanguinary
+character of the book. For he himself was the very reverse of Walker.
+Garrison was a full believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance
+as enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical collisions of
+every description, as wicked and inhuman. He sang to the slave:
+
+  "Not by the sword shall your deliverance be;
+  Not by the shedding of your master's blood,
+  Not by rebellion--or foul treachery,
+  Upspringing suddenly, like swelling flood;
+  Revenge and rapine ne'er did bring forth good.
+  God's _time is best_!--nor will it long delay;
+  Even now your barren cause begins to bud,
+  And glorious shall the fruit be!--watch and pray,
+  For lo! the kindling dawn that ushers in the day."
+
+
+He considered "Walker's Appeal" "a most injudicious publication, yet
+warranted by the creed of an independent people." He saw in our
+Fourth-of-July demonstrations, in our glorification of force as an
+instrument for achieving liberty, a constant incentive to the slaves to
+go and do likewise. If it was right for the men of 1776 to rise in
+rebellion against their mother-country, it surely could not be wrong
+were the slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and strike for their
+freedom. It certainly did not lie in the mouth of a people, who
+apotheosized force, to condemn them. What was sauce for the white man's
+goose was sauce for the black man's gander.
+
+The South could not distinguish between this sort of reasoning, and an
+express and positive appeal to the slaves to cut the throats of their
+masters. The contents of the _Liberator_ were quite as likely to produce
+a slave insurrection as was "Walker's Appeal," if the paper was allowed
+to circulate freely among the slave population. It was, in fact, more
+dangerous to the lives and interests of slaveholders by virtue of the
+pictorial representation of the barbarism and abomination of the
+peculiar institution, introduced as a feature of the _Liberator_ in its
+seventeenth number, in the shape of a slave auction, where the slaves
+are chattels, and classed with "horses and other cattle," and where the
+tortures of the whipping-post are in vigorous operation. Here was a
+message, which every slave, however ignorant and illiterate could read.
+His instinct would tell him, wherever he saw the pictured horror, that a
+friend, not an enemy, had drawn it, but for what purpose? What was the
+secret meaning, which he was to extract from a portrayal of his woes at
+once so real and terrible. Was it to be a man, to seize the knife, the
+torch, to slay and burn his way to the rights and estate of a man?
+Garrison had put no such bloody import into the cut. It was designed not
+to appeal to the passions of the slaves, but to the conscience of the
+North. But the South did not so read it, was incapable, in fact, of so
+reading it. What it saw was a shockingly realistic representation of the
+wrongs of the slaves, the immediate and inevitable effect of which upon
+the slaves would be to incite them to sedition, to acts of revenge.
+Living as the slaveholders were over mines of powder and dynamite, it is
+not to be marveled at that the first flash of danger filled them with
+apprehension and terror. The awful memories of San Domingo flamed red
+and dreadful against the dark background of every Southern plantation
+and slave community. In the "belly" of the _Liberator's_ picture were
+many San Domingos. Extreme fear is the beginning of madness; it is,
+indeed, a kind of madness. The South was suddenly plunged into a state
+of extreme fear toward which the _Liberator_ and "Walker's Appeal" were
+hurrying it, by one of those strange accidents or coincidences of
+history.
+
+This extraordinary circumstance was the slave insurrection in
+Southampton, Virginia, in the month of August, 1831. The leader of the
+uprising was the now famous Nat Turner. Brooding over the wrongs of his
+race for several years, he conceived that he was the divinely appointed
+agent to redress them. He was cast in the mould of those rude heroes,
+who spring out of the sides of oppression as isolated trees will
+sometimes grow out of clefts in a mountain. With his yearning to deliver
+his people, there mingled not a little religious frenzy and
+superstition. Getting his command from Heaven to arise against the
+masters, he awaited the sign from this same source of the moment for
+beginning the work of destruction. It came at last and on the night of
+August 21st; he and his confederates made a beginning by massacring
+first his own master, Mr. Joseph Travis, and his entire family. Turner's
+policy was remorseless enough. It was to spare no member of the white
+race, whether man, woman, or child, the very infant at the mother's
+breast was doomed to the knife, until he was able to collect such an
+assured force as would secure the success of the enterprise. This
+purpose was executed with terrible severity and exactness. All that
+night the work of extermination went on as the slave leader and his
+followers passed like fate from house to house, and plantation to
+plantation, leaving a wide swathe of death in their track. Terror filled
+the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the
+bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable, horrible. James McDowell, one of
+the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and
+sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke
+out in the Virginia Legislature, during the winter afterward. One of the
+legislators, joined to his idol, and who now, that the peril had passed,
+laughed at the uprising as a "petty affair." McDowell retorted--"Was
+that a 'petty affair,' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of
+the State into a military camp, which outlawed from pity the unfortunate
+beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated
+every bosom with fear or suspicion, which so banished every sense of
+security from every man's dwelling, that let but a hoof or horn break
+upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to
+the heart? The husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would
+shudder and weep upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his
+deluded, drunken handful of followers which produced such effects? Was
+it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of
+Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir, it
+was the _suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,_--a
+suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family, that the same
+bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place, that the
+materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for
+a like explosion."
+
+Sixty one whites and more than a hundred blacks perished in this
+catastrophe. The news produced a profound sensation in the Union.
+Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings. Eight
+months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and
+caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy:
+
+  "Wo, if it come with storm, and blood, and fire,
+  When midnight darkness veils the earth and sky!
+  Wo to the innocent babe--the guilty sire--
+  Mother and daughter--friends of kindred tie!
+  _Stranger and citizen alike shall die!_
+  Red-handed slaughter his revenge shall feed,
+  And havoc yell his ominous death-cry,
+  And wild despair in vain for mercy plead--
+  While hell itself shall shrink and sicken at the deed!"
+
+
+After the Southampton insurrection the slavery agitation increased
+apace, and the _Liberator_ and its editor became instantly objects of
+dangerous notoriety in it. The eyes of the country were irresistibly
+drawn to them. They were at the bottom of the uprising, they were
+instigating the slaves to similar outbreaks. The savage growlings of a
+storm came thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful
+mutterings against the agitator and his paper grew thenceforth more
+distinct and threatening throughout the free States. October 15, 1831,
+Garrison records in the _Liberator_ that he "is constantly receiving
+from the slave States letters filled with the most diabolical threats
+and indecent language." In the same month Georgetown, S.C., in a panic
+made it unlawful for a free colored person to take the _Liberator_ from
+the post-office. In the same month the Charleston _Mercury_ announced
+that "gentlemen of the first respectability" at Columbia had offered a
+reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction of any
+white person circulating the _Liberator_, Walker's pamphlet, "or any
+other publication of seditious tendency." In Georgia the same symptoms
+of fright were exhibited. In the same month the grand jury at Raleigh,
+N.C., indicted William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp for circulating
+the _Liberator_ in that county. It was even confidently expected that a
+requisition would be made by the Executive of the State upon the
+Governor of Massachusetts for their arrest, when they would be tried
+under a law, which made their action felony. "Whipping and imprisonment
+for the first offence, and death, without benefit of clergy, for the
+second." Governor Floyd said in his message to the Virginia Legislature
+in December that there was good cause to suspect that the plans of the
+Southampton massacre were "designed and matured by unrestrained fanatics
+in some of the neighboring States." Governor Hamilton sent to the South
+Carolina Legislature in the same month an excited message on the
+situation. He was in entire accord with the Virginia Executive as to the
+primary and potent agencies which led to the slave uprising in Virginia.
+They were "incendiary newspapers and other publications put forth in the
+non-slave-holding States, and freely circulated within the limits of
+Virginia." As specimens of "incendiary newspapers and other
+publications, put forth in the non-slave-holding States," the South
+Carolina official sent along with his message, copies of the _Liberator_
+and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of Color," for the
+enlightenment of the members of the Legislature. But it remained for
+Georgia to cap the climax of madness when her Legislature resolved:
+
+
+    "That the sum of five thousand dollars be, and the same is
+    hereby appropriated, to be paid to any person or persons who
+    shall arrest, bring to trial and prosecute to conviction, under
+    the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain
+    paper called the _Liberator_, published in the town of Boston
+    and State of Massachusetts; or who shall arrest and bring to
+    trial and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of this State,
+    any other person or persons who shall utter, publish, or
+    circulate within the limits of this State said paper called the
+    _Liberator_, or any other paper, circular, pamphlet, letter, or
+    address of a seditious character."
+
+
+This extraordinary resolve was signed Dec. 26, 1831, by "Wilson Lumpkin,
+Governor." The whole South was in a state of terror. In its insane
+fright it would have made short shrift of the editor of the _Liberator,_
+had he by accident, force, or fraud have fallen into the clutches of its
+laws. The Georgia reward of five thousand dollars was as Mr. Garrison
+put it, "a bribe to kidnappers." The Southern method of dealing with the
+agitation within the slave States was violent and effective. There could
+be no agitation after the agitators were abolished. And the Southern
+method was to abolish the agitators.
+
+The suppression of Abolitionism within the slave States was no difficult
+matter, but its suppression at the North was a problem of a wholly
+different nature, as the South was not long in finding out. It would not
+understand why its violent treatment of the disease within its
+jurisdiction could not be prescribed as a remedy by the
+non-slave-holding half of the Union within its borders. And so the South
+began to call loudly and fiercely for the suppression of a movement
+calculated to incite the slaves to insubordination and rebellion. This
+demand of the South had its influence at the North. Such newspapers as
+the _National Intelligencer,_ and the Boston _Courier_ suggested
+amendments to the laws whereby the publication of incendiary writings in
+the free States might be prohibited. The latter journal allowed that
+under the criminal code of Massachusetts "every man has a right to
+advocate Abolition, or conspiracy, or murder; for he may do all these
+without breaking our laws, although in any Southern State public justice
+and public safety would require his punishment." "But," the editor goes
+on to remark, "if we have no laws upon the subject, it is because the
+exigency was not anticipated.... Penal statutes against treasonable and
+seditious publications are necessary in all communities. We have them
+for our own protection; if they should include provisions for the
+protection of our neighbors it would be no additional encroachment upon
+the liberty of the press." The Governors of Virginia and Georgia
+remonstrated with Harrison Gray Otis, who was Mayor of Boston in the
+memorable year of 1831, "against an incendiary newspaper published in
+Boston, and, as they alleged, thrown broadcast among their plantations,
+inciting to insurrection and its horrid results." As a lawyer Mayor
+Otis, however, "perceived the intrinsic, if not insuperable obstacles to
+legislative enactments made to prevent crimes from being consummated
+beyond the local jurisdiction." But the South was not seeking a legal
+opinion as to what it could or could not do. It demanded, legal or
+illegal, that Garrison and the _Liberator_ be suppressed. To the Boston
+mayor the excitement over the editor and his paper seemed like much ado
+about nothing. The cause appeared to his supercilious mind altogether
+inadequate to the effect. And so he set to work to reduce the panic by
+exposing the vulgarity and insignificance of the object, which produced
+it. That he might give the Southern bugaboo its _quietus_, he directed
+one of his deputies to inquire into a publication, of which "no member
+of the city government, nor any person," of his honor's acquaintance,
+"had ever heard." The result of this inquiry Mayor Otis reported to the
+Southern functionaries.
+
+"Some time afterward," he wrote, "it was reported to me by the city
+officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his
+office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and
+his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors."
+
+With this bare bodkin Harrison Gray Otis thought to puncture the
+Southern panic. But the slaveholders had correcter notions of the nature
+and tendency of the Abolition enterprise than had the Boston mayor. They
+had a strange, an obstinate presentiment of disaster from the first
+instant that the _Liberator_ loomed upon their horizon. It was a battery
+whose guns, unless silenced, would play havoc with Southern interests
+and the slave system; _ergo_, the paper must be suppressed; _ergo_, its
+editor must be silenced or destroyed. And so when Otis, from his serene
+height, assured them of his "belief that the new fanaticism had not
+made, nor was likely to make, proselytes among the respectable classes
+of our people," they continued to listen to their fears, and to cry the
+louder for the suppression of the "incendiary newspaper published in
+Boston."
+
+The editor of that paper never flinched before the storm of malignity
+which was gathering about his head. He pursued the even tenor of his
+way, laboring at the case more than fourteen hours every day, except
+Sundays, upon the paper, renewing, week after week, his assaults upon
+the citadel of the great iniquity, giving no quarter to slave-holding
+sinners, but carrying aloft the banner of IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL
+EMANCIPATION. Otis had looked to numbers and respectability as his
+political barometer and cue; but when, after diligent search with
+official microscopes, he failed to observe the presence of either in
+connection with this "new fanaticism," wise man that he was, he turned
+over and renewed his slumbers on the edge of a volcano whose ominous
+rumbling the Southern heart had heard and interpreted aright. He was too
+near to catch the true import of the detonations of those subterranean
+forces which were sounding, week after week, in the columns of the
+_Liberator_. They seemed trivial, harmless, contemptible, like the toy
+artillery of children bombarding Fort Independence. Garrison's moral
+earnestness and enthusiasm seemed to the Boston mayor like the impotent
+rage of a man nursing memories of personal injuries suffered at the
+South.
+
+If there was panic in the South, there was none in the office of the
+_Liberator_. Unterrified by the commotion which his composing-stick was
+producing near and far, he laughed to scorn the abuse and threats of his
+enemies. When the news of the reward of the State of Georgia "for the
+abduction of his person" reached him, he did not quail, great as was his
+peril, but boldly replied:
+
+"Of one thing we are sure: all Southern threats and rewards will be
+insufficient to deter us from pursuing the work of emancipation. As
+citizens of the United States we know our rights and dare maintain them.
+We have committed no crime, but are expending our health, comfort, and
+means for the salvation of our country, and for the interests and
+security of infatuated slaveholders, as well as for the relief of the
+poor slaves."
+
+Archimedes with his lever had moved the world. Archimedes "in a small
+chamber, unfurnitured and mean," had set a world of pro-slavery passions
+and prejudices spinning away into space:
+
+  "Such earnest natures are the fiery pith,
+  The compact nucleus, 'round which systems grow;
+  Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith,
+  And whirls impregnate with the central glow."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MASTER STROKES.
+
+
+"Help came but slowly" to the reformer. With a single instrument he had
+stirred the nation, as no other man had done, on the slavery question.
+He had thrown the South into widespread excitement, and thawed the
+apathy of the North into widespread attention. He had won an almost
+instant hearing for his cause. But he knew that this was not enough.
+Effective as he had shown the weapon of the press to be, it alone was
+unequal to the conduct of prolonged agitation. And prolonged agitation
+Garrison clearly apprehended was to be the price of abolition. Back of
+him and the _Liberator_ he needed an organized force, coadjutors like
+Aaron and Hur to hold up his arms during the mighty conflict on which he
+had now entered with the slave interests of the country. Those interests
+were organized, and because they were organized they were powerful. The
+sentiment of freedom he determined to organize and to render it thereby
+invincible. To organized wrong he designed to oppose organized right,
+confident that organized right would prevail in the end. He had
+knowledge of the utility of temperance societies in advancing the cause
+of sobriety among the people. He had learned from Lundy how much he had
+relied upon the union of men as anti-slavery helps. Garrison determined
+to summon to his side the powerful agency of an anti-slavery society
+devoted to immediate and unconditional emancipation. He had already made
+converts; he had already a small following. At Julien Hall, on the
+occasion of his first lecture on the subject of slavery, he had secured
+three remarkable men to the movement, viz., Rev. Samuel J. May, then a
+young Unitarian minister, Samuel E. Sewall, a young member of the Bar,
+and A. Bronson Alcott, a sage even in his early manhood. They had all
+promised him aid and comfort in the great task which he had undertaken.
+A little later two others, quite as remarkable as those first three were
+drawn to the reformer's side, and abetted him in the treason to
+iniquity, which he was prosecuting through the columns of the
+_Liberator_ with unrivaled zeal and devotion. These disciples were Ellis
+Grey Loring and David Lee Child. They were a goodly company, were these
+five conspirators, men of intellect and conscience, of high family and
+social connections, of brilliant attainments and splendid promises for
+the future. To this number must be added a sixth, Oliver Johnson, who
+was at the time editing _The Christian Soldier_, disciple of Garrison
+then, and ever after his devoted friend. The early promises of this
+noble half dozen friends of the slave were more than fulfilled in after
+years. Often to the dingy room "under the eaves" in Merchants' Hall they
+climbed to carry aid and comfort to "one poor, unlearned young man," and
+to sit at his feet in this cradle-room of the new movement. It was there
+in communion with the young master that suggestions looking to the
+formation of an anti-slavery society, were doubtless first thrown out.
+
+  "The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean;
+  Yet there the freedom of a race began."
+
+
+It was not all clear sailing for the editor of the _Liberator_ even with
+such choice spirits. They did not always carry aid and comfort to him,
+but differences of opinions sometimes as well. He did not sugar-coat
+enough the bitter truth which he was telling to the nation. Some of them
+would have preferred _The Safety Lamp_ to the _Liberator_ as a title
+less likely to offend the prejudices of many good people. Some again
+objected to the pictorial heading of the paper as an altogether unwise
+proceeding, and positively mischievous. He had the same experience when
+the formation of an Abolition society was under consideration. He was
+confronted with this benevolent aversion to giving offence by calling
+things by their right names. But much as he desired to have his friends
+and followers organized for associated action, where a principle was at
+stake he was with them as with slavery itself absolutely inflexible and
+uncompromising. He was for organizing on the principle of immediate
+emancipation. A few deemed that ground too radical and revolutionary,
+and were for ranging themselves under the banner of Gradualism, thinking
+to draw to their ranks a class of people, who would be repelled by
+Immediatism. But Garrison was unyielding, refused to budge an inch to
+conciliate friend or foe--not even such stanch supporters as were Sewall
+and Loring, who supplied him again and again with money needed to
+continue the publication of the _Liberator_. No, he was right and they
+were wrong, and they, not he, ought accordingly to yield. The contention
+between the leader and his disciples was not what was expedient, but
+what was right. It was on the part of the leader the assertion of a
+vital principle, and on this ground he was pledged against retreat. The
+mountain could not go to Mahomet, therefore Mahomet must needs go to the
+mountain. Garrison could not abandon his position, wherefore in due time
+Loring, Child, and Sewall surrendered theirs. Finely has Lowell
+expressed this righteous stubbornness, and steadfastness to principle in
+three stanzas of his poem entitled, "The Day of Small Things," and which
+have such an obvious lesson for our own times that I shall venture to
+quote them in this place:
+
+
+  "Who is it will not dare himself to trust?
+  Who is it hath not strength to stand alone?
+  Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST?
+  He and his works, like sand from earth are blown.
+
+
+  "Men of a thousand shifts and wiles look here!
+  See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
+  To win a world! See the obedient sphere
+  By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!
+
+
+  "Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
+  And by the Present's lips repeated still,
+  In our own single manhood to be bold,
+  Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"
+
+
+The history of the making of this first society is an interesting story.
+There were four meetings in all before it was found possible to complete
+the work of its organization. These meetings extended over a space of
+nearly three months, so obstinate were a minority against committing the
+proposed society to the principle of immediate emancipation. The very
+name which was to be given to the association provoked debate and
+disagreement. Some were for christening it "Philo-African," while
+Garrison would no such milk-and-water title, but one which expressed
+distinctly and graphically the real character of the organization, viz.,
+"New England Anti-Slavery Society." He would sail under no false or
+neutral colors, but beneath the red flag of open and determined
+hostility to slavery. It should be a sign which no one could possibly
+mistake. The first meeting was held at the office of Samuel E. Sewall,
+November 13, 1831. At the third meeting, convened New Year's evening of
+1832, which was the first anniversary of the publication of the
+_Liberator_, the work of organization was finished, with a single
+important exception, viz., the adoption of the preamble to the
+constitution. The character of the preamble would fix the character of
+the society. Therefore that which was properly first was made to come
+last. The fourth meeting took place on the night of January 6th in the
+African Baptist Church on what was then Belknap but now known as Joy
+street. The young leader and fourteen of his followers met that evening
+in the school-room for colored children, situated under the auditorium
+of the church. They could hardly have fallen upon a more obscure or
+despised place for the consummation of their enterprise in the city of
+Boston than was this selfsame negro church and school-room. The weather
+added an ever memorable night to the opprobrium of the spot. A fierce
+northeaster accompanied with "snow, rain, and hail in equal proportions"
+was roaring and careering through the city's streets. To an eye-witness,
+Oliver Johnson, "it almost seemed as if Nature was frowning upon the new
+effort to abolish slavery; but," he added, "the spirits of the little
+company rose superior to all external circumstances."
+
+If there was strife of the elements without, neither was there sweet
+accord within among brethren. "The spirits of the little company" may
+have risen superior to the weather, but they did not rise superior to
+the preamble, with the principle of immediatism incorporated in it.
+Eleven stood by the leader and made it the chief of the corner of the
+new society, while three, Messrs. Loring, Sewall, and Child, refused to
+sign the Constitution and parted sorrowfully from the small band of the
+New England Anti-Slavery Society. But the separation was only temporary,
+for each returned to the side of the reformer, and proved his loyalty
+and valor in the trying years which followed.
+
+The preamble which was the bone of so much contention declared that:
+"We, the undersigned, hold that every person, of full age and sane mind,
+has a right to immediate freedom from personal bondage of whatsoever
+kind, unless imposed by the sentence of the law for the commission of
+some crime. We hold that man cannot, consistently with reason, religion,
+and the eternal and immutable principles of justice, be the property of
+man. We hold that whoever retains his fellow-man in bondage is guilty of
+a grievous wrong. We hold that a mere difference of complexion is no
+reason why any man should be deprived of any of his natural rights, or
+subjected to any political disability. While we advance these opinions
+as the principles on which we intend to act, we declare that we will not
+operate on the existing relations of society by other than peaceful and
+lawful means, and that we will give no countenance to violence or
+insurrection."
+
+Twelve, the apostolic number, affixed to the preamble and constitution
+their names, and thus formed the first Garrisonian Society for the
+abolition of slavery in the United States. The names of these apostolic
+men it is well to keep in mind. They are William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver
+Johnson, Robert B. Hall, Arnold Buffum, William J. Snelling, John E.
+Fuller, Moses Thatcher, Joshua Coffin, Stillman B. Newcomb, Benjamin C.
+Bacon, Isaac Knapp, and Henry K. Stockton. The band of reformers, their
+work done, had risen to pass out of the low, rude room into the dark
+night. The storm was still raging. They themselves had perchance been
+sobered by the experiences of the evening. They had gone in fifteen,
+they were returning twelve. And, after all, what had they accomplished?
+What could they a mere handful do to abolish slavery entrenched as it
+was in Church and State? It is possible that some such dim
+discouragement, some such vague misgiving of the futility of the
+evening's labor, was in the hearts of those wearied men, and that their
+leader divined as much, for the spirit of prophecy fell upon Garrison
+just as they "were stepping out into the storm and darkness." "We have
+met to-night," he said, "in this obscure school-house; our numbers are
+few and our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall
+shall erelong echo with the principles we have set forth. We shall shake
+the nation by their mighty power." Then the little band dispersed "into
+the storm and darkness," carrying with them these words charged with
+hope and courage.
+
+The fruitful seed of organized agitation Garrison had securely planted
+in soil fertile and ready for its reception. Its growth constitutes one
+of the marvels of reforms. Within a few brief years it multiplied into
+hundreds and thousands of societies throughout the free States. But its
+beginnings were small and humble enough. "The objects of the society"
+were according to the second article of the constitution, "to endeavor
+by all means sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion, to effect the
+abolition of slavery in the United States, to improve the character and
+condition of the free people of color, to inform and correct public
+opinion in relation to their situation and rights, and to obtain for
+them equal civil and political rights and privileges with the whites."
+The means which were immediately adopted by the society for the
+accomplishment of these objects were mainly three, than which none
+others could have been more effective. These were petitioning Congress
+on the subject of slavery. The publication and circulation of
+anti-slavery addresses and tracts, and the employment of anti-slavery
+agents, "in obtaining or communicating intelligence, in the publication
+and distribution of tracts, books, or papers, or in the execution of any
+measure which may be adopted to promote the objects of the society."
+Such was the simple but unequaled machinery which the New England
+Anti-Slavery Society relied upon for success in the war, which it had
+declared against American slavery. The executive power of the body, and
+the operation of its machinery were lodged in a board of managers of
+which Garrison's was the leading, originating mind. The society started
+out bravely in the use of its means by memorializing Congress for the
+abolition of slavery, "in the District of Columbia and in the
+Territories of the United States under their jurisdiction," and by
+preparing and distributing an address in maintenance of the doctrine of
+immediate emancipation. The board of managers set the machinery in
+motion as far and as fast as the extremely limited pecuniary ability of
+the society would permit. The membership was not from the rich classes.
+It was Oliver Johnson who wittily remarked that not more than one or two
+of the original twelve, "could have put a hundred dollars into the
+treasury without bankrupting themselves." The remark was true, and was
+quite as applicable to any dozen of the new-comers as to the original
+twelve. The society was never deficient in zeal, but it was certainly
+sadly wanting in money. And money was even to such men and to such a
+movement an important factor in revolutionizing public opinion.
+
+The _Liberator_ was made the official organ of the society, and in this
+way was added to its other weapons that of the press. This was a capital
+arrangement, for by it both the paper and the society were placed under
+the direction of the same masterly guidance. There was still one arrow
+left in the moral quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of
+the people, and that was the appointment of an agent to spread the
+doctrines of the new propaganda of freedom. In August the board of
+managers, metaphorically speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison
+the agent of the society to lecture on the subject of slavery "for a
+period not exceeding three months." This was the first drop from a cloud
+then no bigger than a hand, but which was to grow and spread until,
+covering the North, was, at the end of a few short years, to flood the
+land with anti-slavery agents and lecturers.
+
+Our anti-slavery agent visited portions of Massachusetts, Maine, and
+Rhode Island, preaching the Abolition gospel in divers places, and to
+many people--notably at such centers of population as Worcester,
+Providence, Bangor, and Portland, making at the latter city a signal
+conversion to his cause in the person of General Samuel Fessenden,
+distinguished then as a lawyer, and later as the father of William Pitt
+Fessenden. The anti-slavery schoolmaster was abroad, and was beginning
+to turn New England and the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where
+he sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the forms.
+
+So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the society during the
+first year of its existence that it was no empty declaration or boast of
+the _Abolitionist_, the new monthly periodical of the society, that
+"probably, through its instrumentality, more public addresses on the
+subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people
+of color, have been made in New England, during the past year (1832)
+than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization."
+
+The introduction of the principle of association into the slavery
+agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an
+achievement of the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any man,
+or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense
+initiative. He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged
+the method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling of the
+anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a
+common cause, was a master stroke of moral generalship. This master
+stroke the leader followed up promptly with a second stroke not less
+masterly. That second stroke was his "Thoughts on African Colonization,"
+published in the summer succeeding the formation of the New England
+Anti-Slavery Society.
+
+Garrison's championship of the cause of the slave had started with
+strong faith in the efficacy and disinterestedness of the colonization
+scheme as an instrument of emancipation. It commanded, therefore, his
+early support. In his Park Street Church address he evinced himself in
+earnest sympathy with the friends of colonization. But after his arrival
+in Baltimore a change began to exhibit itself in this regard. He began
+to qualify his confidence in its utility; began to discern in it
+influences calculated to retard general emancipation. As these doubts
+and misgivings arose within him he expressed them frankly in the
+_Genius_. Lundy had been suspicious of the pro-slavery purposes or
+interests of the enterprise for many years. He could not reconcile
+himself to the significant or, at least, singular fact of so many
+slaveholders being in the membership and the offices of the association.
+Then, in addition to this lack of confidence on the part of Lundy in the
+scheme, Garrison became acquainted, for the first time, with the objects
+of the society's philanthropy--the class of free people of color. He
+found that these people were not at all well affected to the society;
+that they had no appreciation of its benevolent intentions in respect to
+themselves. He found, on the contrary, that they were positively
+embittered toward it and toward its designs for their removal from the
+country as toward their worst enemy. This circumstance was undoubtedly a
+poser to their young friend. How could he reconcile this deep-seated and
+widespread disbelief in the purity of the motives of the Colonization
+Society, with the simple integrity and humanity of the enterprise
+itself? Later, his acquaintance with such representatives of the free
+people of color in Philadelphia as James Forten and his son-in-law,
+Robert Purvis, served but to confirm those first impressions which he
+received in Baltimore from the Watkinses and the Greeners. It was the
+same experience in New York and New Haven, in Boston and Providence. He
+learned that from the very beginning, in the year 1817, that the free
+people of color in Richmond and Philadelphia had, by an instinctive
+knowledge of threatened wrong and danger, met and resolved against the
+society and its sinister designs upon themselves. These people did not
+wish to leave the country; they did not wish to be sent to Liberia; but
+the society, bent on doing them good against their will, did want them
+to leave the country, did want to send them to Liberia.
+
+And why did the society desire to remove the free people of color out of
+the country? Was it from motives of real philanthropy? The colored
+people were the first to detect its spurious humanity, the first to see
+through the artful disguises employed to impose upon the conscience of
+the republic. Their removal, they intuitively divined, was proposed not
+to do their race a benefit, but rather to do a service to the owners of
+slaves. These objects of the society's pseudo-philanthropy had the
+sagacity to perceive that, practically, their expatriation tended to
+strengthen the chains of their brethren then in slavery; for if the
+South could get rid of its free colored population, its slave property
+would thereby acquire additional security, and, of consequence,
+increased market value. Like cause, like effect. If the operation of the
+colonization scheme was decidedly in the interest of the masters, it was
+the part of wisdom to conclude as the free colored people did actually
+conclude that the underlying motive, the hidden purpose of the society
+was also in the interest of the masters.
+
+Garrison did not reach his conclusions as to the pro-slavery character
+and tendency of the society abruptly. The scales fell away gradually
+from his eyes. He was not completely undeceived until he had examined
+the reports of the society and found in them the most redundant evidence
+of its insincerity and guilt. It was out of its own mouth that he
+condemned it. When he saw the society in its true character, he saw what
+he must do. It was a wolf in sheep's skin running at large among the
+good shepherd's flock, and inflicting infinite hurt upon his poor sheep.
+He no longer wondered at the horror which the colonization scheme
+inspired among the free people of color. They were right. The society
+was their dangerous and determined enemy; it was the bulwark of the
+slave-holding classes. With the instinct of a great purpose he resolved
+to carry this powerful bulwark of slavery by assault. To the attack he
+returned week after week in the _Liberator_, during a year and a half.
+Then he hurled himself upon it with all his guns, facts, arguments,
+denunciations, blowing away and burning up every shred of false covering
+from the doctrines, principles, and purposes of the society, revealing
+it to mankind in its base and monstrous character.
+
+The society's one motive "to get rid of the free people of color," was
+outrageous enough, but this was not its only sin. There was another
+phase to the mischief it was working, which lifted it to the rank of a
+great sinner. It was not only harmful in its principles and purposes.
+"It imperatively and effectually seals up the lips," so Garrison accused
+it, "of a vast number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of
+giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they associate, and
+thereby leading to a dissolution of the compact, dare not expose the
+flagrant enormities of the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of
+holding human beings in bondage. They dare not lead to the onset against
+the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall
+the victory be won? I do not mean to aver that in their sermons, or
+addresses, or private conversations, they never allude to the subject of
+slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July.
+But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing
+slavery as an evil--a misfortune--a calamity which has been entailed
+upon us by former generations,--_and not as an individual_ CRIME,
+embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. _They
+do not identify the criminal_; they make no direct, pungent, earnest
+appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but
+it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced
+to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable.
+
+Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright described the baleful
+influence of the society upon the humanity and philanthropy of the
+nation. "The humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could not
+otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced into an African
+Colonization Society, whereby all slaves who had grown seditious and
+troublesome to their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous
+African coast. That this wretched and seemingly transparent humbug could
+have deluded anybody, must now seem past belief; but I must with shame
+confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it. And that fact would
+put me in doubt of my own sanity at the time if I did not know that high
+statesmen, presidents of colleges, able editors, and that most undoubted
+of firm philanthropists, Gerritt Smith, shared the same delusion. Bible
+and missionary societies fellowshipped that mean and scurvy device of
+the kidnapper, in their holy work. It was spoken of as the most glorious
+of Christian enterprises, had a monthly magazine devoted to itself, and
+taxed about every pulpit in the land for an annual sermon in its favor."
+
+Such was the Colonization Society, and its entrenched strength in the
+piety and philanthropy of the country at the moment when Garrison
+published his "Thoughts." It did not seem possible that a single arm
+however powerful, was able to start its roots; but, directly upon the
+launching of this bolt, the roots of the Bohun Upas, as Garrison
+graphically designated the society, were seen to have started, and the
+enterprise appeared blasted as by fire. The deluded intellect and
+conscience of the free States saw in the fierce light, which the
+pamphlet of the reformer threw upon the colonization scheme how
+shamefully imposed upon they had been. They had believed the society
+"the most glorious of Christian enterprises," and, lo! it stood revealed
+to them a "scurvy device of the kidnapper." The effect was
+extraordinary. The book was seized and its contents devoured by some of
+the finest minds of the North. Here is an example of the interest which
+it excited and the converts which it made: "Last Monday evening was our
+Law Club meeting, and I had the great satisfaction of hearing Judge
+Mellen, our Chief-Justice, say he had read your 'Thoughts,' was a
+thorough convert to your views, and was ready to do all in his power to
+promote them. Mr. Longfellow [father of Henry W. Longfellow] was present
+also, and with equal warmth and clearness expressed himself also in
+favor of your views. This is getting the two first men in the State for
+talents and influence in benevolent effort. I have no doubt they will
+head the list of those who will subscribe to form here an anti-slavery
+society. Mr. Greenleaf [Simon] also, will cordially come in, and I need
+not say he is one of the first [men] in the State, for his character is
+known." This quotation is made from a letter of General Samuel
+Fessenden, of Portland, Me., to Mr. Garrison, dated December 14, 1832.
+Among the remarkable minds which the "Thoughts" disillusioned in respect
+of the character and tendency of the Colonization Society were Theodore
+D. Weld, Elizur Wright, and Beriah Green, N.P. Rogers, William Goodell,
+Joshua Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Lewis Tappan, and James Miller McKim.
+
+Garrison's assertion that "the overthrow of the Colonization Society was
+the overthrow of slavery itself," was, from the standpoint of a student
+of history, an exaggerated one. We know now that the claim was not
+founded on fact, that while they did stand together they did not fall
+together. But the position was, nevertheless, the strongest possible one
+for the anti-slavery movement to occupy at the time. In the disposition
+of the pro-slavery forces on the field of the opening conflict in 1832,
+the colonization scheme commanded the important approaches to the
+citadel of the peculiar institution. It cut off the passes to public
+opinion, and to the religious and benevolent influences of the land. To
+reach these it was necessary in the first place to dislodge the society
+from its coign of vantage, its strategical point in the agitation. And
+this is precisely what "The Thoughts on African Colonization" did. It
+dislodged the society from its powerful place in the moral sentiment of
+the North. The capture of this position was like the capture of a
+drawbridge, and the precipitation of the assaulting column directly upon
+the walls of a besieged castle. Within the pamphlet was contained the
+whole tremendous enginery of demolition. The anti-slavery agent and
+lecturer thenceforth set it up wherever he spoke.
+
+To him it was not only the catapult; it furnished the missile-like facts
+and arguments for breaching the walls of this pro-slavery stronghold as
+well.
+
+The effect of the publication of "The Thoughts" in this country was
+extraordinary, but the result of their circulation in England was hardly
+less so. It produced there as here a revolution in public sentiment upon
+the subject. The philanthropy and piety of Great Britain had generally
+prior to the unmasking of the society, looked upon it as an instrument
+of Emancipation, and had accordingly given it their powerful
+countenance, and not a little material support. But from the moment that
+the pamphlet reached England a decided change in this regard became
+manifest. The society made fruitless attempts to break the force of the
+blow dealt it by Garrison in the United States. But wherever its
+emissaries traveled "The Thoughts" confronted and confounded them. So
+that Mr. Garrison was warranted in saying that "all that sophistry or
+misrepresentation could effect to overthrow its integrity has been
+attempted in vain. The work, as a whole, stands irrefutable." The
+attempts made to maintain its hold upon the British public were
+characterized by duplicity and misrepresentation beyond anything
+practiced in America. The work of deceiving the philanthropy of Great
+Britain was conducted by the emissary of the society, Elliott Cresson, a
+man perfectly fitted to perform his part with remarkable thoroughness
+and industry. Three thousand miles away from America, and practically
+secure from contradiction, he went about making outrageous statements as
+to the anti-slavery character and purpose of the colonization
+enterprise. As there was no one in England sufficiently acquainted with
+the operations and designs of the society, he was enabled to falsify
+facts, to conceal the real principles of the scheme with astonishing
+audacity and activity. He approached Wilberforce, and duped Clarkson
+into a belief in the anti-slavery aim of the society.
+
+Unmasked in America, the time had come when the interests of the
+Abolition movement on this side of the Atlantic required that it should
+be stripped of its disguises on the other side also. No better
+instrument could be selected for this purpose than the man who had torn
+the mask from its features in the United States. And so in March, 1833,
+the Board of Managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society notified
+the public of the appointment of "William Lloyd Garrison as their agent,
+and that he would proceed to England as soon as the necessary
+arrangements can be made, for the purpose of procuring funds to aid in
+the establishment of the proposed MANUAL LABOR SCHOOL FOR COLORED YOUTH,
+and of disseminating in that country the truth in relation to American
+slavery, and to its ally, the American Colonization Society." The
+managers offered in justification of their step the fact that "Elliott
+Cresson is now in England as an agent for the Colonization Society, and
+that he has procured funds to a considerable amount by representing that
+the object of the society is 'to assist in the emancipation of all the
+slaves now in the United States.' It is important that the
+philanthropists of that country should be undeceived, and that the real
+principles and designs of the Colonization Society should be there made
+known."
+
+In pursuance of this mission Garrison sailed from New York, May 2, 1833.
+Twenty days later he landed in Liverpool. His arrival was opportune, for
+all England was watching the closing scene in the drama of West India
+Emancipation. He was an eye-witness of the crowning triumph of the
+English Abolitionists, viz., the breaking by Act of Parliament of the
+fetters of eight hundred thousand slaves. He was in time to greet his
+great spiritual kinsman, William Wilberforce, and to undeceive him in
+respect of the Colonization Society, before death claimed his body, and
+to follow him to his last resting-place by the side of Pitt and Fox, in
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+A highly interesting incident of this visit is best told in Mr.
+Garrison's own words. He said:
+
+"On arriving in London I received a polite invitation by letter from Mr.
+Buxton to take breakfast with him. Presenting myself at the appointed
+time, when my name was announced, instead of coming forward promptly to
+take me by the hand, he scrutinized me from head to foot, and then
+inquired, 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Garrison, of Boston, in
+the United States?' 'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I am he; and I am here in
+accordance with your invitation.' Lifting up his hands he exclaimed,
+'Why, my dear sir, I thought you were a black man! And I have
+consequently invited this company of ladies and gentlemen to be present
+to welcome Mr. Garrison, the black advocate of emancipation, from the
+United States of America.' I have often said that that is the only
+compliment I have ever had paid to me that I care to remember or to tell
+of! For Mr. Buxton had somehow or other supposed that no white American
+could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and therefore I must be
+black!"
+
+Garrison promptly threw down his challenge to Elliott Cresson, offering
+to prove him an impostor and the Colonization Society "corrupt in its
+principles, proscriptive in its measures, and the worst enemy of the
+free colored and slave population of the United States." From the first
+it was apparent that Cresson did not mean to encounter the author of the
+"Thoughts" in public debate. Even a mouse when cornered will show fight,
+but there was no manly fight in Cresson. Garrison sent him a letter
+containing seven grave charges against his society, and dared him to a
+refutation of them in a joint discussion. This challenge was presented
+four times before the agent of colonization could be persuaded to accept
+it. Garrison was bent on a joint public discussion between himself and
+Mr. Cresson. But Mr. Cresson was bent on avoiding his opponent. He
+skulked under one pretext or another from vindicating the colonization
+scheme from the seven-headed indictment preferred against it by the
+agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. As Cresson could not be
+driven into a joint discussion with him there was nothing left to
+Garrison but to go on without him. His arraignment and exposure of the
+society in public and private was thorough and overwhelming. He was
+indefatigable in the prosecution of this part of his mission. And his
+labor was not in vain. For in less than three months after his reaching
+England he had rendered the Colonization Society as odious there as his
+"Thoughts" had made it in America. The great body of the anti-slavery
+sentiment in Great Britain promptly condemned the spirit and object of
+the American Colonization Society. Such leaders as Buxton and Cropper
+"termed its objects _diabolical_;" while Zachary Macaulay, father of the
+historian, did not doubt that "the unchristian prejudice of color (which
+alone has given birth to the Colonization Society, though varnished over
+with other more plausible pretences, and veiled under a profession of a
+Christian regard for the temporal and spiritual interests of the negro
+which is belied by the whole course of its reasonings and the spirit of
+its measures) is so detestable in itself that I think it ought not to be
+tolerated, but, on the contrary, ought to be denounced and opposed by
+all humane, and especially by all pious persons in this country."
+
+The protest against the Colonization Society "signed by Wilberforce and
+eleven of the most distinguished Abolitionists in Great Britain,"
+including Buxton, Macaulay, Cropper, and Daniel O'Connell, showed how
+thoroughly Garrison had accomplished his mission. The protest declares,
+thanks to the teachings of the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery
+Society, that the colonization scheme "takes its roots from a cruel
+prejudice and alienation in the whites of America against the colored
+people, slave or free. This being its source the effects are what might
+be expected; that it fosters and increases the spirit of caste, already
+so unhappily predominant; that it widens the breach between the two
+races--exposes the colored people to great practical persecution, in
+order to _force_ them to emigrate; and, finally, is calculated to
+swallow up and divert that feeling which America, as a Christian and
+free country, cannot but entertain, that slavery is alike incompatible
+with the law of God and with the well-being of man, whether the enslaver
+or the enslaved." The solemn conclusion of the illustrious signers of
+this mighty protest was that: "That society is, in our estimation, not
+deserving of the countenance of the British public." This powerful
+instrument fell, as Garrison wrote at the time, "like a thunderbolt upon
+the society." The damage inflicted upon it was immense, irreparable. The
+name of Thomas Clarkson was conspicuous by its absence from the protest.
+He could not be induced to take positive ground against the society.
+Garrison had visited him for this purpose. But the venerable
+philanthropist, who was then blind, had taken position on _neutral
+ground_, and could not, after an interview of four hours, be induced to
+abandon it. But, fortunately, potent as the name of Clarkson would have
+been in opposition to the society, it was not indispensable to its
+overthrow in Great Britain. Garrison had won to his side "all the
+staunch anti-slavery spirits," while Cresson was able to retain only "a
+few titled, wealthy, high-pretending individuals."
+
+The success of the mission was signal, its service to the movement
+against slavery in America manifold. Garrison writing from London to the
+board of managers, summarized the results produced by it as follows:
+"1st, awakening a general interest among the friends of emancipation in
+this country, and securing their efficient cooeperation with us in the
+abolition of slavery in the United States; 2d, dispelling the mists with
+which the agent of the American Colonization Society has blinded the
+eyes of benevolent men in relation to the design and tendency of the
+society; 3d, enlisting able and eloquent advocates to plead our cause;
+4th, inducing editors of periodicals and able writers to give us the
+weight of their influence; 5th, exciting a spirit of emulation in the
+redemption of our slave population among the numerous female
+anti-slavery societies; 6th, procuring a large collection of
+anti-slavery documents, tracts, pamphlets, and volumes, which will
+furnish us with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition." These were
+indeed some of the grand results of laborious weeks. His mission was
+ended. He was profoundly grateful to the good God for its success. The
+great movement which he had started against oppression in his own
+country was awaiting his aggressive leadership. He did not tarry abroad,
+therefore, but set sail from London August 18, 1833, for New York, where
+he landed six weeks later.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+COLORPHOBIA
+
+
+Garrison's Abolitionism was of the most radical character. It went the
+whole length of the humanity of the colored race, and all that that
+implied. They were, the meanest members, whether bond or free, his
+brothers and his sisters. From the first he regarded them as bone of his
+bone and blood of his blood, as children with him of a common father.
+Poor and enslaved and despised to be sure, wronged by all men, and
+contemned by all men, but for that very reason they were deserving of
+his most devoted love and labor. He never looked down upon them as
+wanting in any essential respect the manhood which was his. They were
+men and as such entitled to immediate emancipation. They were besides
+entitled to equality of civil and political rights in the republic,
+entitled to equality and fraternity in the church, equality and
+fraternity at the North, equality and fraternity always and everywhere.
+This is what he preached, this is what he practiced. In not a single
+particular was he ever found separating himself from his brother in
+black, saying to him "thus far but no farther." He never drew the line
+in public or private between him and the people whose cause was his
+cause--not even socially. He went into their homes and was in all things
+one with them. He forgot that he was white, forgot that they were black,
+forgot the pride of race, forgot the stigma of race too in the tie of
+human kinship which bound him to them. If he had what they did not
+possess, the rights of a man, the civil and political position of a man
+in the State, the equality of a brother in the church, it could not make
+him feel better than they, it filled him instead with a righteous sense
+of wrong, a passionate sympathy, a supreme desire and determination to
+make his own rights the measure of theirs.
+
+"I lose sight of your present situation," he said in his address before
+Free People of Color, "and look at it only in futurity. I imagine myself
+surrounded by educated men of color, the Websters, and Clays, and
+Hamiltons, and Dwights, and Edwardses of the day. I listen to their
+voice as judges and representatives, and rulers of the people--the whole
+people." This glowing vision was not the handiwork of a rhetorician
+writing with an eye to its effect upon his hearers. The ardent hope of
+the reformer was rather the father of the golden dream.
+
+This practical recognition of the negro as a man and a brother was the
+exact opposite of the treatment which was his terrible lot in the
+country. Never in all history was there a race more shamefully oppressed
+by a dominant race than were the blacks by the whites of America. Held
+as slaves in the South, they were stamped as social outcasts at the
+North. There was no one, however mean or vicious, who if he possessed a
+white skin, was not treated more humanely than were they. In the most
+enlightened of the free States they were discriminated against by public
+laws and proscribed by public opinion. They were in a word pariahs of
+the republic. They were shut out from all the common rights, and
+privileges and opportunities enjoyed by the lowest of the favored race.
+They were denied equality in the public school. The principle of popular
+education had no application to a class which was not of the people, a
+class which the common sentiment of a Christian nation had placed at the
+zero point of political values, and meant to keep forever at that point.
+Entrance to the trades were barred to the blacks. What did they want
+with such things where there was no white trash so forgetful of his
+superiority as to consent to work by their side. Nowhere were they
+allowed the same traveling accommodations as white men, and they were
+everywhere excluded from public inns. Neither wealth nor refinement was
+able to procure them admission into other than "Jim Crow cars." If
+heart-sick at the outrages by every one heaped upon them they turned for
+consolation to the house of God, even there the spirit of proscription
+and caste prejudice met them, and pointed to the "negro pew" where they
+sat corraled from the congregation as if they had no equal share in the
+salvation which the pulpit preached. Everywhere the white man had the
+right of way, even on the highway to heaven! And in no place was the
+negro made to feel the prejudice against his color more gallingly than
+in churches arrogating the name of Christian. He had no rights on earth,
+he had none in trying to get into the bosom of the founder of
+Christianity, which the white sinners or saints were bound to respect.
+Even the liberty-loving Quakers of Philadelphia were not above the use
+of the "negro seat" in their meetings. Somehow they discerned that there
+was a great gulf separating in this life at least the white from the
+black believer. That God had made of one blood all nations of men, St.
+Paul had taught, but the American church had with one accord in practice
+drawn the line at the poor despised colored man. He was excluded from
+ecclesiastical equality, for he was different from other men for whom
+Christ died. The Bible declared that man was made but a little lower
+than the angels; the American people in their State and Church
+supplemented this sentiment by acts which plainly said that the negro
+was made but a little above the brute creation.
+
+Here are instances of the length to which the prejudice against color
+carried the churches in those early years of the anti-slavery movement:
+
+In 1830, a colored man, through a business transaction with a lessee of
+one of the pews in Park Street Church, came into possession of it.
+Thinking to make the best use of his opportunity to obtain religious
+instruction for himself and family from this fountain of orthodoxy, the
+black pew-holder betook him, one Sunday, to "Brimstone Corner." But he
+was never permitted to repeat the visit. "Brimstone Corner" could not
+stand him another Lord's day, and thereupon promptly expelled him and
+his family out of its midst. The good deacons displayed their capacity
+for shielding their flock from consorting with "niggers," by availing
+themselves of a technicality to relet the pew to a member who was not
+cursed with a dark skin. On another Lord's day, in another stronghold of
+Boston Christianity, Oliver Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns
+of a large number of the congregation" for daring to take a
+fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his own into his pew, to
+listen to Dr. Beecher. The good people of the old Baptist meeting-house,
+at Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing the
+heavenly calm of their religious devotions by so much as a thought of
+believers with black faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front
+and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they secured themselves
+from a sight of the obnoxious creatures, while Jehovah, who is no
+respecter of persons, was in His holy place. Incredible as it may seem,
+a church in the town of Stoughton, Mass., to rid itself of even a
+semblance of Christian fellowship and equality with a colored member,
+did actually cut the floor from under the colored member's pew!
+
+These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the churches affected
+Garrison in the most painful manner. He says:
+
+"I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren
+without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation,
+and sorrow."
+
+He had such an intimate acquaintance with members of this despised caste
+in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply
+their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt
+their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that
+beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he
+knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American
+prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to
+Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much
+of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:
+
+"I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to see what I saw, to hear
+what I heard, and to experience what I felt in associating with many
+colored families. There are colored men and women, young men and young
+ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral
+worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration
+and praise."
+
+Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits and advancement, the
+free people of color received nothing but disparagement and contempt
+from eminent divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries of the
+Colonization Society. They were "the most abandoned wretches on the face
+of the earth"; they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous";
+they were "more degraded and miserable than the slaves," and _ad
+infinitum_ through the whole gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was
+human for the American people to hate a class whom they had so deeply
+wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious
+treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said
+class. That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the
+moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.
+
+Garrison's vindication of the free people of color in Exeter Hall,
+London, on July 13, 1833, from this sort of detraction and villification
+is of historic value:
+
+"Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind
+to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people.
+Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light
+of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their
+number are in the most affluent circumstances, and distinguished for
+their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing
+churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of
+the land, embracing a large body of the truly excellent of the earth.
+They have public and private libraries. They have their temperance
+societies, their debating societies, their moral societies, their
+literary societies, their benevolent societies, their saving societies,
+and a multitude of kindred associations. They have their infant schools,
+their primary and high schools, their sabbath schools, and their Bible
+classes. They contribute to the support of foreign and domestic missions
+to Bible and tract societies, etc. In the city of Philadelphia alone
+they have more than fifty associations for moral and intellectual
+improvement. In fact, they are rising up, even with mountains of
+prejudice piled upon them, with more than Titanic strength, and
+trampling beneath their feet the slanders of their enemies. A spirit of
+virtuous emulation is pervading their ranks, from the young child to the
+gray head. Among them is taken a large number of daily and weekly
+newspapers, and of literary and scientific periodicals, from the popular
+monthlies up to the grave and erudite _North American_ and _American
+Quarterly Reviews_. I have at this moment, to my own paper, the
+_Liberator_, one thousand subscribers among this people; and, from an
+occupancy of the editorial chair for more than seven years, I can
+testify that they are more punctual in their payments than any five
+hundred white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately in
+my subscription book."
+
+There was an earnest desire on the part of the free people of color to
+raise the level of their class in the Union. At a convention held by
+them in Philadelphia, in 1831, they resolved upon a measure calculated
+to make up, to some extent, the deprivations which their children were
+suffering by being excluded from the higher schools of learning in the
+land. So they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor
+system for the education of colored youth. They appealed for aid to
+their benevolent friends, and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build
+their institution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence, "purchased
+several acres of land, in the southerly part of the city, and made
+arrangements for the erection of a suitable building, and furnishing it
+with needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city and country."
+
+The school, however, was never established owing to the violent
+hostility of the citizens, who with the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common
+Council resolved in public meeting to "_resist_ the establishment of the
+proposed college in this place by every lawful means."
+
+The free people of color were derided because of their ignorance by
+their persecutors, but when they and their friends proposed a plan to
+reduce that ignorance, their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution.
+New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied in the Colonization
+Society, were not bent on the education of this class but on its
+emigration to the coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions
+and cruelties did American prejudice against color involve American
+Christianity and humanity.
+
+This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years afterward Connecticut
+enacted altogether the most shameful crime in her history. There lived
+in the year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State, an
+accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence Crandall. Besides a
+superior education, she possessed the highest character. And this was
+well; for she was the principal of the Female Boarding School located in
+that town. The institution was, in 1833, at the beginning of its third
+year, and in a flourishing condition. While pursuing her vocation of a
+teacher, Miss Crandall made the acquaintance of the _Liberator_ through
+a "nice colored girl," who was at service in the school. Abhorring
+slavery from childhood, it is no wonder that the earnestness of the
+_Liberator_ exerted an immediate and lasting influence upon the
+sympathies of the young principal. The more she read and the more she
+thought upon the subject the more aroused she became to the wrongs of
+which her race was guilty to the colored people. She, too, would lend
+them a helping hand in their need. Presently there came to her a colored
+girl who was thirsting for an education such as the Canterbury Boarding
+School for young ladies was dispensing to white girls. This was Miss
+Crandall's opportunity to do something for the colored people, and she
+admitted the girl to her classes. But she had no sooner done so than
+there were angry objections to the girl's remaining.
+
+"The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village," Miss
+Crandall records, "told me that if I continued that colored girl in my
+school it would not be sustained."
+
+She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out of the school, and
+thereby caused a most extraordinary exhibition of Connecticut chivalry
+and Christianity.
+
+Seeing how matters stood with her in these circumstances, Prudence
+Crandall conceived the remarkable purpose of devoting her school to the
+education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her
+idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to
+the editor of the _Liberator_. She went to Boston for this purpose, and
+there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening
+of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This
+visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her
+school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was
+expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from
+well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New
+York to assure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss
+Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them
+to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated
+opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her
+townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and
+horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was
+denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a
+single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from
+an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not
+hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of
+personal violence."
+
+As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the
+holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good
+Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the
+Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence,
+punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a
+school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of
+other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of
+a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound
+over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no
+use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the
+infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied
+about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and
+her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies
+did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of
+the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest
+misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against
+Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part,
+peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our
+principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were
+circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into
+court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who
+stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town
+boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils.
+Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe
+for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse
+with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner
+capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in
+her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel
+of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like
+savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence
+the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs
+and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly
+ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the
+detestable building devoted to the higher education of "niggers."
+Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.
+
+The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's indignation to the
+highest pitch. Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony
+of soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership he wrote George
+W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, "we may as well, first as last,
+meet this proscriptive spirit, _and conquer it_. We--_i.e._, all the
+friends of the cause--must make this a common concern. The New Haven
+excitement has furnished a bad precedent--a second must not be given or
+I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner
+which their intellectual and moral necessities demand. In Boston we are
+all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and
+Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in
+from his _Liberator_ outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend
+of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready
+reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for championship,
+and to the _Liberator_ as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and
+for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace.
+Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in
+motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were
+beginning "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of a nation's
+soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+
+AGITATION AND REPRESSION.
+
+
+William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English mission was signalized
+by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City
+Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of
+anti-slavery mobs in the North. The news of his British successes had
+preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his
+pro-slavery countrymen. For had he not with malice prepense put down the
+"most glorious of Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country in
+the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And when O'Connell in
+Exeter Hall pointed the finger of scorn at America and made her a
+by-word and a hissing in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting
+got up to further the designs of this "misguided young gentlemen who has
+just returned from England whither he has recently been for the sole
+purpose as it would seem [to the _Commercial Advertiser_] of traducing
+the people and institutions of his own country." Had he not caught up
+and echoed back the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:--"_Shame
+on the American Slaveholders_! Base wretches should we shout in
+chorus--base wretches, how dare you profane the temple of national
+freedom, the sacred fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the
+sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"
+
+The noise of these treasons on a foreign shore, "deafening the sound of
+the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder goes," to
+borrow O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had reached the
+country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The national sensitiveness was
+naturally enough stung to the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is
+not content with disturbing the peace of the Union with his new
+fanaticism, but must needs presume to make the dear Union odious before
+the world as well. And his return, what is it to be but the signal for
+increased agitation on the slavery question. The conquering hero comes
+and his fanatical followers salute him forthwith with a new anti-slavery
+society, which means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife
+between the North and the South. "Are we tamely to look on, and see this
+most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society?"
+shrieked on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York Harbor,
+the malignant editor of the _Courier and Enquirer_.
+
+The pro-slavery and lawless elements of the city were not slow to take
+the cue given by metropolitan papers, and to do the duty of patriots
+upon their country's enemies. Arthur Tappen and his anti-slavery
+associates outwitted these patriotic gentlemen, who attended in a body
+at Clinton Hall on the evening of October 2, 1833, to perform the
+aforesaid duty of patriots, while the objects of their attention were
+convened at Chatham Street Chapel and organizing their new fanaticism.
+The mob flew wide of its mark a second time, for when later in the
+evening it began a serenade more expressive than musical before the
+entrance to the little chapel on Chatham street the members of the
+society "folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away."
+The Abolitionists accomplished their design and eluded their enemies at
+the same time. But the significance of the riotous demonstration went
+not unobserved by them and their newly arrived leader. It was plain from
+that night that if the spirit of Abolitionism had risen, the spirit of
+persecution had risen also.
+
+A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer in Boston. An
+inflammatory handbill announced to his townsmen his arrival. "The true
+American has returned, _alias_ William Lloyd Garrison, the 'Negro
+Champion,' from his disgraceful mission to the British metropolis,"
+etc., etc., and wound up its artful list of lies with the malignant
+suggestion that "He is now in your power--do not let him escape you, but
+go this evening, armed with plenty of _tar and feathers_ and administer
+to him justice at his abode at No. 9 Merchant's Hall, Congress street."
+In obedience to this summons, a reception committee in the shape of "a
+dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded a storm," did pay their
+respects to the "true American" in front of his abode at the _Liberator_
+office. Fortunately the storm passed over without breaking that evening
+on the devoted head of the "Negro Champion." But the meaning of the
+riotous demonstration it was impossible to miss. Like the mob in New
+York it clearly indicated that the country was on the outer edge of an
+area of violent disturbances on the subject of slavery.
+
+The peril which Garrison had twice escaped was indeed grave, but neither
+it nor the certainty of future persecution could flutter or depress his
+spirits. "For myself," he wrote subsequently in the _Liberator_, "I am
+ready to brave any danger even unto death. I feel no uneasiness either
+in regard to my fate or to the success of the cause of Abolition.
+Slavery must speedily be abolished; the blow that shall sever the chains
+of the slaves may shake the nation to its center--may momentarily
+disturb the pillars of the Union--but it shall redeem the character,
+extend the influence, establish the security, and increase the
+prosperity of our great republic." It was not the rage and malice of his
+enemies which the brave soul minded, but the ever-present knowledge of
+human beings in chains and slavery whom he must help. Nothing could
+separate him from his duty to them, neither dangers present nor
+persecutions to come. The uncertainty of life made him only the more
+zealous in their behalf. The necessity of doing, doing, and yet ever
+doing for the slave was plainly pressing deep like thorns into his
+thoughts. "I am more and more impressed;" he wrote a friend a few weeks
+later, "I am more and more impressed with the importance of 'working
+whilst the day lasts.' If 'we all do fade as a leaf,' if we are 'as the
+sparks that fly upward,' if the billows of time are swiftly removing the
+sandy foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the captive, and
+for our country, and for the subjugation of a hostile world, must be
+done quickly. Happily 'our light afflictions are but for a moment.'"
+
+This yearning of the leader for increased activity in the cause of
+immediate emancipation was shared by friends and disciples in different
+portions of the country. Few and scattered as were the Abolitionists,
+they so much the more needed to band together for the great conflict
+with a powerful and organized evil. This evil was organized on a
+national scale, the forces of righteousness which were rising against
+it, if they were ever to overcome it and rid the land of it, had needs
+to be organized on a national scale also. Garrison with the instinct of
+a great reformer early perceived the immense utility of a national
+anti-slavery organization for mobilizing the whole available Abolition
+sentiment of the free States in a moral agitation of national and
+tremendous proportions.
+
+He had not long to wait after his return from England before this desire
+of his soul was satisfied. It was in fact just a month afterward that a
+call for a convention for the formation of the American Anti-Slavery
+Society went out from New York to the friends of immediate emancipation
+throughout the North. As an evidence of the dangerously excited state of
+the popular mind on the subject of slavery there stands in the summons
+the significant request to delegates to regard the call as confidential.
+The place fixed upon for holding the convention was Philadelphia, and
+the time December 4, 1833.
+
+Garrison bestirred himself to obtain for the convention a full
+representation of the friends of freedom. He sent the call to George W.
+Benson, at Providence, urging him to spread the news among the
+Abolitionists of his neighborhood and to secure the election of a goodly
+number of delegates by the society in Rhode Island. He forthwith
+bethought him of Whittier on his farm in Haverhill, and enjoined his old
+friend to fail not to appear in Philadelphia. But while the young poet
+longed to go to urge upon his Quaker brethren of that city "to make
+their solemn testimony against slavery visible over the whole land--to
+urge them, by the holy memories of Woolman and Benezet and Tyson to come
+up as of old to the standard of Divine Truth, though even the fires of
+another persecution should blaze around them," he feared that he would
+not be able to do so. The spirit was surely willing but the purse was
+empty, "as thee know," he quaintly adds, "our farming business does not
+put much cash in our pockets." The cash he needed was generously
+supplied by Samuel E. Sewall, and Whittier went as a delegate to the
+convention after all. The disposition on the part of some of the poorer
+delegates was so strong to be present at the convention that not even
+the lack of money was sufficient to deter them from setting out on the
+expedition. Two of them, David T. Kimball and Daniel E. Jewett, from
+Andover, Mass., did actually supplement the deficiencies of their
+pocket-books by walking to New Haven, the aforesaid pocket-books being
+equal to the rest of the journey from that point.
+
+About sixty delegates found their way to Philadelphia and organized on
+the morning of December 4th, in Adelphi Hall, the now famous convention.
+It was a notable gathering of apostolic spirits--"mainly composed of
+comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that
+period." They had come together from ten of the twelve free States,
+which fact goes to show the rapid, the almost epidemic-like spread of
+Garrisonian Abolitionism through the North. The _Liberator_ was then
+scarcely three years old, and its editor had not until the second day of
+the convention attained the great age of twenty-eight! The convention of
+1787 did not comprise more genuine patriotism and wisdom than did this
+memorable assembly of American Abolitionists. It was from beginning to
+end an example of love to God and love to men, of fearless scorn of
+injustice and fearless devotion to liberty. Not one of those three score
+souls who made up the convention, who did not take his life in his hand
+by reason of the act. It was not the love of fame surely which brought
+them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so many of them endure
+real physical privation, which drew all by a common, an irresistible
+impulse to congregate for an unpopular purpose within reach of the teeth
+and the claws of an enraged public opinion.
+
+The convention, as one man might have said with the single-minded Lundy,
+"My heart was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail
+of the captive; I felt his pang of distress; and the iron entered my
+soul." The iron of slavery had indeed entered the soul of every member
+of the convention. It was the divine pang and pity of it which collected
+from the East and from the West this remarkable body of reformers.
+
+The story of how they had to find a president illustrates the
+contemporary distrust and antagonism, which the anti-slavery movement
+aroused among the men of standing and influence. Knowing in what bad
+odor they were held by the community, and anxious only to serve their
+cause in the most effective manner, the members of the convention hit
+upon the plan of asking some individual eminent for his respectability
+to preside over their deliberations, and thereby disarm the public
+suspicions and quiet the general apprehensions felt in respect of the
+incendiary character of their intention. So in pursuance of this plan
+six of their number were dispatched on the evening of December 3d to
+seek such a man. But the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes
+proved a failure. After two attempts and two repulses the committee were
+not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have
+listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation
+by Beriah Green, who was one of the six. "If there is not timber amongst
+ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get
+along without one, or go home and stay there until we have grown up to
+be men." The next day Green was chosen, and established in a manner
+never to be forgotten by his associates that the convention did possess
+"timber big enough to make a president of."
+
+Narrow as were the circumstances of many of the members, the convention
+was by no means destitute of men of wealth and business prominence. Such
+were the Winslows, Isaac and Nathan, of Maine, Arnold Buffum, of
+Massachusetts, and John Rankin and Lewis Tappan, of New York.
+Scholarship, talents, and eloquence abounded among the delegates. Here
+there was no lack, no poverty, but extraordinary sufficiency, almost to
+redundancy. The presence of the gentler sex was not wanting to lend
+grace and picturesqueness to the occasion. The beautiful and benignant
+countenance of Lucretia Mott shed over the proceedings the soft radiance
+of a pure and regnant womanhood; while the handful of colored delegates
+with the elegant figure of Robert Purvis at their head, added pathos and
+picturesqueness to the _personnel_ of the convention. Neither was the
+element of danger wanting to complete the historic scene. Its presence
+was grimly manifest in the official intimation that evening meetings of
+the convention could not be protected, by the demonstrations of popular
+ill-will which the delegates encountered on the streets, by the
+detachment of constabulary guarding the entrance to Adelphi Hall, and by
+the thrillingly significant precaution observed by the delegates of
+sitting with locked doors. Over the assembly it impended cruel and
+menacing like fate. Once securely locked within the hall, the
+Abolitionists discreetly abstained from leaving it at noon for dinner,
+well knowing how small a spark it takes to kindle a great fire. It was
+foolhardy to show themselves unnecessarily to the excited crowds in the
+streets, and so mindful that true courage consisteth not in
+recklessness, they despatched one of their number for crackers and
+cheese, which they washed down with copious draughts of cold water. But
+they had that to eat and drink besides, whereof the spirits of mischief
+without could not conceive.
+
+The grand achievement of the convention was, of course, the formation of
+the American Anti-Slavery Society, but the crown of the whole was
+unquestionably the Declaration of Sentiments. The composition of this
+instrument has an interesting history. It seems that the delegates
+considered that the remarkable character of the movement which they were
+launching upon the wide sea of national attention demanded of them an
+expression altogether worthy of so momentous an undertaking. The
+adoption of a constitution for this purpose was felt to be inadequate. A
+constitution was indispensable, but some other expression was necessary
+to give to their work its proper proportion and importance. Such a
+manifestation it was deemed meet to make in the form of a declaration of
+sentiments. A committee was accordingly appointed to draft the
+declaration. This committee named three of its number, consisting of
+Garrison, Whittier, and Samuel J. May to draw up the document. The
+sub-committee in turn deputed Garrison to do the business.
+
+Mr. May has told in his _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_,
+how he and Whittier left their friend at ten o'clock in the evening,
+agreeing to call at eight the following morning and how on their return
+at the appointed hour they found Garrison with shutters closed and lamps
+burning, penning the last paragraph of the admirable document. He has
+told how they three read it over together two or three times, making
+some slight alterations in it, and how at nine o'clock the draft was
+laid by them before the whole committee. The author of the recollections
+has left a graphic account of its effect upon the convention. "Never in
+my life," he says, "have I seen a deeper impression made by words than
+was made by that admirable document upon all who were present. After the
+voice of the reader had ceased there was silence for several minutes.
+Our hearts were in perfect unison. There was but one thought with us
+all. Either of the members could have told what the whole convention
+felt. We felt that the word had just been uttered which would be mighty,
+through God, to the pulling down of the strongholds of slavery." Such
+was the scene at the first reading of the Declaration of Sentiments, Dr.
+Atlee, the reader. The effect at its final reading was, if possible,
+even more dramatic and eloquent. Whittier has depicted this closing and
+thrilling scene. He has described how Samuel J. May read the declaration
+for the last time. "His sweet, persuasive voice faltered with the
+intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of the
+concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston of
+Maine, rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries and affixed
+his name to the document. One after another passed up to the platform,
+signed, and retired in silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the
+occasion--the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon
+every countenance."
+
+The effects, so electrical and impressive, which followed the reading of
+the declaration were not disproportioned to its merits, for it was an
+instrument of singular power, wisdom, and eloquence. Indeed, to this
+day, more than half a century after it was written it still has virtue
+to quicken the breath and stir the pulses of a sympathetic reader out of
+their normal time. A great passion for freedom and righteousness
+irradiates like a central light the whole memorable document. It begins
+by a happy reference to an earlier convention, held some fifty-seven
+years before in the same place, and which adopted a declaration holding
+"that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
+with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and
+the pursuit of happiness;" and how at the trumpet-call of its authors
+three millions of people rushed to arms "deeming it more glorious to die
+instantly as free men, than desirable to live one hour as slaves"; and
+how, though few in number and poor in resources those same people were
+rendered invincible by the conviction that truth, justice, and right
+were on their side. But the freedom won by the men of 1776 was
+incomplete without the freedom for which the men of 1833 were striving.
+The authors of the new declaration would not be inferior to the authors
+of the old "in purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of
+purpose, intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity
+of spirit." Unlike the older actors, the younger had eschewed the sword,
+the spilling of human blood in defence of their principles. Theirs was a
+moral warfare, the grappling of truth with error, of the power of love
+with the inhumanities of the nation. Then it glances at the wrongs which
+the fathers suffered, and at the enormities which the slaves were
+enduring. The "fathers were never slaves, never bought and sold like
+cattle, never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion, never
+subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters," but all these woes and
+more, an unimaginable mountain of agony and misery, was the appalling
+lot of the slaves in the Southern States. The guilt of this nation,
+which partners such a crime against human nature, "is unequaled by any
+other on earth," and therefore it is bound to instant repentance, and to
+the immediate restitution of justice to the oppressed.
+
+The Declaration of Sentiments denies the right of man to hold property
+in a brother man, affirms the identity in principle between the African
+slave trade and American slavery, the imprescriptibility of the rights
+of the slaves to liberty, the nullity of all laws which run counter to
+human rights, and the grand doctrine of civil and political equality in
+the Republic, regardless of race and complexional differences. It boldly
+rejects the principle of compensated emancipation, because it involves a
+surrender of the position that man cannot hold property in man; because
+slavery is a crime, and the master is not wronged by emancipation but
+the slaves righted, restored to themselves; because immediate and
+general emancipation would only destroy nominal, not real, property, the
+labor of the slaves would still remain to the masters and doubled by the
+new motives which freedom infuses into the breasts of her children; and,
+finally because, if compensation is to be given at all it ought to be
+given to those who have been plundered of their rights. It spurns in one
+compact paragraph the pretensions of the colonization humbug as
+"delusive, cruel, and dangerous."
+
+But lofty and uncompromising as were the moral principles and positions
+of the declaration, it nevertheless recognized with perspicuity of
+vision the Constitutional limitations of the Federal Government in
+relation to slavery. It frankly conceded that Congress had no right to
+meddle with the evil in any of the States. But wherever the national
+jurisdiction reached the general government was bound to interfere and
+suppress the traffic in human flesh. It was the duty of Congress,
+inasmuch as it possessed the power, to abolish slavery in the District
+of Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast and between the
+States. The free States are the _particeps criminis_ of the slave
+States. They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical
+force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the
+South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the
+Constitution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves. This
+relationship is criminal, "is full of danger, IT MUST BE BROKEN UP."
+
+So much for the views and principles of the declaration, now for the
+designs and measures as enumerated therein: "We shall organize
+anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city, town and village in
+our land.
+
+"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of
+warning, of entreaty, and of rebuke.
+
+"We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively, anti-slavery tracts
+and periodicals.
+
+"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
+and the dumb.
+
+"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation
+in the guilt of slavery.
+
+"We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by
+giving a preference to their productions; and
+
+"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
+speedy repentance."
+
+The instrument closes by pledging the utmost of its signers to the
+overthrow of slavery--"come what may to our persons, our interests, or
+our reputations--whether we live to witness the triumph of Liberty,
+Justice, and Humanity, or perish untimely as martyrs in this great,
+benevolent, and holy cause." Twin pledge it was to that ancestral,
+historic one made in 1776: "And for the support of this declaration,
+with a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually
+pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
+
+Whittier has predicted for the Declaration of Sentiments an enduring
+fame: "It will live," he declares, "as long as our national history."
+Samuel J. May was equally confident that this "Declaration of the Rights
+of Man," as he proudly cherished it, would "live a perpetual, impressive
+protest against every form of oppression, until it shall have given
+place to that brotherly kindness which all the children of the common
+Father owe to one another." As a particular act and parchment-roll of
+high thoughts and resolves, highly expressed, it will not, I think,
+attain to the immortality predicted for it. For as such it has in less
+than two generations passed almost entirely out of the knowledge and
+recollection of Americans. But in another sense it is destined to
+realize all that has been foreshadowed for it by its friends. Like
+elemental fire its influence will glow and flame at the center of our
+national life long after as a separate and sovereign entity it shall
+have been forgotten by the descendants of its illustrious author and
+signers.
+
+The convention was in session three days, and its proceedings were
+filled with good resolutions and effective work. Arthur Tappan was
+elected President of the national organization, and William Green, Jr.,
+Treasurer. Elizur Wright, Jr., was chosen Secretary of Domestic
+Correspondence, William Lloyd Garrison Secretary of Foreign
+Correspondence, and Abraham L. Cox Recording Secretary. Besides these
+officers there were a Board of Management and a number of
+Vice-Presidents selected. For three days the hearts of the delegates
+burned within them toward white-browed Duty and the master, Justice, who
+stood in their midst and talked with divine accents to their spirits of
+how men were enslaved and cruelly oppressed by men, their own brothers,
+and how the cry of these bondmen came up to them for help. And with one
+accord there fell upon the delegates a pang and pity, an uplifting,
+impelling sense of 'woe unto us' if we withhold from our brethren in
+bonds the help required of us. This rising tide of emotion and
+enthusiasm gathering mass at each sitting of the convention, culminated
+during the several readings of the Declaration of Sentiments. And when
+on the third day Beriah Green brought the congress to a close in a
+valedictory address of apostolic power and grandeur, and with a prayer
+so sweet, so fervent, and strong as to melt all hearts, the pent-up
+waters of the reform was ready to hurl themselves into an agitation the
+like of which had never before, nor has since, been seen or felt in the
+Union. Thenceforth freedom's little ones were not without great allies,
+who were "exultations, agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind."
+
+Everywhere the flood of Abolitionism burst upon the land, everywhere the
+moral deluge spread through the free States. Anti-slavery societies rose
+as it were, out of the ground, so rapid, so astonishing were their
+growth during the year following the formation of the national society.
+In nearly every free State they had appeared doubling and quadrupling in
+number, until new societies reached in that first year to upwards of
+forty. Anti-slavery agents and lecturers kept pace with the anti-slavery
+societies. They began to preach, to remonstrate, to warn, entreat, and
+rebuke until their voices sounded like the roar of many waters in the
+ears of the people. Wherever there was a school-house, a hall, or a
+church, there they were, ubiquitous, irrepressible, a cry in the
+wilderness of a nation's iniquity. Anti-slavery tracts and periodicals
+multiplied and started from New York and Boston in swarms, and clouds,
+the thunder of their wings were as the thunder of falling avalanches to
+the guilty conscience of the country. There was no State, city, town, or
+village in the Republic where their voice was not heard.
+
+The Rev. Amos A Phelp's "Lectures on Slavery and Its Remedy;" "the Rev.
+J.D. Paxton's 'Letters on Slavery'; the Rev. S.J. May's letters to
+Andrew T. Judson, 'The Rights of Colored People to Education
+Vindicated'; Prof. Elizur Wright, Jr.'s, 'Sin of Slavery and Its
+Remedy'; Whittier's 'Justice and Expediency'; and, above all, Mrs. Lydia
+Maria Child's startling 'Appeal in favor of that class of Americans
+called Africans' were the more potent of the new crop of writings
+betokening the vigor of Mr. Garrison's Propagandism," says that
+storehouse of anti-slavery facts the "Life of Garrison" by his children.
+Swift poured the flood, widespread the inundation of anti-slavery
+publications. Money, although not commensurate with the vast wants of
+the crusade, came in copious and generous streams. A marvelous
+munificence characterized the charity of wealthy Abolitionists. The poor
+gave freely of their mite, and the rich as freely of their thousands.
+Something of the state of simplicity and community of goods which marked
+the early disciples of Christianity seemed to have revived in the hearts
+of this band of American reformers. A spirit of renunciation, of
+self-sacrifice, of brotherly kindness, of passionate love of
+righteousness, of passionate hatred of wrong, of self-consecration to
+truth and of martyrdom lifted the reform to as high a moral level as had
+risen any movement for the betterment of mankind in any age of the
+world.
+
+The resolutions of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiment, to
+enlist the pulpit in the cause of the suffering and dumb, and to attempt
+the purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of
+slavery, encountered determined opposition from the pulpits and the
+churches themselves. The Abolitionists were grieved and indignant at the
+pro-slavery spirit which pulpits and churches displayed. But what
+happened was as we now look back at those proceedings, an inevitable
+occurrence, a foregone conclusion. The pulpits were only representative
+of the religion of the pews, and the pews were occupied by the same sort
+of humanity that toil and spin and haggle over dollars and cents six out
+of every seven days. They have their selfish and invested interests,
+fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices, which an episode
+like Sunday, churches, and sermons do not seriously affect. Indeed,
+Sunday, churches, and sermons constitute an institution of modern
+civilization highly conservative of invested interests, fixed social
+notions, relationships, and prejudices. Who advances a new idea, a
+reformatory movement, disturbs the _status quo_, stirs up the human bees
+in that great hive called society, and that lesser one called the
+church, and he must needs expect to have the swarm about his head.
+
+This was precisely what happened in the case of the anti-slavery
+movement. It threatened the then _status quo_ of property rights, it
+attacked the fixed social notions, relationships, and prejudices of the
+South and of the North alike. The revolution which this new idea
+involved in the slave States, was of the most radical character, going
+down to a complete reconstruction of their entire social system. At once
+the human hornets were aroused, and in these circumstances, the innocent
+and the guilty were furiously beset. Because the new idea which
+disturbed the South had originated in the North, the wrath of the South
+rose hot against not the authors of the new idea alone but against the
+people of that section as well. But this sectional unpleasantness
+endangered the stability of the Union, and menaced with obstructions and
+diversions the golden stream of Northern traffic, dollars, and
+dividends. This was intolerable, and forthwith the Apiarian brotherhood
+of the free States put together their heads with those of the slave
+States to attack, sting, and utterly abolish the new idea, and the new
+idea's supporters. The Northern churches were, of course, in the
+Northern brotherhood. And when the new fanaticism threatened the
+financial stability of the pews, the pulpits instead of exerting
+themselves in behalf of the suffering and dumb slaves, exerted
+themselves to preserve the prosperity of the pews by frowning down the
+friends of the slaves. They were among the first to stone the new idea
+and its fiery prophets. "Away with them!" shouted in chorus pulpit and
+pews. Sad? yes, but alas! natural, too. These men were not better nor
+worse than the average man. They were the average men of their
+generation, selfish, narrow, material, encrusted in their prejudices
+like snails in their shells, struggling upward at a snail's pace to the
+larger life, with its added sweetness and humanities, but experiencing
+many a discomfiture by the way from those foul and triple fiends, the
+World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
+
+Nowhere in the churches was their opposition to the Abolition movement
+more persistent and illiberal than in the theological seminaries, whence
+the pulpits drew their supplies of preachers. Like master, like servant,
+these institutions were indentured to the public, and reflected as in a
+mirror the body and pressure of its life and sentiment. That a stream
+cannot rise higher than its source, although a theological stream, found
+remarkable demonstration in the case of Lane Seminary. Here after the
+publication of the "Thoughts on Colonization," and the formation of the
+National Society, an earnest spirit of inquiry broke out among the
+students on the subject of slavery. It was at first encouraged by the
+President, Lyman Beecher, who offered to go in and discuss the question
+with his "boys." That eminent man did not long remain in this mind. The
+discussions which he so lightly allowed swept through the institution
+with the force of a great moral awakening. They were continued during
+nine evenings and turned the seminary at their close, so far as the
+students went, into an anti-slavery society. This is not the place to go
+at length into the history of that anti-slavery debate, which, in its
+consequences, proved one of the events of the anti-slavery conflict. Its
+leader was Theodore D. Weld, who was until Wendell Phillips appeared
+upon the scene, the great orator of the agitation.
+
+Dr. Beecher had no notion of raising such a ghost when he said, "Go
+ahead, boys, I'll go in and discuss with you." It was such an apparition
+of independence and righteousness as neither the power of the trustees
+nor the authority of the faculty was ever able to dismiss. The virtue of
+a gag rule was tried to suppress Abolition among the students, but
+instead of suppressing Abolition, it well-nigh suppressed the seminary;
+for, rather than wear a gag on the obnoxious subject, the students--to
+between seventy and eighty, comprising nearly the whole muster-roll of
+the school--withdrew from an institution where the exercise of the right
+of free inquiry and free speech on a great moral question was denied and
+repressed. The same spirit of repression arose later in the Theological
+School at Andover, Mass. There the gag was effectively applied by the
+faculty, and all inquiry and discussion relating to slavery disappeared
+among the students. But the attempt to impose silence upon the students
+of Phillips's Academy near-by was followed by the secession of forty or
+fifty of the students.
+
+Ah! the Abolitionists had undertaken to achieve the impossible, when
+they undertook to enlist the pulpit in the cause of the slaves, and to
+purify the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery. For
+the average man, whether within or without the church, is not controlled
+in his conduct toward his brother man by the principles and precepts of
+Jesus, but by the laws of social and individual selfishness. These
+selfish forces may at epochal moments align themselves with justice and
+liberty, and they not infrequently do, otherwise human progress must be
+at an end. In advancing themselves, they perforce advance justice and
+liberty. Thus do men love their neighbors as themselves, and move
+forward to fraternity and equality in kingdoms and commonwealths. The
+special province of moral reformers, like Garrison and the
+Abolitionists, seems to be to set these egoistic and altruistic elements
+of human society at war, the one against the other, thereby compelling
+its members and classes, willy nilly, to choose between the
+belligerents. Some will enlist on one side, some on the other, but in
+the furnace heat of the passions which ensues, an ancient evil, or a bad
+custom or institution, gets the vitality burned out of it, which in due
+time falls as slag out of the new order that arises at the close of the
+conflict.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+
+BETWEEN THE ACTS.
+
+
+Mr. Garrison, in a private letter to a friend under date of September
+12, 1834, summarises the doings of the preceding twelve months of his
+life, and makes mention of a fact which lends peculiar interest to that
+time: "It has been the most eventful year," he remarks, "in my history.
+I have been the occasion of many uproars, and a continual disturber of
+the public peace. As soon as I landed I turned the city of New York
+upside down. Five thousand people turned out to see me tarred and
+feathered, but were disappointed. There was also a small hubbub in
+Boston on my arrival. The excitement passed away, but invective and
+calumny still followed me. By dint of some industry and much persuasion,
+I succeeded in inducing the Abolitionists in New York to join our little
+band in Boston, in calling a national convention at Philadelphia. We
+met, and such a body of men, for zeal, firmness, integrity, benevolence,
+and moral greatness, the world has rarely seen in a single assembly.
+Inscribed upon a declaration which it was my exalted privilege to write,
+their names can perish only with the knowledge of the history of our
+times. A National Anti-Slavery Society was formed, which astonished the
+country by its novelty, and awed it by its boldness. In five months its
+first annual meeting was held in the identical city in which, only seven
+antecedent months, Abolitionists were in peril of their lives. In
+ability, interest, and solemnity it took precedence of all the great
+religious celebrations which took place at the same time. During the
+same month, a New England anti-slavery convention was held in Boston,
+and so judicious were its measures, so eloquent its appeals, so
+unequivocal its resolutions, that it at once gave shape and character to
+the anti-slavery cause in this section of the Union. In the midst of all
+these mighty movements, I have wooed "a fair ladye," and won her, have
+thrown aside celibacy, and jumped body and soul into matrimony, have
+sunk the character of bachelor in that of husband, have settled down
+into domestic quietude, and repudiated all my roving desires, and have
+found that which I have long been yearning to find, a home, a wife, and
+a beautiful retreat from a turbulent city."
+
+Garrison does not exaggerate the importance of the initiatives and
+achievements of the year, or the part played by him in its history. His
+activity was indeed phenomenal, and the service rendered by him to the
+reform, was unrivaled. He was in incessant motion, originating,
+directing, inspiring the agitation in all portions of the North. What
+strikes one strongly in studying the pioneer is his sleeplessness, his
+indefatigableness, his persistency in pursuit of his object. Others may
+rest after a labor, may have done one, two, or three distinct tasks, but
+between Garrison's acts there is no hiatus, each follows each, and is
+joined to all like links in a chain. He never closed his eyes, nor
+folded his arms, but went forward from work to work with the
+consecutiveness of a law of nature.
+
+But amid labors so strenuous and uninterrupted the leader found
+opportunity to woo and win "a fair ladye." She was a daughter of a
+veteran Abolitionist, George Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn., who with his
+sons George W. and Henry E. Benson, were among the stanchest of the
+reformer's followers and supporters. The young wife, before her
+marriage, was not less devoted to the cause than they. She was in
+closest sympathy with her husband's anti-slavery interests and purposes.
+Never had husband found wife better fitted to his needs, and the needs
+of his life work. So that it might be truly said that Garrison even when
+he went a-wooing forgot not his cause and that when he took a wife, he
+made at the same time a grand contribution to its ultimate triumph.
+
+How did Helen Eliza Garrison serve the great cause? One who knew shall
+tell. He has told it in his own unequaled way. "That home," he says,
+"was a great help. Her husband's word and pen scattered his purpose far
+and wide; but the comrades that his ideas brought to his side her
+welcome melted into friends. No matter how various and discordant they
+were in many things--no matter how much there was to bear and
+overlook--her patience and her thanks for their sympathy in the great
+idea were always sufficient for the work also.... In that group of
+remarkable men and women which the anti-slavery movement drew together,
+she had her own niche--which no one else could have filled so perfectly
+or unconsciously as she did.... She forgot, omitted nothing. How much we
+all owe her!" These were words spoken by a friend, whose name will
+appear later on in this story; words spoken by him at the close of her
+beautiful life, as she lay dead in her coffin.
+
+And here is another account of her written by the husband on the first
+anniversary of their marriage: "I did not marry her," he confides to her
+brother George, "expecting that she would assume a prominent station in
+the anti-slavery cause, but for domestic quietude and happiness. So
+completely absorbed am I in that cause, that it was undoubtedly wise in
+me to select as a partner one who, while her benevolent feelings were in
+union with mine, was less immediately and entirely connected with it. I
+knew she was naturally diffident, and distrustful of her own ability to
+do all that her heart might prompt. She is one of those who prefer to
+toil unseen--to give by stealth--and to sacrifice in seclusion. By her
+unwearied attention to my wants, her sympathetic regards, her perfect
+equanimity of mind, and her sweet and endearing manners; she is no
+trifling support to Abolitionism, inasmuch as she lightens my labors,
+and enables me to find exquisite delight in the family circle, as an
+offset to public adversity."
+
+And here is a lovely bit of self-revelation made to her betrothed
+several months before they were wedded. "I am aware of the
+responsibility that will devolve upon me," she writes, "and how much my
+example will be copied among that class you have so long labored to
+elevate and enlighten. I have been considering how the colored people
+think of dress, and how much of their profits are expended for useless
+ornaments that foolishly tend to make a show and parade. As much stress
+will, of course, be laid on Garrison's _wife_ by that class, it behooves
+me to be very circumspect in all things, when called upon to fill so
+important a station."
+
+The marriage occurred September 4, 1834, and the next day the pair set
+up housekeeping in "Freedom's Cottage," on Bower street, Roxbury. The
+young housekeepers were rich in every good thing except money; and of
+that commodity there was precious little that found its way into the
+family till. And money was indispensable even to a philanthropist, who
+cared as little for it as did Garrison. He had never in his twenty-eight
+years experienced the sensation which a bank account, however small,
+gives its possessor. He had been toiling during the last three years in
+a state of chronic self-forgetfulness, and of consequence in a state of
+chronic inpecuniosity. He had never been careful of what he got--was
+careful only of what he gave. For himself he was ready to subsist on
+bread and water and to labor more than fourteen hours at the case to
+make the issue of the _Liberator_ possible. But surely he could not put
+"a fair ladye" on such limited commons even for the sake of his cause.
+The laborer is worthy of his hire, and an unworldly minded reformer
+ought to be supplied with the wherewithal needful to feed, clothe, and
+house himself and those dependent upon him. Some such thought shaped
+itself in Garrison's mind as his circumstances grew more and more
+straitened, and his future as the head of a family looked more and more
+ominous. Anxiety for the morrow pressed heavily upon him as his
+responsibilities as a breadwinner hugged closer and closer his everyday
+life. Poverty ceased to be the ordinary enemy of former years, whom he
+from the lookouts of the unconquerable mind used to laugh to scorn; it
+had become instead a cruel foe who worried as by fire the peace of his
+soul.
+
+There was the _Liberator_? The _Liberator_ as a moral engine was a
+marvelous success; but the _Liberator_ as a money-maker was a most
+dismal failure. If its owners had possessed only common aptitude for
+business the failure need not have been so complete, indeed the
+enterprise might have been crowned with a moderate degree of success.
+But never were two men more entirely lacking in the methods, which
+should enter into ventures of that character, than were Garrison and
+Knapp. Garrison was unfortunate in this respect but it seems that Knapp
+was more so. Neither took to book-keeping, and neither overcame his
+serious deficiency in this regard. The consequence was that the books
+kept themselves, and confusion grew upon confusion until the partners
+were quite confounded. Garrison naively confesses this fault of the firm
+to his brother-in-law thus: "Brother Knapp, you know, resembles me very
+closely in his habits of procrastination. Indeed I think he is rather
+worse than I am in this respect!"
+
+The paper was issued originally without a single subscriber. At the end
+of the first volume the subscription list numbered five hundred names.
+In the course of the next two volumes this number was more than doubled,
+almost tripled, in fact. The subscription price was two dollars. The
+property would have begun from this point to make returns to its owners
+had they possessed the business training and instinct requisite to its
+successful management. But they were reformers, not money-getters, and
+instead of enjoying the profits they proceeded to use them up
+incontinently in their first enlargement of the paper. But while they
+had added to the cost of publication, they took no thought to augment
+the cost of subscription. The publishers gave more and the subscribers
+received more for the sum of two dollars. The pecuniary embarrassments
+of the _Liberator_ increased, and so the partners' "bondage to penury"
+increased also. This growing pressure was finally relieved by "several
+generous donations," made for the support of the paper. At the beginning
+of the fourth volume, the publishers wisely or other-wisely, again
+enlarged their darling, and again neglected to raise the subscription
+rates at the same time.
+
+Misfortunes never come without company, but alight in flocks, and a
+whole flock of misfortunes it was to the _Liberator_ when Joshua Coffin,
+"that huge personification of good humor," was appointed canvassing
+agent for the paper. He was as wanting in business methods as his
+employers were. Confusion now gathered upon confusion around the devoted
+heads of the partners, was accelerated and became daily more and more
+portentous and inextricable. The delinquencies of subscribers grew more
+and more grave. On the three first volumes they were two thousand
+dollars in arrears to the paper. This was a large, a disastrous loss,
+but traceable, to no inconsiderable extent, doubtless, to the loose
+business methods of the reformer and his partner. The _Liberator_ at the
+beginning of its fourth year was struggling in a deep hole of financial
+helplessness and chaos. Would it ever get out alive, or "SHALL THE
+_LIBERATOR_ DIE?" burst in a cry of anguish, almost despair, from its
+editor, so weak in thought of self, so supreme in thought of others.
+
+This carelessness of what appertained to the things which concerned
+self, and devotion to the things which concerned his cause, finds apt
+and pathetic illustration in this letter to Samuel J. May in the summer
+of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and burdens were never harder
+to carry:
+
+"In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my partner joins with me in
+consenting to print an edition of Miss Crandall's [defence] as large as
+the one proposed by you, at our own risk. As to the profits that may
+arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do not expect to make any; on
+the contrary, we shall probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the
+difficulty of disposing of any publication, however interesting or
+valuable in itself. But a trial so important as Miss C.'s, involving
+such momentous consequences to a large portion of our countrymen,
+implicating so deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to
+go unpublished, and _shall_ not while we have the necessary materials
+for printing it."
+
+It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation of the
+_Liberator_, in the spring of 1834, was twenty-three hundred copies, and
+that this number was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred; in New
+York, three hundred: in Boston, two hundred; in other parts of the free
+States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half
+was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half
+were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies
+for gratuitous distribution. The colored subscribers to the paper were
+to the whites as three to one.
+
+There were several suggestions by sundry friends looking to the release
+of the _Liberator_ from its embarrassments, and, to the relief of its
+unselfish publishers, from the grinding poverty which its issue imposed
+upon them. The most hopeful and feasible of them was the scheme of which
+Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834: "I am happy to say," he
+pours into her ears, "that it is probable the managers of the New
+England Anti-Slavery Society will determine, to-morrow afternoon, to
+take all the pecuniary liabilities of the _Liberator_ hereafter, and
+give me a regular salary for editing it, and friend Knapp a fair price
+for printing it. My salary will not be less than $800 per annum, and
+perhaps it will be fixed at a $1,000.... The new arrangement will go
+into effect on the 1st of July." But alas; the managers took no such
+action on the morrow, nor went the "new arrangement" into effect at the
+time anticipated. The editor was married in September, and two months
+later the eagerly expected relief was still delayed. This hope deferred
+must have caused the young husband meanwhile no little anxiety and heart
+sickness.
+
+Love in a cottage is very pretty and romantic in novels, but love in a
+cottage actually thriving on "bread and water," was a sweet reality in
+the home of the young couple in Roxbury. "All the world loves a lover,"
+says Emerson, but alas! there are exceptions to all rules, and all the
+world loved not Garrison in his newly found felicity as shall presently
+appear.
+
+The pledge made by the reformer in the initial number of the _Liberator_
+to be "as harsh as truth," had been kept to the letter. To some minds
+there is nothing more difficult to understand and tolerate than is the
+use of harsh language toward individual wrongdoers. They appear to be
+much more solicitous to turn away the wrath of the wicked than to do
+away with their wickedness. Multitudes of such minds were offended at
+the tremendous severities of Garrison's speech. They were for peace at
+any cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These pro-slavery
+critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or
+lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause. But the feelings and
+the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that
+terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation of such people
+exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity
+in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and
+habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked no indignation,
+provoked instead unbounded charity for the willing victims of ancestral
+transgressions. Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of
+circumstances, these people expended all their sympathy while upon the
+Southern slave, who were to their view _the circumstances_, they looked
+with increasing disapprobation. Garrison's harsh language greatly
+shocked this class--excited their unbounded indignation against the
+reformer.
+
+Besides this class there was another, composed of friends, whom
+Garrison's denunciatory style offended. To Charles Pollen and Charles
+Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the
+great agitator was a sore trial. To them and to others, too, his
+language seemed grossly intemperate and vituperative, and was deemed
+productive of harm to the movement. But Garrison defended his harsh
+language by pointing to the state of the country on the subject of
+slavery before he began to use it, and to the state of the country
+afterward. How utterly and morally dead the nation was before, how
+keenly and marvelously alive it became afterward. The blast which he had
+blown had jarred upon the senses of his slumbering countrymen he
+admitted, but he should not be blamed for that. What to his critics
+sounded harsh and abusive, was to him the trump of God. For, at the
+thunder-peal which the Almighty blew from the mouth of his servant, how,
+as by a miracle, the dead soul of the nation awoke to righteousness. He
+does not arrogate to himself infallibility, indeed he is sure that his
+language is not always happily chosen. Such errors, however, appear to
+him trivial, in view of indisputable and extraordinary results produced
+by the _Liberator_. He believes in marrying masculine truths to
+masculine words. He protests against his condemnation by comparison.
+"Every writer's style is his own--it may be smooth or rough, plain or
+obscure, simple or grand, feeble or strong," he contends, "but
+_principles_ are immutable." By his principles, therefore he would, be
+judged. "Whittier, for instance," he continues, "is highly poetical,
+exuberant, and beautiful. Stuart is solemn, pungent, and severe. Wright
+is a thorough logician, dextrous, transparent, straightforward. Beriah
+Green is manly, eloquent, vigorous, devotional. May is persuasive,
+zealous, overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Cox is diffusive,
+sanguine, magnificent, grand. Bourne thunders and lightens. Phelps is
+one great, clear, infallible argument--demonstration itself. Jocelyn is
+full of heavenly-mindedness, and feels and speaks and acts with a zeal
+according to knowledge. Follen is chaste, profound, and elaborately
+polished. Goodell is perceptive, analytical, expert, and solid. Child
+(David L.) is generously indignant, courageous, and demonstrative; his
+lady combines strength with beauty, argumentation with persuasiveness,
+greatness with humility. Birney is collected, courteous,
+dispassionate--his fearlessness excites admiration, his
+conscientiousness commands respect." Of these writers, which is
+acceptable to slaveholders or their apologists? Some have been cruelly
+treated and all been calumniated as "fanatics, disorganizers, and
+madmen." And why? "Certainly not for the _phraseology_ which they use,
+but for the _principles_ which they adopt."
+
+From another quarter came presently notes of discord, aroused by
+Garrison's _hard language_. Sundry of the Unitarian clergy, under the
+lead of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., took it into their heads that the editor
+of the _Liberator_ and some others were outrageously abusing the
+Abolition cause, "mismanaging it by their unreasonable violence" of
+language. Wherefore those gentlemen interposed to rescue the great cause
+from harm by a brilliant scheme designed to secure moderation in this
+regard. This brilliant scheme was nothing less absurd than the
+establishment of a censorship over the _Liberator_. But as these
+solicitous souls had reckoned without their host, their amiable plan
+came to naught; but not, however, before adding a new element to the
+universal discord then fast swelling to a roar. To the storm of censure
+gathering about his head the reformer bowed not--neither swerved he to
+the right hand nor to the left--all the while deeming it, "with the
+apostle, a small thing to be judged by man's judgment." "I solicit no
+man's praise," he sternly replies to his critics, "I fear no men's
+censure."
+
+There was still another cause of offence given by Garrison to his
+countrymen. It was not his _hard language_, but a circumstance less
+tolerable, if that was possible, than even that rock of offence. It
+seems that when the editor of the _Liberator_ was in England, and dining
+with Thomas Powell Buxton, he was asked by the latter in what way the
+English Abolitionists could best assist the anti-slavery movement in
+America, and he had replied, "_By giving us George Thompson_." This
+unexpected answer of the American appeared without doubt to the
+Englishman at the time somewhat extraordinary. He had his misgivings as
+to the wisdom, to say nothing of the propriety, of an international act
+of such importance and delicacy as the sending of George Thompson to
+America. He questioned whether the national self-love of the American
+people would not resent the arrival of an Englishman on such a mission
+among them and refuse him a fair hearing in consequence. But Garrison
+was confident that while Thompson's advent would stir up the pro-slavery
+bile of the North and all that, he would not be put to much if any
+greater disadvantage as a foreigner in speaking in New England on the
+subject of slavery, than were those Abolitionists who were to the manner
+born. As to his friend's personal safety in the East, Garrison was
+extremely optimistic, had not apparently the slightest apprehensions for
+him in this regard.
+
+Well, after due deliberation, George Thompson consented to undertake the
+mission to America, and the English reformers to send him, though not
+all of them. For some there were like James Cropper, who were indisposed
+to promoting such a mission, or "paying agents to travel in the United
+States." It was natural enough for Mr. Garrison to prefer such a request
+after hearing George Thompson speak. For he was one of those electric
+speakers, who do with popular audiences what they will. In figure and
+voice and action, he was a born orator. His eloquence was graphic,
+picturesque, thrilling, and over English audiences it was irresistible.
+Garrison fancied that such eloquence would prove equally attractive to
+and irresistible over American audiences as well. But in this he was
+somewhat mistaken, for Thompson had to deal with an element in American
+audiences of which he had had no experience in England. What that
+element was he had occasion to surmise directly he arrived upon these
+shores. He reached New York just sixteen days after the marriage of his
+friend, the editor of the _Liberator_ to be immediately threatened with
+mob violence by the metropolitan press in case he ventured to "lecture
+in favor of immediate Abolition," and to be warned that: "If our people
+will not suffer our own citizens to tamper with the question of slavery,
+it is not to be supposed that they will tolerate the officious
+intermeddling of a foreign fanatic." Then as if by way of giving him a
+taste of the beak and talons of the American _amour propre_, he and his
+family were put out of the Atlantic Hotel in deference to the wish of an
+irate Southerner. Thus introduced the English orator advanced speedily
+thereafter into closer acquaintance with the American public. He
+lectured in many parts of New England where that new element of rowdyism
+and virulence of which his English audiences had given him no previous
+experience, manifested its presence first in one way and then in others,
+putting him again and again in jeopardy of life and limb. At Augusta,
+Maine, his windows were broken, and he was warned out of the town. At
+Concord, New Hampshire, his speech was punctuated with missiles. At
+Lowell, Massachusetts, he narrowly escaped being struck on the head and
+killed by a brickbat. Indeed it was grimly apparent that the master of
+Freedom's Cottage would be obliged to revise his views as to the hazard,
+which his friend ran in speaking upon the subject of slavery in New
+England. To do so was weekly becoming for that friend an enterprise of
+great personal peril. But it added also to the fierce hatred with which
+the public now regarded Garrison. He was the author of all the mischief,
+the slavery agitation, the foreign emissary. He had even dared to inject
+the poison of Abolitionism into the politics of Boston and
+Massachusetts. This attempt on the part of the _Liberator_ to establish
+an anti-slavery test of office was only another proof of the dangerous
+character of the new fanaticism and the Jacobinical designs of the
+Garrisonian fanatics, ergo, the importance of suppressing the
+incendiaries. Down with Thompson! Garrison must be destroyed! The
+Union--it must and shall be preserved! All these the public excitement,
+which had risen everywhere to a tempest, had come more and more to mean.
+A tremendous crisis had come in the life of Garrison, and a great peril,
+eagle-like, with the stirred-up hate of a nation, was swooping upon him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+
+MISCHIEF LET LOOSE.
+
+
+A wild-cat-like creature was abroad. To it the Abolitionists were to be
+thrown. It was to destroy Garrison, make an end of Thompson, and
+suppress between its enormous jaws the grandest moral movement of the
+century. Besides doing up this modest little programme, the beast, O
+wonderful to say, was also to crown its performances by "saving" the
+Union. Rejoicing in the possession of such a conservative institution,
+the politicians, the press, and public opinion uncaged the monster,
+while from secure seats they watched the frightful scenes of fury and
+destruction enacted by it in the national arena.
+
+These scenes began in the summer of 1834, and in the city of New York.
+They were ushered in by the breaking up of an anti-slavery celebration
+on the Fourth of July by the clack and roar of several hundred young
+rowdies, gathered for the purpose. Their success but whetted the
+appetite of the spirit of mischief for other ventures against the
+Abolitionists. As a consequence New York was in a more or less disturbed
+state from the fourth to the ninth of the month. The press of the city,
+with but a single exception (_The Evening Post_) meanwhile goaded the
+populace on by false and inflammatory representations touching the
+negroes and their friends, to the rioting which began in earnest on the
+evening of the ninth. That night a mob attacked Lewis Tappan's house on
+Rose street, breaking in the door, smashing blinds and windows, and
+playing havoc generally with the furniture. On the following evening the
+rioters assailed the store of Arthur Tappan, on Pearl street,
+demolishing almost every pane of glass in the front of the building. On
+the same evening the mob paid its respects to Rev. Dr. Cox, by breaking
+windows both at his house and at his church. The negro quarters in the
+neighborhood of Five Points, and their houses in other parts of the
+city, were raided on the night of the 11th, and much damage done by the
+lawless hordes which for nearly a week wreaked their wrath upon the
+property of the negroes and their anti-slavery friends.
+
+After this brave beginning, the wild-cat-like spirit continued, these
+ferocious demonstrations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan,
+Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire. The slavery agitation had
+increased apace. It had broken out in Congress on the presentation of
+anti-slavery petitions. The fire thus kindled spread through the
+country. Southern excitement became intense, amounted almost to panic.
+The activity of the anti-slavery press, the stream of anti-slavery
+publications, which had, indeed, increased with singular rapidity, was
+exaggerated by the Southern imagination, struck it with a sort of
+terror. There were meetings held in many parts of the South, tremendous
+scenes enacted there. In Charleston, South Carolina, the post-office was
+broken open by an aristocratic mob, under the lead of the famous Robert
+Y. Hayne, and a bonfire made of the Abolition mail-matter which it
+contained. As this Southern excitement advanced, a passionate fear for
+the stability of the Union arose in the heart of the North. Abolition
+and the Abolitionists had produced these sectional disturbances.
+Abolition and the Abolitionists were, therefore, enemies of the
+"glorious Union." Northern excitement kept pace with Southern excitement
+until, in the summer of 1835, a reign of terror was widely established
+over both sections. To Garrison, from his _Liberator_ outlook, all
+seemed "Consternation and perplexity, for perilous times have come."
+They had, indeed, come in New York, as witness this from the pen of
+Lydia Maria Child, who was at the time (August 15) in Brooklyn. Says
+she:
+
+
+    "I have not ventured into the city, nor does one of us dare to
+    go to church to-day, so great is the excitement here. You can
+    form no conception of it. 'Tis like the time of the French
+    Revolution, when no man dared trust his neighbor. Private
+    assassins from New Orleans are lurking at the corners of the
+    streets to stab Arthur Tappan, and very large sums are offered
+    for any one who will convey Mr. Thompson into the slave
+    States.... There are several thousand Southerners now in the
+    city, and I am afraid there are not seven hundred among them who
+    have the slightest fear of God before their eyes. Mr. Wright
+    [Elizur] was yesterday barricading his doors and windows with
+    strong bars and planks an inch thick. Violence in some form
+    seems to be generally expected."
+
+
+Great meetings to put the Abolitionists down afforded vents during this
+memorable year to the pent-up excitement of the free States. New York
+had had its great meeting, and had put the Abolitionists down with
+pro-slavery resolutions and torrents of pro-slavery eloquence. Boston,
+too, had to have her great meeting and her cataracts of pro-slavery
+oratory to reassure the South of the sympathy and support of "the great
+body of the people of the Northern States." The toils seemed everywhere
+closing around the Abolitionists. The huge head of the asp of public
+opinion, the press of the land was everywhere busy, day and night,
+smearing with a thick and virulent saliva of lies the brave little band
+and its leader. Anti-slavery publications, calculated to inflame the
+minds of the slaves against their masters, and intended to instigate the
+slaves to servile insurrections, had been distributed broadcast through
+the South by the emissaries of anti-slavery societies. The Abolitionists
+advocated the emancipation of the slaves in the South by Congress,
+intermarriages between the two races, the dissolution of the Union, etc.
+All of which outrageous misrepresentations were designed to render the
+movement utterly odious to the public, and the public so much the more
+furious for its suppression.
+
+It was in the midst of such intense and widespread excitement that
+Boston called its meeting to abolish the Abolitionists. It was the month
+of August, and the heat of men's passions was as great as the heat of
+the August sun. The moral atmosphere of the city was so charged with
+inflammable gases that the slightest spark would have sufficed to
+produce an explosion. The Abolitionists felt this and carried themselves
+the while with unusual circumspection. They deemed it prudent to publish
+an address to neutralize the falsehoods with which they were assailed by
+their enemies. The address drawn up by Garrison for the purpose was
+thought "too fiery for the present time," by his more cautious followers
+and was rejected. The _Liberator_ office had already been threatened in
+consequence of a fiery article by the editor, denouncing the use of
+Faneuil Hall for the approaching pro-slavery meeting. It seemed to the
+unawed and indignant champion of liberty that it were "better that the
+winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole earth--better that
+an earthquake should engulf it--than that it should be used for so
+unhallowed and detestable a purpose!" The anti-abolition feeling of the
+town had become so bitter and intense that Henry E. Benson, then clerk
+in the anti-slavery office, writing on the 19th of the month, believed
+that there were persons in Boston, who would assassinate George Thompson
+in broad daylight, and doubted whether Garrison or Samuel J. May would
+be safe in Faneuil Hall on the day of the meeting, and what seemed still
+more significant of the inflamed state of the public mind, was the
+confidence with which he predicted that a mob would follow the meeting.
+The wild-cat-like spirit was in the air--in the seething heart of the
+populace.
+
+The meeting was held August 21st, in the old cradle of liberty. To its
+call alone fifteen hundred names were appended. It was a Boston audience
+both as to character and numbers, an altogether imposing affair, over
+whom the mayor of the city presided and before whom two of the most
+consummate orators of the commonwealth fulmined against the
+Abolitionists. One of their hearers, a young attorney of twenty-four,
+who listened to Peleg Sprague and Harrison Gray Otis that day, described
+sixteen years afterward the latter and the effects produced by him on
+that audience. Our young attorney vividly recalled how "'Abolitionist'
+was linked with contempt, in the silver tones of Otis, and all the
+charms that a divine eloquence and most felicitous diction could throw
+around a bad cause were given it; the excited multitude seemed actually
+ready to leap up beneath the magic of his speech. It would be something,
+if one must die, to die by such a hand--a hand somewhat worthy and able
+to stifle anti-slavery, if it could be stifled. The orator was worthy of
+the gigantic task attempted; and thousands crowded before him, every one
+of their hearts melted by that eloquence, beneath which Massachusetts
+had bowed, not unworthily, for more than thirty years."
+
+Here is a specimen of the sort of goading which the wild-cat-like spirit
+of the city got from the orators. It is taken from the speech of Peleg
+Sprague. The orator is paying his respects to George Thompson, "an
+avowed _emissary_" "_a professed agitator_," who "comes here from the
+dark and corrupt institutions of Europe to enlighten _us_ upon the
+rights of man and the moral duties of our own condition. Received by our
+hospitality, he stands here upon our soil, protected by our laws, and
+hurls firebrands, arrows, and death into the habitations of our
+neighbors and friends, and brothers; and when he shall have kindled a
+conflagration which is sweeping in desolation over our land, he has only
+to embark for his own country, and there look serenely back with
+indifference or exultation upon the widespread ruin by which _our_
+cities are wrapt in flames, and _our_ garments rolled in blood."
+
+The great meeting was soon a thing of the past but not so its effects.
+The echoes of Otis and Sprague did not cease at its close. They thrilled
+in the air, they thrilled long afterward in the blood of the people.
+When the multitude dispersed Mischief went out into the streets of the
+city with them. Wherever afterward they gathered Mischief made one in
+their midst. Mischief was let loose, Mischief was afoot in the town. The
+old town was no place for the foreign emissary, neither was it a safe
+place for the arch-agitator. On the day after the meeting, Garrison and
+his young wife accordingly retreated to her father's home at Brooklyn,
+Conn., where the husband needed not to be jostling elbows with Mistress
+Mischief, and her _pals_.
+
+Garrison's answer to the speeches of Otis and Sprague was in his
+sternest vein. He is sure after reading them that, "there is more guilt
+attaching to the people of the free States from the continuance of
+slavery, than those in the slave States." At least he is ready to affirm
+upon the authority of Orator Sprague, "that New England is as really a
+slave-holding section of the republic as Georgia or South Carolina."
+Sprague, he finds, "in amicable companionship and popular repute with
+thieves and adulterers; with slaveholders, slavedealers, and
+slave-destroyers; ... with the disturbers of the public peace; with the
+robbers of the public mail; with ruffians who insult, pollute, and
+lacerate helpless women; and with conspirators against the lives and
+liberties of New England citizens."
+
+To Otis who was then nearly seventy years of age Garrison addressed his
+rebuke in tones of singular solemnity. It seemed to him that the aged
+statesman had transgressed against liberty "under circumstances of
+peculiar criminality." "Yet at this solemn period," the reprobation of
+the prophet ran, "you have not scrupled, nay, you have been ambitious,
+to lead and address an excited multitude, in vindication of all
+imaginable wickedness, embodied in one great system of crime and
+blood--to pander to the lusts and desires of the robbers of God and his
+poor--to consign over to the tender mercies of cruel taskmasters,
+multitudes of guiltless men, women, and children--and to denounce as an
+'unlawful and dangerous association' a society whose only object is to
+bring this nation to repentance, through the truth as it is in Jesus."
+
+These audacious and iconoclastic performances of the reformer were not
+exactly adapted to turn from him the wrath of the idol worshipers. They
+more likely added fuel to the hot anger burning in Boston against him.
+Three weeks passed after his departure from the city, and his friends
+did not deem it safe for him to return. Toward the end of the fourth
+week of his enforced absence, against which he was chafing not a little,
+an incident happened in Boston which warned him to let patience have its
+perfect work. It was on the night of September 17th that the
+dispositions of the city toward him found grim expression in a gallows
+erected in front of his house at 23 Brighton street. This ghastly
+reminder that the fellow-citizens of the editor of the _Liberator_
+continued to take a lively interest in him, "was made in real
+workmanship style, of _maple joist_ five inches through, eight or nine
+feet high, for the accommodation of two persons." Garrison and Thompson
+were the two persons for whom these brave accommodations were prepared.
+But as neither they nor their friends were in a mood to have trial made
+of them, the intended occupants consented to give Boston a wide berth,
+and to be somewhat particular that they did not turn in with her while
+the homicidal fit lasted.
+
+This editing his paper at long range, and this thought of life and
+safety Garrison did not at all relish. They grew more and more irksome
+to his fearless and earnest spirit. For his was a "pine-and-fagot"
+Abolitionism that knew not the fear of men or their wrath. But now he
+must needs have a care for the peace of mind of his young wife, who was,
+within a few months, to give birth to a child. And her anxiety for him
+was very great. Neither was the anxiety of devoted friends and followers
+to be lightly disregarded. All of which detained the leader in Brooklyn
+until the 25th of the month, when the danger signals seemed to have
+disappeared. Whereupon he set out immediately for his post in Boston to
+be at the head of his forces. He found the city in one of those strange
+pauses of popular excitement, which might signify the ebb of the tide or
+only the retreat of the billows. He was not inclined to let the
+anti-Abolition agitation subside so soon, before it had carried on its
+flood Abolition principles to wider fields and more abundant harvests in
+the republic. Anxious lest the cat-like temper of the populace was
+falling into indifference and apathy, he and his disciples took occasion
+to prod it into renewed wakefulness and activity. The instruments used
+for this purpose were anti-slavery meetings and the sharp goad of his
+_Liberator_ editorials. The city was possessed with the demon of
+slavery, and its foaming at the mouth was the best of all signs that the
+Abolition exorcism was working effectively. So, in between the
+glittering teeth and the terrible paws was thrust the maddening goad,
+and up sprang the mighty beast horrible to behold.
+
+One of these meetings was the anniversary of the formation of the Boston
+Female Anti-Slavery Society which fell on October 14th. The ladies
+issued their notice, engaged a hall, and invited George Thompson to
+address them. Now the foreign emissary was particularly exasperating to
+Boston sensibility on the subject of slavery. He was the veritable red
+rag to the pro-slavery bull. The public announcement, therefore, that he
+was to speak in the city threw the public mind into violent agitation.
+The _Gazette_ and the _Courier_ augmented the excitement by the
+recklessness with which they denounced the proposed meeting, the former
+promising to Thompson a lynching, while the latter endeavored to involve
+his associates who were to the "manner born" in the popular outbreak,
+which was confidently predicted in case the "foreign vagrant" wagged his
+tongue at the time appointed.
+
+Notwithstanding the rage of press and people the meeting was postponed
+through no willingness on the part of the ladies, but because of the
+panic of the owners of the hall lest their property should be damaged or
+destroyed in case of a riot. The ladies, thereupon, appointed three
+o'clock in the afternoon of October 21st as the time, and the hall
+adjoining the Anti-Slavery Office, at 46 Washington street, as the place
+where they would hold their adjourned meeting. This time they made no
+mention of Mr. Thompson's addressing them, merely announcing several
+addresses. In fact, an address from Mr. Thompson, in view of the squally
+outlook, was not deemed expedient. To provide against accidents and
+disasters, he left the city on the day before the meeting. But this his
+enemies did not know. They confidently expected that he was to be one of
+the speakers. An inflammatory handbill distributed on the streets at
+noon of the 21st seemed to leave no doubt of this circumstance in the
+pro-slavery portion of the city.
+
+The handbill referred to ran as follows:
+
+
+    THOMPSON,
+
+    THE ABOLITIONIST!
+
+    That infamous foreign scoundrel, THOMPSON, will hold forth _this
+    afternoon_ at the _Liberator_ office. No. 48 Washington street.
+    The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union
+    to _snake Thompson out_! It will be a contest between the
+    Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has
+    been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the
+    individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so
+    that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of
+    the Union, be vigilant!
+
+    _Boston, Wednesday, 12 o'clock._
+
+
+That Wednesday forenoon Garrison spent at the anti-slavery office,
+little dreaming of the peril which was to overtake him in that very spot
+in the afternoon. He went home to an early dinner, since his wife was a
+member of the society, and he himself was set down for an address. As he
+wended his way homeward, Mischief and her gang were afoot distributing
+the aforesaid handbills "in the insurance offices, the reading-rooms,
+all along State street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc.," and scattering
+it "among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it."
+Garrison returned about a half hour before the time appointed for the
+meeting. He found a small crowd of about a hundred individuals collected
+in front of the building where the hall was situated, and on ascending
+to the hall more of the same sort, mostly young men, choking the access
+to it. They were noisy, and Garrison pushed his way through them with
+difficulty. As he entered the place of meeting and took his seat among
+the ladies, twenty had already arrived, the gang of young rowdies
+recognized him and evinced this by the exclamation: "That's Garrison!"
+The full significance of the crowd just without the hall did not seem to
+have occurred to the man whom they had identified. He did not know that
+they were the foam blown from the mouth of a great mob at the moment
+filling the streets in the neighborhood of the building where he sat
+with such serenity of spirit. His wife who had followed him from their
+home saw what Garrison did not see. The crowd of a hundred had swelled
+to thousands. It lay in a huge irregular cross, jammed in between the
+buildings on Washington street, the head lowering in front of the
+anti-slavery office, the foot reaching to the site where stood Joy
+building, now occupied by the Rogers, the right arm stretching along
+Court street to the Court House, and the left encircling the old State
+House, City Hall and Post-office then, in a gigantic embrace. All hope
+of urging her way through that dense mass was abandoned by Mrs.
+Garrison, and a friend, Mr. John E. Fuller, escorted her to his home,
+where she passed the night.
+
+Meantime the atmosphere upstairs at the hall began to betoken a fast
+approaching storm. The noises ominously increased on the landing just
+outside. The door of the hall was swung wide open and the entrance
+filled with rioters. Garrison, all unconscious of danger, walked over to
+these persons and remonstrated in his grave way with them in regard to
+the disturbance which they were producing, winding up with a
+characteristic bit of pleasantry: "Gentlemen," said he, "perhaps you are
+not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston _Female_ Anti-Slavery
+Society, called and intended exclusively for _ladies_, and those only
+who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact you will
+not be so rude and indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this
+meeting." But he added, "If, _gentlemen_, any of you are _ladies_ in
+disguise--why only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I
+will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among
+them accordingly." The power of benignity over malignity lasted a few
+moments after this little speech, when the situation changed rapidly
+from bad to worse. "The tumult continually increased," says an
+eye-witness, "with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally
+shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding
+their fury, but mounted on each other's shoulders, so that a row of
+hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of
+the wall which divides the society's rooms from the landing place. We
+requested them to allow the door to be shut; but they could not decide
+as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and
+shut with violence, till it hung useless from its hinges."
+
+Garrison thinking that his absence might quiet these perturbed spirits
+and so enable the ladies to hold their meeting without further
+molestation volunteered at this juncture to the president of the society
+to retire from the hall unless she desired him to remain. She did not
+wish him to stay but urged him to go at once not only for the peace of
+the meeting but for his own safety. Garrison thereupon left the hall
+meaning at the time to leave the building as well, but egress by the way
+of the landing and the stairs, he directly perceived was impossible, and
+did what seemed the next best thing, entered the anti-slavery office,
+separated from the hall by a board partition. Charles C. Burleigh
+accompanied him within this retreat. The door between the hall and the
+office was securely locked, and Garrison with that marvelous serenity of
+mind, which was a part of him, busied himself immediately with writing
+to a friend an account of the scenes which were enacting in the next
+room.
+
+The tempest had begun in the streets also. The mob from its five
+thousand throats were howling "Thompson! Thompson!" The mayor of the
+city, Theodore Lyman, appeared upon the scene, and announced to the
+gentlemen of property and standing, who were thus exercising their vocal
+organs, that Mr. Thompson was not at the meeting, was not in the city.
+But the mayor was a modern Canute before the sea of human passion, which
+was rushing in over law and authority. He besought the rioters to
+disperse, but he might as well have besought the waves breaking on
+Nastasket Beach to disperse. Higher, higher rose the voices; fiercer,
+fiercer waxed the multitude; more and more frightful became the uproar.
+The long-pent-up excitement of the city and its hatred of Abolitionists
+had broken loose at last and the deluge had come. The mayor tossed upon
+the human inundation as a twig on a mountain stream, and with him for
+the nonce struggled helplessly the police power of the town also.
+
+Upstairs in the hall the society and its president are quite as
+powerless as the mayor and the police below. Miss Mary S. Parker, the
+president, is struggling with the customary opening exercises. She has
+called the meeting to order, read to the ladies some passages from the
+Bible, and has lifted up her voice in prayer to the All Wise and
+Merciful One "for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies
+and revilers." It is a wonderful scene, a marvelous example of Christian
+heroism, for in the midst of the hisses and threats and curses of the
+rioters, the prayer of the brave woman rose clear and untremulous. But
+now the rioters have thrown themselves against the partition between the
+landing-place and the hall. They are trying to break it down; now, they
+have partially succeeded. In another moment they have thrown themselves
+against the door of the office where Garrison is locked. The lower panel
+is dashed in. Through the opening they have caught sight of their
+object, Garrison, serenely writing at his desk. "There he is! That's
+Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!" and other such words of recognition
+and execration, burst from one and another of the mob. The shattering of
+the partition, the noise of splitting and ripping boards, the sharp
+crash caused by the shivering of the office door, the loud and angry
+outcries of the rioters warn the serene occupant of the office that his
+position has become one of extreme peril. But he does not become
+excited. His composure does not forsake him. Instead of attempting to
+escape, he simply turns to his friend, Burleigh, with the words, "You
+may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst." But
+fortunately, Burleigh was in no such extremely non-resistant mood.
+
+The advent of the mayor and the constables upon the scene at this point
+rescued Garrison from immediately falling into the hands of the mob, who
+were cleared out of the hall and from the stairway. Now the voice of the
+mayor was heard urging the ladies to go home as it was dangerous to
+remain; and now the voice of Maria Weston Chapman, replying: "If this is
+the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere." The
+ladies finally decided to retire, and their exit diverted, while the
+operation lasted, the attention of the huge, cat-like creature from
+their object in the anti-slavery office. When the passing of the ladies
+had ceased, the old fury of the mob against Garrison returned. "Out with
+him!" "Lynch him!" rose in wild uproar from thousands in the streets.
+But again the attention of the huge, cat-like creature was diverted from
+its object in the second story of the building before which it was
+lashing itself into frenzy. This time it was the anti-slavery sign which
+hung from the rooms of the society over the sidewalk. The mob had caught
+sight of it, and directly set up a yell for it. The sensation of utter
+helplessness in the presence of the multitude seemed at this juncture to
+return to the chief magistrate of the city. It was impossible to control
+the cataract-like passions of the rioters. He heard their awful roar for
+the sign. The din had risen to terrific proportions. The thought of what
+might happen next appalled him. The mob might begin to bombard the sign
+with brickbats, and from the sign pass to the building, and from the
+building to the constables, and then--but the mayor glanced not beyond,
+for he had determined to appease the fury of the mob by throwing down to
+it the hateful sign. A constable detached it, and hurled it down to the
+rioters in the street. But by the act the mayor had signified that the
+rule of law had collapsed, and the rule of the mob had really begun.
+When the rioters had wreaked their wrath upon the emblem of freedom,
+they were in the mood for more violence. The appetite for destruction,
+it was seen, had not been glutted; only whetted. Garrison's situation
+was now extremely critical. He could no longer remain where he was, for
+the mob would invade the building and hunt him like hounds from cellar
+to garret. He must leave the building without delay. To escape from the
+front was out of the question. A way of escape must, therefore, be found
+in the rear. All of these considerations the mayor and Garrison's
+friends urged upon him. The good man fell in with this counsel, and,
+with a faithful friend, proceeded to the rear of the building, where
+from a window he dropped to a shed, but in doing so was very nearly
+precipitated to the ground. After picking himself up he passed into a
+carpenter's shop, meaning to let himself down into Wilson's Lane, now
+Devonshire street, but the myriad-eyed mob, which was searching every
+portion of the building for their game, espied him at this point, and
+with that set up a great shout. The workmen came to the aid of the
+fugitive by closing the door of the carpenter's shop in the face of his
+pursuers. The situation seemed desperate. Retreat from the front was cut
+off; escape from the rear anticipated and foiled. Garrison perceived the
+futility of any further attempts to elude the mob, and proposed in his
+calm way to deliver himself up to them. But his faithful Achates, John
+Reid Campbell, advised him that it was his duty to avoid the mob as long
+as it was possible to do so. Garrison thereupon made a final effort to
+get away. He retreated up stairs, where his friend and a lad got him
+into a corner of the room and tried to conceal his whereabouts by piling
+some boards in front of him. But, by that time, the rioters had entered
+the building, and within a few moments had broken into the room where
+Garrison was in hiding. They found Mr. Reid, and demanded of him where
+Garrison was. But Reid firmly refused to tell. They then led him to a
+window, and exhibited him to the mob in the Lane, advising them that it
+was not Garrison, but Garrison's and Thompson's friend, who knows where
+Garrison is, but refuses to tell. A shout of fierce exultation from
+below greeted this announcement. Almost immediately afterward, Garrison
+was discovered and dragged furiously to the window, with the intention
+of hurling him thence to the pavement. Some of the rioters were for
+doing this, while others were for milder measures. "Don't let us kill
+him outright!" they begged. So his persecutors relented, coiled a rope
+around his body instead, and bade him descend to the street. The great
+man was never greater than at that moment. With extraordinary meekness
+and benignity he saluted his enemies in the street. From the window he
+bowed to the multitude who were thirsting for his destruction,
+requesting them to wait patiently, for he was coming to them. Then he
+stepped intrepidly down the ladder raised for the purpose, and into the
+seething sea of human passion.
+
+Garrison must now have been speedily torn to pieces had he not been
+quickly seized by two or three powerful men, who were determined to save
+him from falling into the hands of the mob. They were men of great
+muscular strength, but the muscular strength of two or three giants
+would have proven utterly unequal to the rescue, and this Mr. Garrison's
+deliverers evidently appreciated. For while they employed their powerful
+arms, they also employed stratagem as well to effect their purpose. They
+shouted anon as they fought their way through the excited throng, "He is
+an American! He shan't be hurt!" and other such words which divided the
+mind of the mob, arousing among some sympathy for the good man. By this
+means he was with difficulty got out of Wilson's lane into State street,
+in the rear of the old State House. The champion was now on historic
+ground, ground consecrated by the blood of Crispus Attucks and his
+fellow-martyrs sixty-five years before. His hat was lost, much of his
+clothing was stripped from his body, he was without his customary
+glasses, and was therefore practically blind. He could hear the awful
+clamor, the mighty uproar of the mob, but he could not distinguish them
+one from another, friend from foe. Nevertheless he "walked with head
+erect, calm countenance flashing eyes like a martyr going to the stake,
+full of faith and manly hope" according to the testimony of an
+eye-witness. Garrison himself has thrown light on the state of his mind
+during the ordeal. "The promises of God," he afterward remembered,
+sustained his soul, "so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready
+to sing aloud for joy."
+
+The news now reached the ears of the mayor that Garrison was in the
+hands of the mob. Thereupon the feeble but kindly magistrate began to
+act afresh the role of the twig in the mountain stream. He and his
+constables struggled helplessly in the human current rushing and raging
+around City Hall, the head and seat of municipal law and authority.
+Without the aid of private citizens Garrison must inevitably have
+perished in the commotions which presently reached their climax in
+violence and terror. He was in the rear of City Hall when the mayor
+caught up to him and his would-be rescuers. The mayor perceived the
+extremity of the situation, and said to the Faneuil Hall giants who had
+hold of Garrison, "Take him into my office," which was altogether more
+easily said than done. For the rioters have raised the cry "to the Frog
+Pond with him!" Which order will be carried out, that of the magistrate
+or that of the mob?
+
+These were horrible moments while the two hung trembling in the balance.
+But other private citizens coming to the assistance of the mayor struck
+the scales for the moment in his favor, and Garrison was finally
+hustled, and thrust by main force into the south door of the City Hall
+and carried up to the mayor's room. But the mob had immediately effected
+an entrance into the building through the north door and filled the
+lower hall. The mayor now addressed the pack, strove manfully in his
+feeble way to prevail upon the human wolves to observe order, to sustain
+the law and the honor of the city, he even intimated to them that he was
+ready to lay down his life on the spot to maintain the law and preserve
+order. Then he got out on the ledge over the south door and spoke in a
+similar strain to the mob on the street. But alas! he knew not the
+secret for reversing the Circean spell by which gentlemen of property
+and standing in the community had been suddenly transformed into a
+wolfish rabble.
+
+The increasing tumult without soon warned the authorities that what
+advantage the mayor may have obtained in the contest with the mob was
+only temporary and that their position was momentarily becoming more
+perilous and less tenable. It was impossible to say to what extreme of
+violence a multitude so infuriated would not go to get their prey. It
+seemed to the now thoroughly alarmed mayor that the mob might in their
+frenzy attack the City Hall to effect their purpose. There was one
+building in the city, which the guardians of the law evidently agreed
+could resist the rage of the populace, and that building was the jail.
+To this last stronghold of Puritan civilization the authorities and the
+powers that were, fell back as a dernier resort to save Garrison's life.
+But even in this utmost pitch and extremity, when law was trampled in
+the streets, when authority was a reed shaken in a storm, when anarchy
+had drowned order in the bosom of the town, the Anglo-Saxon passion for
+legal forms asserted itself. The good man, hunted for his life, must
+forsooth be got into the only refuge which promised him security from
+his pursuers by a regular judicial commitment as a disturber of the
+peace. Is there anything at once so pathetic and farcical in the
+Universal history of mobs?
+
+Pathetic and farcical to be sure, but it was also well meant, and
+therefore we will not stop to quarrel with men who were equal to the
+perpetration of a legal fiction so full of the comedy and tragedy of
+civilized society. But enough--the municipal wiseacres having put their
+heads together and evolved the brilliant plan of committing the prophet
+as a disturber of the peace, immediately set about its execution, which
+developed in the sequence into a bird of altogether another color. For a
+more perilous and desperate device to preserve Garrison's life could not
+well have been hit upon. How was he ever to be got out of the building
+and through that sea of ferocious faces surging and foaming around it.
+First then by disguising his identity by sundry changes in his apparel.
+He obtained a pair of trousers from one kindly soul, another gave him a
+coat, a third lent him a stock, a fourth furnished him a cap. A hack was
+summoned and stationed at the south door, a posse of constables drew up
+and made an open way from the door to it. Another hack was placed in
+readiness at the north door. The hack at the south door was only a ruse
+to throw the mob off the scent of their prey, while he was got out of
+the north door and smuggled into the other hack. Up to this point, the
+plan worked well, but the instant after Garrison had been smuggled into
+the hack he was identified by the mob, and then ensued a scene which
+defies description; no writer however skillful, may hope to reproduce
+it. The rioters rushed madly upon the vehicle with the cry: "Cut the
+traces! Cut the reins!" They flung themselves upon the horses, hung upon
+the wheels, dashed open the doors, the driver the while belaboring their
+heads right and left with a powerful whip, which he also laid vigorously
+on the backs of his horses. For a moment it looked as if a catastrophe
+was unavoidable, but the next saw the startled horses plunging at
+break-neck speed with the hack up Court street and the mob pursuing it
+with yells of baffled rage. Then began a thrilling, a tremendous race
+for life and Leverett street jail. The vehicle flew along Court street
+to Bodoin square, but the rioters, with fell purpose flew hardly less
+swiftly in its track. Indeed the pursuit of the pack was so close that
+the hackman did not dare to drive directly to the jail but reached it by
+a detour through Cambridge and Blossom streets. Even then the mob
+pressed upon the heels of the horses as they drew up before the portals
+of the old prison, which shut not an instant too soon upon the editor of
+the _Liberator_, who was saved from a frightful fate to use a Biblical
+phrase but by the skin of his teeth.
+
+Here the reformer safe from the wrath of his foes, was locked in a cell;
+and here, during the evening, with no abatement of his customary
+cheerfulness and serenity of spirit, he received several of his anxious
+friends, Whittier among them, whom through the grated bars he playfully
+accosted thus: "You see my accommodations are so limited, that I cannot
+ask you to spend the night with me." That night in his prison cell, and
+on his rude prison bed, he slept the sleep of the just man, sweet and
+long:
+
+  "When peace within the bosom reigns,
+  And conscience gives th' approving voice;
+  Though bound the human form in chains.
+  Yet can the soul aloud rejoice.
+
+
+  "'Tis true, my footsteps are confined--
+  I cannot range beyond this cell--
+  But what can circumscribe my mind,
+  To chain the winds attempt as well!"
+
+
+The above stanzas he wrote the next morning on the walls of his cell.
+Besides this one he made two other inscriptions there, to stand as
+memorabilia of the black drama enacted in Boston on the afternoon of
+October 21, 1835.
+
+After being put through the solemn farce of an examination in a court,
+extemporized in the jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a
+disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of
+the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few
+days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving him to Canton, where he
+boarded the train from Boston to Providence, containing his wife, and
+together they went thence to her father's at Brooklyn, Conn. The
+apprehensions of the authorities in respect of the danger of a fresh
+attack upon him were unquestionably well founded, inasmuch as diligent
+search was made for him in all of the outgoing stages and cars from the
+city that morning.
+
+In this wise did pro-slavery, patriotic Boston translate into _works_
+her sympathy for the South.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+
+FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
+
+
+The results of the storm became immediately manifest in several ways.
+Such a commotion did not leave things in precisely the state in which
+they were on the morning of the memorable day on which it struck the
+city. The moral landscape and geography of the community had sensibly
+changed at its close. The full extent of the alteration wrought could
+not at once be seen, nor was it at once felt. But that there were deep
+and abiding changes made by it in the court of public opinion in Boston
+and Massachusetts on the subject of slavery there is little doubt. It
+disgusted and alarmed many individuals who had hitherto acted in unison
+with the social, business, and political elements, which were at the
+bottom of the riot. Francis Jackson, for instance, had been one of the
+fifteen hundred signers of the call for the great Faneuil Hall meeting
+of the 21st of August. But on the afternoon of the 21st of October he
+threw his house open to the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, after
+its meeting had been broken up by the mob. It seemed to him then that it
+was no longer a mere struggle for the freedom of the slave, but for the
+right of free speech and free discussion as well. Dr. Henry I. Bowditch,
+a young man, in 1835, eminent professor and physician subsequently,
+dates from that afternoon of mob violence his conversion to
+Abolitionism. In that selfsame hour seeds of resistance to slavery were
+sown in two minds of the first order in the city and State. Wendell
+Phillips was a spectator in the streets that day, and the father of
+Charles Sumner, the sheriff at the time, fought bravely to save Garrison
+from falling into the hands of the mob. The great riot gave those young
+men their first summons to enter the service of freedom. It was not long
+afterward probably that they both began to read the _Liberator_. From
+that event many intelligent and conservative people associated slavery
+with lynch law and outrage upon the rights of free speech and popular
+assembly.
+
+This anti-slavery reaction of the community received practical
+demonstration in the immediate increase of subscribers to the
+_Liberator_. Twelve new names were added to the subscription list in one
+day. It received significant illustration also in Garrison's nomination
+to the legislature. In this way did between seventy and eighty citizens
+testify their sympathy for him and their reprobation of mob rule. In yet
+another way was its influence felt, and this was in the renewed zeal and
+activity which it instantly produced on the part of the Abolitionists
+themselves. It operated upon the movement as a powerful stimulus to
+fresh sacrifices and unwearied exertions. George W. Benson, Garrison's
+brother-in-law, led off bravely in this respect, as the following
+extract from a letter written by him in Boston, two days after the riot,
+to Garrison, at Brooklyn, well illustrates. He had come up to the city
+from Providence the night before, in quest of his sister and her
+husband. Not finding them, he turned to the cause which had been so
+ruthlessly attacked, and this is the sort of care which he bestowed upon
+it. He got Burleigh to write a general relation of the mob for
+publication in the _Liberator_, and Whittier to indite another, with an
+appeal to the public, the same to be published immediately, and of which
+he ordered three thousand copies for himself.
+
+"I further ordered," he writes, "one thousand copies of A. Grimke's
+letter, with your introductory remarks, and your address published in
+the _Liberator_ several weeks since, with your name appended, and
+Whittier's poetry on the times, in a pamphlet form. I urged all our
+friends to redouble their exertions. They seemed well disposed to accept
+the advice, as nothing will now avail but thorough measures. _Liberty or
+Death_!"
+
+This is a fair specimen of the indomitable, indefatigable spirit which
+was born of the attempt to put Abolitionism down by lawlessness and
+violence. Indeed, the "Broad-Cloth Mob," viewed in the light of the
+important consequences which followed it, was equal to a hundred
+anti-slavery meetings, or a dozen issues of the _Liberator_.
+
+It is a curious and remarkable circumstance that, on the very day of the
+Boston mob, there occurred one in Utica, N.Y., which was followed by
+somewhat similar results. An anti-slavery convention was attacked and
+broken up by a mob of "gentlemen of property and standing in the
+community," under the active leadership of a member of Congress. Here
+there was an apparent defeat for the Abolitionists, but the consequences
+which followed the outrage proved it a blessing in disguise. For the
+cause made many gains thereby, and conspicuously among them was Gerritt
+Smith, ever afterward one of its most eloquent and munificent
+supporters. If anti-slavery meetings made converts by tens, anti-slavery
+mobs made them by hundreds. The enemies of freedom builded better than
+they knew or intended, and Garrison had the weightiest of reasons for
+feeling thankful to them for the involuntary, yet vast aid and comfort
+which their pro-slavery virulence and violence were bringing him and the
+anti-slavery movement throughout the free States. Example: in 1835-36,
+the great mob year, as many as three hundred and twenty-eight societies
+were organized in the North for the immediate abolition of slavery.
+
+The mob did likewise help towards a satisfactory solution of the riddle
+propounded by Garrison: "Shall the _Liberator_ die?" The fresh access of
+anti-slavery strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers, begotten by
+it, exerted no slight influence on the longevity of the _Liberator_.
+Poor the paper continued, and embarrassed the editor for many a month
+thereafter, but as an anti-slavery instrument its survival may be said
+from that proceeding to have become a necessity. To allow the
+_Liberator_ to die at this juncture would have been such a confession of
+having been put down, such an ignominious surrender to the mobocrats as
+the Abolitionists of Boston would have scorned to make. "I trust," wrote
+Samuel E. Sewall, "there will not be even one week's interruption in the
+publication of the _Liberator._" _Ex uno disce omnes_. He but voiced the
+sentiment of the editor's disciples and associates in the city, in the
+State, and in New England as well.
+
+Besides these larger consequences there were others of a more personal
+and less welcome character. The individual suffers but the cause goes
+forward. Property-holders in Boston after the riot were not at all
+disposed to incur the risk of renting property to such disturbers of the
+peace as Garrison and the _Liberator_. The owner of his home on Brighton
+street was thrown into such alarm for the safety of his property, if
+Garrison continued to occupy it, that he requested the cancellation of
+the lease and the vacation of the premises. Garrison and his friends,
+all things considered, decided that it was the part of wisdom to accede
+to the request--although this breaking up of his home was a sore trial
+to the young husband in more ways than one.
+
+The landlord of the building where was located the _Liberator_ office
+promptly notified the publishers to remove the paper not many mornings
+after the mob. This was particularly hard luck, inasmuch as the most
+dilligent quest for another local habitation for the paper, failed of
+success. No one was willing to imperil his property by letting a part of
+it to such a popularly odious enterprise. So that not only had the
+household furniture of the editor to be stored, but the office effects
+of the paper as well. The inextinguishable pluck and zeal of Garrison
+and his Boston coadjutors never showed to better advantage than when
+without a place to print the _Liberator_, the paper was "set up in
+driblets" in other offices at extraordinary expense, and sent out week
+after week to tell the tale of the mob, and to preach with undiminished
+power the gospel of universal emancipation.
+
+But more afflictive to the feelings of the reformer than the loss of his
+home, or that of the office of the _Liberator_, was the loss of his
+friend, George Thompson. It seemed to him when the English orator
+departed that "the paragon of modern eloquence," and "the benefactor of
+two nations," had left these shores. Garrison's grief was as poignant as
+his humiliation was painful. George Thompson had come hither only as a
+friend of America, and America had pursued him with the most relentless
+malice. The greatest precautions were taken after the "Broadcloth Mob"
+to ensure his safety. The place of his concealment was kept a secret and
+committed only to a few tried friends. There is no doubt that had these
+precautions not been observed and his hiding place been discovered by
+the ruffians of the city, his life would have been attempted. Indeed it
+is almost as certain that had he ventured to show himself in public he
+would have been murdered in broad daylight in any of the large towns and
+cities of Massachusetts. His mission was clearly at an end unless he was
+determined to invite martyrdom. In these circumstances there was nothing
+to do but to smuggle him out of the country at the first opportunity. On
+Sunday, November 8, the anxiously looked-for moment came when George
+Thompson was put upon a packet, in which he sailed for St. Johns, New
+Brunswick, whence he subsequently took passage for England. Garrison was
+inconsolable. "Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public," he
+sadly asked, "with subtle sophists and insolent scoffers?" little
+dreaming that there was then approaching him out of the all-hail
+hereafter a greater in these identical respects than George Thompson,
+indisputably great as he was.
+
+It was a blessed refuge to Garrison, the Benson homestead of Brooklyn,
+termed Friendship's Valley. Hunted as a partridge by his enemies here he
+found the quiet, and sympathy, and the right royal welcome and affection
+for which his heart panted amidst the dust, and din, and dangers of the
+crusade against slavery. But grateful as were the domestic sweets of
+Friendship's Valley, his was altogether too militant and masterful a
+spirit to yield himself without a struggle to the repose which it
+offered. He did not at all relish the idea of being a forced exile from
+Boston, of being obliged to edit the _Liberator_ at such long range. But
+his friends urged him to submit to the one, and do the other, both on
+grounds of economy and common prudence. He was almost super-anxious lest
+it be said that the fear of the mob drove him out of Boston, and that
+the fear of it kept him out. This super-anxiety in that regard his
+friends to a certain degree shared with him. It was a phase of Abolition
+grit. Danger attracted this new species of reformers as a magnet draws
+iron. Instead of running away from it, they were, with one accord,
+forever rushing into it. And the leader in Brooklyn was for rushing back
+to Boston, where, if one chanced to sow the wind in the morning, he
+might be morally certain of reaping the whirlwind in the afternoon.
+
+Two weeks after he had been secretly conveyed to Canton by Deputy
+Sheriff Parkman, being the day of his discharge from Leverett street
+jail, he was back again in Boston. The popular excitement had subsided.
+He showed himself freely in the streets and was nowhere molested. One
+day, however, while at the anti-slavery office on Washington street, he
+witnessed what was perhaps a final manifestation of the cat-like spirit
+of the great mob. A procession passed by with band and music, bearing
+aloft a large board on which were represented George Thompson and a
+black woman with this significant allusion to the riot, made as if
+addressed to himself by his dusky companion in disgrace: "When are we
+going to have another meeting, Brother Thompson?" The cat-like creature
+had lapsed into a playful mood, but its playfulness would have quickly
+given place to an altogether different fit did it but know that Garrison
+was watching it from the window of the very room where a few weeks
+before he had nearly fallen into its clutches.
+
+Garrison remained in Boston two weeks, going about the city, wherever
+and whenever business or duty called him in a perfectly fearless way. He
+left on the afternoon of November 18th. On that same afternoon the
+Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society held a memorable meeting at the house
+of Francis Jackson. It was then that Harriet Martineau, another foreign
+emissary, avowed her entire agreement with the principles of the
+Abolitionists, which subjected her to social ostracism, and to unlimited
+abuse from the pro-slavery press of the city.
+
+The new hatred of slavery which the mob had aroused in Boston found
+heroic expression in a letter of Francis Jackson's replying to a vote of
+thanks of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to him for his
+hospitality to the ladies after their meeting was broken up by the mob.
+Mr. Jackson in his answer points with emphasis to the fact that his
+hospitality had a double aim, one was the accommodation of the ladies,
+the other the preservation of the right of free discussion. In his
+regard a foundation principle of free institutions had been assailed.
+"Happily," he shrewdly observed, "one point seems already to be gaining
+universal assent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion.
+Hence the efforts of the friends, and apologists of slavery to break
+down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of
+slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in its preservation. The
+contest is, therefore, substantially between liberty and slavery.
+
+"As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty
+breathe without it. Losing this, we, too, shall be no longer free men
+indeed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we now seek to
+emancipate." This apprehension and spirit of resistance, voiced by
+Francis Jackson, was Garrison's new ally, which, phoenix-like, was born
+out of the ashes of that terrific attempt of his enemies to effect his
+destruction, known as the "Broad-Cloth Mob."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+
+THE BAROMETER CONTINUES TO FALL.
+
+
+Having made trial of the strong arm of the mob as an instrument for
+putting down the Abolitionists, and been quite confounded by its
+unexpected energy and unmanageableness, Boston was well disposed to lay
+the weapon aside as much too dangerous for use. For the wild-cat-like
+creature might take it into its head, when once it had got a taste of
+blood, to suppress some other isms in the community besides
+Abolitionism. No, no, the gentlemen of property and standing in the
+community had too much at stake to expose their property and their
+persons to the perils of any further experiments in that direction, even
+for the sake of expressing their sympathy for their dear brethren in the
+South, or of saving the dear Union into the bargain. Another method more
+in accord with the genius of their high state of civilization, they
+opined, might be invented to put the agitation and the agitators of the
+slavery question down. The politicians thereupon proceeded to make this
+perfectly wonderful invention. Not the strong arm of the mob, quoth
+these wiseacres, but the strong arm of the law it shall be. And the
+strong arm of the law they forthwith determined to make it.
+
+Massachusetts was hearkening with a sort of fascination to the song of
+the slave syren. And no wonder. For the song of the slave syren was
+swelling and clashing the while with passionate and imperious energy.
+South Carolina had led off in this kind of music. In December following
+the Boston mob Governor McDuffie, pitched the key of the Southern
+concert in his message to the legislature descriptive of anti-slavery
+publications, and denunciatory of the anti-slavery agitation. The
+Abolitionists were, to his mind, "enemies of the human race," and the
+movement for immediate emancipation ought to be made a felony punishable
+"by death without benefit of clergy." He boldly denied that slavery was
+a political evil, and vaunted it instead as "_the corner stone of our
+republican edifice_." The legislature upon the receipt of this
+extraordinary message proceeded to demand of the free States the
+suppression, by effective legislation, of anti-slavery societies and
+their incendiary publications. The burden of this demand was directly
+caught up by North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia. But there
+were some things which even a pro-slavery North could not do to oblige
+the South. Neither party, much as both desired it, dared to undertake
+the violation by law of the great right of free speech and of the
+freedom of the press. Not so, however, was it with sundry party leaders,
+notably the governors of New York and Massachusetts, who were for trying
+the strong arm of the law as an instrument for suppressing Abolitionism.
+Edward Everett was so affected by the increasing Southern excitement and
+his fears for the safety of the dear Union that he must needs deliver
+himself in his annual message upon the Abolition agitation. He was of
+the opinion that the Abolitionists were guilty of an offence against
+Massachusetts which might be "prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common
+law." He evidently did not consider that in the then present state of
+political parties and of public opinion any repressive legislation upon
+the subject could be got through the legislature, and hence the immense
+utility of the old machinery of the common law, as an instrument for
+putting down the agitation. But in order to get this machinery into
+operation, careful preparation was necessary. Proof must not be wanting
+as to the dangerous and unpatriotic character and tendency of the
+movement to be repressed. There should be the most authoritative
+utterance upon this point to warrant the effective intervention of the
+Courts and Grand Juries of the commonwealth in the prosecution of the
+Abolitionists, as disturbers of the peace. Ergo the Governor's
+deliverance in his annual message against them. Now, if the legislature
+could be brought to deliver itself in tones not less certain, the third
+cooerdinate branch of the State government might catch its cue and act
+with energy in suppressing the disturbers of the peace of the
+commonwealth and of the dear Union as well. This was the scheme, the
+conspiracy which was in a state of incubation in Massachusetts in the
+year 1836. The pro-slavery portion of Governor Everett's message,
+together with the Southern demands for repressive legislation against
+the Abolitionists were referred to a joint legislative committee for
+consideration and report. The chairman of the committee was George Lunt,
+of Newburyport, a bitter pro-slavery politician, who saw no sign,
+received no light which did not come out of the South.
+
+The Abolitionists perceived the gravity of the new danger which
+threatened them, and rallied promptly to avert it. They shrewdly guessed
+that the object of the committee would not be the enactment of any new
+law against themselves but the adoption of condemnatory resolutions
+instead. This course they rightly dreaded more than the other, and to
+defeat it the managers of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society
+requested a public hearing of the committee, which was granted. On March
+4th Garrison and many of the anti-slavery leaders appeared before the
+committee, with a carefully planned programme of procedure. To each of
+the selected speakers was assigned a distinct phase of the great subject
+of discussion before the committee. Samuel J. May was appointed to open
+with an exposition of the anti-slavery movement and of the object and
+motives of its founders; Garrison to follow with an exhibition of the
+pacific character of the agitation as contained in official publications
+whereby forgiveness, submission, and non-resistance were steadily
+inculcated; Ellis Gray Loring was next to demonstrate the perfectly
+constitutional character of the agitation. The Abolitionists had in no
+wise contravened the National or the State Constitution, either in
+letter or spirit, and so on through the programme. It was thus that the
+Abolitionists dexterously killed two birds with one stone; for at the
+same time that they made their defence before the committee, they
+managed to present their cause to the attention of the public as well.
+Appearing before the committee to prevent hostile action on the part of
+the legislature against their movement, they skillfully turned the
+occasion into the most notable meeting for agitating the subject of
+slavery in the State during the year.
+
+The pro-slavery malignity of the chairman helped not a little to bring
+this result to pass. He again and again interrupted the speakers with
+the greatest insolence of behavior. Garrison, for a wonder, was allowed
+to finish his remarks without interruption. Here is a specimen of the
+way in which Paul addressed himself to King Agrippa's master--public
+opinion:
+
+"Sir," spoke he to the committee, "we loudly boast of our free country,
+and of the union of these States, yet I have no country! As a New
+Englander and as an Abolitionist I am excluded by a bloody proscription
+from one-half of the national territory, and so is every man who is
+known to regard slavery with abhorrence. Where is our Union? ... The
+right of free and safe locomotion from one part of the land to the other
+is denied to us, except on peril of our lives.... Therefore it is, I
+assert, that the Union is now virtually dissolved.... Look at McDuffie's
+sanguinary message! Read Calhoun's Report to the U.S. Senate,
+authorizing every postmaster in the South to plunder the mail of such
+Northern letters or newspapers as he may choose to think incendiary!
+Sir, the alternative presented to the people of New England is this:
+they must either submit to be gagged and fettered by Southern
+taskmasters, or labor unceasingly for the removal of slavery from our
+country."
+
+This was a capital stroke, a bold and brilliant adaptation of the
+history of the times to the advancement of the anti-slavery movement in
+New England. Missing Garrison, the anger of the chairman fell upon
+Goodell and Prof. Follen, like a tiger's whelp. Follen was remarking
+upon the Faneuil Hall meeting, how it had rendered the Abolitionists
+odious in Boston, and how, in consequence, the mob had followed the
+meeting.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," the great scholar continued, "may we most reasonably
+anticipate that similar consequences would follow the expression by the
+legislature of a similar condemnation? Would not the mob again undertake
+to execute the informal sentence of the General Court? Would it not let
+loose again its bloodhounds upon us?"
+
+At this point Mr. Lunt peremptorily stopped the speaker, exclaiming:
+
+"Stop, sir! You may not pursue this course of remark. It is insulting to
+this committee and the legislature which they represent."
+
+The Abolitionists, after this insult, determined to withdraw from the
+hearing, and appeal to the legislature to be heard, not as a favor but
+of right. A new hearing was, therefore, ordered, and the reformers
+appeared a second time before the committee. But the scenes of the first
+were repeated at the second hearing. The chairman was intolerably
+insolent to the speakers. His violent behavior to William Goodell, who
+was paying his respects to the Southern documents lying on the table of
+the committee, terminated the second hearing. These documents Mr.
+Goodell described as fetters for Northern freemen, and boldly
+interrogated the chairman in respect of them thus:
+
+"Mr. Chairman, are you prepared to attempt putting them on?" But the
+chairman was in no mood to listen to the question. His insolence reached
+a climax as he exclaimed passionately to Mr. Goodell, "Stop, sir! Sit
+down, sir! The committee will hear no more of this." But the temper of
+the Abolitionists had risen also, as had also risen the temper of the
+great audience of citizens who were present at the hearing which was had
+in the hall of the House of Representatives. "Freemen we came," retorted
+Goodell, "and as freemen we shall go away." Scarcely had these words
+died upon the ears when there rose sharply from the auditory, the stern
+protest "Let us go quickly, lest we be made slaves."
+
+The attempt to suppress the Abolitionists was a failure. It but
+stimulated the agitation and deepened the popular interest in the
+subject. Strong allies within and without the legislature were enlisted
+on the side of freedom. The turning of the tide of public sentiment in
+the grand old State had come. Slowly did it rise for awhile, but from
+that event it never ceased to flow in and with increasing volume. The
+condemnatory report of the insolent chairman proved as innocuous as the
+baying of dogs at the moon. The legislature refused to indorse it and
+the pro-slavery resolutions attached to it. They were both ignominiously
+laid upon the table, and what is more to the purpose as a straw to show
+the drift of popular opinion on the slavery question in Massachusetts,
+their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the hands of his
+dissatisfied constituents.
+
+The conflict was raging not alone in Massachusetts but all through the
+free States. In Congress the battle was assuming an intensely bitter
+character. Here the South was the agitator. Here she kept the political
+waters in a state of violent ebullition. As the discord grew,
+sectionalism threw darkening and portentous shadows over the face of the
+Union. The South was insisting in all stages of passion that the tide of
+Abolition be checked in the North, that the flood of incendiary
+publications be suppressed at their sources in the free States. The
+Southern slave-holding President had suggested the suppression of these
+by Congress. He would "prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation
+in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications
+intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." But when Webster and
+a few Northern leaders objected to such a proceeding as unconstitutional
+and in derogation of the freedom of the press, the South treated the
+objection as inimical to Southern interest and security. Thereupon the
+Southern excitement increased all the faster. The slave-power was not
+disposed to accept anything short of complete submission on the part of
+the North. And this the North could not well yield. While the
+slave-holding States were clamoring for the suppression of Abolitionism
+in the free States, Abolitionism was giving evidences of extraordinary
+expansion, and activity. It had risen well above the zero point in
+politics. It was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes. A new element
+had appeared at the polls and both of the old parties began to exhibit a
+certain degree of impressibility to the latest attraction. The
+slave-power with quick instinct recognized in the new comer a dangerous
+rival, and schemed for its destruction. Southern jealousy took on the
+character of insanity. Neither Northern Whigs nor Northern Democrats
+were permitted to show any regard for the rival. They were to snub and
+utterly abolish her, otherwise they should be snubbed and utterly
+abolished by the slave-power. They could not with impunity give to
+Abolitionism the scantiest attention or courtesy. Not even a gallant
+like John Quincy Adams, who was able to see nothing attractive in the
+little band of reformers. They seemed to him, in fact, "a small,
+shallow, and enthusiastic party preaching the abolition of slavery upon
+the principles of extreme democracy." If Mr. Adams had little love for
+the South, he had none whatever for the Abolitionists. By no stretch of
+the imagination could he have been suspected of any sentimental
+attachment to the Abolition movement. For his unvarying attitude towards
+it was one of grim contempt. But if the old Roman had no love for the
+Abolitionists, he did have a deep-seated attachment and reverence for
+certain ancient rights appertaining to free institutions, which nothing
+was able to shake. Among these was the great right of petition, viewed
+by the ex-President as a right of human nature. For a dozen years he
+stood in Congress its sleepless sentinel. And herein did he perform for
+freedom most valiant service. It made no difference to the dauntless old
+man whether he approved of the prayer of a petition or not, if it was
+sent to him he presented it to the House all the same. He presented
+petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and
+one, at least, against it, petitions from black and white, bond and
+free, with superb fidelity to the precious right which he championed.
+
+This characteristic of the aged statesman kept the Southern members in a
+state of chronic apprehension and excitement. They bullied him, they
+raged like so many wild animals against him, they attempted to crush him
+with votes of censure and expulsion all to no purpose. Then they applied
+the gag: "That all petitions, memorials, and papers touching the
+abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring slaves, in
+any State, or district, or territory of the United States, be laid on
+the table without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no
+action be taken thereon." Mr. Adam's denunciation of this action as a
+violation of the Constitution, of the right of the people to petition,
+and of the right to freedom of speech in Congress, found wide echo
+through the North. The violence, intolerence, and tyranny of the South
+were disgusting many of the most intelligent and influential minds in
+the non-slave-holding States, and driving them into more or less close
+affiliation with the anti-slavery movement.
+
+And so it was wherever one turned there were conflict and uproar.
+Everywhere contrary ideas, interests, institutions, tendencies, were
+colliding with inextinguishable rage. All the opposites and
+irreconcilables in a people's life had risen and clashed together in a
+death struggle for mastery. Freedom and slavery, civilization and
+barbarism had found an Armageddon in the moral consciousness of the
+Republic. Now the combatants rallied and the battle thickened at one
+point, now around another. At Washington the tide rolls in with
+resounding fury about the right of petition and the freedom of debate,
+then through the free States it surges and beats around the right of
+free speech and the freedom of the press. Storm clouds are flying from
+the East and from the West, flying out of the North and out of the
+South. Everywhere the chaos of the winds has burst, and the anarchy of
+the "live thunder."
+
+Benton with his customary optimism from a Southern standpoint, rejoiced
+in the year 1836 that the people of the Northern States had "chased off
+the foreign emissaries, silenced the gabbling tongues of female dupes,
+and dispersed the assemblies, whether fanatical, visionary, or
+incendiary, of all that congregated to preach against evils that
+afflicted others, not them, and to propose remedies to aggravate the
+disease which they pretended to cure." Calhoun's pessimism was clearer
+eyed. The great nullifier perceived at once the insuppressible nature of
+the Abolition movement and early predicted that the spirit then abroad
+in the North would not "die away of itself without a shock or
+convulsion." Yes, it was as he had prophesied, the anti-slavery reform
+was, at the very moment of Benton's groundless jubilation, rising and
+spreading with astonishing progress through the free States. It was
+gaining footholds in the pulpit, the school, and the press. It was a
+stalwart sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over the fields of the
+then coming generation truths and antipathies of social principles,
+which were to make peace impossible between the slave-holding and the
+non-slave-holding halves of the Union.
+
+In the year 1836 the anti-slavery leaven or residuum for instance, was
+sufficiently potent to preserve the statutes of the free States, free
+from repressive laws directed against the Abolitionists. This was much
+but there was undoubtedly another phase of the agitation, a phase which
+struck the shallow eye of Benton, and led him into false conclusions. It
+was not clear sailing for the reform. It was truly a period of stress
+and storm. Sometimes the reform was in a trough of the sea of public
+opinion, sometimes on the crest of a billow, and then again on the bosom
+of a giant ground swell. In Boston in this selfsame year which witnessed
+Benton's exultation over the fall of Abolitionism, the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society was not able to obtain the use of hall or church
+for its annual meeting, and was in consequence forced into insufficient
+accommodations at its rooms on Washington street. The succeeding year
+the society was obliged, from inability to obtain the use of either hall
+or church in the city, to occupy for its annual meeting the loft over
+the stable connected with the Marlborough Hotel. It is a long way from
+this rude meeting-house to the hall of the House of Representatives, but
+in this storm and stress period the distance was traversed in a few
+brief hours. The society applied in its exigency for the use of the hall
+for an evening meeting, and the application was granted by the members.
+It was a _jeu d'esprit_ of Henry B. Stanton, "That when Boston votes we
+go into a stable, but when the State votes we go into the State House."
+It was even so, for the incident served to reveal what was true
+everywhere through the free States that the anti-slavery reform was
+making fastest progress among people away from the great centres of
+population. It found ready access to the simple American folk in
+villages, in the smaller towns, and in the rural districts of New
+England and the North. And already from these independent and
+uncorrupted sons and daughters of freedom had started the deep ground
+swell which was to lift the level of Northern public opinion on the
+question of slavery.
+
+This Walpurgis period of the movement culminated on November 7, 1837, in
+a terrible tragedy. The place was a little Illinois town, Alton, just
+over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, and the victim was Elijah P.
+Lovejoy. He was a minister of the Presbyterian Church, and the editor of
+a weekly religious newspaper, first published in St. Louis and removed
+by him later to Alton. His sin was that he did not hold his peace on the
+subject of slavery in the columns of his paper. He was warned "to pass
+over in silence everything connected" with that question. But he had no
+choice, he had to cry aloud against iniquities, which, as a Christian
+minister and a Christian editor, he dared not ignore. His troubles with
+the people of St. Louis took in the spring of 1836 a sanguinary turn,
+when he denounced the lynching of a negro by a St. Louis mob,
+perpetrated under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. In consequence of
+his outspoken condemnation of the horror, his office was broken into and
+destroyed by a mob. Lovejoy thereupon removed his paper to Alton, but
+the wild-cat-like spirit pursued him across the river and destroyed his
+press. He replaced his broken press with a new one, only to have his
+property a second time destroyed. He replaced the second with a third
+press, but a third time the mob destroyed his property. Then he bought a
+fourth press, and resolved to defend it with his life. Pierced by
+bullets he fell, resisting the attack of a mob bent on the destruction
+of his rights. Lovejoy died a martyr to free speech and the freedom of
+the press.
+
+The tidings of this tragedy stirred the free States to unwonted depths.
+The murder of an able and singularly noble man by a mob was indeed
+horrible enough, but the blow which took his life was aimed at the right
+of free speech and the freedom of the press. He was struck down in the
+exercise of his liberties as a citizen of the town where he met death,
+and of the State and country to which he belonged. What brave man and
+good in the North who might not meet a similar fate for daring to
+denounce evils approved by the community in which his lot was cast? Who
+was safe? Whose turn would it be next to pay with his life for attempts
+to vindicate the birthright of his citizenship? What had Lovejoy done,
+what had he written, that thousands of people who did not agree with
+Garrison would not have done and have written under like circumstances?
+He was not a disciple of Garrison, he did not accept the doctrine of
+immediate emancipation, and yet a pro-slavery mob had murdered him. Yes,
+who was safe? Who was to be the next? A great horror transfixed the
+North, and bitter uncertainty, and tremendous dread of approaching
+perils to its liberties.
+
+Ah! had not Garrison spoken much plain truth at the public hearing of
+the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society before the insolent chairman and
+his committee when he said: "The liberties of the people of the free
+States are identified with those of the slave population. If it were not
+so, there would be no hope, in my breast, of peaceful deliverance of the
+latter class from their bondage. Our liberties are bound together by a
+ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese twins. The blow which
+cuts them asunder, will inevitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of
+speech and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and the nation itself
+will be in bondage; let it remain untrammeled, and Southern slavery must
+speedily come to an end." The tragedy at Alton afforded startling
+illustration of the soundness of this remark. Classes like individuals
+gain wisdom only by experience; and the murder of Lovejoy was one of
+those terrific experiences which furrow themselves in the soul of a
+people in frightful memories and apprehensions which do not disappear
+but remain after long lapse of years.
+
+Twelve days after the murder--it was before the development of the
+telegraph and rapid postal facilities--the news reached Boston. It
+produced the most profound sensation. Many of the leading citizens felt
+straightway that if the rights assailed in the person of Lovejoy were to
+be preserved to themselves and their section, immediate action was
+required. A great meeting was proposed, and Faneuil Hall applied for.
+The application was denied by the municipal authorities on the plea that
+its use for such a purpose might provoke a mob. The city was, however,
+dealing now not with the despised Abolitionists, but with men of
+property and standing in the community and was soon brought to its
+senses by the indignant eloquence of Dr. Channing, appealing to the
+better self of Boston in this strain: "Has it come to this? Has Boston
+fallen so low? May not its citizens be trusted to come together to
+express the great principles of liberty for which their forefathers
+died? Are our fellow-citizens to be murdered in the act of defending
+their property and of assuming the right of free discussion? And is it
+unsafe in this metropolis to express abhorrence of the deed?"
+
+A second application for the hall was granted, and a meeting, which is
+an historical event in the annals of the old town, was held December 8,
+1837--a meeting memorable as an uprising, not of the Abolitionists, but
+of the conservatism and respectability of the city in behalf of the
+outraged liberties of white men. Ever memorable, too, for that marvelous
+speech of Wendell Phillips, which placed him instantly in the front rank
+of minds with a genius for eloquence, lifted him at once as an
+anti-slavery instrument and leader close beside William Lloyd Garrison.
+The wild-cat-like spirit which had hunted Thompson out of the country
+and Lovejoy to death, had more than made good the immense deficit of
+services thus created through the introduction upon the national stage
+of the reform of this consummate and incomparable orator.
+
+The assassination of Lovejoy was an imposing object lesson to the North,
+but it was not the last. Other and terrible illustrations of the triumph
+of mobs followed it, notably the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in
+Philadelphia on the evening of May 17, 1838. As the murder of Lovejoy
+formed the culmination of outrages directed against the rights of
+person, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall furnished the climax of
+outrages committed against the rights of property. The friends of the
+slave and of free discussion in Philadelphia feeling the need of a place
+where they might assemble for the exercise of the right of free speech
+in a city which denied to them the use of its halls and meeting-houses,
+determined to erect for themselves such a place. At a cost of forty
+thousand dollars they built Pennsylvania Hall and devoted it to "Free
+Discussion, Virtue, Liberty, and Independence."
+
+Two days after the dedicatory exercises were had the hall was occupied
+by the annual convention of American Anti-Slavery Women. On the evening
+of May 16th, Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman, Angelina Grimke Weld and
+others addressed the convention in the new temple of freedom. The scenes
+of that evening have been graphically described by the first speaker as
+follows: "The floor of the hall was densely crowded with women, some of
+the noblest specimens of our race, a large proportion of whom were
+Quakers. The side aisles and spacious galleries were as thickly filled
+with men. Nearly three thousand people were in the hall. There seemed to
+be no visible symptoms of a riot. When I rose to speak I was greeted
+with applause by the immense assembly, and also several times in the
+course of my remarks. As soon, however, as I had concluded my address, a
+furious mob broke into the hall, yelling and shouting as if the very
+fiends of the pit had suddenly broken loose. The audience rose in some
+confusion, and would undoubtedly have been broken up, had it not been
+for the admirable self-possession of some individuals, particularly the
+women. The mobocrats finding that they could not succeed in their
+purpose, retreated into the streets, and, surrounding the building,
+began to dash in the windows with stones and brick-bats. It was under
+these appalling circumstances that Mrs. Chapman rose for the first time
+in her life, to address a promiscuous assembly of men and women--and she
+acquitted herself nobly. She spoke about ten minutes, and was succeeded
+by A.E.G. Weld, who occupied nearly an hour. As the tumult from without
+increased, and the brick-bats fell thick and fast (no one, however,
+being injured) her eloquence kindled, her eye flashed, and her cheeks
+glowed, as she devoutly thanked the Lord that the stupid repose of that
+city had at length been disturbed by the force of truth. When she sat
+down, Esther Moore (a Friend) made a few remarks, then Lucretia Mott,
+and finally Abby Kelley, a noble young woman from Lynn.
+
+"The meeting broke up about 10 o'clock, and we all got safely home. The
+next day the street was thronged with profane ruffians and curious
+spectators--the women, however, holding their meetings in the hall all
+day, till towards evening. It was given out by the mob that the hall
+would be burnt to the ground that night. We were to have a meeting in
+the evening, but it was impossible to execute our purpose. The mayor
+induced the manager to give the keys of the building into his hands. He
+then locked the doors, and made a brief speech to the mob, assuring them
+that he had the keys, and that there would be no meeting, and requesting
+them to retire. He then went home, but the mob were bent on the
+destruction of the hall. They had now increased to several thousands,
+and soon got into the hall by dashing open the doors with their axes.
+They then set fire to this huge building, and in the course of an hour
+it was a solid mass of flame. The bells of the city were rung, and
+several engines rallied; but no water was permitted to be thrown upon
+the building. The light of the fire must have been seen a great
+distance."
+
+At midnight Garrison was spirited out of the city, and conveyed in a
+covered carriage by a friend to Bristol, about twenty miles, where in
+the morning he took the steamboat for Boston. The light of that fire was
+visible a great distance in more senses than one. The burning of
+Pennsylvania Hall proved a public enlightener. After that occurrence the
+gentlemen of property scattered through the free States devoted
+themselves less to the violent suppression of Abolitionism and more to
+the forcible suppression, upon occasion, of the alarming manifestations
+of popular lawlessness, which found significant demonstration just a
+week later in the city of Boston.
+
+Mr. Garrison has preserved for us an instructive account of this affair,
+too, and here is the story as told by him to his brother-in-law, George
+W. Benson, in a letter dated May 25th: "The spirit of mobocracy, like
+the pestilence, is contagious; and Boston is once more ready to reenact
+the riotous scenes of 1835. The Marlboro' Chapel, having just been
+completed, and standing in relation to our cause just as did
+Pennsylvania Hall, is an object of pro-slavery malevolence. Ever since
+my return, threats have been given out that the chapel should share the
+fate of the hall. Last evening was the time for its dedication; and, so
+threatening was the aspect of things, four companies of light infantry
+were ordered to be in readiness, each being provided with 100 _ball_
+cartridges, to rush to the scene of riot on the tolling of the bells.
+The Lancers, a powerful body of horsemen, were also in readiness. During
+the day placards were posted at the corners of the streets, denouncing
+the Abolitionists, and calling upon the citizens to rally at the chapel
+in the evening, in order to put them down. An immense concourse of
+people assembled, a large proportion doubtless from motives of
+curiosity, and not a few of them with evil designs; but owing to the
+strong military preparations, the multitude refrained entirely from any
+overt acts of violence. They did not disperse till after 10 o'clock, and
+during the evening shouted and yelled like a troop of wild savages. Some
+ten or twelve were seized and carried to the watch-house, and this
+morning fined for their disorderly conduct."
+
+The frightful excesses of the Walpurgis period of the agitation reacted
+through the free States to an extraordinary extent in favor of
+Abolition. The greater the horror committed by the wild-cat-like spirit,
+the greater the help which the reform derived therefrom. The destruction
+of property, and the destruction of life instead of putting down the
+hated Abolitionists aroused in the public mind apprehensions and
+antagonisms in respect of mobs, which proved, immediately and
+ultimately, of immense advantage to freedom. This revulsion on the part
+of the North from lawless attempts to abolish Abolitionism, affected
+almost unavoidably, and in the beginning of it almost unconsciously, the
+friendly dispositions of that section toward slavery, the root and
+mainspring of these attempts. Blows aimed at the agent were sure,
+regardless of the actor's intention, to glance and strike the principal.
+In spite of mobs then, and to a remarkable degree because of mobs,
+Abolitionism had become a powerful motor in revolutionizing public
+opinion in the free States on the subject of slavery.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+
+BROTHERLY LOVE FAILS, AND IDEAS ABOUND.
+
+
+During those strenuous, unresting years, included between 1829 and 1836,
+Garrison had leaned on his health as upon a strong staff. It sustained
+him without a break through that period, great as was the strain to
+which it was subjected. But early in the latter year the prop gave way,
+and the pioneer was prostrated by a severe fit of sickness. It lasted
+off and on for quite two years. His activity the first year was
+seriously crippled, though at no time, owing to his indomitable will,
+could he be said to have been rendered completely _hors de combat_.
+Almost the whole of 1836 he spent with his wife's family in Brooklyn,
+where his first child was born. This new mouth brought with it fresh
+cares of a domestic character. He experienced losses also. Death removed
+his aged father-in-law in the last month of 1836, and four weeks later
+Henry E. Benson, his brother-in-law. Their taking off was a sad blow to
+the reformer and to the reform. That of the younger man cast a gloom
+over anti-slavery circles in New England; for at the time of his death
+he was the secretary and general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and
+although not twenty-three, had displayed uncommon capacity for affairs.
+The business ability which he brought into his office was of the
+greatest value where there was such a distinct deficiency in that
+respect among his coadjutors, and the loss of it seemed irreparable.
+
+Afflicted as he was, the leader was nevertheless cheered by the
+extraordinary progress of the movement started by him. The growth and
+activity of Abolitionism were indeed altogether phenomenal. In February,
+1837, Ellis Gray Loring estimated that there were then eight hundred
+anti-slavery societies in the United States, that an anti-slavery
+society had been formed in the North every day for the last two years,
+and that in the single State of Ohio there were three hundred societies,
+one of which had a membership of four thousand names. The moral
+agitation was at its height. The National Society had hit upon a capital
+device for increasing the effectiveness of its agents and lecturers.
+This was to bring them together in New York for a few weeks' study of
+the slavery question under the direction of such masters as Theodore D.
+Weld, Beriah Green, Charles Stuart, and others. All possible phases of
+the great subject, such as, What is slavery? What is immediate
+emancipation? The consequences of emancipation to the South, etc., etc.,
+pro-slavery objections and arguments were stated and answered. The
+agents and lecturers went forth from the convention bristling with
+facts, and glowing with enthusiasm to renew the crusade against slavery.
+Garrison, broken in health as he was, went on from Boston to attend this
+school of his disciples. He spoke briefly but repeatedly to them upon
+the all-absorbing topic which had brought them together. "It was a happy
+circumstance, too," he wrote, "that I was present with them, and that
+they had an opportunity to become _personally_ acquainted with me; for,
+as I am a great stumbling-block in the way of the people, or, rather, of
+some people, it would be somewhat disastrous to our cause if any of our
+agents, through the influence of popular sentiment, should be led to
+cherish prejudices against me."
+
+In February, 1837, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society came to the
+rescue of the _Liberator_ from its financial embarrassments and
+hand-to-mouth existence by assuming the responsibility of its
+publication. The arrangement did not in any respect compromise Mr.
+Garrison's editorial independence, but lifted from him and his friend
+Knapp in his own language, "a heavy burden, which has long crushed us to
+the earth." The arrangement, nevertheless, continued but a year when it
+was voluntarily set aside by Mr. Garrison for causes of which we must
+now give an account.
+
+In the letter from which we have quoted above, touching his visit to the
+Convention of Anti-Slavery Agents, Garrison alludes to one of these
+causes. He says: "I was most kindly received by all, and treated as a
+brother, notwithstanding the wide difference of opinion between us on
+some religious points, _especially the Sabbath question_." The italics
+are our own. Until within a few years he had been one of the strictest
+of Sabbath observers. Although never formally connected with any church,
+he had been a narrow and even an intolerant believer in the creed and
+observances of New England orthodoxy. Words failed him in 1828 to
+express his abhorrence of a meeting of professed infidels: "It is
+impossible," he exclaimed with the ardor of a bigot, "to estimate the
+depravity and wickedness of those who, at the present day, reject the
+Gospel of Jesus Christ," etc. A year and a half later while editing the
+_Genius_ in Baltimore, he held uncompromisingly to the stern Sabbatical
+notions of the Puritans. A fete given to Lafayette in France on Sunday
+seemed to him an act of sheer religious desecration. The carrying of
+passengers and the mails on the Sabbath provoked his energetic
+reprobation. He was in all points of New England Puritanism, orthodox of
+the orthodox.
+
+Subsequently he began to see things in a different light. As the area of
+his experience extended it came to him that living was more than
+believing, that it was not every one who professed faith in Jesus had
+love for him in the heart; and that there were many whom his own
+illiberalism had rated as depraved and wicked on mere points of
+doctrine, who, nevertheless, shamed by the blamelessness and nobility of
+their conduct multitudes of ardent Christians of the lip-service sort.
+Indeed this contradiction between creed and conduct struck him with
+considerable force in the midst of his harsh judgments against unbelief
+and unbelievers. "There are, in fact," he had remarked a year or two
+after he had attained his majority, "few _reasoning_ Christians; the
+majority of them are swayed more by the usages of the world than by any
+definite perception of what constitutes duty--so far, we mean, as
+relates to the subjugation of vices which are incorporated, as it were,
+into the existence of society; else why is it that intemperance, and
+slavery, and war, have not ere this in a measure been driven from our
+land?"
+
+As the months of his earnest young life passed him by, they showed him
+as they went how horrible a thing was faith without works. "By their
+fruits ye shall know them," the Master had said, and more and more as he
+saw how many and great were the social evils to be reformed, and in what
+dire need stood his country of righteous action, did he come to put
+increasing emphasis on conduct, as the one thing needful to rid the land
+of the triple curse of slavery, intemperance, and war. As he mused upon
+these giant evils, and the desolation which they were singly and
+together causing in the world, and upon the universal apathy of the
+churches in respect of them, it seemed to him that the current religion
+was an offence and an abomination. And in his prophetic rage he
+denounced it as "a religion which quadrates with the natural depravity
+of the heart, giving license to sin, restraining no lust, mortifying not
+the body, engendering selfishness, and cruelty!--a religion which walks
+in silver slippers, on a carpeted floor, having thrown off the burden of
+the cross and changed the garments of humiliation for the splendid
+vestments of pride! a religion which has no courage, no faithfulness, no
+self-denial, deeming it better to give heed unto men than unto God!"
+This was in the autumn of 1829, but though he was thus violently
+denunciatory of contemporary religion, the severity of his judgment
+against the skepticism of the times had not been materially modified. He
+still regarded the unbeliever with narrow distrust and dislike. When,
+after his discharge from Baltimore jail, he was engaged in delivering
+his message on the subject of slavery, and was seeking an opportunity to
+make what he knew known to the people of Boston, he was forced, after
+vainly advertising for a hall or meeting-house in which to give his
+three lectures, to accept the offer of Abner Kneeland's Society of
+Infidels of the use of their hall for that purpose. The spirit of these
+people, branded by the community as blasphemers, and by himself, too, in
+all probability, Garrison saw to be as admirable as the spirit displayed
+by the churches of the city toward him and his cause was unworthy and
+sinful. But, grateful as he was for the hospitality of the infidels, he,
+nevertheless, rather bluntly informed them that he had no sympathy with
+their religious notions, and that he looked for the abolition of slavery
+to evangelicism, and to it alone.
+
+A few years in the university of experience, where he learned that
+conduct is better than creeds, and living more than believing, served to
+emancipate him from illiberal prejudices and narrow sectarianism. He
+came to see, "that in Christ Jesus all stated observances are so many
+self-imposed and unnecessary yokes; and that prayer and worship are all
+embodied in that pure, meek, child-like state of heart which
+affectionately and reverently breathes but one petition--'Thy will be
+done on earth as it is in heaven.' Religion ... is nothing but
+love--perfect love toward God and toward man--without formality, without
+hypocrisy, without partiality--depending upon no outward form to
+preserve its vitality or prove its existence."
+
+This important change in Mr. Garrison's religious convictions became
+widely known in the summer of 1836 through certain editorial strictures
+of his upon a speech of Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Pittsburgh, on the subject
+of the Sabbath. The good doctor was cold enough on the question of
+slavery, which involved not only the desecration of the Sabbath, but of
+the souls and bodies of millions of human beings. If Christianity was
+truly of divine origin, and Garrison devoutly believed that it was, it
+would approve its divinity by its manner of dealing with the vices and
+evils which were dragging and chaining the feet of men to the gates of
+hell. If it parleyed with iniquity, if it passed its victims by on the
+other side, if it did not war incessantly and energetically to put down
+sin, to destroy wickedness, it was of the earth, earthy, and its
+expounders were dumb dogs where they should bark the loudest and bite
+the hardest; and Dr. Beecher appeared to him one of these dumb dogs,
+who, when he opened his mouth at all, was almost sure to open it at the
+men who were trying through evil report and good to express in their
+lives the spirit of Him who so loved the world that He gave His Son to
+die to redeem it. He bayed loud enough at the Abolitionists but not at
+the abomination which they were attacking. He was content to leave it to
+the tender mercies of two hundred years. No such liberal disposition of
+the question of the Sabbath was he willing to allow. He waxed eloquent
+in its behalf. His enthusiasm took to itself wings and made a great
+display of ecclesiastical zeal beautiful to behold. "The Sabbath," quoth
+the teacher who endeavored to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on
+the subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his prophetic soul
+quiescently committed to the operation of two centuries; "the Sabbath,"
+quoth he, "is the _great sun of the moral world_." Out upon you, said
+Garrison, the LORD GOD is the _great sun of the moral world_, not the
+Sabbath. It is not one, but every day of the week which is His, and
+which men should be taught to observe as holy days. It is not regard for
+the forms of religion but for the spirit, which is essential to
+righteousness. What is the command, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it
+holy,' but one of ten commandments? Is the violation of the fourth any
+worse than the violation of the third or fifth, or sixth? Nowhere is it
+so taught in the Bible. Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and treading
+down of the whole ten, what but a vast system of adultery, robbery, and
+murder, the daily and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone
+of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?
+
+Mr. Garrison then passed to criticisms of a more special character
+touching the observance of the day thus: "These remarks are made not to
+encourage men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious
+and superstitious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that
+extraordinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon
+certain transgressors (of the Sabbath particularly and almost
+exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the
+prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious
+observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must
+necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its
+sanctity." This pious but rational handling of the Sabbath question gave
+instant offence to the orthodox readers of the _Liberator_. For it was
+enough in those days to convict the editor of rank heresy. From one and
+another of his subscribers remonstrances came pouring in upon him. A
+young theological student at Yale ordered his paper stopped in
+consequence of the anti-Sabbatarian views of the editor. A Unitarian
+minister at Harvard, Mass., was greatly cut up by reason thereof, and
+suddenly saw what before he did not suspect. "I had supposed you," he
+wrote in his new estate, "a very pious person, and that a large
+proportion of the Abolitionists were religious persons.... I have
+thought of you as another Wilberforce--but would Wilberforce have spoken
+thus of the day on which the Son of God rose from the dead?" Garrison's
+query in reply--"Would Wilberforce have denied the identity of Christ
+with the Father?"--was a palpable hit. But as he himself justly
+remarked, "Such questions are not arguments, but fallacies unworthy of a
+liberal mind." Nevertheless, so long as men are attached to the leading
+strings of sentiment rather than to those of reason, such questions will
+possess tremendous destructive force, as Mr. Garrison, in his own case,
+presently perceived. He understood the importance of not arousing
+against him "denominational feelings or peculiarities," and so had
+steered the _Liberator_ clear of the rocks of sectarianism. But when he
+took up in its columns the Sabbath question he ran his paper directly
+among the breakers of a religious controversy. He saw how it was with
+him at once, saw that he had stirred up against him all that religious
+feeling which was crystallized around the first day of the week, and
+that he could not hope to escape without serious losses in one way or
+another. "It is pretty certain," he writes Samuel J. May in September,
+1836, "that the _Liberator_ will sustain a serious loss in its
+subscriptions at the close of the present volume; and all appeals for
+aid in its behalf will be less likely to prevail than formerly. I am
+conscious that a mighty sectarian conspiracy is forming to crush me, and
+it will probably succeed to some extent."
+
+This controversy over the Sabbath proved the thin edge of differences
+and dissensions, which, as they went deeper and deeper, were finally to
+rend asunder the erstwhile united Abolition movement. The period was
+remarkable for the variety and force of new ideas, which were coming
+into being, or passing into general circulation. And to all of them it
+seems that Garrison was peculiarly receptive. He took them all in and
+planted them in soil of extraordinary fertility. It was immediately
+observed that it was not only one unpopular notion which he had adopted,
+but a whole headful of them. And every one of these new ideas was a sort
+of rebel-reformer, a genuine man of war. They had come as a protest
+against the then existing beliefs and order of things, come as their
+enemies and destroyers. Each one of them was in a sense a stirrer-up of
+sedition against old and regnant relations and facts, political, moral,
+and religious. Whoever espoused them as his own, espoused as his own
+also the antagonisms, political, moral, and religious which they would
+excite in the public mind. All of which was directly illustrated in the
+experience of the editor of the _Liberator_. Each of these new notions
+presently appeared in the paper along with Abolitionism. What was his
+intention timid people began to inquire? Did he design to carry them
+along with the Abolition movement? Suspicious minds fancied they saw "in
+Mr. Garrison, a decided wish, nay, a firm resolve, in laboring to
+overthrow slavery, to overthrow the Christian Sabbath and the Christian
+ministry. His doctrine is that every day is a Sabbath, and every man his
+own minister. There are no Christian ordinances, there is no visible
+church." His no-government and non-resistant ideas excited yet further
+the apprehensions of some of his associates for the safety of that
+portion of the present order to which they clung. As developed by
+Garrison they seemed to deny the right of the people "to frame a
+government of laws to protect themselves against those who would injure
+them, and that man can apply physical force to man rightfully under no
+circumstances, and not even the parent can apply the rod to the child,
+and not be, in the sight of God, a trespasser and a tyrant."
+
+Garrison embraced besides Perfectionism, a sort of political, moral, and
+religious Come-outerism, and faith in "universal emancipation from sin."
+His description of himself about this time as "an Ishmaelitish editor"
+is not bad, nor his quotation of "Woe is me my mother! for I was born a
+man of strife" as applicable to the growing belligerency of his
+relations with the anti-slavery brethren in consequence of the new ideas
+and isms, which were taking possession of his mind and occupying the
+columns of the _Liberator_.
+
+Among the strife-producers during this period of the anti-slavery
+agitation, the woman's question played a principal part. Upon this as
+upon the Sabbath question, Garrison's early position was one of extreme
+conservatism. As late as 1830, he shared the common opinions in regard
+to woman's sphere, and was strongly opposed to her stepping outside of
+it into that occupied by man. A petition of seven hundred women of
+Pittsburgh, Pa., to Congress in behalf of the Indians gave his masculine
+prejudices a great shock. "This is, in our opinion," he declared, "an
+uncalled for interference, though made with holiest intentions. We
+should be sorry to have this practice become general. There would then
+be no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and
+contrariant opinions of the softer sex." This top-lofty sentiment
+accorded well with the customary assumption and swagger of one of the
+lords of creation. For the young reformer was evidently a firm believer
+in the divine right of his sex to rule in the world of politics. But as
+he grew taller and broader the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere
+embraced every duty, responsibility, and right for which her gifts and
+education fitted her. The hard and fast lines of sex disappeared from
+his geography of the soul. He perceived for a truth that in humanity
+there was neither male nor female, but that man and woman were one in
+work and destiny--equals in bearing the world's burden, equals in
+building the world's glory. He heard in his heart the injunction of the
+eternal wisdom saying: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put
+asunder;" and straightway disposed his opinions and prejudices, his
+thoughts and purposes in cordial obedience therewith. He saw at once the
+immense value of woman's influence in the temperance movement, he saw no
+less quickly her importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had
+appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she had justified his
+appeal and proven herself the most devoted of coadjutors.
+
+In the beginning of the movement against slavery the line of demarcation
+between the sexes was strictly observed in the formation of societies.
+The men had theirs, the women theirs. Each, sexually considered, were
+very exclusive affairs. It did not seem to have occurred to the founders
+of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, or of the national organization
+to admit women to membership in them, nor did it seem to enter the mind
+of any woman to prefer a request to be admitted into them. Anti-slavery
+women organized themselves into female anti-slavery societies, did their
+work apart from the men, who plainly regarded themselves as the
+principals in the contest, and women as their moral seconds. The first
+shock, which this arrangement, so accordant with the oak-and-ivy notion
+of the masculine half of mankind, received, came when representatives of
+the gentler sex dropped the secondary role assigned women in the
+conflict, and began to enact that of a star. The advent of the sisters
+Grimke upon the anti-slavery stage as public speakers, marked the advent
+of the idea of women's rights, of their equality with men in the
+struggle with slavery.
+
+At the start these ladies delivered their message to women only, but
+by-and-bye as the fame of their eloquence spread men began to appear
+among their auditories. Soon they were thrilling packed halls and
+meeting-houses in different parts of the country, comprised of men and
+women. The lesson which their triumph enforced of women's fitness to
+enact the role of principals in the conflict with slavery was not lost
+upon the sex. Women went, saw, and conquered their prejudices against
+the idea of equality; likewise, many men. The good seed of universal
+liberty and equality fell into fruitful soil and germinated in due time
+within the heart of the moral movement against slavery.
+
+The more that Sarah and Angelina Grimke reflected upon the sorry
+position to which men had assigned women in Church and State the more
+keenly did they feel its injustice and degradation. They beat with their
+revolutionary idea of equality against the iron bars of the cage-like
+sphere in which they were born, and within which they were doomed to
+live and die by the law of masculine might. At heart they were rebels
+against the foundation principle of masculine supremacy on which society
+and government rested. While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the
+sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters rose up before them
+and revealed itself in bitter questionings. "Are we aliens," asked
+Angelina, "because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we
+are the _mothers, wives, and daughters_ of a mighty people? Have _women_
+no country--no interests staked on the public weal--no partnership in a
+nation's guilt or shame?" This discontent with the existing social
+establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic responses
+from many friends to whom the sisters communicated the contagion of
+their unrest and dissatisfaction. Angelina records that, "At friend
+Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the
+brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment
+prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken. L.M. Child and Maria
+Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed very many seem to think a
+new order of things is very desirable in this respect."
+
+This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women's rights, which
+Angelina observed in Mrs. Chapman's parlors possessed no general
+significence. For true to the character of new ideas, this particular
+new idea did not bring peace but a sword. It set Abolition brethren
+against Abolition brethren, and blew into a flame the differences of
+leaders among themselves. But the first irruption of strife which it
+caused proceeded from without, came from the church or rather from the
+clergy of the Orthodox Congregational churches of Massachusetts. This
+clerical opposition to the idea of women's rights found expression in
+the celebrated "Pastoral Letter," issued by the General Association of
+Ministers of that denomination to the churches of the same in the summer
+of 1837. This ecclesiastical bull had two distinct purposes to
+accomplish; first, to discourage the agitation of the slavery question
+by excluding anti-slavery agents from lecturing upon that subject in the
+churches; and, second, to suppress the agitation of the woman's question
+by setting the seal of the disapproval of the clergy to the appearance
+of women in their new and revolutionary role of public speakers and
+teachers on the burning subjects of the times. The reverend authors
+threw up their hands and eyes in holy horror at the "widespread and
+permanent injury" which seemed to them to threaten "the female
+character." They scorned the new-fangled notion of woman's independence,
+and asked for nothing better than the Pauline definition of her
+"appropriate duties and influence." "The power of women," quoth they,
+"is in her dependence.... When she assumes the place and tone of man as
+a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we
+put ourselves in self-defence against her, she yields the power which
+God has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural!"
+
+These Congregational ministers were not the only representatives of the
+lordly sex to whom the idea of women's equality was repellent.
+Anti-slavery brethren, too, were flinging themselves into all postures
+of self-defence against the dangerous innovation, which the sisters
+Grimke were letting into the social establishment, by itinerating "in
+the character of public lecturers and teachers." Amos A. Phelps was
+quite as strongly opposed to women preachers, to women assuming the
+"place and tone of man as a public reformer," as Nehemiah Adams himself.
+He remonstrated, with them against their continued assumption of the
+character of public lecturers and teachers, but to no purpose. Sarah and
+Angelina were uncompromising, refused to yield one iota of their rights
+as "moral and responsible beings." They firmly declined to make their
+Quakerism and not their womenhood their warrant for "exercising the
+rights and performing the duties" of rational and responsible beings,
+for the sake of quieting tender consciences, like that of Phelps, among
+the anti-slavery brethren. They were in earnest and demanded to know
+"whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and
+female duties." Angelina writes: "My opinion is that there is no
+difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin
+over the whole field of morality. My idea is that whatever is morally
+right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no
+rights but human rights.... I am persuaded that woman is not to be, as
+she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen
+world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this
+glorious work."
+
+The debate on the subject threatened for a short season to push the
+woman's question to the level of the slavery question. The contention
+became acrimonious, and the alienation of friendships was widespread.
+John G. Whittier and Theodore D. Weld, who were both avowed believers in
+the idea of women's rights, nevertheless, felt that the agitation of the
+subject, under the circumstances, was a grave blunder. "No moral
+enterprise, when prosecuted with ability and any sort of energy, _ever_
+failed under heaven," wrote Weld to Sarah and Angelina, "so long as its
+conductors pushed the _main_ principle, and did not strike off until
+they reached the summit level. On the other hand, every reform that ever
+foundered in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty side-winds."
+Both Weld and Whittier endeavored to dissuade the sisters from mooting
+the question of women's rights at all, and to urge them to devote their
+voice and pen to the "_main_ principle" exclusively. But Angelina
+confesses that "our judgment is not convinced, and we hardly know what
+to do about it, for we have just as high an opinion of Brother
+Garrison's views, and _he_ says '_go on_.'" The influence of Weld and
+Whittier finally prevailed with "Carolina's high-souled daughters," and
+they refrained from further agitation of the subject of Women's rights
+lest they should thereby injure the cause of the slave.
+
+But the leaven of equality was not so effectually disposed of. It had
+secured permanent lodgment in the anti-slavery body, and the
+fermentation started by it, went briskly on. Such progress did the
+principle of women's rights make among the Eastern Abolitionists,
+especially among those of Massachusetts, that in the spring of 1838 the
+New England Anti-Slavery Society voted to admit women to equal
+membership with men. This radical action was followed by a clerical
+secession from the society, which made a stir at the time. For among the
+seceding members was no less a personage than Amos A. Phelps, who was
+the general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and therefore one of
+Garrison's stanchest supporters. The reform instituted by the New
+England Society, in respect of the character of its membership, was
+quickly adopted by the Massachusetts Society and by several local
+organizations, all of which set the ball of discord spinning among the
+brethren at a great rate. But by this time all the new ideas,
+Sabbatical, no-government, perfectionist, non-resistance, as well as
+women's rights, were within the anti-slavery arena, and fencing and
+fighting for a chance to live, with the old ideas and the old order.
+
+Garrison championed all of the new ideas, and in doing so arrayed
+against himself all of the special champions of the existing
+establishments. In his reduced physical state, the reformer was not
+equal to the tremendous concussions of this "era of activity," as
+Emerson named it. At moments he appeared bewildered amid the loud,
+fierce clamor of contending ideas, each asserting in turn its moral
+primacy. For an instant the vision of the great soul grew dim, the great
+heart seemed to have lost its bearings. All of the new ideas thawed and
+melted into each other, dissolved into one vague and grand solidarity of
+reforms. The voice of the whole was urging him amid the gathering moral
+confusion to declare himself for all truth, and he hearkened irresolute,
+with divided mind. "I feel somewhat at a loss to know what to do"--he
+confesses at this juncture to George W. Benson, "whether to go into all
+the principles of holy reform and make the Abolition cause subordinate,
+or whether still to persevere in the _one_ beaten track as hitherto.
+Circumstances hereafter must determine this matter." That was written in
+August, 1837; a couple of months later circumstances had not determined
+the matter, it would seem, from the following extract from a letter to
+his brother-in-law: "It is not my intention at present to alter either
+the general character or course of the _Liberator_. My work in the
+anti-slavery cause is not wholly done; as soon as it is, I shall know
+it, and shall be prepared, I trust, to enter upon a mightier work of
+reform."
+
+Meanwhile the relations between the editor of the _Liberator_ and the
+managers of the national organization were becoming decidedly strained.
+For it seemed to them that Garrison had changed the anti-slavery
+character of his paper by the course which he had taken in regard to the
+new ideas which were finding their way into its columns to the manifest
+harm of the main principle of immediate emancipation. This incipient
+estrangement between the pioneer and the executive committee of the
+national society was greatly aggravated by an occurrence, which, at the
+time, was elevated to an importance that it did not deserve. This
+occurrence was what is known in anti-slavery annals as the "Clerical
+Appeal." Five clergymen, who were obviously unfriendly to Garrison, and
+distrustful of the religious and social heresies which they either saw
+or fancied that they saw in the _Liberator_, and withal jealous lest the
+severities of the paper against particular pro-slavery ministers should
+diminish the influence and sacred character of their order, published,
+in August of 1837, in the _New England Spectator_ an acrid arraignment
+of editor and paper, upon five several charges, designed to bring
+Garrisonism to the block and speedy death. This document was followed by
+two other appeals by way of supplement and rejoinder from the same
+source, an "Andover Appeal" from kindred spirits and a bitter, personal
+letter from one of the "seventy agents," all of them having a common
+motive and purpose, viz., sectarian distrust and dislike of Garrison,
+and desire to reduce his anti-slavery influence to a nullity.
+
+In his diseased and suffering bodily condition, Garrison naturally
+enough fell into the error of exaggerating the gravity of these attacks
+upon himself. Insignificant in an historical sense, they really were an
+episode, an unpleasant one to be sure for the time being, but no more.
+To Garrison, however, they appeared in a wholly different light. It
+seemed a rebellion on a pretty grand scale, which called for all his
+strength, all the batteries of the friends of freedom, all his terrible
+and unsparing severities of speech to quell it. All his artillery he
+posted promptly in positions commanding the camp of the mutineers, and
+began to pour, as only he could, broadside after broadside into the
+works of the wretched little camp of rebels. He could hardly have
+expended more energy and ammunition in attacking a strategical point of
+Southern slavery, than was expended in punishing a handful of deserters
+and insurgents. But, alas! he was not satisfied to draw upon his own
+resources for crushing the clerical sedition, he demanded reinforcements
+from the central authorities in New York as well. And then began a
+contention between him and the Executive Committee of the National
+Society, which issued only in ill.
+
+Garrison considered it the duty of the Executive Committee to disapprove
+officially of the action of the Massachusetts recalcitrants, and also
+the duty of its organ, the _Emancipator_, to rebuke the authors of the
+"appeals." Not so, replied Lewis Tappan and Elizur Wright, your request
+is unreasonable. If you choose to make a mountain out of a molehill, you
+choose to make a mistake which the Executive Committee will not repeat.
+Your troubles are wholly local, of no general importance whatever.
+"What! Shall a whole army stop its aggressive movements into the
+territories of its enemies to charge bayonets on five soldiers,
+subalterns, company, or even staff officers, because they stray into a
+field to pick berries, throw stones or write an 'appeal?' To be frank
+with you we shall make bold to say that we do not approve of the appeal,
+it is very censurable, its spirit is bad, but neither do we approve of
+your action in the premises, it is also very censurable and its spirit
+is bad. What then? shall the Executive Committee condemn the authors of
+the appeal and not condemn the editor of the _Liberator_ also? If strict
+military justice were done should not both parties be cashiered? Let the
+Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood alone for the
+present." "I could have wished, yes, I have wished from the bottom of my
+soul," it is Wright who now holds the pen, "that you could conduct that
+dear paper, the _Liberator_, in the singleness of purpose of its first
+years, without traveling off from the ground of our true, noble,
+heart-stirring Declaration of Sentiments--without breathing sentiments
+which are novel and shocking to the community, and which seem to me to
+have no logical sequence from the principles on which we are associated
+as Abolitionists. I cannot but regard the taking hold of one great moral
+enterprise while another is in hand and but half achieved, as an outrage
+upon commonsense, somewhat like that of the dog crossing the river with
+his meat. But you have seen fit to introduce to the public some novel
+views--I refer especially to your sentiments on government and religious
+perfection--and they have produced the effect which was to have been
+expected. And now considering what stuff human nature is made of, is it
+to be wondered at that some honest-hearted, thorough-going Abolitionists
+should have lost their equanimity? As you well know I am comparatively
+no bigot to any creed, political or theological, yet to tell the plain
+truth, I look upon your notions of government and religious perfection
+as downright fanaticism--as harmless as they are absurd. I would not
+care a pin's head if they were preached to all Christendom; for it is
+not in the human mind (except in a peculiar and, as I think, diseased
+state) to believe them."
+
+Barring the extreme plainness of speech with which Wright and Tappan
+gave their advice to Mr. Garrison, it was in the main singularly sound
+and wise. But the pioneer did not so regard it. He was possessed with
+his idea of the importance of chastising the clerical critics, and of
+the duty of the Executive Committee and of the _Emancipator_ to back him
+in the undertaking. His temper was, under all circumstances, masterful
+and peremptory. It was never more masterful and peremptory than in its
+management of this business. The very reasonable course of the Board at
+New York suggested to his mind a predominance of "sectarianism at
+headquarters," seemed to him "criminal and extraordinary." As the
+Executive Committee and its organ would not rebuke the schismatics, he
+was moved to rebuke the Executive Committee and its organ for their
+"blind and temporizing policy." And so matters within the movement
+against slavery went, with increasing momentum, from bad to worse.
+
+The break in the anti-slavery ranks widened as new causes of controversy
+arose between the management in Boston and the management at New York.
+The Massachusetts Abolitionists had stood stanchly by Garrison against
+the clerical schismatics. They also inclined to his side in his trouble
+with the national board. Instead of one common center of activity and
+leadership the anti-slavery reform began now to develop two centers of
+activity and leadership. Garrison and the _Liberator_ formed the moral
+nucleus at one end, the Executive Committee and the _Emancipator_ the
+moral nucleus at the other. Much of the energies of the two sides were
+in those circumstances, absorbed in stimulating and completing the
+processes which were to ultimate in the organic division of the body of
+the movement against slavery. When men once begin to quarrel they will
+not stop for lack of subjects to dispute over. There will be no lack,
+for before one disputed point is settled another has arisen. It is the
+old story of the box of evils. Beginnings must be avoided, else if one
+evil escapes, others will follow. The anti-slavery Pandora had let out
+one little imp of discord and many big and little imps were
+incontinently following.
+
+Against all of the new ideas except one, viz., the idea of anti-slavery
+political action, the New York leadership, speaking broadly, had opposed
+itself. But as if by some strange perversity of fate, this particular
+new idea was the only one of the new ideas to which the Boston
+leadership did not take kindly. It became in time as the very apple of
+the eye to the management of the National Society. And the more ardently
+it was cherished by them, the more hateful did it become with the Boston
+Board. It was the only one of the new ideas which had any logical
+sequence from the Abolition cause. In a country where the principle of
+popular suffrage obtains, all successful moral movements must sometime
+ultimate in political action. There is no other way of fixing in laws
+the changes in public sentiment wrought during this period of agitation.
+The idea of political action was therefore a perfectly natural growth
+from the moral movement against slavery. The only reasonable objection
+to it would be one which went to show that it had arrived out of due
+course, that its appearance at any given time was marked by prematurity
+in respect of the reasons, so to speak, of the reform. For every
+movement against a great social wrong as was the anti-slavery movement
+must have its John-the-Baptist stage, its period of popular awakening to
+the nature and enormity of sin and the duty of immediate repentance.
+
+The anti-slavery enterprise was at the time of the controversy between
+the New York and the Boston Boards in this first stage of its growth. It
+had not yet progressed naturally out of it into its next phase of
+political agitation. True there were tendencies more or less strong to
+enter the second stage of its development, but they seem irregular,
+personal, and forced. The time had not come for the adoption of the
+principle of associated political action against slavery. But the deep
+underlying motive of the advocates of the third-party idea was none the
+less a grand one, viz., "to have a free Northern nucleus," as Elizur
+Wright put it, "a standard flung to the breeze--something around which
+to rally." Garrison probed to the quick the question in a passage of an
+address to the Abolitionists, which is here given: "Abolitionists! you
+are now feared and respected by all political parties, not because of
+the number of votes you can throw, so much as in view of the moral
+integrity and sacred regard to principle which you have exhibited to the
+country. It is the religious aspect of your enterprise which impresses
+and overawes men of every sect and party. Hitherto you have seemed to be
+actuated by no hope of preferment or love of power, and therefore have
+established, even in the minds of your enemies, confidence in your
+disinterestedness. If you shall now array yourselves as a political
+party, and hold out mercenary rewards to induce men to rally under your
+standard, there is reason to fear that you will be regarded as those who
+have made the anti-slavery cause a hobby to ride into office, however
+plausible or sound may be your pretexts for such a course. You cannot,
+you ought not, to expect that the political action of the State will
+move faster than the religious action of the Church, in favor of the
+abolition of slavery; and it is a fact not less encouraging than
+undeniable, that both the Whig and Democratic parties have consulted the
+wishes of Abolitionists even beyond the measure of their real political
+strength. More you cannot expect under any circumstances."
+
+Hotly around this point raged the strife among brethren. Actuated by the
+noblest motives were both sides in the main, yet, both sides displayed
+in the maintenance of their respective positions an amount of weak human
+nature, which proves that perfection is not attainable even by the most
+disinterested of men. Harsh and abusive language good men uttered
+against good men. Distrust, suspicion, anger, and alienation took
+possession of the thoughts of the grandest souls. Saints and heroes
+beseemed themselves like very ordinary folk, who, when they come to
+differences, come directly afterward to high words and thumping blows.
+The love of David and Jonathan which once united Garrison and Phelps,
+has died. Garrison and Stanton meet and only exchange civilities. They,
+too, have become completely alienated, and so on down the long list of
+the "goodliest fellowship ... whereof this land holds record." To a
+sweet and gentle spirit like Samuel J. May, the acrimony and scenes of
+strife among his old associates was unspeakably painful. Writing to
+Garrison from South Scituate, May 1, 1839, he touches thus upon this
+head: "I now think I shall not go to New York next week. In the first
+place, I cannot afford the expense.... But I confess, I do not lament my
+inability to go so much as I should do if the prospect of an agreeable
+meeting was fairer. I am apprehensive that it will be not so much an
+anti-slavery as anti-Garrison and anti-Phelps meeting, or
+anti-board-of-managers and anti-executive committee meeting. Division
+has done its work, I fear, effectually. The two parties seem to me to
+misunderstand, and therefore sadly misrepresent one another. I am not
+satisfied with the course you and your partisans have pursued. It
+appears to me not consistent with the non-resistant, patient,
+long-suffering spirit of the Gospel. And I do not believe that either
+the cause of the slave, or the cause of peace and righteousness has been
+advanced."
+
+The situation was further complicated by the discovery of a fresh bone
+of contention. As if to give just a shade of sordidness to the strife
+there must needs arise a money difficulty between the two rival boards
+of leaders. This is how our recent band of brothers happened to stumble
+upon their new apple of discord. Soon after the formation of the
+National Society an arrangement was made with each of the State
+societies whereby they agreed to operate financially their respective
+territories and to turn into the national treasury the several sums
+which at the annual meeting they obligated themselves to contribute to
+the general work. This arrangement was intended to avoid the expense,
+conflict, and confusion consequent upon the employment of two sets of
+agents to work the same territory. Matters went on quite smoothly under
+this plan between the Massachusetts Board and the National Board until
+the beginning of the year 1839, when the former fell into arrears in the
+payment of its instalments to the latter. Money from one cause or
+another, was hard to get at by the Massachusetts Board, and the treasury
+in New York was in an extremely low state. The relations between the two
+boards were, as we have seen, much strained and neither side was in the
+mood to cover with charity the shortcomings of the other. Perhaps the
+board at New York was too exacting, perhaps the board at Boston was not
+sufficiently zealous, under the circumstances. But what were the real
+irritating causes which kept the two boards at loggerheads over the
+matter need not here be determined. This fact is clear that the
+arrangement was rescinded by the New York management, and their agents
+thrown into Massachusetts. This action only added fuel to a fire which
+was fast assuming the proportions of a conflagration. All the
+anti-Garrisonians formed themselves into a new anti-slavery society, and
+the National Board, as if to burn its bridges, and to make
+reconciliation impossible, established a new paper in Boston in
+opposition to the _Liberator_. The work of division was ended. There was
+no longer any vital connection between the two warring members of the
+anti-slavery reform. To tear the dead tissues asunder which still joined
+them, all that was wanted was another sharp shock, and this came at the
+annual meeting of the National Society in 1840 over the woman's
+question. The issue, "Shall a woman serve with men on a committee?" was
+precipitated upon the convention by the appointment of that brilliant
+young Quakeress, Abby Kelley, on the business committee with ten men.
+The convention confirmed her appointment by about a hundred majority in
+a total vote of 1,008. Whereupon those opposed to this determination of
+the question, withdrew from the convention and organized the American
+and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison had triumphed and he was
+immensely elated with his victory. His moral leadership was definitely
+established, never again to be disputed by his disciples and followers.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+
+RANDOM SHOTS.
+
+
+The division of the anti-slavery organization into two distinct
+societies did not immediately terminate the war between them. From New
+York and the American society the contest over the woman's question was
+almost directly shifted after the triumph of the Garrisonians in the
+convention, to London and the World's Convention, which was held in the
+month of June of the year 1840. To this anti-slavery congress both of
+the rival anti-slavery organizations in America elected delegates. These
+delegates, chosen by the older society and by its auxiliaries of the
+States of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, were composed of women and
+men. Lucretia Mott was not only chosen by the National Society, but by
+the Pennsylvania Society as well. The Massachusetts Society selected
+Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston Chapman, and Ann Green Phillips together
+with their husbands among its list of delegates. England at this time
+was much more conservative on the woman's question than America. The
+managers of the World's Convention did not take kindly to the notion of
+women members, and signified to the American societies who had placed
+women among their delegates that the company of the women was not
+expected. Those societies, however, made no alteration in deference to
+this notice, in the character of their delegations, but stood stoutly by
+their principle of "the EQUAL BROTHERHOOD of the entire HUMAN FAMILY
+without distinction of color, sex, or clime."
+
+A contest over the admission of women to membership in the World's
+Convention was therefore a foregone conclusion. The convention,
+notwithstanding a brilliant fight under the lead of Wendell Phillips in
+behalf of their admission, refused to admit the women delegates. The
+women delegates instead of having seats on the floor were forced in
+consequence of this decision to look on from the galleries. Garrison,
+who with Charles Lenox Remond, Nathaniel P. Rogers, and William Adams,
+was late in arriving in England, finding, on reaching London the women
+excluded from the convention and sitting as spectators in the galleries,
+determined to take his place among them, deeming that the act of the
+convention which discredited the credentials of Lucretia Mott and her
+sister delegates, had discredited his own also. Remond, Rogers, and
+Adams followed his example and took their places with the rejected women
+delegates likewise. The convention was scandalized at such proceedings,
+and did its best to draw Garrison and his associates from the ladies in
+the galleries to the men on the floor, but without avail. There they
+remained an eloquent protest against the masculine narrowness of the
+convention. Defeated in New York, the delegates of the new American and
+Foreign Anti-Slavery Society triumphed over their victors in London. But
+their achievements in the World's Convention, in this regard, was not of
+a sort to entitle them to point with any special pride in after years;
+and, as a matter of fact, not one of them would have probably cared to
+have their success alluded to in any sketch of their lives for the
+perusal of posterity.
+
+Garrison and his associates were the recipients of the most cordial and
+flattering attention from the English Abolitionists. He was quite
+lionized, in fact, at breakfasts, fetes, and soirees. The Duchess of
+Sunderland paid him marked attention and desired his portrait, which was
+done for Her Grace by the celebrated artist, Benjamin Robert Haydon, who
+executed besides a large painting of the convention, in which he grouped
+the most distinguished members with reference to the seats actually
+occupied by them during its sessions. Of course to leave Garrison out of
+such a picture would almost seem like the play of "Hamlet" with _Hamlet_
+omitted, a blunder which the artist was by no means disposed to make.
+Garrison was accordingly invited to sit to him for his portrait. Haydon,
+who it seems was a student of human nature as well as of the human form,
+made the discovery of a fact which at first surprised and angered him.
+In making his groupings of heads he decided to place together the Rev.
+John Scoble, George Thompson and Charles Lenox Remond. When Scoble sat
+to him, Haydon told him of his design in this regard. But, remarked
+Haydon, Scoble "sophisticated immediately on the propriety of placing
+the negro in the distance, as it would have much greater effect." The
+painter now applied his test to Thompson who "saw no objection."
+Thompson did not bear the test to Haydon's satisfaction, who observed
+that "A man who wishes to place the negro on a level must no longer
+regard him as having been a slave, and feel annoyed at sitting by his
+side." But when the artist approached Garrison on the subject it was
+wholly different. "I asked him," Haydon records with obvious pleasure,
+"and he met me at once directly."
+
+Thompson was not altogether satisfactory to Garrison either during this
+visit as the following extract from one of his letters to his wife
+evinces: "Dear Thompson has not been strengthened to do battle for us,
+as I had confidently hoped he would be. He is placed in a difficult
+position, and seems disposed to take the ground of non-committal,
+publicly, respecting the controversy which is going on in the United
+States."
+
+Garrison, Rogers, and Remond in the company of Thompson made a
+delightful trip into Scotland at this time. Everywhere the American
+Abolitionists were met with distinguished attentions. "Though I like
+England much, on many accounts," Garrison writes home in high spirits,
+"I can truly say that I like Scotland better." An instance, which may be
+coupled with that one furnished by Haydon, occurred during this Scottish
+tour, and illustrates strongly the kind of stuff of which he was made.
+On his way to the great public reception tendered the American delegates
+by the Glasgow Emancipation Society, a placard with the caption, _"Have
+we no white slaves?"_ was put into his hands. Upon acquainting himself
+with its contents he determined to read it to the meeting, and to make
+it the text of remarks when he was called upon to address the meeting.
+He was presently announced and the immense audience greeted him with
+every manifestation of pleasure and enthusiasm, with loud cheering and
+waving of handkerchiefs. Nevertheless he held to his purpose to speak
+upon the subject of the placard, unwelcome though it should prove to his
+hearers. "After reading the interrogation, I said in reply: 'No--broad
+as is the empire, and extensive as are the possessions of Great Britain,
+not a single _white_ SLAVE can be found in them all;' and I then went on
+to show the wide difference that exists between the condition of human
+beings who are held and treated as chattels personal, and that of those
+who are only suffering from certain forms of political injustice or
+governmental oppression.... 'But,' I said, 'although it is not true that
+England has any _white_ slaves, either at home or abroad, is it not true
+that there are thousands of her population, both at home and abroad, who
+are deprived of their just rights, who are grievously oppressed, who are
+dying even in the midst of abundance, of actual starvation? YES!' and I
+expressly called upon British Abolitionists to prove themselves the true
+friends of suffering humanity abroad, by showing that they were the best
+friend of suffering humanity at home." Truth, justice, duty, always
+overrode with him the proprieties, however sacredly esteemed by others.
+Of a piece with this fact of the placard of the _white slave_ was his
+custom in refusing the wine proffered by some of his British friends to
+their guests. He was not content with a simple refusal and the implied
+rebuke which it involved, he must needs couple his declaration with an
+express rebuke to host and hostess for tempting men into the downward
+way to drunkenness.
+
+While in attendance upon the sessions of the World's Convention Garrison
+received tidings, of the birth of his third child. The second, whom he
+named for himself, was born in 1838. The third, who was also a son, the
+fond father named after Wendell Phillips. Three children and a wife did
+not tend to a solution of the always difficult problem of family
+maintenance. The pressure of their needs upon the husband sometimes,
+simple as indeed they were owing to the good sense and prudence of Mrs.
+Garrison, seemed to exceed the weight of the atmospheric column to the
+square inch. The fight for bread was one of the bitterest battles of the
+reformer's life. The arrangement made in 1837, whereby the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society assumed the responsibility of the publication of
+the _Liberator_, Garrison rescinded at the beginning of 1838, for the
+sake of giving himself greater freedom in the advocacy in its columns of
+the several other reforms in which he had enlisted, besides
+Abolitionism. But Garrison and the paper were now widely recognized as
+anti-slavery essentials and indispensables. Many of the leaders of the
+movement perceived, as Gerritt Smith expressed it in a letter enclosing
+fifty dollars for the editor, that "Among the many things in which the
+Abolitionists of our country should be agreed, are the two following:
+(1) The _Liberator_ must be sustained; (2) its editor must be kept above
+want; not only, nor mainly, for his own or his family's happiness; but
+that, having his own mind unembarrassed by the cares of griping poverty,
+he may be a more effective advocate of the cause of the Saviour's
+enslaved poor." A new arrangement, in accordance with this suggestion
+for the support of the paper and the preservation of the editor from
+want, was made in 1839, and its performance taken in charge by a
+committee of gentlemen, who undertook to raise the necessary funds for
+those objects. Thus it was that Garrison, through the wise and generous
+provision of friends, was enabled to augment the happiness of an
+increasing family, and at the same time add to his own effectiveness as
+an anti-slavery instrument.
+
+Garrison found occasion soon after his return from the World's
+Convention for the employment of all his added effectiveness for
+continuing the moral movement against slavery. For what with the strife
+and schism in the anti-slavery ranks, followed by the excitements of the
+long Presidential canvass of 1840, wherein the great body of the
+Abolitionists developed an uncontrollable impulse to political action,
+some through the medium of the new Liberty party which had nominated
+James G. Birney for the Presidency, while others reverted to the two old
+parties with which they had formerly acted--what with all these causes
+the pure moral movement started by Garrison was in grave danger of
+getting abolished or at least of being reduced to a nullity in its
+influence upon public opinion. John A. Collins, the able and resourceful
+general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, wrote in the
+deepest anxiety to Garrison from New Bedford, September 1, 1840, on this
+head. Says he: "I really wish you understood perfectly the exact
+position the friends of the old organization hold to the two great
+political parties, and how generally they have been caught up in the
+whirlwind of political enthusiasm. Could you but go where I have been,
+and have seen and heard what I have seen and heard; could you see
+men--aye, and women, too--who have been and still are your warmest
+advocates, who have eschewed sectarianism, and lost their caste in the
+circle in which they moved, for their strong adherence to your views and
+measures, declare that they would sooner forego their Abolitionism than
+their party.... Now, these are not the views of here and there a
+straggling Abolitionist, but of seven-tenths of all the voting
+Abolitionists of the State.... They are entirely unconscious of the
+demoralizing influence of their course. They need light, warning,
+entreaty, and rebuke." Besides this demoralization of the Abolitionists,
+as described by Collins, the parent society at New York fell into bad
+financial straits. It was absolutely without funds, and without any
+means of supplying the lack. What should it do in its extremity but
+appeal to the Massachusetts Society which was already heavily burdened
+by its own load, the _Liberator_. The new organ of the national
+organization, _The Anti-Slavery Standard_, surely must not be allowed to
+fail for want of funds in this emergency. The Boston management rose to
+the occasion. Collins was sent to England in quest of contributions from
+the Abolitionists of Great Britain. But, great as was the need of money,
+the relief which it might afford would only prove temporary unless there
+could be effected a thorough anti-slavery revival. This was vital. And
+therefore to this end Garrison now bent his remarkable energies.
+
+Agents, during this period when money was scarce, were necessarily few.
+But the pioneer proved a host in himself. Resigning the editorial charge
+of the _Liberator_ into the capable hands of Edmund Quincy, Garrison
+itinerated in the role of an anti-slavery lecturer in Massachusetts,
+Connecticut, and New Hampshire, reviving everywhere the languishing
+interest of his disciples. On the return of Collins in the summer of
+1841, revival meetings and conventions started up with increased
+activity, the fruits of which were of a most cheering character. At
+Nantucket, Garrison made a big catch in his anti-slavery net. It was
+Frederick Douglass, young, callow, and awkward, but with his splendid
+and inimitable gifts flashing through all as he, for the first time in
+his life, addressed an audience of white people. Garrison, with the
+instinct of leadership, saw at once the value of the runaway slave's
+oratorical possibilities in their relations to the anti-slavery
+movement. It was at his instance that Collins added Douglass to the band
+of anti-slavery agents. The new agent has preserved his recollections of
+the pioneer's speech on that eventful evening in Nantucket. Says he:
+"Mr. Garrison followed me, taking me as his text; and now, whether I had
+made an eloquent plea in behalf of freedom or not, his was one never to
+be forgotten. Those who had heard him oftenest, and had known him
+longest, were astonished at his masterly effort. For the time he
+possessed that almost fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom
+attained, in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a
+single individuality, the orator swaying a thousand heads and hearts at
+once, and by the simple majesty of his all-controlling thought,
+converting his hearers into the express image of his own soul. That
+night there were, at least, a thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket!"
+
+Here is another picture of Garrison in the lecture-field. It is from the
+pen of N.P. Rogers, with whom he was making a week's tour among the
+White Mountains, interspersing the same with anti-slavery meetings. At
+Plymouth, failing to procure the use of a church for their purpose, they
+fell back upon the temple not made with hands.
+
+"Semi-circular seats, backed against a line of magnificent trees to
+accommodate, we should judge, from two to three hundred," Rogers
+narrates, "were filled, principally with women, and the men who could
+not find seats stood on the green sward on either hand; and, at length,
+when wearied with standing, seated themselves on the ground. Garrison,
+mounted on a rude platform in front, lifted up his voice and spoke to
+them in prophet tones and surpassing eloquence, from half-past three
+till I saw the rays of the setting sun playing through the trees on his
+head.... They (the auditory) heeded it not any more than he, but
+remained till he ended, apparently indisposed to move, though some came
+from six, eight, and even twelve miles distance." So bravely prospered
+the revival agitation, under the vigorous preaching of the indomitable
+pioneer.
+
+In the midst of the growing activities of the revival season of the
+anti-slavery movement, Garrison had some personal experiences of a
+distressing nature. One of these was the case of his quondam friend and
+partner in the publication of the _Liberator_, Isaac Knapp. He, poor
+fellow, was no longer the publisher of the paper. His wretched business
+management of his department tended to keep the _Liberator_ in a state
+of chronic financial embarrassment. When the committee, who assumed
+charge of the finances of the paper, took hold of the problem, they
+determined to let Knapp go. He was paid $150 or $175 as a _quid pro quo_
+for his interest in the _Liberator_. Unfortunate in the business of a
+publisher, he was yet more unfortunate in another respect. He had become
+a victim of intemperance. His inebriety increased upon him, accelerated,
+no doubt, by his business failure. Notwithstanding Garrison's strong and
+tender friendship for Knapp, the broken man came to regard him as an
+enemy, and showed in many ways his jealousy and hatred of his old friend
+and partner. Very painful was this experience to the pioneer.
+
+An experience which touched Garrison more nearly arose out of the sad
+case of his brother James, who, the reader will recall, ran away from
+his mother in Baltimore and went to sea. He ultimately enlisted in the
+United States Navy, and what with the brutalities which he suffered at
+the hands of his superiors, by way of discipline, and with those of his
+own uncontrolled passions and appetites, he was, when recovered by his
+brother William, a total moral and physical wreck. But the prodigal was
+gathered to the reformer's heart, and taken to his home where in memory
+of a mother long dead, whose darling was James, he was nursed and
+watched over with deep and pious love. There were sad lapses of the
+profligate man even in the sanctuary of his brother's home. The craving
+for liquor was omnipotent in the wretched creature, and he was attacked
+by uncontrollable desire for drink. But William's patience was infinite,
+and his yearning and pity at such times were as sweet and strong as a
+mother's. Death rung the curtain down in the fall of 1842, on this
+miserable life with its sorry and pathetic scenes.
+
+About this time a trial of a different sort fell to the lot of Garrison
+to endure. The tongue of detraction was never more busy with his alleged
+infidel doctrines or to more damaging effect. Collins, in England,
+seeking to obtain contributions for the support of the agitation in
+America found Garrison's infidelity the _great lion_ in the way of
+success. Even the good dispositions of the venerable Clarkson were
+affected by the injurious reports in this regard, circulated in England
+mainly by Nathaniel Colver, a narrow and violent sectary of the Baptist
+denomination of the United States. It was, of course, painful to
+Garrison to feel that he had become a rock of offence in the path of the
+great movement, which he had started and to which he was devoting
+himself so energetically. To Elizabeth Pease, one of the noblest of the
+English Abolitionists, and one of his stanchest transatlantic friends,
+he defended himself against the false and cruel statements touching his
+religious beliefs. "I esteem the Holy Scriptures," he wrote her, "above
+all other books in the universe, and always appeal to 'the law and the
+testimony' to prove all my peculiar doctrines." His religious sentiments
+and Sabbatical views are almost if not quite identical with those held
+by the Quakers. "I believe in an indwelling Christ," he goes on to
+furnish a summary of his confession of faith, "and in His righteousness
+alone; I glory in nothing here below, save in Christ and in Him
+crucified; I believe all the works of the devil are to be destroyed, and
+Our Lord is to reign from sea to sea, even to the ends of the earth; and
+I profess to have passed from death unto life, and know by happy
+experience, that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ
+Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." These were
+the pioneer's articles of faith. Their extreme simplicity and
+theological conservatism it would seem ought to have satisfied the
+evangelicals of all denominations. They were in essentials thoroughly
+orthodox. But in the composition of the shibboleths of beliefs
+non-essentials as well as essentials enter, the former to the latter in
+the proportion of two to one. It is not surprising, therefore, that
+Garrison's essentials proved unequal to the test set up by sectarianism,
+inasmuch as his spiritual life dropped the aspirate of the
+non-essentials of religious forms and observances.
+
+But the good man had his compensation as well as his trials. Such of a
+very noble kind was the great Irish address brought over from Ireland by
+Remond in December 1841. It was signed by Daniel O'Connell, Father
+Mathew, and sixty thousand Roman Catholics of Ireland, who called upon
+the Irish Roman Catholics of America to make the cause of the slaves of
+the United States their cause. Large expectations of Irish assistance in
+the anti-slavery agitation were excited in the bosoms of Abolitionists
+by this imposing appeal. Garrison shared the high hopes of its
+beneficent influence upon the Ireland of America, with many others.
+Alas! for the "best laid schemes of mice and men," for the new Ireland
+was not populated with saints, but a fiercely human race who had come to
+their new home to better their own condition, not that of the negro.
+Hardly had they touched these shores before they were Americanized in
+the colorphobia sense, out-Heroded Herod in hatred of the colored people
+and their anti-slavery friends. Indeed, it was quite one thing to preach
+Abolitionism with three thousand miles of sea-wall between one and his
+audience, and quite another to rise and do the preaching with no
+sea-wall to guard the preacher from the popular consequences of his
+preaching, as Father Mathew quickly perceived and reduced to practice
+eight years later, when he made his memorable visit to this country. In
+vain was the monster document unrolled in Faneuil Hall, and many
+Abolitionists with Irish blood were put forward to sweep the chords of
+Erin's heart, and to conjure by their eloquence the disciples of St.
+Patrick to rally under the banner of freedom. There was no response,
+except the response of bitter foes. Erin's harp vibrated to no breeze
+which did not come out of the South. The slave-power had been erected
+into patron saint by the new Ireland in America, and the new Ireland in
+America was very well content with his saintship's patronage and
+service. Thus it happened that the great expectations, which were
+excited by the Irish address, were never realized. But the pioneer had
+other fish in his net, had, in fact, meanwhile, got himself in readiness
+for a launch into a new and startling agitation. As to just what this
+new and startling agitation was we must refer the reader to the next
+chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+
+THE PIONEER MAKES A NEW AND STARTLING DEPARTURE.
+
+
+When Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate emancipation he was
+over-confident of success through the instrumentality of the church. It
+did not enter his heart to conceive that after he had delivered his
+message touching the barbarism of slavery that a church calling itself
+Christian, or that a ministry arrogating to itself the character of the
+Christ, could possibly say him nay. But he learned sadly enough the
+utter folly of such expectations. For from pew and pulpit the first
+stones were hurled against him, and the most cruel and persistent
+opposition and persecution issued. Then as the movement which he had
+started advanced, he saw how it was, why the church had played him false
+and the cause of freedom. It was because the poison of slavery which the
+evil one had injected into the nation's arteries had corrupted the
+springs of justice and mercy in that body. The Church was not free, it,
+too, was in bonds to slavery, how then could it help to free the slaves?
+That was the reason that pulpit and pew cried out against him and
+persecuted him. It was not they but the slave despotism, which ruled
+them, which wrought its fell purpose within them.
+
+If the reformer cast his eyes about him for other help it was the same;
+the slime of the serpent was upon State as well as Church. Both of the
+two great political parties were bound hands and feet, and given over to
+the will of the slave tyranny. In all departments of Government, State
+and National, the positive, all-powerful principle was slavery. Its
+dread _nolo me tangere_ had forced Congress into the denial of the right
+of petition, and into the imposition of a gag upon its own freedom of
+debate. It was the grand President-maker, and the judiciary bent without
+a blush to do its service. What, then, in these circumstances could the
+friends of freedom hope to achieve? The nation had been caught in the
+snare of slavery, and was in Church and State helpless in the vast
+spider-like web of wrong. The more the reformer pondered the problem,
+the more hopeless did success look under a Constitution which united
+right and wrong, freedom and slavery. As his reflections deepened, the
+conviction forced its way into his mind that the Union was the strong
+tower of the slave-power, which could never be destroyed until the
+fortress which protected it was first utterly demolished. In the spring
+of 1842 the pioneer was prepared to strike into this new path to effect
+his purpose.
+
+"We must dissolve all connection with those murderers of fathers," he
+wrote his brother-in-law, "and murderers of mothers, and murderers of
+liberty, and traffickers of human flesh, and blasphemers against the
+Almighty at the South. What have we in common with them? What have we
+gained? What have we not lost by our alliance with them? Are not their
+principles, their pursuits, their policies, their interests, their
+designs, their feelings, utterly diverse from ours? Why, then, be
+subject to their dominion? Why not have the Union dissolved in form as
+it is in fact, especially if the form gives ample protection to the
+slave system, by securing for it all the physical force of the North? It
+is not treason against the cause of liberty to cry, "Down with every
+slave-holding Union!" Therefore, I raise that cry. And O that I had a
+voice louder than a thousand thunders, that it might shake the land and
+electrify the dead--the dead in sin, I mean--those slain by the hand of
+slavery."
+
+A few weeks later the first peal of this thunder broke upon the startled
+ears of the country through the columns of the _Liberator_. The May
+meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was drawing near, and the
+reformer, now entirely ready to enter upon an agitation looking to the
+dissolution of the Union, suggested "the duty of making the REPEAL OF
+THE UNION between the North and the South the grand rallying point until
+it be accomplished, or slavery cease to pollute our soil. We are for
+throwing all the means, energies, actions, purposes, and appliances of
+the genuine friends of liberty and republicanism into this one channel,"
+he goes on to announce, "and for measuring the humanity, patriotism, and
+piety of every man by this one standard. This question can no longer be
+avoided, and a right decision of it will settle the controversy between
+freedom and slavery." The stern message of Isaiah to the Jews,
+beginning, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men that rule this
+people. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with DEATH and
+with HELL are we at agreement," seemed to the American Isaiah to
+describe exactly the character of the National Constitution. "Slavery is
+a combination of DEATH and HELL," he declares, with righteous wrath,
+"and with it the North have made a covenant, and are at agreement. As an
+element of the Government it is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. As
+a component part of the Union, it is necessarily a national interest.
+Divorced from Northern protection, it dies; with that protection it
+enlarges its boundaries, multiplies its victims, and extends its
+ravages."
+
+The announcement of this new radicalism caused a sensation. Many genuine
+Garrisonian Abolitionists recoiled from a policy of disunion. Lydia
+Maria Child and James S. Gibbon of the Executive Committee of the
+National Society hastened to disavow for the society all responsibility
+for the disunion sentiment of the editor of the _Liberator_. His new
+departure seemed to them "foreign to the purpose for which it was
+organized." Like all new ideas, it was a sword-bearer, and proved a
+decided disturber of the peace. The Union-loving portion of the free
+States had never taken to the Abolition movement, for the reason that it
+tended to disturb the stability of their idol. But now the popular
+hatred of Abolitionism was intensified by the avowal of a distinct
+purpose on the part of its leader to labor for the separation of the
+sections. The press of the North made the most of this design to render
+altogether odious the small band of moral reformers, to reduce to a
+nullity their influence upon public opinion.
+
+Notwithstanding its rejection by James Gibbons and Lydia Maria Child the
+new idea of the dissolution of the Union, as an anti-slavery object,
+found instant favor with many of the leading Abolitionists, like Wendell
+Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Parker Pillsbury, Stephen S. Foster and Abby
+Kelley. At the anniversary meeting of the American Society in 1842, the
+subject was mooted, and, although there was no official action taken,
+yet it was apparent that a majority of the delegates were favorable to
+its adoption as the sentiment of the society.
+
+The ultimate object of Garrison was the abolition of slavery. Disunion
+led directly to this goal, therefore he planted his feet in that way.
+But while he shot the agitation at a distant mark, he did not mean to
+miss less remote results. There was remarkable method in his madness. He
+agitated the question of the dissolution of the Union "in order that the
+people of the North might be induced to reflect upon their debasement,
+guilt, and danger in continuing in partnership with heaven-daring
+oppressors, and thus be led to repentance."
+
+The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting in January,
+1843 "dissolved the Union," wrote Quincy to R.D. Webb, "by a handsome
+vote, after a warm debate. The question was afterward reconsidered and
+passed in another shape, being wrapped up by Garrison in some of his
+favorite Old Testament Hebraisms by way of vehicle, as the apothecaries
+say." This is the final shape which Garrison's "favorite Old Testament
+Hebraisms" gave to the action of the society:
+
+"_Resolved_, That the compact which exists between the North and the
+South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell--involving
+both parties in atrocious criminality--and should be immediately
+annulled."
+
+At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American Society resolved
+likewise that there should be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of
+the same year the New England Society voted by a large majority to
+dissolve the 'covenant with death, and the agreement with hell.' Almost
+the whole number of the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time
+placed upon their banner of immediate emancipation the revolutionary
+legend "No Union with slaveholders." _Cathago est delenda_ were now ever
+on the lips of the pioneer. 'The Union it must and shall be destroyed'
+became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his utterances on
+the slavery question.
+
+The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the Government which
+they were seeking to overthrow was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in
+a letter returning to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission as a
+justice of the peace. Says he, "To me it appears that the vices of
+slavery, introduced into the constitution of our body politic by a few
+slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of
+our National Government that literally there is no health in it. The
+only remedy that I can see for the disease is to be found in the
+_dissolution of the patient_.... Henceforth it (the Constitution) is
+dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it,
+and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays
+upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear
+patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly
+declaring that, while I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no
+compact which helps to rob any other man of his."
+
+The Abolition agitation for the dissolution of the Union was assisted
+not a little by sundry occurrences of national importance. The
+increasing arrogance and violence of the South in Congress on all
+matters relating to the subject of slavery was one of these occurrences.
+Freedom of debate and the right of petition, Southern intolerance had
+rendered well nigh worthless in the National Legislature. In this way
+the North, during several months in every year, was forced to look at
+the reverse and the obverse faces, of the Union. These object-lessons
+taught many minds, no doubt, to count the cost which the preservation of
+the Union entailed upon the free States--"to reflect upon their
+debasement, guilt, and danger" in their partnership with slaveholders.
+Another circumstance which induced to this kind of reflection was the
+case of George Latimer, who was seized as a fugitive slave in Boston in
+the autumn of 1842. From beginning to end the Latimer case revealed how
+completely had Massachusetts tied her own hands as a party to the
+original compact with slavery whose will was the supreme law of the
+land. In obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused to the
+captive the writ of _habeas corpus_, and Judge Story granted the owner
+possession of the fugitive, and time to procure evidence of his
+ownership. But worse still Massachusetts officials and one of her jails
+were employed to aid in the return of a man to slavery. This degradation
+aroused the greatest indignation in the State and led to the enactment
+of a law prohibiting its officials from taking part in the return of
+fugitive slaves, and the use of its jails and prisons for their
+detention. The passage of this personal liberty measure served to
+increase the activity of the anti-Union working forces in the South.
+
+Then, again, the serious difficulty between Massachusetts and two of the
+slave States in regard to their treatment of her colored seamen aided
+Garrison in his agitation for the dissolution of the Union by the keen
+sense of insult and injury which the trouble begat and left upon the
+popular mind. Colored men in Massachusetts enjoyed a fair degree of
+equality before her laws, were endowed with the right to vote, and were,
+barring the prejudice against color, treated by the commonwealth as
+citizens. They were employed in the merchant service of her interstate
+trade. But at two of the Southern ports where her vessels entered, the
+colored seamen were seized by the local police and confined in houses of
+detention until the vessels to which they belonged were ready to depart,
+when they were released and allowed to join the vessels. This was a most
+outrageous proceeding, outrageous to the colored men who were thus
+deprived of their liberty, outrageous also to the owners of the vessels
+who were deprived of the service of their employes. Of what avail was
+the constitutional guaranty that "the citizens of each State shall be
+entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
+States", many men began to question? The South was evidently disposed to
+support only that portion of the national compact which sustained the
+slave system, all the rest upon occasion it trampled on and nullified.
+This lesson was enforced anew upon Massachusetts by the affair of her
+colored seamen. Unable to obtain redress of the wrong done her citizens,
+the State appointed agents to go to Charleston and New Orleans and test
+the constitutionality of the State laws under which the local
+authorities had acted. But South Carolina and Louisiana, especially the
+former, to whom Samuel Hoar was accredited, evinced themselves quite
+equal to the exigency to which the presence of the Massachusetts agents
+gave rise. To cut a long story short, these gentlemen, honored citizens
+of a sister State, and covered with the aegis of the Constitution, found
+that they could make no success of the business which they had in hand,
+found indeed that as soon as that business was made public that they
+stood in imminent peril of their lives. Whereupon, wisely conceiving
+discretion to be the better part of valor, they beat a hasty retreat
+back to their native air. The Massachusetts agents were driven out of
+Charleston and New Orleans. Where was the sacred and glorious union
+between Massachusetts and South Carolina and Louisiana that such things
+were possible--were constantly occurring? The circumstance made a strong
+impression on the State whose rights were thus grossly violated. It
+helped to convert Massachusetts to its later opposition to slavery, and
+to make its public sentiment more tolerant of the Garrisonian opposition
+to the covenant with death and the agreement with hell. To the agitation
+growing out of the scheme for the annexation of Texas must, however, be
+ascribed the premium among all the anti-Union working facts and forces
+of the first few years after Garrison and his coadjutors had raised the
+cry of "No union with slaveholders." This agitation renewed the
+intensity and sectionalism of the then almost forgotten struggle over
+the admission of Missouri nearly a quarter of a century before, and
+which was concluded by the Missouri compromise. This settlement was at
+the time considered quite satisfactory to the South. But Calhoun took an
+altogether different view of the matter twenty years later. The
+arrangement by which the South was excluded from the upper portion of
+the Louisiana Territory he came to regard as a cardinal blunder on the
+part of his section. The fact is that within those two decades the
+slave-holding had been completely outstripped by the non-slave-holding
+States in wealth, population, and social growth. The latter had obtained
+over the former States an indisputable supremacy in those respects.
+Would not the political balance settle also in the natural order of
+things in the Northern half of the Union unless it could be kept where
+it then was to the south of Mason and Dixon's line by an artificial
+political make-weight. This artificial political make-weight was nothing
+less than the acquisition of new slave territory to supply the demand
+for new slave States. Texas, with the territorial dimensions of an
+empire, answered the agrarian needs of the slave system. And the South,
+under the leadership of Calhoun, determined to make good their fancied
+loss in the settlement of the Missouri controversy by annexing Texas.
+
+But all the smouldering dread of slave domination, all the passionate
+opposition to the extension of slavery, to the acquisition of new slave
+territory and the admission of new slave States, awoke hotly in the
+heart of the North. "No more slave territory." "No more slave States,"
+resounded during this crisis, through the free States. "Texas or
+disunion," was the counter cry which reverberated through the slave
+States. Even Dr. Channing, who had no love for Garrison or his
+anti-slavery ultraism, was so wrought upon by the scheme for the
+annexation of Texas as to profess his preference for the dissolution of
+the Union, "rather than receive Texas into the Confederacy." "This
+measure, besides entailing on us evils of all sorts," the doctor boldly
+pointed out, "would have for its chief end to bring the whole country
+under the slave-power, to make the general Government the agent of
+slavery; and this we are bound to resist at all hazards. The free States
+should declare that the very act of admitting Texas will be construed as
+a dissolution of the Union."
+
+The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an unwonted defiance of
+consequences, a fierce contempt of ancient political bugaboos marked the
+utterances of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions relating
+to slavery. In the anti-Texas convention held in Faneuil Hall January
+29, 1845, all this timidity disappeared in the presence of the new
+peril. It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison was a
+member, but of politicians, mostly of the Whig party. "The anti-slavery
+spirit of the convention," wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D. Webb, "was
+surprising. The address and the speeches of the gentlemen, not
+Abolitionists, were such as caused Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago,
+and such as we thought thorough three or four years ago. There were no
+qualifications, or excuses, or _twaddle_."
+
+Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement with all his
+customary force and fire. Elected a delegate to the Faneuil Hall
+Convention by the influence of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part
+in its proceedings, "created the most stir in the whole matter," Wendell
+Phillips thought. Charles Sumner, who heard him speak for the first
+time, was struck with his "natural eloquence," and described his words
+as falling "in fiery rain." Again at a mass meeting for Middlesex
+County, held at Concord, to consider the aggressions of the slave-power,
+did the words of the pioneer fall "in fiery rain." Apprehensive that the
+performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency arose, would fall far
+short of her protestations, he exclaimed, "I have nothing to say, sir,
+nothing. I am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things said, where
+there is no heart to carry them out. When we are prepared to state the
+whole truth, and die for it, if necessary--when, like our fathers, we
+are prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it, counting not
+our lives dear unto us--when we are prepared to let all earthly hopes go
+back to the board--_then_ let us say so; _till_ then, the less we say
+the better, in such an emergency as this. 'But who are we, will men
+ask.' that talk of such things? 'Are we enough to make a revolution?'
+No, sir; but we are enough to _begin_ one, and, once begun, it never can
+be turned back. I am for revolution were I utterly alone. I am there
+because I _must_ be there. I _must_ cleave to the right. I cannot choose
+but obey the voice of God.
+
+" ... Do not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have
+been one. We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and
+deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on
+the floor of Congress! The moment we say no to this, the Union
+ceases--the Government falls."
+
+The Texan struggle terminated in the usual way, in the triumph of the
+slave-power. Texas was annexed and admitted into the sisterhood of
+States, giving to the Southern section increased slave representation in
+both branches of Congress, and thereby aiding to fasten, what at the
+moment appeared to be its permanent domination in national affairs. As
+Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the North fell far short of
+its protestations when the crisis came. It swallowed all its brave
+words, and collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to its
+jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The whole North except the
+small and irrepressible band of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down
+by the revulsive wave of this disastrous event. Writing to his friend
+Webb, Garrison discourses thus upon the great defeat: "Apparently the
+slave-holding power has never been so strong, has never seemed to be so
+invincible, has never held such complete mastery over the whole, has
+never so successfully hurled defiance at the Eternal and Just One, as at
+the present time; and yet never has it in reality been so weak, never
+has it had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it been so
+filled with doubt and consternation, never has it been so near its
+downfall, as at this moment. Upon the face of it, this statement looks
+absurdly paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are groping in
+thick darkness; but it is that darkest hour which is said to precede the
+dawn of day."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+
+AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.
+
+
+Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the most earnest of men. It
+was almost next to impossible for him to understand that his way was not
+the only way to attain a given end. A position reached by him, he was
+curiously apt to look upon as a sort of _ultima thule_ of human endeavor
+in that direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances
+of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung around his
+personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer.
+His was not a tolerant mind. Differences with him he was prone to treat
+as gross departures from principle, as evidences of faithlessness to
+freedom. He fell upon the men who did not see eye to eye with him with
+tomahawk and scalping knife. He was strangely deficient in a sense of
+proportion in such matters. His terrible severities of speech, he
+visited upon the slave-power and the Liberty party alike. And although a
+non-resistent, in that he eschewed the use of physical force, yet there
+never was born among the sons of men a more militant soul in the use of
+moral force, in the quickness with which he would whip out the rapiers,
+or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother tongue at opponents. The
+pioneer must have been an unconscious believer in the annihilation of
+the wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer in the
+wickedness of all opposition to his idea of right and duty. This, of
+course, must be taken only as a broad description of the reformer's
+character. He was a man, one of the grandest America has given to the
+world, but still a man with his tendon of Achilles, like the rest of his
+kind.
+
+His narrow intolerance of the idea of anti-slavery political action, and
+his fierce and unjust censure of the champions of that idea, well
+illustrate the trait in point. Birney and Whittier, and Wright and
+Gerritt Smith, and Joshua Leavitt, he apparently quite forgot, were
+actuated by motives singularly noble, were in their way as true to their
+convictions as he was to his. No, there was but one right way, and in
+that way stood the feet of the pioneer. His way led directly,
+unerringly, to the land of freedom. All other ways, and especially the
+Liberty party way, twisted, doubled upon themselves, branched into
+labyrinths of folly and self-seeking. "Ho! all ye that desire the
+freedom of the slave, who would labor for liberty, follow me and I will
+show you the only true way," was the tone which the editor of the
+_Liberator_ held to men, who were battering with might and main to
+breach the walls of the Southern Bastile. They were plainly not against
+the slave, although opposed to Mr. Garrison, narrowly, unjustly opposed
+to him, without doubt, but working strenuously according to their lights
+for the destruction of a common enemy and tyrant. This was the test,
+which Garrison should have taken as conclusive. The leaders of the
+Liberty party, though personally opposed to him and to his line of
+action, were, nevertheless, friends of the slaves, and ought to have
+been so accounted and treated by the man who more than any other was
+devoted to the abolition of slavery.
+
+But the whole mental and moral frame of the man precluded such
+liberality of treatment of opponents. They had rejected his way, which
+was the only true way, and were, therefore, anathema maranatha. When a
+moral idea which has been the subject of widespread agitation, and has
+thereby gained a numerous following, reaches out, as reach out it must,
+sooner or later, for incorporation into law, it will, in a republic like
+ours, do so naturally and necessarily through political action--along
+the lines of an organized party movement. The Liberty party formation
+was the product of this strong tendency in America. Premature it
+possibly was, but none the less perfectly natural. Now every political
+party, that is worthy of the name, is a compound rather than a simple
+fact, consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties
+depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest
+but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions.
+One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and
+multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks
+to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. There
+will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, that
+will dominate the organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon
+which the party throws itself upon the country, but the secondary ideas
+or interests must be there all the same to give strength and support to
+the main idea and interest.
+
+Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political
+parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and
+that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power.
+Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe
+strictly these limitations in its aims and issues. Accordingly when the
+moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea
+of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by
+the National Constitution. Slavery within the States lay outside of the
+political boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within the
+States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders
+placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national
+issues. But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia,
+in the national territories, under the national flag on the high seas,
+for it lay within the constitutional reach of the federal political
+power, and its abolition was demanded in the Third party platform. These
+leaders were confident that the existence of slavery depended upon its
+connection with the National Government. Their aim was to destroy the
+evil by cutting this connection through which it drew its blood and
+nerve supplies. They planted themselves upon the anti-slavery character
+of the Constitution, believing that it "does not sanction nor
+nationalize slavery but condemns and localizes it."
+
+This last position of the Liberty party leaders struck Garrison as a
+kind of mental and moral enormity. At it and its authors, the
+anti-slavery Jupiter, launched his bolts, fast and furious. Here is a
+specimen of his chain lightning: "We have a very poor opinion of the
+intelligence of any man, and very great distrust of his candor or
+honesty, who tries to make it appear that no pro-slavery compromise was
+made between the North and the South, at the adoption of the
+Constitution. We cherish feelings of profound contempt for the quibbling
+spirit of criticism which is endeavoring to explain away the meaning of
+language, the design of which as a matter of practice, and the adoption
+of which as a matter of bargain, were intelligently and clearly
+understood by the contracting parties. The truth is the misnamed
+'Liberty party' is under the control of as ambitious, unprincipled, and
+crafty leaders as is either the Whig or Democratic party; and no other
+proof of this assertion is needed than their unblushing denial of the
+great object of the national compact, namely, union at the sacrifice of
+the colored population of the United States. Their new interpretations
+of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the facts of history, and a
+gross insult to the intelligence of the age, and certainly never can be
+carried into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a civil
+war." All the same, the pioneer to the contrary notwithstanding, many of
+these very Liberty party leaders were men of the most undoubted candor
+and honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.
+
+Garrison was never able to see the Liberty party, and for that matter
+Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, and others of the old organization
+leaders could not either, except through the darkened glass of personal
+antagonisms growing out of the schism of 1840. It was always, under all
+circumstances, to borrow a phrase of Phillips, "Our old enemy, Liberty
+party." And, as Quincy naively confesses in an article in the
+_Liberator_ pointing out the reasons why Abolitionists should give to
+the Free-soil party incidental aid and comfort, which were forbidden to
+their "old enemy, Liberty party," the significant and amusing fact that
+the latter was "officered by deserters." Ay, there was indeed the rub!
+The military principle of the great leader forbade him to recognize
+deserters as allies. Discipline must be maintained, and so he proceeded
+to maintain the anti-slavery discipline of his army by keeping up a
+constant fusillade into the ranks of the deserter band, who, in turn,
+were every whit as blinded by the old quarrel and separation, and who
+slyly cherished the modest conviction that, when they seceded, the salt
+of old organization lost its savor, and was thenceforth fit only to be
+trampled under the Liberty party's feet. Without doubt, those old
+Abolitionists and Liberty party people belonged to the category of
+"humans."
+
+The scales of the old grudge dropped from Garrison's eyes directly the
+Free-Soil party loomed upon the political horizon. He recognized at once
+that, if it was not against the slave, it was for the slave; apprehended
+clearly that, in so far as the new party, which, by the way, was only
+the second stage in the development of the central idea of his old
+enemy, Liberty party, as the then future Republican party was to be its
+third and final expression, apprehended clearly I say that, in so far as
+the new party resisted the aggressions and pretensions of the
+slave-power, it was fighting for Abolition--was an ally of Abolitionism.
+
+In the summer of 1848, from Northampton, whither he had gone to take the
+water cure, Garrison counseled Quincy, who was filling the editorial
+chair, in the interim, at the _Liberator_ office, in this sage fashion:
+"As for the Free-Soil movement, I feel that great care is demanded of us
+disunionists, both in the _Standard_ and the _Liberator_, in giving
+credit to whom credit is due, and yet in no case even seeming to be
+satisfied with it." In the winter of 1848 in a letter to Samuel May,
+Jr., he is more explicit on this head. "As for the Free-Soil movement,"
+he observes, "I am for hailing it as a cheering sign of the times, and
+an unmistakable proof of the progress we have made, under God, in
+changing public sentiment. Those who have left the Whig and Democratic
+parties for conscience's sake, and joined the movement, deserve our
+commendation and sympathy; at the same time, it is our duty to show
+them, and all others, that there is a higher position to be attained by
+them or they will have the blood of the slave staining their garments.
+This can be done charitably yet faithfully. On the two old parties,
+especially the Whig-Taylor party, I would expend--_pro tempore_, at
+least--our heaviest ammunition." This is as it should be, the tone of
+wise and vigilant leadership, the application of the true test to the
+circumstances, viz., for freedom if against slavery; not to be
+satisfied, to be sure, with any thing less than the whole but disposed
+to give credit to whom it was due, whether much or little. Pity that the
+pioneer could not have placed himself in this just and discriminating
+point of view in respect of his old enemy, Liberty party, praising in it
+what he found praiseworthy, while blaming it for what he felt was
+blameworthy. But perfection weak human nature doth not attain to in this
+terrestrial garden of the passions, and so very likely the magnanimity
+which we have desired of Garrison is not for that garden to grow but
+another and a heavenly.
+
+Garrison ill brooked opposition, came it from friends or foes. He was so
+confident in his own positions that he could not but distrust their
+opposites. Of course, if his were right, and of that doubt in his mind
+there was apparently none, then the positions of all others had to be
+wrong. This masterful quality of the man was constantly betrayed in the
+acts of his life and felt by his closest friends and associates in the
+anti-slavery movement. Quincy, writing to Richard Webb, narrates how, at
+the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843,
+Garrison was for removing it to Boston, but that he and Wendell Phillips
+were for keeping it where it then was in New York, giving at the same
+time sundry good and sufficient reasons for the faith that was in them,
+and how, thereupon, "Garrison dilated his nostrils like a war-horse, and
+snuffed indignation at us." "If the Boston friends were unwilling to
+take the trouble and responsibility," were the petulant, accusative
+words put by Quincy into his chief's mouth on the occasion, "then there
+was nothing more to be said; we must try to get along as well as we
+could in the old way." And how they disclaimed "any unwillingness to
+take trouble and responsibility," while affirming "the necessity of
+their acting on their own idea."
+
+Another characteristic of the pioneer is touched upon by the same writer
+in a relation which he was making to Webb of Garrison's election to the
+presidency of the parent society. Says Quincy: "Garrison makes an
+excellent president at a public meeting where the order of speakers is
+in some measure arranged, as he has great felicity in introducing and
+interlocuting remarks; but at a meeting for debate he does not answer so
+well, as he is rather too apt, with all the innocence and simplicity in
+the world, to do all the talking himself."
+
+The same friendly critic has left his judgment of other traits of the
+leader, traits not so much of the man as of the editor. It is delivered
+in a private letter of Quincy to Garrison on resigning the temporary
+editorship of the _Liberator_ to "its legitimate possessor." who had
+been for several months health-hunting at Northampton in the beautiful
+Connecticut Valley. Quincy made bold to beard the Abolition lion in his
+lair, and twist his tail in an extremely lively manner. "Now, my dear
+friend," wrote the disciple to the master, "you must know that to the
+microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic eyes of
+its enemies, _the_ _Liberator_ _has faults_, these they keep to themselves
+as much as they honestly may, but they are not the less sensible of
+them, and are all the more desirous to see them immediately abolished.
+Luckily, they are not faults of principle--neither moral nor
+intellectual deficiencies--but faults the cure of which rests solely
+with yourself.
+
+"I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are that we find with it,
+lest you should think them none at all, or else unavoidable. But no
+matter, of that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen to our
+opinion. We think the paper often bears the mark of haste and
+carelessness in its getting up; that the matter seems to be hastily
+selected and put in _higgledy-piggledy_, without any very apparent
+reason why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the place
+where it is. I suppose this is often caused by your selecting articles
+with a view to connect remarks of your own with them, which afterward in
+your haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper is not so nearly a
+complete work in itself as it might be made, but that things are often
+left at loose ends, and important matters broken off in the middle. I
+assure you, that Brother Harriman is not the only one of the friends of
+the _Liberator_ who grieves over your 'more anon' and 'more next
+week'--which 'anon' and 'next week' never arrive.
+
+"Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else
+such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to
+see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often
+either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important
+moments like the present neglected....
+
+"We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by
+the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by
+conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends
+and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the
+_Liberator_ a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is,
+powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It
+is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the
+_Liberator_ and _Emancipator_ with regard to the manner of getting it
+up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them--and we knowing all the
+time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a
+good newspaper that Leavitt has, with as much more, intellectual ability
+as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me)
+industry, application, and method."
+
+Garrison, to his honor, did not allow the exceeding candor of his mentor
+to disturb their friendship. The pioneer was not wholly without defence
+to the impeachment. He might have pleaded ill health, of which he had
+had _quantum suf._ since 1836 for himself and family. He might have
+pleaded also the dissipation of too much of his energies in consequence
+of more or less pecuniary embarrassments from which he was never wholly
+freed; but, above all, he might have pleaded his increasing activity as
+an anti-slavery lecturer. His contributions to the movement against
+slavery were of a notable character in this direction, both in respect
+of quantity and quality. He was not alone the editor of the _Liberator_,
+he was unquestionably besides one of the most effective and interesting
+of the anti-slavery speakers--indeed in the judgment of so competent an
+authority as James Russell Lowell, he was regarded as the most effective
+of the anti-slavery speakers. Still, after all is placed to his credit
+that can possibly be, Quincy's complaints would be supported by an
+altogether too solid basis of fact. The pioneer was much given to
+procrastination. What was not urgent he was strongly tempted to put off
+for a more convenient time. His work accumulated. He labored hard and he
+accomplished much, but because of this habit of postponing for to-morrow
+what need not be done to-day, he was necessarily forced to leave undone
+many things which he ought to have done and which he might have
+accomplished had he been given to putting off for to-morrow nothing
+which might be finished to-day.
+
+The pioneer was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but never
+was he wholly cast down by his misfortunes. His cheerful and bouyant
+spirit kept him afloat above his sorrows, above his griefs. The organ of
+mirthfulness in him was very large. He was an optimist in the best sense
+of that word, viz., that all things work together for good to them that
+love goodness. In the darkest moments which the Abolition cause
+encountered his own countenance was full of light, his own heart pierced
+through the gloom and communicated its glow to those about him, his own
+voice rang bugle-like through reverse and disaster.
+
+In his family the reformer was seen at his best. His wife was his friend
+and equal, his children his playfellows and companions. The dust of the
+great conflict he never carried with him into his home to choke the love
+which burned ever brightly on its hearth and in the hearts which it
+contained. What he professed in the _Liberator_, what he preached in the
+world, of non-resistance, woman's rights, perfectionism, he practiced in
+his home, he embodied as father, and husband, and host. Never lived
+reformer who more completely realized his own ideals to those nearest
+and dearest to him than William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+He had seven children, five boys and two girls. The last, Francis
+Jackson, was born to him in the year 1848. Two of them died in
+childhood, a boy and a girl. The loss of the boy, whom the father had
+"named admiringly, gratefully, reverently," Charles Pollen, was a
+terrible blow to the reformer, and a life-long grief to the mother. He
+seemed to have been a singularly beautiful, winning, and affectionate
+little man and to have inspired sweet hopes of future "usefulness and
+excellence" in the breasts of his parents. "He seemed born to take a
+century on his shoulders, without stooping; his eyes were large,
+lustrous, and charged with electric light; his voice was clear as a
+bugle, melodious, and ever ringing in our ears, from the dawn of day to
+the ushering in of night, so that since it has been stilled, our
+dwelling has seemed to be almost without an occupant," lamented the
+stricken father to Elizabeth Pease, of Darlington, England.
+
+"Death itself to me is not terrible, is not repulsive," poured the
+heartbroken pioneer into the ears of his English friend, "is not to be
+deplored. I see in it as clear an evidence of Divine wisdom and
+beneficence as I do in the birth of a child, in the works of creation,
+in all the arrangements and operations of nature. I neither fear nor
+regret its power. I neither expect nor supplicate to be exempted from
+its legitimate action. It is not to be chronicled among calamities; it
+is not to be styled "a mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence"; it
+is scarcely rational to talk of being resigned to it. For what is more
+rational, what more universal, what more impartial, what more
+serviceable, what more desirable, in God's own time, hastened neither by
+our ignorance or folly?...
+
+"When, therefore, my dear friend, I tell you that the loss of my dear
+boy has overwhelmed me with sadness, has affected my peace by day and my
+repose by night, has been a staggering blow, from the shock of which I
+find it very difficult to recover, you will not understand me as
+referring to anything pertaining to another state of existence, or as
+gloomily affected by a change inevitable to all; far from it. Where the
+cherished one who has been snatched from us is, what is his situation,
+or what his employment, I know not, of course; and it gives me no
+anxiety whatever. Until I join him at least my responsibility to him as
+his guardian and protector has ceased; he does not need my aid, he
+cannot be benefited by my counsel. That he will still be kindly cared
+for by Him who numbers the very hairs of our heads, and without whose
+notice a sparrow cannot fall to the ground; that he is still living,
+having thrown aside his mortal drapery, and occupying a higher sphere of
+existence, I do not entertain a doubt. My grief arises mainly from the
+conviction that his death was premature; that he was actually defrauded
+of his life through unskillful treatment; that he might have been saved,
+if we had not been so unfortunately situated at that time. This to be
+sure, is not certain; and not being certain, it is only an ingredient of
+consolation that we find in our cup of bitterness."
+
+The pioneer was one of the most generous of givers. Poor indeed he was,
+much beyond the common allotment of men of his intelligence and
+abilities, but he was never too indigent to answer the appeals of
+poverty. If the asker's needs were greater than his own he divided with
+him the little which he had. To his home all sorts of people were
+attracted, Abolitionists, peace men, temperance reformers,
+perfectionists, homoeopathists, hydropathists, mesmerists,
+spiritualists, Grahamites, clairvoyants, whom he received with unfailing
+hospitality, giving welcome and sympathy to the new ideas, food and
+shelter for the material sustenance of the fleshly vehicles of the new
+ideas. He evidently was strongly of the opinion that there are "more
+things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in the philosophy of any
+particular period in the intellectual development of man. No age knows
+it all. It was almost a lo, here, and a lo, there, with him, so large
+was his bump of wonder, so unlimited was his appetite for the incredible
+and the improbable in the domain of human knowledge and speculation.
+Great was the man's faith, great was his hope, great was his charity.
+
+He was one of the most observant of men in all matters affecting the
+rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters
+appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual
+knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was
+amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out
+an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury
+of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out
+of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones for
+future use. His wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic
+business, determined, without consulting him, the morning when the new
+trousers should be donned. She made the necessary changes when her lord
+was in bed, putting the new in the place of the old. Garrison wore for
+several days the new trousers, thinking all the time that they were his
+old ones until his illusions in this regard were dispelled by an
+incident which cost him the former. Some poor wretch of a tramp,
+knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer's door and asking for clothes,
+decided the magnificent possessor of two pairs of trousers, to don his
+new ones and to pass the old ones on to the tramp. But when he
+communicated the transaction to his wife, she hoped, with a good deal of
+emphasis, that he had not given away the pair of breeches which he was
+wearing, for if he had she would beg to inform him that he had given
+away his best ones! But the pioneer's splendid indifference to _meum_
+and _tuum_ where his own possessions were concerned was equal to the
+occasion. He got his compensation in the thought that his loss was
+another's gain. That, indeed, was not to be accounted loss which had
+gone to a brother-man whose needs were greater than his own.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+
+THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE.
+
+
+Garrison's forecast of the future, directly after the annexation of
+Texas, proved singularly correct. Never, as at that moment, had the
+slave-power seemed so secure in its ascendency, yet never, at any
+previous period, was it so near its downfall. Freedom had reached that
+darkest hour just before dawn; and this, events were speedily to make
+clear. If the South could have trammeled up the consequences of
+annexation, secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held its
+political supremacy in America? But omnipotent as was the slave-power in
+the Government, it was not equal to this labor. In the great game, in
+which Texas was the stakes, Fate had, unawares, slipped into the seat
+between the gamesters with hands full of loaded dice. At the first throw
+the South got Texas, at the second the war with Mexico fell out, and at
+the third new national territory lay piled upon the boards.
+
+Calhoun, the arch-annexationist, struggled desperately to avert the war.
+He saw as no other Southern leader saw its tremendous significance in
+the conflict between the two halves of the Union for the political
+balance. The admission of Texas had made an adjustment of this balance
+in favor of the South. Calhoun's plan was to conciliate Mexico, to sweep
+with our diplomatic broom the gathering war-clouds from the national
+firmament. War, he knew, would imperil the freshly fortified position of
+his section--war which meant at its close the acquisition of new
+national territory, with which the North would insist upon retrieving
+its reverse in the controversy over Texas. War, therefore, the great
+nullifier resolved against. He cried halt to his army, but the army
+heard not his voice, heeded not his orders, in the wild uproar and
+clamor which arose at the sight of helpless Mexico, and the temptation
+of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her
+spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities
+between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes
+the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of
+the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable
+with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to
+postpone the evil day for the South by proposing a military policy of
+"masterly inactivity" whereby time might be gained for his side to
+prepare to meet the blow when it fell. But his "masterly inactivity"
+policy was swept aside by the momentum of the national passion which the
+war had aroused.
+
+California and New Mexico became the strategic points of the slavery
+struggle at the close of the war. To open both to the immigration of
+slave-labor was thenceforth the grand design of the South. Over Oregon
+occurred a fierce preliminary trial of strength between the sections.
+The South was thrown in the contest, and the anti-slavery principle of
+the Ordinance of 1787 applied to the Territory. Calhoun, who was
+apparently of the mind that as Oregon went so would go California and
+New Mexico, was violently agitated by this reverse. "The great strife
+between the North and the South is ended," he passionately declared.
+Immediately the charge was made and widely circulated through the slave
+States that the stronger was oppressing the weaker section, wresting
+from it its just share in the common fruits of common victories. For had
+not California and New Mexico been won by the bravery and blood of the
+South as of the North, and how then was the North to deprive the South
+of its joint ownership of them without destroying the federal equality
+of the two halves of the Union? What was it but to subvert the Union
+existing among the States?
+
+Disunion sentiment was thenceforth ladled out to the slave States in
+increasing quantities. The turning of the long lane in the domination of
+the slave-power was visibly near. With Garrison at one end and Calhoun
+at the other the work of dissolution advanced apace. The latter
+announced, in 1848, that the separation of the two sections was
+complete. Ten years before, Garrison had made proclamation that the
+Union, though not in form, was, nevertheless, in fact dissolved. And
+possibly they were right. The line of cleavage had at the date of
+Calhoun's announcement passed entirely through the grand strata of
+national life, industrial, moral, political, and religious. There
+remained indeed but a single bond of connection between the
+slave-holding and the non-slave-holding States, viz., fealty to party.
+But in 1848 not even this slender link was intact.
+
+The anti-slavery uprising was a fast growing factor in the politics of
+the free States. This was evinced by the aggressiveness of anti-slavery
+legislation, the repeal of slave sojournment laws, the enactment of
+personal liberty laws, the increasing preference manifested by Whig and
+by Democratic electors for anti-slavery Whig, and anti-slavery
+Democratic leaders. Seward and Chase, and Hale and Hamlin, Thaddeus
+Stevens and Joshua R. Giddings, were all in Congress in 1849. A
+revolution was working in the North; a revolution was working in the
+South. New and bolder spirits were rising to leadership in both
+sections. On the Southern stage were Jefferson Davis, Barnwell Rhett,
+David Atchison, Howell Cobb, Robert Toombs, and James M. Mason. The
+outlook was portentous, tempestuous.
+
+The tide of excitement culminated in the crisis of 1850. The
+extraordinary activity of the under-ground railroad system, and its
+failure to open the national Territories to slave immigration had
+transported the South to the verge of disunion. California, fought over
+by the two foes, was in the act of withdrawing herself from the field of
+contention to a position of independent Statehood. It was her rap for
+admission into the Union as a free State which precipitated upon the
+country the last of the compromises between freedom and slavery. It
+sounded the opening of the final act of Southern domination in the
+republic.
+
+The compromise of 1850, a series of five acts, three of which it took to
+conciliate the South, while two were considered sufficient to satisfy
+the North, was, after prolonged and stormy debate, adopted to save
+Webster's glorious Union. These five acts were, in the agonized accents
+of Clay, to heal "the five fire gaping wounds" of the country. But the
+wounds were immedicable, as events were soon to prove. Besides, two at
+least of the remedies failed to operate as emollients. They irritated
+and inflamed the national ulcers and provoked fresh paroxysms of the
+disease. The admission of California as a free State was a sort of
+perpetual _memento mori_ to the slave-power. It hung forever over the
+South the Damoclean blade of Northern political ascendency in the Union.
+The fugitive slave law on the other hand produced results undreamt of by
+its authors. Who would have ventured to predict the spontaneous,
+irresistible insurrection of the humane forces and passions of the North
+which broke out on the passage of the infamous bill? Who could have
+foretold the moral and political consequences of its execution, for
+instance, in Boston, which fifteen years before had mobbed anti-slavery
+women and dragged Garrison through its streets? The moral indignation
+aroused by the law in Massachusetts swept Webster and the Whigs from
+power, carried Sumner to the Senate and crowned Liberty on Beacon Hill.
+It worked a revolution in Massachusetts, it wrought changes of the
+greatest magnitude in the free States.
+
+From this time the reign of discord became universal. The conflict
+between the sections increased in virulence. At the door of every man
+sat the fierce figure of strife. It fulmined from the pulpit and frowned
+from the pews. The platforms of the free States resounded with the
+thunder of tongues. The press exploded with the hot passions of the
+hour. Parties warred against each other. Factions arose within parties
+and fought among themselves with no less bitterness. Wrath is infectious
+and the wrathful temper of the nation became epidemic. The Ishmaelitish
+impulse to strike something or someone, was irresistible. The bonds
+which had bound men to one another seemed everywhere loosening, and
+people in masses were slipping away from old to enter into new
+combinations of political activity. It was a period of tumultuous
+transition and confusion. The times were topsy-turvy and old Night and
+Chaos were the angels who sat by the bubbling abysses of the revolution.
+
+In the midst of this universal and violent agitation of the public mind
+the old dread of disunion returned to torment the American
+_bourgeoisie_, who through their presses, especially those of the
+metropolis of the Union, turned fiercely upon the Abolitionists. While
+the compromise measures were the subject of excited debate before
+Congress, the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society
+fell due. But the New York journals, the _Herald_ in particular, had no
+mind to allow the meeting to take place without renewing the reign of
+terror of fifteen years before. Garrison was depicted as worse than
+Robespierre, with an insatiable appetite for the destruction of
+established institutions, both human and divine. The dissolution of the
+Union, the "overthrow of the churches, the Sabbath, and the Bible," all
+were required to glut his malevolent passion. "Will the men of sense
+allow meetings to be held in this city which are calculated to make our
+country the arena of blood and murder," roared the _Herald_, "and render
+our city an object of horror to the whole South?... Public opinion
+should be regulated. These Abolitionists should not be allowed to
+misrepresent New York." In order to suppress the Abolitionists that
+paper did not blink at any means, however extreme or revolutionary, but
+declared boldly in favor of throttling free discussion. "When free
+discussion does not promote the public good," argued the editor, "it has
+no more right to exist than a bad government that is dangerous and
+oppressive to the common weal. It should be overthrown." The mob thus
+invoked came forward on the opening of the convention to overthrow free
+discussion.
+
+The storm which the New York press was at so much labor to brew,
+Garrison did not doubt would break over the convention. He went to it in
+a truly apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. "Not knowing the things that
+shall befall me there, saving that bonds and afflictions abide with me
+in every city," he wrote his wife an hour before the commencement of the
+convention. His prevision of violence was quickly fulfilled. He had
+called Francis Jackson to the chair during the delivery of the opening
+speech which fell to the pioneer to make as the president of the
+society. His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which he was
+paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian fashion. Belief in Jesus in
+the United States had no vital influence on conduct or character. The
+chief religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery, they had
+uttered no protest against the national sin. There was the Roman
+Catholic Church whose "priests and members held slaves without incurring
+the rebuke of the Church." At this point the orator was interrupted by
+one of those monstrous products of the slums of the American metropolis,
+compounded of the bully, the blackleg, and the demagogue in about equal
+proportions. It was the notorious Captain Isaiah Rynders, perched with
+his band of blackguards in the organ loft of the tabernacle and ready to
+do the will of the metropolitan journals by over-throwing the right of
+free discussion. He was not disposed to permit Mr. Garrison's censure of
+the Roman Catholic Church to pass unchallenged, so he begged to ask
+"whether there are no other churches as well as the Catholic Church,
+whose clergy and lay members hold slaves?" To which the anti-slavery
+leader replied with the utmost composure, not inclined to let even
+Captain Rynders interrupt the even and orderly progression of his
+discourse: "Will the friend wait for a moment, and I will answer him in
+reference to other churches?" "The friend" thereupon resumed his seat in
+the organ loft, and Garrison proceeded with his indictment of the
+churches. There was the Episcopal Church, whose clergy and laity dealt
+with impunity in human flesh, and the Presbyterians, whose ministers and
+members did likewise without apparently any compunctious visitings of
+conscience, ditto the Baptist, ditto the Methodist. In fact "all the
+sects are combined," the orator sternly continued, "to prevent that
+jubilee which it is the will of God should come."
+
+But the bully in the organ loft, who was not content for long to play
+the part of Patience on a monument, interrupted the speaker with a
+second question which he looked upon, doubtless, as a hard nut to crack.
+"Are you aware," inquired the blackleg "that the slaves in the South
+have their prayer-meetings in honor of Christ?" The nut was quickly
+crushed between the sharp teeth of the orator's scathing retort. Mr.
+Garrison--"Not a slave-holding or a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.)
+The slaves believe in a Jesus that strikes off chains. In this country
+Jesus has become obsolete. A profession in him is no longer a test. Who
+objects to his course in Judaea? The old Pharisees are extinct, and may
+safely be denounced. Jesus is the most respectable person in the United
+States. (Great sensation and murmurs of disapprobation.) Jesus sits in
+the President's chair of the United States. (A thrill of horror here
+seemed to run through the assembly.) Zachary Taylor sits there, which is
+the same thing, for he believes in Jesus. He believes in war, and the
+Jesus that 'gave the Mexicans hell.'" (Sensation, uproar, and
+confusion.)
+
+This rather sulphurous allusion to the President of the glorious Union,
+albeit in language used by himself in a famous order during the Mexican
+War, acted as a red rag upon the human bull in the organ loft, who, now
+beside himself with passion, plunged madly down to the platform with his
+howling mob at his heels. "I will not allow you to assail the President
+of the United States. You shan't do it!" bellowed the blackguard,
+shaking his fist at Mr. Garrison. But Mr. Garrison, with that
+extraordinary serenity of manner which was all his own, parleyed with
+the ruffian, as if he was no ruffian and had no mob at his back. "You
+ought not to interrupt us," he remonstrated with gentle dignity. "We go
+upon the principle of hearing everybody. If you wish to speak, I will
+keep order, and you shall be heard." Rynders was finally quieted by the
+offer of Francis Jackson to give him a hearing as soon as Mr. Garrison
+had brought his address to an end.
+
+Rev. W.H. Furness, of Philadelphia, who was a member of the convention
+and also one of the speakers, has preserved for us the contrasts of the
+occasion. "The close of Mr. Garrison's address," says he, "brought down
+Rynders again, who vociferated and harangued at one time on the
+platform, and then pushing down into the aisles, like a madman followed
+by his keepers. Through the whole, nothing could be more patient and
+serene than the bearing of Mr. Garrison. I have always revered Mr.
+Garrison for his devoted, uncompromising fidelity to his great cause.
+Today I was touched to the heart by his calm and gentle manners. There
+was no agitation, no scorn, no heat, but the quietness of a man engaged
+in simple duties."
+
+The madman and his keepers were quite vanquished on the first day of the
+convention by the wit, repartee, and eloquence of Frederick Douglass,
+Dr. Furness, and Rev. Samuel R. Ward, whom Wendell Phillips described as
+so black that "when he shut his eyes you could not see him." But it was
+otherwise on the second day when public opinion was "regulated," and
+free discussion overthrown by Captain Rynders and his villainous gang,
+who were resolved, with the authors of the compromise, that the Union as
+it was should be preserved.
+
+But, notwithstanding the high authority and achievements of this noble
+band of patriots and brothers, Garrison's detestation of the Union but
+increased, and his cry for its dissolution grew deeper and louder. And
+no wonder. For never had the compact between freedom and slavery seemed
+more hateful than after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. The
+state of panic which it created among the colored people in the free
+States will form, if ever written down, one of the most heartrending
+chapters in human history. Hundreds and thousands fled from their homes
+into the jaws of a Canadian winter to escape the jaws of the
+slave-hounds, whose fierce baying began presently to fill the land from
+Massachusetts to Ohio. It made no difference whether these miserable
+people had been always free or were fugitives from slavery, the terror
+spread among them all the same. The aged and the young turned their
+backs upon their homes and hurried precipitately into a strange country.
+Fathers with wives and children dependant upon them for their daily
+bread, were forced by the dread of being captured and returned to
+bondage to abandon their homes and loved ones, sometimes without so much
+as a touch of their hands or a tone of their voices in token of
+farewell. Perhaps on his way to work in the morning some husband or son
+has caught a glimpse among the faces on the street of one face, the
+remembrance of which to the day of death, he can never lose, a face he
+had known in some far away Southern town or plantation, and with which
+are connected in the poor fellow's brain the most frightful sufferings
+and associations. Crazed at the sight, with no thought of home, of the
+labors which are awaiting him, oblivious of everything but the abject
+terror which has suddenly taken possession of him, he hastens away to
+hide and fly, fly and hide, until he reaches a land where slave-hounds
+enter not, and panting fugitives find freedom. Wendell Phillips tells of
+an old woman of seventy who asked his advice about flying, though
+originally free, and fearful only of being caught up by mistake. The
+distress everywhere was awful, the excitement indescribable. From Boston
+alone in the brief space of three weeks after the rescue of Shadrach,
+nearly a hundred of these panic stricken creatures had fled. The whole
+number escaping into Canada Charles Sumner placed as high as six
+thousand souls. But in addition to this large band of fugitives, others
+emigrated to the interior of New England away from the seaboard centers
+of trade and commerce where the men-hunters abounded.
+
+The excitement and the perils of this period were not confined to the
+colored people. Their white friends shared both with them. We are
+indebted to Mr. Phillips for the following graphic account of these
+excitements and perils in Boston in March, 1851. He has been describing
+the situation in the city, in respect of the execution of the infamous
+law, to Elizabeth Pease, and goes on thus: "I need not enlarge on this;
+but the long evening sessions--debates about secret escapes--plans to
+evade where we can't resist--the door watched that no spy may enter--the
+whispering consultations of the morning--some putting property out of
+their hands, planning to incur penalties, and planning also that, in
+case of conviction, the Government may get nothing from them--the doing,
+and answering no questions--intimates forbearing to ask the knowledge
+which it may be dangerous to have--all remind one of those foreign
+scenes which have hitherto been known to us, transatlantic republicans,
+only in books."
+
+On the passage of the Black Bill, as the Abolitionists stigmatised the
+law, it was not believed that the moral sentiment of Boston would
+execute it, so horrified did the community seem. But it was soon
+apparent to the venerable Josiah Quincy that "The Boston of 1851 is not
+the Boston of 1775. Boston," the sage goes on to remark, "has now become
+a mere shop--a place for buying and selling goods; and, I suppose, also
+of _buying and selling men_." The great idol of her shopkeepers, Daniel
+Webster, having striven mightily for the enactment of the hateful bill
+while Senator of the United States, had gone into Millard Fillmore's
+Cabinet, to labor yet more mightily for its enforcement. The rescue of
+Shadrach, which Mr. Secretary of State characterized "as a case of
+treason," set him to thundering for the Union as it was, and against the
+"fanatics," who were stirring up the people of the free States to resist
+the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. But he was no longer "the
+God-like" Webster, for he appeared to the editor of the _Liberator_ as
+"an ordinary-looking, poor, decrepit old man, whose limbs could scarce
+support him; lank with age; whose sluggish legs were somewhat concealed
+by an over-shadowing abdomen; with head downcast and arms shriveled, and
+dangling almost helpless by his side, and incapable of being magnetized
+for the use of the orator." The voice and the front of "the God-like"
+had preceded the "poor decrepit old man" to the grave. Garrison dealt no
+less roughly and irreverently with another of the authors of the wicked
+law and another of the superannuated divinities of a shopkeeping North,
+Henry Clay. "HENRY CLAY, with one foot in the grave," exclaimed the
+reformer, "and just ready to have both body and soul cast into hell, as
+if eager to make his damnation doubly sure, rises in the United States
+Senate and proposes an inquiry into the expediency of passing yet
+another law, by which every one who shall dare peep or mutter against
+the execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill shall have his life crushed
+out."
+
+In those trial times words from the mouth or the pen of Abolitionists
+had the force of deadly missiles. Incapacitated as Garrison was to
+resort to physical resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law by his
+non-resistant doctrine, it seemed that all the energy and belligerency
+of the man went into the most tremendous verbal expressions. They were
+like adamantine projectiles flung with the savage strength of a catapult
+against the walls of slavery. The big sinners, like Webster and Clay, he
+singled out for condign punishment, were objects of his utmost
+severities of speech. It was thus that he essayed to breach the iron
+dungeon in which the national iniquity had shut the national conscience.
+Saturated was the reformer's mind with the thought of the Bible, its
+solemn and awful imagery, its fiery and prophetic abhorrence and
+denunciations of national sins, all of which furnished him an unfailing
+magazine whence were drawn the bolts which he launched against the giant
+sin and the giant sinners of his time. And so Clay had not only "one
+foot in the grave," but was "just ready to have both body and soul cast
+into hell."
+
+While physical resistance of the Slave Law was wholly out of the
+question with Garrison, he, nevertheless, refused to condemn the men
+with whom it was otherwise. Here he was anything but a fanatic. All that
+he required was that each should be consistent with his principles. If
+those principles bade him resist the enforcement of the Black Bill, the
+apostle of non-resistance was sorry enough, but in this emergency,
+though he possessed the gentleness of the dove, he also practised the
+wisdom of the serpent. That truth moves with men upon lower as well as
+higher planes he well knew. It is always partial and many-colored,
+refracted as it is through the prisms of human passion and prejudice. If
+it appear unto some minds in the red bar of strife and blood, so be it.
+Each must follow the light which it is given him to discern, whether the
+blue of love or the red of war. Great coadjutors, like Wendell Phillips,
+Theodore Parker, and Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, were for forcible resistance
+to the execution of the law. So were the colored people. Preparations to
+this end went on vigorously in Boston under the direction of the
+Vigilance Committee. The Crafts escaped the clutches of the
+slave-hunters, so did Shadrach escape them, but Sims and Burns fell into
+them and were returned to bondage.
+
+From this time on Wendell Phillips became in Boston and in the North
+more distinctly the leader of the Abolition sentiment. The period of
+pure moral agitation ended with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law.
+That act opened a new era in the movement, an era in which
+non-resistance had no place, an era in which a resort to physical force
+in settlement of sectional differences, the whole trend of things were
+making inevitable. Fighting, the Anglo-Saxon method, as Theodore Parker
+characterized it, of making a final settlement of just such
+controversies as was the slavery question, was in the air, had become
+without any general consciousness of it at the time appearing in the
+popular mind, a foregone conclusion, from the moment that the South
+wrested from the National Government the right to defy and override the
+moral sentiment of free State communities. With this advance of the
+anti-slavery agitation a stage nearer the end, when fighting would
+supersede all other methods, the fighters gravitated naturally to the
+front of the conflict, and the apostle of non-resistance fell somewhat
+into the background of the great movement started by him.
+
+Garrison had begun, indeed, to recognize that there were other ways
+besides his way of abolishing slavery--had begun to see that these with
+his led to Rome, to the ultimate extinction of the evil, to which
+anti-slavery unionists and disunionists were alike devoted. His innate
+sagacity and strong sense of justice lifted the reformer to larger
+toleration of mind. At a dinner given in Boston in May, 1853, by the
+Free Democracy to John P. Hale, he was not only present to testify his
+appreciation of the courage and services of Mr. Hale to the common
+cause, but while there was able to speak thus tolerantly--tolerantly for
+him certainly--of a Union dear to the company about the table yet
+hateful beyond measure to himself: "Sir, you will pardon me," spoke the
+arch anti-slavery disunionist, "for the reference. I have heard
+something here about our Union, about the value of the Union, and the
+importance of preserving the Union, Gentlemen, if you have been so
+fortunate as to find a Union worth preserving, I heartily congratulate
+you. Cling to it with all your souls!" For himself, he has not been so
+fortunate. With a price set on his head in one of the Southern States,
+and outlawed in all of them, he begs to be pardoned if found lacking in
+loyalty to the existing Union, which to him, alas: "is but another name
+for the iron reign of the slave-power. We have no common country as yet.
+God grant we may have. We shall have it when the jubilee comes--and not
+till then," he declared, mindful of the convictions of others, yet
+bravely true to his own. The seeds of liberty, of hatred of the
+slave-power, planted by Garrison were springing up in a splendid crop
+through the North. Much of the political anti-slavery of the times were
+the fruit of his endeavor. Wendell Phillips has pointed out how the
+Liberty party was benefited by the meetings and speeches of Garrisonian
+Abolitionists. What was true of the Liberty party was equally true of
+Free Soil and Free Democracy. Although the little band remained small,
+it was potent in swelling, year after year, the anti-slavery membership
+of all the parties, Whig and Democratic, as well as of those already
+mentioned. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" might fairly be classed among the large
+indirect results produced by Garrison. "But," as Phillips justly
+remarked, "'Uncle Tom' would never have been written had not Garrison
+developed the facts; and never would have succeeded had he not created
+readers and purchasers." Garrisonism had become an influence, a power
+that made for liberty and against slavery in the United States. It had
+become such also in Great Britain. George Thompson, writing the pioneer
+of the marvelous sale of "Uncle Tom" in England, and of the
+unprecedented demand for anti-slavery literature, traced their source to
+his friend: "Behold the fruit of your labors," he exclaimed, "and
+rejoice."
+
+Mr. Garrison's pungent characterization of the "Union" at the dinner of
+the Free Democracy as "but another name for the iron reign of the
+slave-power," found almost instant illustration of its truth in the
+startling demand of that power for the repeal of the Missouri
+Compromise. In 1850 the South lost California, but it received at the
+time an advantage of far-reaching consequence, viz., the admission of
+the principle of federal non-intervention upon the subject of slavery in
+the national Territories into the bill organizing Territorial
+Governments for New Mexico and Utah. The train which was to blow down
+the slave wall of 1820 and open to slave immigration the northern half
+of the Louisiana Territory, was laid in the compromise measures of 1850.
+
+Calhoun, strongly dissatisfied as he was with the Missouri settlement,
+recoiled from countenancing any agitation on the part of the South
+looking to its repeal on the ground that such action was calculated to
+disturb "the peace and harmony of the Union." But four years after the
+death of the great nullifier, his disciples and followers dared to
+consummate a crime, the consequences of which he shrank from inviting.
+The political conditions four years had indeed modified in one important
+particular at least. In Calhoun's lifetime, there was no Northern leader
+bold enough to undertake to engineer an act of abrogation through
+Congress. If the North were willing, possessed sufficient magnanimity,
+to surrender, in the interest of brotherly love between the sections,
+the benefits which inured to it under the Missouri Compromise, neither
+Calhoun nor the South would have declined the proffered sacrifice. The
+selection of Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 as the leader of the movement
+for repeal put a new face on the business, which was thereby made to
+appear to proceed from the free, not from the slave States. This was
+adroit, the fixing upon the losing section the initiative and the
+responsibility of the act of abrogation.
+
+Besides this element, there was another not less specious which lent to
+the scheme an air of fairness, and that was the application to the
+Territories of the American principle of local self-government, in other
+words, the leaving to the people of the Territories the right to vote
+slavery up or vote it down, as they might elect. The game was a deep
+one, worthy of the machinations of its Northern and Southern authors.
+But, like other elaborate schemes of mice and men, it went to pieces
+under the fatal stroke of an unexpected circumstance. The act which
+abrogated the Missouri Compromise broke the much-enduring back of
+Northern patience at the same time. In the struggle for the repeal
+Southern Whigs and Southern Democrats forgot their traditionary party
+differences in battling for Southern interests, which was not more or
+less than the extension to the national Territories of the peculiar
+institution. The final recognition of this ugly fact on the part of the
+free States, raised a popular flood in them big enough to whelm the Whig
+party and to float a great political organization, devoted to
+uncompromising opposition to the farther extension of slavery. The
+sectionalism of slavery was at last met by the sectionalism of freedom.
+From that moment the old Union, with its slave compromises, was doomed.
+In the conflict then impending its dissolution was merely a matter of
+time, unless indeed the North should prove strong enough to preserve it
+by the might of its arms, seeing that the North still clung passionately
+to the idea of national unity.
+
+Not so, however, was it with Garrison. Sharper and sterner rose his
+voice against any union with Slaveholders. On the Fourth of July
+following the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the reformer at
+Framingham, Mass., gave a fresh and startling sign of his hatred of the
+Union by burning publicly the Constitution of the United States. Before
+doing so however, he consigned to the flames a copy of the _Fugitive
+Slave Law_, next the decision of Judge Loring remanding Anthony Burns to
+slavery, also the charge of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis to the Grand Jury
+touching the assault upon the court-house for the rescue of Burns. Then
+holding up the United States Constitution, he branded it as the source
+and parent of all the other atrocities--a covenant with death and an
+agreement with hell--and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming,
+"So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say,
+Amen!" This dramatic act and the "tremendous shout" which "went up to
+heaven in ratification of the deed" from the assembled multitude, what
+were they but the prophecy of a fiercer fire already burning in the
+land, soon to blaze about the pillars of the Union, of a more tremendous
+shout soon to burst with the wrath of a divided people over that
+
+  "perfidious bark
+  Built i' th' eclipse, and rigged with curses dark."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+
+FACE TO FACE.
+
+
+Face to face at last were freedom and slavery. The final struggle
+between them for mastery had come. Narrow, indeed, was the issue that
+divided the combatants, slavery extension on the one side, and slavery
+restriction on the other, not total and immediate emancipation, but it
+was none the less vital and supreme to the two enemies. Back of the
+Southern demand for "More slave soil" stood a solid South, back of the
+Northern position, "No more slave soil" was rallying a fast uniting
+North. The political revolution, produced by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
+advanced apace through the free States from Maine to Michigan. A
+flood-tide of Northern resistance had suddenly risen against the
+slave-power.
+
+Higher than anywhere else rose this flood-tide in Massachusetts. The
+judge who remanded Anthony Burns to slavery was removed from office, and
+a Personal Liberty Law, with provisions as bold as they were thorough,
+enacted for the protection of fugitive slaves. Mr. Garrison sat beside
+the President of the State Senate when that body voted to remove Judge
+Loring from his office. Such was Massachusetts's answer to the
+abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, and a triumphant slave-power. Its
+instant effect was to accelerate in the South the action of the disunion
+working forces there, to hurry the inevitable moment when the two
+sections would rush together in a death-grapple within or without
+Webster's once glorious Union.
+
+Indeed the foes had already closed in a frightful wrestle for the
+possession of Kansas. When the National Government adopted the popular
+sovereignty doctrine in solution of the Territorial problem between the
+two halves of the Union, freedom and slavery thereupon precipitated
+their forces upon the debatable land, and, for the first time, the men
+of the North and the men of the South came into actual physical
+collision in defence of their respective ideas and institutions. The
+possession of land is nine points of the law among Anglo-Saxons, and for
+this immense advantage both sides flung themselves into Kansas--the
+North by means of emigrant aid societies, the South by means of bands of
+Border ruffians under the direction of a United States Senator. It was
+distinctly understood and ordained in connection with the repeal of the
+compromise of 1820, that final possession of the Territories then thrown
+open to slave labor should be determined by the people inhabiting the
+same. In the contest for peopling Kansas the superior colonizing
+resources of the free States was presently made manifest. They, in any
+fair contest with ballots, had a majority of the polls, and were,
+therefore, able to vote slavery down. Worsted as the South clearly was
+in a show of heads, it threw itself back upon fraud and force to decide
+the issue in its favor. The cartridge-box took the place of the
+ballot-box in bleeding Kansas, and violence and anarchy, as a
+consequence, reigned therein for the space of several years.
+
+This is no place to depict those scenes of slave-holding outrages,
+supported as they were by a Northern President with Southern principles.
+The sight of them rapidly changed the pacific character of the free
+States. Many a peace man dropped his peace principles before this bloody
+duel between the civilization of the South and that of the North.
+Ministers and churches took up collections to send, not Bibles, but
+Sharp's rifles to their brethren in Kansas. The South had appealed to
+the sword, and the North had sternly accepted the challenge. War was in
+the air, and the Northern temper, without there being any general
+consciousness of it, was fast mounting to the war point in the
+thermometer of the passions, thanks to the perfidy and ruffianism of the
+slave-power in Congress and Kansas.
+
+This trend and strong undertow of the nation toward a civil outbreak and
+commotion, though unnoted by the multitude, was yet, nevertheless, seen
+and felt by many thoughtful and far-seeing minds; and by no one more
+clearly than by T.W. Higginson, who at the twentieth anniversary of the
+Boston mob, discoursed thus on this head: "Mr. Phillips told us that on
+this day, twenty years ago, the military could not protect the meeting,
+because the guns were outside in the mob--or the men who should have
+carried them! There has been a time since when the men were on the
+outside and the guns too; and as surely as this earth turns on its axis,
+that time will come again! And it is for you, men, who hear me, to think
+what you will do when that time comes; and it is for you, women, who
+hear me, to think what you will do, and what you are willing--I will not
+say, to _consent_ that those you love should do, but what you are
+willing to _urge_ them to do, and to send them from your homes, knowing
+that they will do it, whether they live or die." The murderous assault
+upon Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber at Washington by Preston S.
+Brooks, served to intensify the increasing belligerency of the Northern
+temper, to deepen the spreading conviction that the irrepressible
+conflict would be settled not with the pen through any more fruitless
+compromises, but in Anglo-Saxon fashion by blood and iron.
+
+Amid this general access of the fighting propensity, Garrison preserved
+the integrity of his non-resistant principles, his aversion to the use
+of physical force as an anti-slavery weapon. Men like Charles Stearns
+talked of shouldering their Sharp's rifles against the Border ruffians
+as they would against wild beasts. For himself, he could not class any
+of his fellow-creatures, however vicious and wicked, on the same level
+with wild beasts. Those wretches were, he granted, as bad and brutal as
+they were represented by the free State men of Kansas, but to him they
+were less blameworthy than were their employers and indorsers, the
+pro-slavery President and his Cabinet, pro-slavery Congressmen, and
+judges, and doctors of divinity, and editors. Incomparably guilty as
+these "colossal conspirators against the liberty, peace, happiness, and
+safety of the republic" were; and, though his moral indignation "against
+their treasonable course" burned like fire, he, nevertheless, wished
+them no harm. He shrank from the idea of the physical collision of man
+with a brother man, and with him all mankind were brothers. No one is
+able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member of the human family,
+"in a Christian state of mind." He held to Jesus, who condemned
+violence, forbade the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory
+feelings and the use of retaliatory weapons. When Jesus said "Love your
+enemies," he did not mean, "Kill them if they go too far."
+
+Garrison's moral radicalism and political sagacity were never exhibited
+to better advantage than during these tremendous years of the crisis. He
+saw the sudden rise of a great political organization opposed to the
+farther extension of slavery to national territory. It was by no means a
+party after his heart, and for total and immediate emancipation, and the
+dissolution of the Union, yet he perceived that while this was true, it
+was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose, battling against the
+slave-power, fighting the slave system, and to this extent was worthy of
+the commendation of Abolitionists. "It helps to disseminate no small
+amount of light and knowledge," the reformer acutely observed, "in
+regard to the nature and workings of the slave system, being
+necessitated to do this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time
+being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right direction, though
+with no purpose to aid us in the specific work we are striving to
+accomplish, namely, the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of
+slavery throughout the land." While bating no jot of his anti-slavery
+principles, he all the same put in practice the apostolic injunction to
+give credit to whom credit is due, by cordially commending what he found
+worthy of commendation in the purpose and policy of the Republican
+party, and by urging a like conduct upon his followers. In the
+Presidential canvass of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with Fremont
+as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although his Abolition principles
+precluded him from voting for the Republican candidate or from urging
+his disciples to vote for him. But, barring this moral barrier, had he
+"a million votes to bestow" he "would cast them all for Fremont ... not
+because he is an Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is for
+the non-extension of slavery, in common with the great body of the
+people of the North, whose attachment to the Union amounts to idolatry."
+
+When the election was over the motto of the _Liberator_ was still "No
+union with slaveholders," and would have remained the same though
+Fremont instead of Buchanan had triumphed at the polls, until indeed the
+domination of the slave-power had ended, and the North and the National
+Constitution had been divorced from all criminal connection with
+slavery. The anti-slavery agitation for the dissolution of the Union
+went on with increased zeal. A State convention, called by T.W.
+Higginson and others, "to consider the practicability, probability, and
+expediency of a separation between the free and slave States, and to
+take such other measures as the condition of the times may require," met
+at Worcester, Mass., January 15, 1857, with Frank W. Bird in the chair,
+and William Lloyd Garrison among the vice-presidents. The pioneer's
+speech on the occasion was a characteristic and noteworthy utterance.
+Its tone throughout was grave and argumentative. Here is a specimen of
+it, and of the way in which he met the most serious objection to the
+Abolition movement for disunion: "The air is filled with objections to a
+movement of this kind. I am neither surprised nor disquieted at this.
+One of these is of a very singular nature, and it is gravely urged that
+it is conclusive against disunion. It is to this effect: We must remain
+in the Union because it would be inhuman in us to turn our backs upon
+millions of slaves in the Southern States, and to leave them to their
+fate! Men who have never been heard of in the anti-slavery ranks, or who
+are ever submitting to a compromise of principle, have their bowels
+wonderfully moved all at once with sympathy for the suffering slave!
+Even our esteemed friend, Theodore Parker (who deals in no cant) says,
+in his letter, that he cannot consent to cut himself off from the slave
+population. Now, we who are engaged in this movement claim to be equally
+concerned for the liberation of the slave. If we have not yet proved our
+willingness to suffer the loss of all things, rather than turn and flee,
+God knows that we are prepared to bear any new cross that He, in His
+Providence, may be disposed to lay upon us. For one, I make no parade of
+my anxiety for the deliverance of those in bondage; but I do say that it
+strikes me as remarkable that those who, for a quarter of a century,
+have borne the heat and burden of the day, should have the imputation
+cast upon them of intending to leave four millions of slaves in their
+chains, by seeking the overthrow of this Union!...
+
+" ... I declare that this talk of leaving the slave to his fate is not a
+true representation of the case; and it indicates a strange dullness of
+comprehension with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is it to
+forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his
+master? What! When the North is pressing down upon four millions of
+slaves like an avalanche, and we say to her, 'Take off that
+pressure--stand aside--give the slave a chance to regain his feet and
+assert his freedom!' is that turning our backs upon him? Here, for
+example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, and another man is acting
+as an accessory, without whose aid the robber cannot succeed. In saying
+to the accomplice. 'Hands off! Don't aid the villain!' shall I be told
+that this is enabling the highwayman to rob with impunity? What an
+absurdity! Are we not trying to save the pockets of all travelers from
+being picked in seeking to break up all connection with highway
+robbery?"
+
+The convention projected a general convention of the free States to
+consider the subject, and "_Resolved_, That the sooner the separation
+takes place, the more peaceful it will be; but that peace or war is _a
+secondary consideration_ in view of our present perils. Slavery must be
+conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." The projected
+general convention, owing to the monetary crisis of 1857, did not take
+place; but the extraordinary public excitement on the slavery question
+increased rather than diminished during the year. The increasing menace
+to the domination of the slave-power from this source had become so
+great that it was deemed prudent on the part of the upholders of that
+power to allay it by means of an authoritative utterance upon the vexed
+question of slavery in the national Territories from the highest
+judicial tribunal in the Land. The Northern respect for the opinion of
+the Supreme Court, the South and her allies in the free States counted
+upon as the vehicle of the quieting medicament. For, if the Missouri
+Compromise were pronounced by that Court unconstitutional and,
+therefore, _ab initio_, null and void, no wrong was done the North
+through its formal repeal by Congress. The act of abrogation, in this
+view, added nothing to the South which did not belong to it as well
+before as after its passage, detracted nothing from the North which was
+justly its due in the premises. In pursuance of this cunningly devised
+scheme the Supreme Court delivered itself of an opinion in the famous
+"Dred Scott Case." So abhorrent it was to the intelligence and moral
+sense of the free States, that it produced results altogether opposed to
+those designed by the men who invoked it. Instead of checking, the
+execrated judgment augmented enormously the existing excitement.
+Garrison's bitter taunt that "the Union is but another name for the iron
+reign of the slave-power," was driven home to the North, by the Dred
+Scott decision, with the logic of another unanswerable fact. Confidence
+in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court was seriously
+shaken, and widespread suspicion struck root at the North touching the
+subserviency of that tribunal to the interests and designs of the
+slave-power.
+
+The popular agitation at this fresh and alarming evidence of the purpose
+and power of the South upset the machinations of the schemers, swelled
+the numerical strength of the new Northern party opposed to the
+Territorial aggressions and pretensions of the slave section. So rapid
+was the growth of the Republican party that the slave leaders
+anticipated its accession to power at the then next Presidential
+election. So certain were they in their forebodings of defeat that they
+set about in dead earnest to put their side of the divided house in
+order for the impending struggle for Southern independence. Military
+preparations went forward with a vengeance, arms and munitions of war
+which were the property of the General Government began to move
+southward, to Southern military depots and posts for the defence of the
+United States South, when at last the word "DISUNION" should be
+pronounced over the Republic. The Lincoln-Douglass debate augmented
+everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty numbers of the new
+party. More and more the public consciousness and conviction were
+squaring with Mr. Lincoln's oracular words in respect that the Union
+could not "endure permanently half slave and half free."
+
+The darkness and tumult of the rising tempest were advancing apace, when
+suddenly there burst from the national firmament the first warning peal
+of thunder, and over Virginia there sped the first bolt of the storm.
+John Brown with his brave little band, at Harper's Ferry, had struck for
+the freedom of the slave. Tired of words, the believer in blood and iron
+as a deliverer, had crossed from Pennsylvania into Virginia on the
+evening of October 16, 1859, and seized the United States Armory at
+Harper's Ferry. Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and hanged
+for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had builded better than he
+knew. For the blow struck by him then and there ended almost abruptly
+the period of argument and ushered in the period of arms. The jar from
+that battle-ax at the roots of the slave system hurled together in a
+death struggle right and wrong, freedom and slavery, in the republic.
+
+This attempt on the part of John Brown to liberate the slaves seemed to
+Garrison "misguided, wild, and apparently insane, though disinterested
+and well-intended." On non-resistant grounds he deplored this use of the
+sword to effect emancipation, and condemned the leader. But, judging him
+according to the standard of Bunker Hill and the men of 1776, he did not
+doubt that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable
+remembrance to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the deeds
+of a Wallace or Tell, a Washington or Warren."
+
+The raid of Brown and his subsequent execution, and their reception at
+the North revealed how vast was the revolution in public sentiment on
+the slavery question which had taken place there, since the murder of
+Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy died defending the right of free
+speech and the liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of
+Massachusetts declared that "he died as the fool dieth." Brown died in
+an invasion of a slave State, and in an effort to emancipate the slaves
+with a band of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one end of
+the free States to the other, hero and martyr. Mr. Garrison commenting
+on this immensely significant fact, acutely and justly observed that:
+"The sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him, prove how
+marvelous has been the change affected in public opinion during the
+thirty years of moral agitation--a change so great indeed, that whereas,
+ten years since, there were thousands who could not endure my lightest
+word of rebuke of the South, they can now easily swallow John Brown
+whole and his rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has merely
+told us what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God!"
+
+But there is another circumstance hardly less significant of another
+change at the North even more momentous than the one just noted.
+
+On December 2d, the day on which Brown was hung, solemn funeral
+observances were held throughout the North by Abolitionists. At the
+great meeting in Boston, held in Tremont Temple, and presided over by
+Samuel E. Sewall, Garrison inquired as to the number of non-resistants
+who were present. To this question there came a solitary reply. There
+was but one non-resistant beside himself in the hall. Where were his
+followers? Why had they forsaken their principles? The tide of Northern
+belligerency, which was everywhere rising to its flood, everywhere
+rushing and mounting to the tops of those dams which separate war and
+peace had swept away his followers, had caused them to forsake their
+principles. True to their Anglo-Saxon instinct, they had reverted to the
+more human, if less Christian method of cutting the Gordian knot of the
+republic with the sword.
+
+The irresistible drift of the North toward the point where peace ends
+and war begins, which that solitary "I" at the John Brown meeting
+denoted, was still further indicated by what appeared not wholly unlike
+a change in Mr. Garrison's attitude on the same subject. His
+non-resistant position was the same, but somehow his face seemed to turn
+warward too, with the rest of the nation, in the following passage taken
+from his address at that John Brown meeting:
+
+"Nevertheless, I am a non-resistant," said he, speaking to that solitary
+confession of non-resistance principles, "and I not only desire, but
+have labored unremittingly to effect the peaceful abolition of slavery,
+by an appeal to the reason and conscience of the slaveholder; yet, as a
+peace man, an ultra peace man, I am prepared to say: Success to every
+slave insurrection at the South, and in every slave country. And I do
+not see how I compromise or stain my peace profession in making that
+declaration. Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the
+oppressor, the weapons being equal between the parties, God knows that
+my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor.
+Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave
+insurrections.... Rather than see men wearing their chains, in a
+cowardly and servile spirit, I would as an advocate of peace, much
+rather see them breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains. Give
+me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Concord, rather
+than the cowardice and servility of a Southern slave plantation."
+
+The unmistakable signs of disintegration, the swift action of the
+national tragedy, the Charleston Convention, the disruption of the
+Democratic party, the last bond between the North and the South, filled
+the heart of the pioneer with solemn joy. "Only think of it!" he exulted
+at the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, May
+8, 1860; "only think of it! the party which has for so many years cried
+out, 'There must be no agitation on this subject' is now the most
+agitated of all the parties in the country. The party which declares
+that there ought not to be any sectionalism as against slavery, has now
+been sundered geographically, and on this very question! The party which
+had said, 'Let discussions cease forever,' is busily engaged in the
+discussion, so that, possibly, the American Anti-Slavery Society might
+adjourn _sine die_, after we get through with our present meetings, and
+leave its work to be carried on in the other direction!" This was all
+true enough. The sections were at last sundered, and a day of wrath was
+rising dark and dreadful over "States dissevered, discordant,
+belligerent."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+
+THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
+
+
+The triumph of the Republican party at the polls was the signal for the
+work of dissolution to begin. Webster's terrific vision of "a land rent
+with civil feuds" became reality in the short space of six weeks after
+Lincoln's election, by the secession of South Carolina from the Union.
+Quickly other Southern States followed, until a United States South was
+organized, the chief stone in the corner of the new political edifice
+being Negro slavery. It was not six weeks after the inauguration of
+Abraham Lincoln, when the roar of cannon in Charleston Harbor announced
+to the startled country that war between the States had begun. The first
+call of the new President for troops to put down the rebellion and to
+save the Union, and the patriotic uprising which it evoked made it plain
+that the struggle thus opened was to be nothing less than a
+death-grapple between the two sections.
+
+Before the attack on Fort Sumter, Garrison was opposed to coercing the
+rebel States back into the Union. He admitted the Constitutional power
+of the National Government to employ force in maintaining the integrity
+of the Republic. "The Federal Government must not pretend to be in
+actual operation, embracing thirty-four States," the editor of the
+_Liberator_ commented, "and then allow the seceding States to trample
+upon its flag, steal its property, and defy its authority with impunity;
+for it would then be (as it is at this moment) a mockery and a
+laughing-stock. Nevertheless to think of whipping the South (for she
+will be a unit on the question of slavery) into subjection, and
+extorting allegiance from millions of people at the cannon's mouth, is
+utterly chimerical. True, it is in the power of the North to deluge her
+soil with blood, and inflict upon her the most terrible sufferings; but
+not to conquer her spirit, or change her determination."
+
+He, therefore, proposed that "the people of the North should recognize
+the fact that THE UNION IS DISSOLVED, and act accordingly. They should
+see, in the madness of the South, the hand of God, liberating them from
+'a covenant with death' and an 'agreement with hell,' made in a time of
+terrible peril, and without a conception of its inevitable consequences,
+and which has corrupted their morals, poisoned their religion, petrified
+their humanity as towards the millions in bondage, tarnished their
+character, harassed their peace, burdened them with taxation, shackled
+their prosperity, and brought them into abject vassalage."
+
+It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under the circumstances, was
+for speeding the South rather than obstructing her way out of the Union.
+For hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater peril than that
+which hung over it during the months which elapsed between Lincoln's
+election and the attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions
+to which the free States fell a prey in view of the then impending
+disruption of their glorious Union. Indeed no sacrifice of anti-slavery
+accomplishments, policy, and purpose of those States were esteemed too
+important or sacred to make, if thereby the dissolution of the Union
+might be averted. Many, Republicans as well as Democrats, were for
+repealing the Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of New Mexico
+as a State, with or without slavery, for the enforcement of the Fugitive
+State Law, for suppressing the right of free speech and the freedom of
+the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering the Northern
+position in opposition to the extension of slavery to national
+Territories, in order to placate the South and keep it in the Union.
+Nothing could have possibly been more disastrous to the anti-slavery
+movement in America than a Union saved on the terms proposed by such
+Republican leaders as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Thomas
+Corwin, and Andrew G. Curtin. The Union, under the circumstances, was
+sure death to the slave, in disunion lay his great life-giving hope.
+Therefore his tried and sagacious friend was for sacrificing the Union
+to win for him freedom.
+
+As the friends of the Union were disposed to haggle at no price to
+preserve it, so was Garrison disposed to barter the Union itself in
+exchange for the abolition of slavery. "Now, then, let there be a
+CONVENTION OF THE FREE STATES," he suggested, "called to organize an
+independent government on free and just principles; and let them say to
+the slave States: Though you are without excuse for your treasonable
+conduct, depart in peace! Though you have laid piratical hands on
+property not your own, we surrender it all in the spirit of magnanimity!
+And if nothing but the possession of the Capitol will appease you, take
+even that without a struggle! Let the line be drawn between us where
+free institutions end and slave institutions begin!"
+
+But the thunder of the rebel guns in Charleston Harbor wrought in the
+reformer a complete revolution in this regard. In the tremendous popular
+uprising which followed that insult to the national flag he perceived
+that the old order with its compromises and dispositions to agree to
+anything, to do anything for the sake of preserving the Union had passed
+away forever. When it was suggested as an objection to his change of
+base that the "Administration is endeavoring to uphold the Union, the
+Constitution, and the Laws, even as from the formation of the
+Government," he was not for a moment deceived by its apparent force, but
+replied sagely that "this is a verbal and technical view of the case."
+"Facts are more potential than words," he remarked with philosophic
+composure, "and events greater than parchment arrangements. The truth
+is, the old Union is _nan est invenius_, and its restoration, with its
+pro-slavery compromises, well-nigh impossible. The conflict is really
+between the civilization of freedom and the barbarism of
+slavery--between the principles of democracy and the doctrines of
+absolutism--between the free North and the man-imbruting South;
+therefore, to this extent hopeful for the cause of impartial liberty."
+
+With the instinct of wise leadership, he adjusted himself and his little
+band of Abolitionists, as far as he was able, to the exigencies of the
+revolution. In his madness there was always remarkable method. When the
+nation was apathetic, dead on the subject of slavery, he used every
+power which he possessed or could invent to galvanize it into life. But
+with the prodigious excitement which swept over the free States at the
+outbreak of the war, Garrison saw that the crisis demanded different
+treatment. Abolitionists and their moral machinery he felt should be
+withdrawn, for a season at least, from their conspicuous place before
+the public gaze, lest it happen that they should divert the current of
+public opinion from the South to themselves, and thus injure the cause
+of the slave. He accordingly deemed it highly expedient that the usual
+anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held in New York,
+ought, under the circumstances, to be postponed, coming as it would but
+a few weeks after the attack on Sumter, and in the midst of the
+tremendous loyal uprising against the rebels. This he did, adding, by
+way of caution, this timely counsel: "Let nothing be done at this solemn
+crisis needlessly to check or divert the mighty current of popular
+feeling which is now sweeping southward with the strength and
+impetuosity of a thousand Niagaras, in direct conflict with that haughty
+and perfidious slave-power which has so long ruled the republic with a
+rod of iron, for its own base and satanic purposes."
+
+The singular tact and sagacity of the pioneer in this emergency may be
+again seen in a letter to Oliver Johnson, who was at the time editing
+the _Anti-Slavery Standard_. Says the pioneer: "Now that civil war has
+begun, and a whirlwind of violence and excitement is to sweep through
+the country, every day increasing in interest until its bloodiest
+culmination, it is for the Abolitionists to 'stand still and see the
+salvation of God,' rather than to attempt to add anything to the general
+commotion. It is no time for minute criticism of Lincoln, Republicanism,
+or even the other parties, now that they are fusing, for a death-grapple
+with the Southern slave oligarchy; for they are instruments in the hands
+of God to carry forward and help achieve the great object of
+emancipation for which we have so long been striving.... We need great
+circumspection and consummate wisdom in regard to what we may say and do
+under these unparalleled circumstances. We are rather, for the time
+being, to note the events transpiring than seek to control them. There
+must be no needless turning of popular violence upon ourselves by any
+false step of our own."
+
+The circumspection, the tact, and sagacity which marked his conduct at
+the beginning of the rebellion characterized it to the close of the war,
+albeit at no time doing or saying aught to compromise his anti-slavery
+principle of total and immediate emancipation. On the contrary, he
+urged, early and late, upon Congress and the President the exercise of
+the war power to put an end for ever to slavery. Radical Abolitionists
+like Stephen S. Foster were for denying to the Administration
+anti-slavery support and countenance, and for continuing to heap upon
+the Government their denunciations until it placed itself "openly and
+unequivocally on the side of freedom," by issuing the edict of
+emancipation. Against this zeal without discretion Garrison warmly
+protested. "I cannot say that I do not sympathize with the Government,"
+said he, "as against Jefferson Davis and his piratical associates. There
+is not a drop of blood in my veins, both as an Abolitionist and a peace
+man, that does not flow with the Northern tide of sentiment; for I see,
+in this grand uprising of the manhood of the North, which has been so
+long groveling in the dust, a growing appreciation of the value of
+liberty and free institutions, and a willingness to make any sacrifice
+in their defence against the barbaric and tyrannical power which avows
+its purpose, if it can, to crush them entirely out of existence. When
+the Government shall succeed (if it shall succeed) in conquering a
+peace, in subjugating the South, and shall undertake to carry out the
+Constitution as of old, with all its pro-slavery compromises, then will
+be my time to criticise, reprove, and condemn; then will be the time for
+me to open all the guns that I can bring to bear upon it. But blessed be
+God that 'covenant with death' has been annulled, and that 'agreement
+with hell' no longer stands. I joyfully accept the fact, and leave all
+verbal criticism until a more suitable opportunity."
+
+But it must be confessed that at times during the struggle, Lincoln's
+timidity and apparent indifference as to the fate of slavery, in his
+anxiety to save the Union, weakened Garrison's confidence in him, and
+excited his keenest apprehensions "at the possibility of the war
+terminating without the utter extinction of slavery, by a new and more
+atrocious compromise on the part of the North than any that has yet been
+made." The pioneer therefore adjudged it prudent to get his battery into
+position and to visit upon the President for particular acts, such as
+the revocation of anti-slavery orders by sundry of his generals in the
+field, and upon particular members of his Cabinet who were understood to
+be responsible for the shuffling, hesitating action of the Government in
+its relation to slavery, an effective fire of criticism and rebuke.
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Garrison maintained toward the Government a uniform
+tone of sympathy and moderation. "I hold," said he, in reply to
+strictures of Mr. Phillips upon the President at the annual meeting of
+the Massachusetts Society in 1862; "I hold that it is not wise for us to
+be too microscopic in endeavoring to find disagreeable and annoying
+things, still less to assume that everything is waxing worse and worse,
+and that there is little or no hope." He himself was full of hope which
+no shortcomings of the Government was able to quench. He was besides
+beginning to understand the perplexities which beset the administration,
+to appreciate the problem which confronted the great statesman who was
+at the head of the nation. He was getting a clear insight into the
+workings of Lincoln's mind, and into the causes which gave to his
+political pilotage an air of timidity and indecision.
+
+"Supposing Mr. Lincoln could answer to-night," continued the pioneer in
+reply to his less patient and hopeful coadjutors, "and we should say to
+him: 'Sir, with the power in your hands, slavery being the cause of the
+rebellion beyond all controversy, why don't you put the trump of jubilee
+to your lips, and proclaim universal freedom?'--possibly he might
+answer: 'Gentlemen, I understand this matter quite as well as you do. I
+do not know that I differ in opinion from you; but will you insure me
+the support of a united North if I do as you bid me? Are all parties and
+all sects at the North so convinced and so united on this point that
+they will stand by the Government? If so, give me the evidence of it,
+and I will strike the blow. But, gentlemen, looking over the entire
+North, and seeing in all your towns and cities papers representing a
+considerable, if not a formidable portion of the people, menacing and
+bullying the Government in case it dared to liberate the slaves, even as
+a matter of self-preservation, I do not feel that the hour has yet come
+that will render it safe for the Government to take that step.' I am
+willing to believe that something of this kind weighs in the mind of the
+President and the Cabinet, and that there is some ground for hesitancy
+as a mere matter of political expediency." This admirable and
+discriminating support of the President finds another capital
+illustration in weighty words of his in answer to animadversions of
+Prof. Francis W. Newman, of England, directed against Mr. Lincoln. Says
+Garrison: "In no instance, however, have I censured him (Lincoln) for
+not acting upon the highest abstract principles of justice and humanity,
+and disregarding his Constitutional obligations. His freedom to follow
+his convictions of duty as an individual is one thing--as the President
+of the United States, it is limited by the functions of his office, for
+the people do not elect a President to play the part of reformer or
+philanthropist, nor to enforce upon the nation his own peculiar ethical
+or humanitary ideas without regard to his oath or their will."
+
+Great indeed was the joy of the pioneer when President Lincoln on
+January 1, 1863, issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The same
+sagacious and statesmanlike handling of men and things distinguished his
+conduct after the edict of freedom was made as before. When the question
+of Reconstruction was broached in an administrative initiative in
+Louisiana, the President gave great offence to the more radical members
+of his party, and to many Abolitionists by his proposal to readmit
+Louisiana to Statehood in the Union with no provision for the extension
+of the suffrage to the negro. This exhibition of the habitual caution
+and conservatism of Mr. Lincoln brought upon him a storm of criticism
+and remonstrances, but not from Garrison. There was that in him which
+appreciated and approved the evident disposition of the President to
+make haste slowly in departing from the American principle of local
+self-government even in the interest of liberty. Then, too, he had his
+misgivings in relation to the virtue of the fiat method of transforming
+chattels into citizens. "Chattels personal may be instantly translated
+from the auction-block into freemen," he remarked in defence of the
+administrative policy in the reconstruction of Louisiana, "but when were
+they ever taken at the same time to the ballot-box, and invested with
+all political rights and immunities? According to the laws of
+development and progress it is not practicable.... Besides, I doubt
+whether he has the Constitutional right to decide this matter. Ever
+since the Government was organized, the right of suffrage has been
+determined by each State in the Union for itself, so that there is no
+uniformity in regard to it.
+
+" ... In honestly seeking to preserve the Union, it is not for President
+Lincoln to seek, by a special edict applied to a particular State or
+locality, to do violence to a universal rule, accepted and acted upon
+from the beginning till now by the States in their individual
+sovereignty.... Nor, if the freed blacks were admitted to the polls by
+Presidential fiat do I see any permanent advantage likely to be secured
+by it; for, submitted to as a necessity at the outset, as soon as the
+State was organized and left to manage its own affairs, the white
+population with their superior intelligence, wealth, and power, would
+unquestionably alter the franchise in accordance with their prejudices,
+and exclude those thus summarily brought to the polls. Coercion would
+gain nothing." A very remarkable prophecy, which has since been exactly
+fulfilled in the Southern States. Garrison, however, in the subsequent
+struggle between Congress and Mr. Lincoln's successor over this selfsame
+point in its wider relation to all of the Southern States, took sides
+against Andrew Johnson and in favor of the Congressional fiat method of
+transforming chattels personal into citizens. The elimination of Abraham
+Lincoln from, and the introduction of Andrew Johnson upon the National
+stage at this juncture, did undoubtedly effect such a change of
+circumstances, as to make the Congressional fiat method a political
+necessity. It was distinctly the less of two evils which at the moment
+was thrust upon the choice of the Northern people.
+
+The same breadth and liberality of view, which marked his treatment of
+Mr. Lincoln upon the subject of emancipation and of that of
+reconstruction, marked his treatment also of other questions which the
+suppression of the rebellion presented to his consideration. Although a
+radical peace man, how just was his attitude toward the men and the
+measures of the War for the Union. Nothing that he did evinced on his
+part greater tact or toleration than his admirable behavior in this
+respect. To his eldest son, George Thompson, who was no adherent of the
+doctrine of non-resistance, and who was commissioned by Governor Andrew,
+a second lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, the
+pioneer wrote expressing his regret that the young lieutenant had not
+been able "to adopt those principles of peace which are so sacred and
+divine to my soul, yet you will bear me witness that I have not laid a
+straw in your way to prevent your acting up to your own highest
+convictions of duty." Such was precisely his attitude toward the North
+who, he believed, in waging war against the South for the maintenance of
+the Union, was acting up to her own highest convictions of duty. And not
+a straw would he place across her path, under those circumstances,
+though every step bore witness to one of the most gigantic and
+destructive wars in history.
+
+Garrison did not have to wait for posthumous appreciation from his
+countrymen. His steady and discriminating support of the Government, and
+his ardent sympathy with the arms of the North won him appreciation in
+his lifetime. Indeed, there came to him, if not popularity, something
+closely akin to it during the war. His visit to the capital in June,
+1864, well illustrates the marvelous changes which had taken place in
+the Union touching himself and his cause. On his way to Washington the
+pioneer stopped over at Baltimore, which he had not revisited for
+thirty-four years, and where the Republican Convention, which
+renominated Lincoln was in session. He watched the proceedings from the
+gallery, and witnessed with indescribable emotions the enthusiastic
+demonstrations of joy with which the whole body of delegates greeted the
+radical anti-slavery resolution of the Convention. To the reformer it
+was "a full indorsement of all the Abolition fanaticism and
+incendiarism" with which he had been branded for years. The jail where
+he had been held a prisoner for seven weeks, like the evil which he had
+denounced, was gone, and a new one stood in its place, which knew not
+Garrison. In the court-house where he was tried and sentenced he was
+received by a United States judge as an illustrious visitor. Judge Bond
+hunted up the old indictment against the junior editor of the _Genius of
+Universal Emancipation_, where it had lain for a generation, during
+which that guiltless prisoner had started a movement which had shaken
+the nation by its mighty power, and slavery out of it. "Eight or nine of
+the original jurymen who gave the verdict against Mr. Garrison are still
+living," wrote Theodore Tilton, at the time, to the _Independent_, "and
+Judge Bond jocosely threatened to summon them all into Court, that Mr.
+Garrison might forgive them in public."
+
+At Washington the pioneer's reception seemed to him like a dream. And no
+wonder. He was heartily received by President Lincoln and Secretary
+Stanton. He was accorded the most marked attentions on the floor of both
+branches of Congress. On every side there rose up witnesses to the
+vastness of the revolution which had taken place, and to the fact that
+the great Abolitionist was no longer esteemed an enemy of the Republic
+but one of its illustrious citizens. This was evinced in a signal and
+memorable manner a little later when the National Government extended to
+him an invitation to visit Fort Sumter as its guest on the occasion of
+the re-raising over it of the Stars and Stripes. He went, and so also
+went George Thompson, his lifelong friend and coadjutor, who was the
+recipient of a similar invitation from the Secretary of War.
+
+This visit of Mr. Garrison, taken in all its dramatic features, is more
+like a chapter of fiction, with its strange and improbable incidents and
+situations, than a story of real life. The pioneer entered Georgia and
+trod the streets of Savannah, whose legislature thirty-three years
+before had set a price upon his head. In Charleston he witnessed the
+vast ruin which the war had wrought, realized how tremendous had been
+the death-struggle between Freedom and Slavery, and saw everywhere he
+turned that slavery was beaten, was dead in its proud, rebellious
+center. Thousands upon thousands of the people whose wrongs he had made
+his own, whose woes he had carried in his soul for thirty-five years,
+greeted him, their deliverer, in all stages of joy and thanksgiving.
+They poured out at his feet their overflowing love and gratitude. They
+covered him with flowers, bunches of jessamines, and honeysuckles and
+roses in the streets of Charleston, hard by the grave where Calhoun lay
+buried. "'Only listen to that in Charleston streets!' exclaimed
+Garrison, on hearing the band of one of the black regiments playing the
+air of 'Old John Brown', and we both broke into tears," relates Rev.
+Theodore L. Cuyler, who stood by the side of the pioneer that April
+morning under the spire of St. Michael's church.
+
+"The Government has its hold upon the throat of the monster, slavery,"
+Mr. Garrison assured an audience of nearly four thousand freedmen, "and
+is strangling the life out of it." It was even so. Richmond had fallen,
+and Lee had surrendered. The early and total collapse of the rebellion
+was impending. The Government was, indeed, strangling the life out of it
+and out of slavery, its cause and mainspring. The monster had, however,
+a crowning horror to add to a long list of horrors before fetching its
+last gasp. The assassination of President Lincoln was the dying blow of
+slavery, aimed through him at the Union which he had maintained.
+Appalling as was the deed, it was vain, for the Union was saved, and
+liberty forever secured to the new-born nation. As Garrison remarked at
+the tomb of Calhoun, on the morning that Lincoln died, "Down into a
+deeper grave than this slavery has gone, and for it there is no
+resurrection."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+
+THE LAST.
+
+
+"Garrison," said George Thompson on the steamer which was conveying the
+Government party out of Charleston Harbor on their return trip;
+"Garrison you began your warfare at the North in the face of rotten eggs
+and brickbats. Behold you end it at Charleston on a bed of roses!" The
+period of persecution had indeed ended, the reign of missiles had
+ceased, but with the roses there came to the pioneer not a few thorns.
+Bitter was the sorrow which visited him in the winter of 1863. Without
+warning his wife was on the night of December 29th, stricken with
+paralysis, which crippled her for the rest of her life. No words can
+adequately express all that she had been to the reformer in his struggle
+with slavery. She was a providential woman raised up to be the wife and
+helpmate of her husband, the strenuous man of God. "As a wife for a
+period of more than twenty-six years," he wrote her on the completion of
+her fiftieth year, "you have left nothing undone to smooth the rugged
+pathway of my public career--to render home the all-powerful magnet of
+attraction, and the focal point of domestic enjoyment--to make my
+welfare and happiness at all times a matter of tender solicitude--and to
+demonstrate the depth and fixedness of that love which you so long ago
+plighted to me.... Whatever of human infirmity we may have seen in each
+other, I believe few have enjoyed more unalloyed bliss in wedded life
+than ourselves." For twelve years after that sad December night the
+lovely invalid was the object of her husband's most tender and assiduous
+care. And when at last she left him in January, 1876, the loneliness
+which fell upon his heart seemed more than he could bear.
+
+Differences with old associates was a grievous thorn which came to the
+pioneer during the progress of the war. The first marked disagreement
+between him and them occurred at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts
+Anti-Slavery Society not a month after his wife's prostration. The clash
+came between the leader and his great coadjutor Wendell Phillips over a
+resolution introduced by the latter, condemning the Government and
+declaring its readiness "to sacrifice the interest and honor of the
+North to secure a sham peace." Garrison objected to the severity of this
+charge. He believed that there was but one party at the North of which
+it was true, and that was the party of Copperheads. He endeavored,
+therefore, to modify the harshness of the resolution by giving it a more
+moderate tone. But the anti-Lincoln feeling of the Convention proved too
+strong for his resistance, and Mr. Phillips's resolution was finally
+adopted as the sentiment of the society.
+
+The discordant note thus struck grew sharper and louder during the year.
+The divergence of views in the ranks of the Abolitionists touching the
+Southern policy of the Administration grew wider, until the subject of
+Mr. Lincoln's renomination sundered the little band into two wings--one
+for renomination, headed by Garrison, the other against renomination,
+and led by Phillips. These differences presently developed into, if not
+positive antagonism, then something closely akin to it between the two
+wings and the two leaders. No little heat was generated from the strong,
+sharp things said on both sides. Garrison was wiser than Phillips in his
+unwillingness to have the country, in the homely speech of the
+President, "swap horses while crossing a stream."
+
+Serious differences of opinion sprang up also between the two leaders
+and the two wings in relation to the proper time for dissolving the
+anti-slavery organizations. Garrison held on one side that this time had
+come with the adoption of the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery,
+while Phillips held on the other that the societies should continue
+their operations until the negro was invested with the right to vote.
+And here it seems that Phillips was wiser than Garrison in his purpose
+not to abandon in 1865 the old machinery for influencing public
+sentiment in the negro's interest.
+
+At the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in May, 1865,
+Garrison contended for its dissolution, declaring that "Nothing is more
+clear in my own mind, nothing has ever been more clear, than that this
+is the fitting time to dissolve our organization, and to mingle with the
+millions of our fellow-countrymen in one common effort to establish
+justice and liberty throughout the land." For two days the debate upon
+this question raged in the convention, but when the vote was taken it
+was found that a large majority of the delegates agreed with Mr.
+Phillips. Mr. Garrison was, nevertheless, reelected President, but
+declined and withdrew from the society. The controversy was renewed at
+the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in January,
+1866. But here again a large majority voted against dissolution. Warm
+words fell from both Garrison and Phillips and their respective
+supporters, which tried sorely the friendship of the two leaders.
+
+In accordance with his views touching the discontinuance of the
+anti-slavery societies, Garrison discontinued the publication of the
+_Liberator_ after the completion of its thirty-fifth volume in December,
+1865. He did not mean by this act to cease his labors for the negro. Far
+from it. For he, like Phillips, stood for his absolute equality before
+the law. But he perceived that old things had passed away, and with them
+the need of the old instruments, and that what remained to be done for
+the black man required to be done with new means. "The object," said he
+in his valedictory, "for which the _Liberator_ was commenced, the
+extermination of chattel slavery, having been gloriously consummated, it
+seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the
+historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done
+to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalites (of which
+I hope to avail myself), under new auspices, with more abundant means,
+and with millions instead of hundreds for allies."
+
+With the discontinuance of the _Liberator_ Garrison's occupation, from
+which he had derived a regular though somewhat uncertain income for the
+support of his family, was gone. He was not in destitute circumstances,
+however, thanks to the generosity of friends, who had already secured
+him the home in Roxbury, where he spent the remaining years of his life.
+He had also been one of the legatees under the will of Charles F. Hovey,
+who left about forty thousand dollars to the anti-slavery cause. But the
+age of the reformer, he was then sixty, and the state of his health,
+which was much impaired, together with the helplessness of his wife,
+made some provision for his and her support, other than the little which
+he possessed, a matter of anxious thought on the part of himself and his
+friends. He had given thirty-five years of his life to the public good.
+His services to his country and to the world were above all price, all
+money considerations. It was felt that to him who had given so much to
+the world, the world should in his need make some substantial
+acknowledgement in return.
+
+Some of his countrymen, accordingly, conceived the plan of a national
+testimonial to the philanthropist, which should ensure to him during the
+rest of his life a competence.
+
+A committee having this end in view was organized March 28, 1866, at the
+house of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch. John A. Andrew, who was its chairman,
+wrote the address to the public, to which were appended the chief names
+in the politics and literature of the land. Nearly two years afterward,
+on March 10, 1868, the committee were able to place in Mr. Garrison's
+hands the handsome sum of thirty-one thousand dollars with a promise of
+possibly one or two thousand more a little later. To the energy and
+devotedness of one man, the Rev. Samuel May, Jr., more than to any
+other, and perhaps than all others put together, this noble achievement
+was due. The pioneer was deeply moved at the high and generous character
+of the recognition accorded his labors. "Little, indeed, did I know or
+anticipate how prolonged or how virulent would be the struggle," said he
+in his reply to the committee, "when I lifted up the standard of
+immediate emancipation, and essayed to rouse the nation to a sense of
+its guilt and danger. But having put my hands to the plow, how could I
+look back? For, in a cause so righteous, I could not doubt that, having
+turned the furrows, if I sowed in tears I should one day reap in joy.
+But, whether permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery or
+not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing that was not clearly in
+accordance with justice and humanity, sometime or other, if remembered
+at all, I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen." The
+names of John Bright, John Stuart Mill, William E. Foster, and Samuel
+Morley, among the contributors to the fund, lent to the testimonial an
+international character.
+
+In May, 1867, Garrison went abroad the fourth time, and traveled in
+Great Britain and on the Continent. Everywhere that he went he was
+received as an illustrious visitor and as a benefactor of mankind. At a
+breakfast in London which "was intended to commemorate one of the
+greatest of the great triumphs of freedom, and to do honor to a most
+eminent instrument in the achievement of that freedom," and at which
+were gathered the genius, the wealth, and aristocracy of England and
+Scotland, John Bright, who presided, welcomed the illustrious guest
+"with a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for him and for his
+noble associates, both men and women," and ventured to speak a verdict
+which he believed would be sanctioned by all mankind, viz., that
+"William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow-laborers in that world's
+work--are they not
+
+  "On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed?"
+
+
+With the discontinuance of the _Liberator_ Garrison's active career came
+to a close. But his sympathetic interest in the freedmen, temperance,
+the cause of women, and in other reformatory enterprises continued
+unabated. He watched with stern and vigilant eye, and bleeding heart the
+new rebellion at the South whose purpose was the nullification of the
+civil and political rights of the blacks, and the overthrow of the
+military rule of the National Government in the Southern States. He did
+not see what time has since made clear that a genuine reconstruction of
+the South, and the ultimate solution of the Southern problem had, in
+accordance with social laws, to proceed from within, from the South
+itself, not from without and from Washington. The old fire again burned
+in his speech as tidings of the violence of the whites and the
+sufferings of the blacks reached him from the former slave section.
+Indeed, the last written words of his, addressed to the public, were
+words in defence of the race to whose freedom he had devoted his
+life--words which, trumpet-tongued raised anew the rallying-cry of
+"Liberty and equal rights for each, for all, and for ever, wherever the
+lot of man is cast within our broad domains!"
+
+True to his grand motto "My country is the world! my countrymen are all
+mankind," he espoused the cause of the Chinese, and denounced the
+National policy of excluding them on the ground of race from the
+republic but a few months before his death. The anti-Chinese movement
+appeared to him "narrow, conceited, selfish, anti-human,
+anti-Christian." "Against this hateful spirit of caste," wrote the dying
+philanthropist, "I have earnestly protested for the last fifty years,
+wherever it has developed itself, especially in the case of another
+class, for many generations still more contemned, degraded, and
+oppressed; and the time has fully come to deal with it as an offence to
+God, and a curse to the world wherever it seeks to bear sway."
+
+On the same grand principle of human fraternity Mr. Garrison dealt with
+the questions of trade and tariffs also. He believed in liberty, civil,
+religious, and commercial. He was in fact a radical free trader on moral
+and humanitary grounds. "He is the most sagacious political economist,"
+was a remark of his, "who contends for the highest justice, the most
+far-reaching equality, a close adherence to natural laws, and the
+removal of all those restrictions which foster national pride and
+selfishness." And here is another like unto it: "Believing that the
+interests of the American people in no wise materially differ from those
+of the people of any other country, and denying the rectitude or
+feasibility of building ourselves up at their expense by an exclusive
+policy, obstructing the natural flow of material exchanges, I avow
+myself to be a radical free trader, even to the extent of desiring the
+abolition of all custom-houses, as now constituted, throughout the
+world. That event is far distant, undoubtedly, but I believe it will
+come with the freedom and enlightenment of mankind. My faith is absolute
+that it will prove advantageous to every branch of industry, whether at
+home or abroad."
+
+The closing years of the reformer's life were years of great bodily
+suffering. A disease of the kidneys and a chronic catarrh of the head
+made steady inroads upon the resources of his constitution, made life at
+times a wheel on which he was racked with physical tortures, all of
+which he bore with the utmost fortitude and serenity of spirit. "The
+longer I live, the longer I desire to live," he wrote Samuel J. May,
+"and the more I see the desirableness of living; yet certainly not in
+this frail body, but just as it shall please the dear Father of us all."
+One by one he saw the little band of which he was leader dwindle as now
+one and now another dropped by the way. And it was he or Mr. Phillips,
+or both, who spoke the last loving words over their coffins. As the
+little band passed on to the unseen country, a new joy awoke in the soul
+of the leader left behind, the joy of anticipation, of glad reunion
+beyond the grave. "How unspeakably pleasant it will be to greet them,
+and to be greeted by them on the other side of the line," it seemed to
+him as he, too, began to descend toward the shore of the swift, silent
+river. The deep, sweet love for his mother returned with youthful
+freshness and force to him, the man of seventy-three years, at the
+thought of coming again into her presence. A strange yearning was
+tugging at his heart for all the dear ones gone before. The fond mother,
+who had watched over his childhood, and the fond wife, who had been the
+stay of his manhood, were the first two whom he yearned to meet after
+crossing the river. The joyous thought of his approaching meeting with
+those white-souled women cheered and comforted the reformer amid
+excruciating physical sufferings. Worn out by heroic and Herculean
+labors for mankind and by a complication of diseases, he more and more
+longed for rest, to go home to beloved ones as he expressed it. To the
+question, "What do you want, Mr. Garrison?" asked by the attending
+physician on the day before his death, he replied, weariedly, "To finish
+it up!" And this he did at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Henry Villard,
+in New York, in the midst of children and grandchildren, near midnight,
+on May 24, 1879.
+
+"While that ear could listen," said Wendell Phillips over the
+illustrious champion of liberty as he lay dead in the old church in
+Roxbury; "While that ear could listen, God gave what he has rarely given
+to man, the plaudits and prayers of four millions of victims." But as he
+lay there he had, besides, the plaudits and praise of an emancipated
+nation. The plaudits and praise of an emancipated race, mingling
+melodiously with those of an emancipated nation made noble music about
+his bier. In the city, where forty-three years before he was mobbed, the
+flags floated at half-mast in his honor; and on Beacon Hill, where the
+Government once desired his destruction, the voice of appreciation was
+heard and tokens of the State's sorrow met the eye. Great in life great
+also in death was William Lloyd Garrison.
+
+
+  "Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!
+  See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
+  To win a world; see the obedient sphere
+  By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!
+
+
+  Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old,
+  And by the present's lips repeated still,
+  In our own single manhood to be bold,
+  Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+
+Adams, Charles Francis,                                      372.
+
+Adams, John Quincy,                                          54, 250-251.
+
+Adams, Nehemiah,                                             278.
+
+Adams, William,                                              292.
+
+Alcott, A. Bronson,                                          90, 91, 134.
+
+American Anti-Slavery Society,                               174, 311, 340,
+                                                             373, 387.
+
+Andover Seminary,                                            190.
+
+Andrew, John A.,                                             381, 389.
+
+Annexation of Texas,                                         335.
+
+_Anti-Slavery Standard_,                                     299.
+
+Atchison, David,                                             338, 374.
+
+Attucks, Crispus,                                            227.
+
+
+Bacon, Leonard W.,                                           162.
+
+Bartlett, Ezekiel,                                           18, 20.
+
+Beecher, Lyman,                                              110, 111, 161,
+                                                             189, 190, 269.
+
+Benson, George,                                              194, 263.
+
+Benson, George W.,                                           168, 178, 234,
+                                                             260, 281.
+
+Benson, Henry E.,                                            212, 263.
+
+Benton, Thomas H.,                                           105-106, 252,
+                                                             253.
+
+Bird, Frank W.,                                              361.
+
+Birney, James G.,                                            203, 298, 320.
+
+Bond, Judge,                                                 382.
+
+Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society,                          217, 233, 240.
+
+Bourne, Rev. George,                                         108, 203.
+
+Bowditch, Henry I.,                                          233, 349, 389.
+
+Bright, John,                                                390, 391.
+
+Brooks, Preston S.,                                          359.
+
+Brown, John,                                                 365-368.
+
+Buffum, Arnold,                                              139, 177.
+
+Burleigh, Charles C.,                                        221, 223, 235.
+
+Buxton, Thomas Fowell,                                       152, 154, 204.
+
+
+Calhoun, John C.,                                            246, 252, 315,
+                                                             335, 336, 337,
+                                                             352, 353, 384.
+
+Campbell, John Reid,                                         225.
+
+Channing, Dr. W.E.,                                          110, 111, 256,
+                                                             316.
+
+Chapman, Maria Weston,                                       223, 258, 259,
+                                                             277, 292.
+
+Chase, Salmon P.,                                            338.
+
+Child, David Lee,                                            134, 136, 138,
+                                                             203.
+
+Child, Lydia Maria,                                          186, 203, 210,
+                                                             277, 292, 309.
+
+Clay, Henry,                                                 339, 348.
+
+Clerical Appeal,                                             282.
+
+Clarkson, Thomas,                                            155, 303.
+
+Coffin, Joshua,                                              139, 198.
+
+Cobb, Howell,                                                338.
+
+Collier, Rev. William,                                       40.
+
+Collins, John A.,                                            298, 299, 300,
+                                                             303.
+
+Colonization Society,                                        60, 72,
+                                                             144-156, 162.
+
+Colored Seaman,                                              313-314.
+
+Colorphobia,                                                 157-169.
+
+Colver, Nathaniel,                                           303.
+
+_Commercial Advertiser_, New York,                           170.
+
+_Courier_, Boston,                                           128, 129, 217.
+
+_Courier and Enquirer_, New York,                            171.
+
+Corwin, Thomas,                                              372.
+
+Cox, Abraham L.,                                             185, 203, 209.
+
+Crandall, Prudence,                                          165-168, 199.
+
+Cresson, Elliott,                                            150, 151, 153.
+
+Cropper, James,                                              154, 205.
+
+Curtin, Andrew G.,                                           372.
+
+Curtis, Benjamin R.,                                         354.
+
+Cuyler, Rev. Theodore L.,                                    384.
+
+
+Davis, Jefferson,                                            338, 376.
+
+Disunion Convention at Worcester,                            361-363.
+
+Dole, Ebenezer,                                              86.
+
+Douglas, Stephen A.,                                         353, 365.
+
+Douglass, Frederick,                                         300, 344.
+
+Dred Scott Case,                                             364.
+
+Duncan, Rev, James,                                          108-109.
+
+_Emancipator, The_,                                          283, 285, 286,
+                                                             328.
+
+Emerson, Ralph Waldo,                                        281.
+
+_Evening Post_, New York,                                    208.
+
+Everett, Edward,                                             30, 31, 243,
+                                                             244.
+
+
+Farnham, Martha,                                             16.
+
+Fessenden, Samuel,                                           141, 148.
+
+Follen, Prof. Charles,                                       201, 203, 247.
+
+Forten, James,                                               144.
+
+Foster, Stephen S.,                                          310, 375.
+
+Foster, William E.,                                          390.
+
+Fremont, John C.,                                            361.
+
+_Free Press_,                                                27, 34.
+
+Fugitive Slave Law, effect of,                               345-347.
+
+Fugitive Slaves, The Crafts, Shadrach, Sims, Burns,          349.
+
+Fuller, John E.,                                             219.
+
+Furness, Rev. W.H.,                                          344.
+
+
+Garrison, Abijah,                                            12-15, 18.
+
+Garrison, Charles Follen,                                    331-332.
+
+Garrison, Francis Jackson,                                   330.
+
+Garrison, George Thompson,                                   381.
+
+Garrison, Helen Eliza,                                       194-196, 219,
+                                                             297, 331,
+                                                             385-386.
+
+Garrison, James,                                             19, 20,
+                                                             302-303.
+
+Garrison, Joseph,                                            11, 12.
+
+Garrison, Wendell Phillips,                                  297.
+
+Garrison, William Lloyd,
+
+  Early years,                                               11-26;
+
+  Publishes _Free Press,_                                    27-34;
+
+  seeks work in Boston,                                      35;
+
+  nominates Harrison Gray Otis for Congress,                 35-36;
+
+  temperance and the _Philanthropist_,                       39-44;
+
+  meets Lundy,                                               44;
+
+  early attitude on the slavery question,                    46-50;
+
+  on war,                                                    51;
+
+  first experience with ministers on the subject of slavery, 52;
+
+  Anti-slavery Committee of twenty,                          53;
+
+  goes to Bennington, Vt., to edit the
+    _Journal of the Times_,                                  54-55;
+
+  monster anti-slavery petition to Congress,                 55;
+
+  anticipates trouble with the South,                        56;
+
+  begins to preach freedom,                                  56-57;
+
+  agrees to help Lundy edit the _Genius of Universal
+    Emancipation_,                                           58;
+
+  Congregational Societies of Boston invite him to
+    deliver Fourth-of-July oration,                          60;
+
+  the address,                                               61-67;
+
+  goes to Baltimore,                                         69;
+
+  raises the standard of immediate emancipation,             70;
+
+  Lundy and he agree to differ,                              71;
+
+  defends Free People of Color,                              73-74;
+
+  makes acquaintance with barbarism of slavery,              74;
+
+  ship _Francis_ and Francis Todd,                           75-77;
+
+  prosecuted and imprisoned,                                 77-83;
+
+  released,                                                  83;
+
+  visits the North,                                          84;
+
+  returns to Baltimore but leaves it again for good,         87;
+
+  lectures on slavery,                                       88-91;
+
+  character,                                                 92-94;
+
+  incarnation of immediate emancipation,                     109;
+
+  Dr. Lyman Beecher,                                         110-111;
+
+  difficulties in the way of publishing the _Liberator_,     112-115;
+
+  his method of attacking slavery,                           118;
+
+  he is heard,                                               120;
+
+  Walker's appeal,                                           121-122;
+
+  Nat Turner,                                                125-126;
+
+  southern excitement,                                       127-128;
+
+  New England Anti-Slavery Society,                          137-138;
+
+  appointed agent,                                           141;
+
+  thoughts on African colonization,                          143-150;
+
+  first visit to England,                                    152-156;
+
+  Mr. Buxton's mistake,                                      152;
+
+  prejudice against color,                                   157;
+
+  Prudence Crandall,                                         166, 168;
+
+  organization of New York City Anti-Slavery Society and
+    beginning of the mob period,                             170-172;
+
+  formation of American Anti-Slavery Society,                174-185;
+
+  declaration of sentiments,                                 182-184;
+
+  increased agitation,                                       185-186;
+
+  marriage,                                                  193;
+
+  the wife,                                                  194-196;
+
+  poverty of the _Liberator_,                                197-200;
+
+  the paper displeases friends,                              201-204;
+
+  George Thompson,                                           204-206;
+
+  Faneuil Hall meeting to put the Abolitionists down,        211-215;
+
+  gallows for two,                                           215-216;
+
+  the Broad-Cloth Mob,                                       218-232;
+
+  Thompson leaves the country,                               238;
+
+  appears before a committee of Massachusetts legislature,   245-246;
+
+  Pennsylvania Hall,                                         257-260;
+
+  Marlboro Chapel,                                           260-261;
+
+  ill health,                                                263;
+
+  Educational Convention of anti-slavery agents,             264-265;
+
+  the Sabbath question,                                      265-272;
+
+  The woman's question,                                      273-280;
+
+  clerical appeal,                                           282-285;
+
+  anti-slavery political action,                             286-288;
+
+  conflict between the New York and the Boston boards,       289-291;
+
+  the World's Convention,                                    292-295;
+
+  visit to Scotland,                                         295-296;
+
+  in the lecture field,                                      300-301;
+
+  his brother James,                                         302-303;
+
+  meets charges of infidelity,                               303-304;
+
+  Irish Address,                                             304-305;
+
+  no union with slaveholders,                                306-312;
+
+  Texas agitation,                                           316-318;
+
+  dislikes Liberty party,                                    319-323;
+
+  some characteristics,                                      326-334;
+
+  the Rynders Mob,                                           340-344;
+
+  publicly burns the United States Constitution,             354;
+
+  answers objections to his disunionism,                     362-363;
+
+  Harper's Ferry,                                            365-367;
+
+  secession: first attitude to it,                           370-373;
+
+  second attitude,                                           373;
+
+  adapts himself to circumstances,                           373-381;
+
+  Lincoln and emancipation,                                  379;
+
+  visits Baltimore, Washington, Charleston,                  381-384;
+
+  illness and death of his wife,                             385-386;
+
+  differences with anti-slavery associates,                  386-388;
+
+  discontinues the _Liberator_,                              388;
+
+  national testimonial,                                      389-390;
+
+  fourth visit to England,                                   390-391;
+
+  champions cause of Southern negroes,                       391;
+
+  champions cause of Chinese,                                392;
+
+  believes in Free Trade,                                    392-393;
+
+  illness and death,                                         393-395.
+
+Garrison, William Lloyd, Jr.,                                297.
+
+_Gazette_, Boston,                                           217.
+
+_Genius of Universal Emancipation_,                          58, 69, 71-75.
+
+Gibbons, James S.,                                           309.
+
+Giddings, Joshua R.,                                         338.
+
+Goodell, William,                                            149, 203, 247,
+                                                             248.
+
+Green, William, Jr.,                                         184.
+
+Grimke, Angelina E.,                                         235, 258-259.
+
+Grimke, Sisters,                                             275-280.
+
+
+Hale, John P.,                                               338, 350.
+
+Hamilton, Alexander,                                         104.
+
+Hamlin, Hannibal,                                            338.
+
+Haydon, Benjamin Robert,                                     294, 295.
+
+Hayne, Robert Y.,                                            209.
+
+_Herald_, Newburyport,                                       21, 26.
+
+_Herald_, New York,                                          340, 341.
+
+Higginson, T.W.,                                             358-359, 361.
+
+Hoar, Samuel,                                                314.
+
+Horton, Jacob,                                               61.
+
+Hovey, Charles F.,                                           389.
+
+
+Jackson, Francis,                                            233, 240-241,
+                                                             311-312, 317,
+                                                             341, 344.
+
+Jewett, Daniel E.,                                           175.
+
+Jocelyn, Rev. Simeon Smith,                                  203.
+
+Johnson, Andrew,                                             380.
+
+Johnson, Oliver,                                             114, 134, 137,
+                                                             139, 160-161,
+                                                             374.
+
+_Journal_, Camden (S.C.),                                    128.
+
+_Journal_, Louisville (Ky.),                                 120.
+
+
+Kansas, Struggle over,                                       357-358.
+
+Kelley, Abby,                                                259, 291, 310.
+
+Kimball, David T.,                                           175.
+
+Knapp, Isaac,                                                113, 127, 139,
+                                                             197, 200, 265,
+                                                             301-302.
+
+Kneeland, Abner,                                             90, 268.
+
+
+Lane Seminary,                                               189.
+
+Latimer, George,                                             312.
+
+Leavitt, Joshua,                                             149, 320, 329.
+
+Leggett, Samuel,                                             86.
+
+_Liberator, The_,                                            111-120,
+                                                             126-129, 131,
+                                                             141, 163, 165,
+                                                             169, 176,
+                                                             197-204, 236,
+                                                             237, 265, 284,
+                                                             297, 327-329,
+                                                             388.
+
+Lincoln, Abraham,                                            365, 370, 375,
+                                                             376, 377, 378,
+                                                             379, 380, 382,
+                                                             384.
+
+Lloyd, Fanny,                                                13-20, 24-26,
+                                                             44-45.
+
+Longfellow, Stephen,                                         148.
+
+Loring, Edward Greeley,                                      354.
+
+Loring, Ellis Grey,                                          134, 135, 136,
+                                                             138, 245, 264.
+
+Lovejoy, Elijah P.,                                          254-257.
+
+Lowell, James Russell,                                       136, 329.
+
+Lumpkin, Wilson,                                             128.
+
+Lundy, Benjamin,                                             44, 45, 46,
+                                                             48-54, 57,
+                                                             58, 69, 71,
+                                                             72, 75, 108,
+                                                             133.
+
+Lunt, George,                                                244, 247, 248.
+
+Lyman, Theodore,                                             223, 224, 227,
+                                                             228.
+
+
+Macaulay, Zachary,                                           154.
+
+Malcolm, Rev. Howard,                                        52.
+
+Martineau, Harriet,                                          94, 240.
+
+Mason, James M.,                                             338.
+
+Mason, Jeremiah,                                             111.
+
+Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,                          265, 280, 297,
+                                                             310.
+
+Mathew, Father,                                              304, 305.
+
+May, Samuel, Jr.,                                            325, 389.
+
+May, Samuel J.,                                              90, 93, 94,
+                                                             134, 166, 167,
+                                                             179, 180, 186,
+                                                             199, 245, 272,
+                                                             289, 393.
+
+McDowell, James,                                             124, 125.
+
+McKim, James Miller,                                         149.
+
+McDuffie, Governor,                                          243, 246.
+
+_Mercury_, Charleston,                                       126,
+
+Mill, John Stuart,                                           390.
+
+Missouri Compromise, Repeal of,                              352-354.
+
+Moore, Esther,                                               259.
+
+Morley, Samuel,                                              390,
+
+Mott, Lucretia,                                              178, 259, 292,
+                                                             293.
+
+_National Intelligencer_,                                    128.
+
+New England Anti-Slavery Society,                            137-141, 200,
+                                                             280, 311.
+
+_New England Spectator_,                                     282.
+
+Newman, Prof. Francis W.,                                    378.
+
+
+O'Connell, Daniel,                                           154, 170, 171,
+                                                             304.
+
+Otis, Harrison Gray,                                         35, 129, 130,
+                                                             131, 213, 214,
+                                                             215.
+
+
+Palmer, Daniel,                                              11.
+
+Palmer, Mary,                                                11, 12.
+
+Parker, Mary S.,                                             222, 234.
+
+Parker, Theodore,                                            121, 349, 350,
+                                                             362.
+
+Pastoral Letter,                                             277.
+
+Paxton, Rev. J.D.,                                           186.
+
+Pease, Elizabeth,                                            303, 331, 346.
+
+Pennsylvania Hall,                                           257-260.
+
+Phelps, Amos A.,                                             149, 186, 203,
+                                                             278, 280, 288.
+
+Phillips Academy (Andover),                                  190.
+
+Phillips, Ann Green,                                         292, 293.
+
+Phillips, Wendell,                                           190, 257, 310,
+                                                             317, 323, 326,
+                                                             344, 346-347,
+                                                             349, 351, 386,
+                                                             387, 388, 393,
+                                                             394.
+
+Pillsbury, Parker,                                           310,
+
+Prentice, George D.,                                         120.
+
+Purvis, Robert,                                              144, 162, 178.
+
+
+Quincy, Edmund,                                              299, 310, 316,
+                                                             323, 324, 325,
+                                                             326, 327-329.
+
+Quincy, Josiah,                                              347.
+
+
+Rankin, John,                                                177.
+
+Remond, Charles Lenox,                                       293, 295, 304.
+
+Rhett, Barnwell,                                             338.
+
+Rogers, Nathaniel P.,                                        149, 293, 295,
+                                                             301.
+
+Rynders, Isaiah,                                             341-344.
+
+
+Scoble, Rev. John,                                           294.
+
+Sewall, Samuel E.,                                           90, 91, 134,
+                                                             135, 136, 137,
+                                                             138, 175, 236,
+                                                             367.
+
+Seward, William H.,                                          338, 372.
+
+Shaw, Chief-Justice,                                         312.
+
+Slavery, Rise and Progress of,                               95-107.
+
+Smith, Gerritt,                                              147, 236, 297,
+                                                             320.
+
+Sprague, Peleg,                                              213, 214.
+
+Stanton, Edwin M.,                                           382.
+
+Stanton, Henry B.                                            253, 288.
+
+Stearns, Charles,                                            359.
+
+Stevens, Thaddeus,                                           338.
+
+Stuart, Charles,                                             201, 202, 264.
+
+Sumner, Charles,                                             234, 317, 339,
+                                                             346, 359.
+
+
+Tappan, Arthur,                                              83, 84, 164,
+                                                             171, 184, 209,
+                                                             210.
+
+Tappan, Lewis,                                               149, 177, 201,
+                                                             209, 283, 285.
+
+Texas Agitation,                                             314-318.
+
+Thompson, George,                                            204-206, 210,
+                                                             212, 213, 216,
+                                                             217, 218, 238,
+                                                             294, 295, 351,
+                                                             383, 385.
+
+Thurston, David,                                             180.
+
+Tilton, Theodore,                                            382.
+
+Todd, Francis,                                               75, 76, 77,
+                                                             81, 82, 87.
+
+Toombs, Robert,                                              338.
+
+Travis, Joseph,                                              124.
+
+Turner, Nat.,                                                124-125.
+
+
+Uncle Tom's Cabin,                                           351-352.
+
+
+Villard, Mrs. Henry,                                         394.
+
+
+Walker, David,                                               121, 122, 123,
+                                                             126.
+
+Ward, Rev. Samuel R.,                                        344.
+
+Ware, Rev. Henry, Jr.,                                       203.
+
+Webb, Richard D.,                                            310, 316, 318,
+                                                             326.
+
+Webster, Daniel,                                             35, 101, 110,
+                                                             111, 117, 249,
+                                                             338, 339, 347,
+                                                             348, 370.
+
+Weld, Theodore D.,                                           149, 190, 264,
+                                                             279.
+
+Wesley, John,                                                70, 107.
+
+White, Nathaniel H.,                                         41.
+
+Whitney, Eli,                                                98.
+
+Whittier, John Greenleaf,                                    34, 175, 179,
+                                                             186, 202, 234,
+                                                             279, 320.
+
+Wilberforce, William,                                        152, 154.
+
+Winslow, Isaac,                                              177.
+
+Winslow, Nathan,                                             177.
+
+Wright, Elizur,                                              147, 149, 185,
+                                                             186, 202, 210,
+                                                             283-285, 287,
+                                                             320.
+
+
+Yerrington, James B.,                                        113.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's William Lloyd Garrison, by Archibald H. Grimke
+
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