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.