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!"