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.