AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.
Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the most earnest of men. It
was almost next to impossible for him to understand that his way was not
the only way to attain a given end. A position reached by him, he was
curiously apt to look upon as a sort of _ultima thule_ of human endeavor
in that direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances
of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung around his
personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer.
His was not a tolerant mind. Differences with him he was prone to treat
as gross departures from principle, as evidences of faithlessness to
freedom. He fell upon the men who did not see eye to eye with him with
tomahawk and scalping knife. He was strangely deficient in a sense of
proportion in such matters. His terrible severities of speech, he
visited upon the slave-power and the Liberty party alike. And although a
non-resistent, in that he eschewed the use of physical force, yet there
never was born among the sons of men a more militant soul in the use of
moral force, in the quickness with which he would whip out the rapiers,
or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother tongue at opponents. The
pioneer must have been an unconscious believer in the annihilation of
the wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer in the
wickedness of all opposition to his idea of right and duty. This, of
course, must be taken only as a broad description of the reformer's
character. He was a man, one of the grandest America has given to the
world, but still a man with his tendon of Achilles, like the rest of his
kind.
His narrow intolerance of the idea of anti-slavery political action, and
his fierce and unjust censure of the champions of that idea, well
illustrate the trait in point. Birney and Whittier, and Wright and
Gerritt Smith, and Joshua Leavitt, he apparently quite forgot, were
actuated by motives singularly noble, were in their way as true to their
convictions as he was to his. No, there was but one right way, and in
that way stood the feet of the pioneer. His way led directly,
unerringly, to the land of freedom. All other ways, and especially the
Liberty party way, twisted, doubled upon themselves, branched into
labyrinths of folly and self-seeking. "Ho! all ye that desire the
freedom of the slave, who would labor for liberty, follow me and I will
show you the only true way," was the tone which the editor of the
_Liberator_ held to men, who were battering with might and main to
breach the walls of the Southern Bastile. They were plainly not against
the slave, although opposed to Mr. Garrison, narrowly, unjustly opposed
to him, without doubt, but working strenuously according to their lights
for the destruction of a common enemy and tyrant. This was the test,
which Garrison should have taken as conclusive. The leaders of the
Liberty party, though personally opposed to him and to his line of
action, were, nevertheless, friends of the slaves, and ought to have
been so accounted and treated by the man who more than any other was
devoted to the abolition of slavery.
But the whole mental and moral frame of the man precluded such
liberality of treatment of opponents. They had rejected his way, which
was the only true way, and were, therefore, anathema maranatha. When a
moral idea which has been the subject of widespread agitation, and has
thereby gained a numerous following, reaches out, as reach out it must,
sooner or later, for incorporation into law, it will, in a republic like
ours, do so naturally and necessarily through political action--along
the lines of an organized party movement. The Liberty party formation
was the product of this strong tendency in America. Premature it
possibly was, but none the less perfectly natural. Now every political
party, that is worthy of the name, is a compound rather than a simple
fact, consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties
depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest
but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions.
One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and
multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks
to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. There
will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, that
will dominate the organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon
which the party throws itself upon the country, but the secondary ideas
or interests must be there all the same to give strength and support to
the main idea and interest.
Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political
parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and
that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power.
Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe
strictly these limitations in its aims and issues. Accordingly when the
moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea
of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by
the National Constitution. Slavery within the States lay outside of the
political boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within the
States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders
placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national
issues. But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia,
in the national territories, under the national flag on the high seas,
for it lay within the constitutional reach of the federal political
power, and its abolition was demanded in the Third party platform. These
leaders were confident that the existence of slavery depended upon its
connection with the National Government. Their aim was to destroy the
evil by cutting this connection through which it drew its blood and
nerve supplies. They planted themselves upon the anti-slavery character
of the Constitution, believing that it "does not sanction nor
nationalize slavery but condemns and localizes it."
This last position of the Liberty party leaders struck Garrison as a
kind of mental and moral enormity. At it and its authors, the
anti-slavery Jupiter, launched his bolts, fast and furious. Here is a
specimen of his chain lightning: "We have a very poor opinion of the
intelligence of any man, and very great distrust of his candor or
honesty, who tries to make it appear that no pro-slavery compromise was
made between the North and the South, at the adoption of the
Constitution. We cherish feelings of profound contempt for the quibbling
spirit of criticism which is endeavoring to explain away the meaning of
language, the design of which as a matter of practice, and the adoption
of which as a matter of bargain, were intelligently and clearly
understood by the contracting parties. The truth is the misnamed
'Liberty party' is under the control of as ambitious, unprincipled, and
crafty leaders as is either the Whig or Democratic party; and no other
proof of this assertion is needed than their unblushing denial of the
great object of the national compact, namely, union at the sacrifice of
the colored population of the United States. Their new interpretations
of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the facts of history, and a
gross insult to the intelligence of the age, and certainly never can be
carried into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a civil
war." All the same, the pioneer to the contrary notwithstanding, many of
these very Liberty party leaders were men of the most undoubted candor
and honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.
Garrison was never able to see the Liberty party, and for that matter
Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, and others of the old organization
leaders could not either, except through the darkened glass of personal
antagonisms growing out of the schism of 1840. It was always, under all
circumstances, to borrow a phrase of Phillips, "Our old enemy, Liberty
party." And, as Quincy naïvely confesses in an article in the
_Liberator_ pointing out the reasons why Abolitionists should give to
the Free-soil party incidental aid and comfort, which were forbidden to
their "old enemy, Liberty party," the significant and amusing fact that
the latter was "officered by deserters." Ay, there was indeed the rub!
The military principle of the great leader forbade him to recognize
deserters as allies. Discipline must be maintained, and so he proceeded
to maintain the anti-slavery discipline of his army by keeping up a
constant fusillade into the ranks of the deserter band, who, in turn,
were every whit as blinded by the old quarrel and separation, and who
slyly cherished the modest conviction that, when they seceded, the salt
of old organization lost its savor, and was thenceforth fit only to be
trampled under the Liberty party's feet. Without doubt, those old
Abolitionists and Liberty party people belonged to the category of
"humans."
The scales of the old grudge dropped from Garrison's eyes directly the
Free-Soil party loomed upon the political horizon. He recognized at once
that, if it was not against the slave, it was for the slave; apprehended
clearly that, in so far as the new party, which, by the way, was only
the second stage in the development of the central idea of his old
enemy, Liberty party, as the then future Republican party was to be its
third and final expression, apprehended clearly I say that, in so far as
the new party resisted the aggressions and pretensions of the
slave-power, it was fighting for Abolition--was an ally of Abolitionism.
In the summer of 1848, from Northampton, whither he had gone to take the
water cure, Garrison counseled Quincy, who was filling the editorial
chair, in the interim, at the _Liberator_ office, in this sage fashion:
"As for the Free-Soil movement, I feel that great care is demanded of us
disunionists, both in the _Standard_ and the _Liberator_, in giving
credit to whom credit is due, and yet in no case even seeming to be
satisfied with it." In the winter of 1848 in a letter to Samuel May,
Jr., he is more explicit on this head. "As for the Free-Soil movement,"
he observes, "I am for hailing it as a cheering sign of the times, and
an unmistakable proof of the progress we have made, under God, in
changing public sentiment. Those who have left the Whig and Democratic
parties for conscience's sake, and joined the movement, deserve our
commendation and sympathy; at the same time, it is our duty to show
them, and all others, that there is a higher position to be attained by
them or they will have the blood of the slave staining their garments.
This can be done charitably yet faithfully. On the two old parties,
especially the Whig-Taylor party, I would expend--_pro tempore_, at
least--our heaviest ammunition." This is as it should be, the tone of
wise and vigilant leadership, the application of the true test to the
circumstances, viz., for freedom if against slavery; not to be
satisfied, to be sure, with any thing less than the whole but disposed
to give credit to whom it was due, whether much or little. Pity that the
pioneer could not have placed himself in this just and discriminating
point of view in respect of his old enemy, Liberty party, praising in it
what he found praiseworthy, while blaming it for what he felt was
blameworthy. But perfection weak human nature doth not attain to in this
terrestrial garden of the passions, and so very likely the magnanimity
which we have desired of Garrison is not for that garden to grow but
another and a heavenly.
Garrison ill brooked opposition, came it from friends or foes. He was so
confident in his own positions that he could not but distrust their
opposites. Of course, if his were right, and of that doubt in his mind
there was apparently none, then the positions of all others had to be
wrong. This masterful quality of the man was constantly betrayed in the
acts of his life and felt by his closest friends and associates in the
anti-slavery movement. Quincy, writing to Richard Webb, narrates how, at
the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843,
Garrison was for removing it to Boston, but that he and Wendell Phillips
were for keeping it where it then was in New York, giving at the same
time sundry good and sufficient reasons for the faith that was in them,
and how, thereupon, "Garrison dilated his nostrils like a war-horse, and
snuffed indignation at us." "If the Boston friends were unwilling to
take the trouble and responsibility," were the petulant, accusative
words put by Quincy into his chief's mouth on the occasion, "then there
was nothing more to be said; we must try to get along as well as we
could in the old way." And how they disclaimed "any unwillingness to
take trouble and responsibility," while affirming "the necessity of
their acting on their own idea."
Another characteristic of the pioneer is touched upon by the same writer
in a relation which he was making to Webb of Garrison's election to the
presidency of the parent society. Says Quincy: "Garrison makes an
excellent president at a public meeting where the order of speakers is
in some measure arranged, as he has great felicity in introducing and
interlocuting remarks; but at a meeting for debate he does not answer so
well, as he is rather too apt, with all the innocence and simplicity in
the world, to do all the talking himself."
The same friendly critic has left his judgment of other traits of the
leader, traits not so much of the man as of the editor. It is delivered
in a private letter of Quincy to Garrison on resigning the temporary
editorship of the _Liberator_ to "its legitimate possessor." who had
been for several months health-hunting at Northampton in the beautiful
Connecticut Valley. Quincy made bold to beard the Abolition lion in his
lair, and twist his tail in an extremely lively manner. "Now, my dear
friend," wrote the disciple to the master, "you must know that to the
microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic eyes of
its enemies, _the_ _Liberator_ _has faults_, these they keep to themselves
as much as they honestly may, but they are not the less sensible of
them, and are all the more desirous to see them immediately abolished.
Luckily, they are not faults of principle--neither moral nor
intellectual deficiencies--but faults the cure of which rests solely
with yourself.
"I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are that we find with it,
lest you should think them none at all, or else unavoidable. But no
matter, of that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen to our
opinion. We think the paper often bears the mark of haste and
carelessness in its getting up; that the matter seems to be hastily
selected and put in _higgledy-piggledy_, without any very apparent
reason why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the place
where it is. I suppose this is often caused by your selecting articles
with a view to connect remarks of your own with them, which afterward in
your haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper is not so nearly a
complete work in itself as it might be made, but that things are often
left at loose ends, and important matters broken off in the middle. I
assure you, that Brother Harriman is not the only one of the friends of
the _Liberator_ who grieves over your 'more anon' and 'more next
week'--which 'anon' and 'next week' never arrive.
"Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else
such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to
see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often
either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important
moments like the present neglected....
"We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by
the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by
conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends
and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the
_Liberator_ a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is,
powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It
is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the
_Liberator_ and _Emancipator_ with regard to the manner of getting it
up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them--and we knowing all the
time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a
good newspaper that Leavitt has, with as much more, intellectual ability
as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me)
industry, application, and method."
Garrison, to his honor, did not allow the exceeding candor of his mentor
to disturb their friendship. The pioneer was not wholly without defence
to the impeachment. He might have pleaded ill health, of which he had
had _quantum suf._ since 1836 for himself and family. He might have
pleaded also the dissipation of too much of his energies in consequence
of more or less pecuniary embarrassments from which he was never wholly
freed; but, above all, he might have pleaded his increasing activity as
an anti-slavery lecturer. His contributions to the movement against
slavery were of a notable character in this direction, both in respect
of quantity and quality. He was not alone the editor of the _Liberator_,
he was unquestionably besides one of the most effective and interesting
of the anti-slavery speakers--indeed in the judgment of so competent an
authority as James Russell Lowell, he was regarded as the most effective
of the anti-slavery speakers. Still, after all is placed to his credit
that can possibly be, Quincy's complaints would be supported by an
altogether too solid basis of fact. The pioneer was much given to
procrastination. What was not urgent he was strongly tempted to put off
for a more convenient time. His work accumulated. He labored hard and he
accomplished much, but because of this habit of postponing for to-morrow
what need not be done to-day, he was necessarily forced to leave undone
many things which he ought to have done and which he might have
accomplished had he been given to putting off for to-morrow nothing
which might be finished to-day.
The pioneer was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but never
was he wholly cast down by his misfortunes. His cheerful and bouyant
spirit kept him afloat above his sorrows, above his griefs. The organ of
mirthfulness in him was very large. He was an optimist in the best sense
of that word, viz., that all things work together for good to them that
love goodness. In the darkest moments which the Abolition cause
encountered his own countenance was full of light, his own heart pierced
through the gloom and communicated its glow to those about him, his own
voice rang bugle-like through reverse and disaster.
In his family the reformer was seen at his best. His wife was his friend
and equal, his children his playfellows and companions. The dust of the
great conflict he never carried with him into his home to choke the love
which burned ever brightly on its hearth and in the hearts which it
contained. What he professed in the _Liberator_, what he preached in the
world, of non-resistance, woman's rights, perfectionism, he practiced in
his home, he embodied as father, and husband, and host. Never lived
reformer who more completely realized his own ideals to those nearest
and dearest to him than William Lloyd Garrison.
He had seven children, five boys and two girls. The last, Francis
Jackson, was born to him in the year 1848. Two of them died in
childhood, a boy and a girl. The loss of the boy, whom the father had
"named admiringly, gratefully, reverently," Charles Pollen, was a
terrible blow to the reformer, and a life-long grief to the mother. He
seemed to have been a singularly beautiful, winning, and affectionate
little man and to have inspired sweet hopes of future "usefulness and
excellence" in the breasts of his parents. "He seemed born to take a
century on his shoulders, without stooping; his eyes were large,
lustrous, and charged with electric light; his voice was clear as a
bugle, melodious, and ever ringing in our ears, from the dawn of day to
the ushering in of night, so that since it has been stilled, our
dwelling has seemed to be almost without an occupant," lamented the
stricken father to Elizabeth Pease, of Darlington, England.
"Death itself to me is not terrible, is not repulsive," poured the
heartbroken pioneer into the ears of his English friend, "is not to be
deplored. I see in it as clear an evidence of Divine wisdom and
beneficence as I do in the birth of a child, in the works of creation,
in all the arrangements and operations of nature. I neither fear nor
regret its power. I neither expect nor supplicate to be exempted from
its legitimate action. It is not to be chronicled among calamities; it
is not to be styled "a mysterious dispensation of Divine Providence"; it
is scarcely rational to talk of being resigned to it. For what is more
rational, what more universal, what more impartial, what more
serviceable, what more desirable, in God's own time, hastened neither by
our ignorance or folly?...
"When, therefore, my dear friend, I tell you that the loss of my dear
boy has overwhelmed me with sadness, has affected my peace by day and my
repose by night, has been a staggering blow, from the shock of which I
find it very difficult to recover, you will not understand me as
referring to anything pertaining to another state of existence, or as
gloomily affected by a change inevitable to all; far from it. Where the
cherished one who has been snatched from us is, what is his situation,
or what his employment, I know not, of course; and it gives me no
anxiety whatever. Until I join him at least my responsibility to him as
his guardian and protector has ceased; he does not need my aid, he
cannot be benefited by my counsel. That he will still be kindly cared
for by Him who numbers the very hairs of our heads, and without whose
notice a sparrow cannot fall to the ground; that he is still living,
having thrown aside his mortal drapery, and occupying a higher sphere of
existence, I do not entertain a doubt. My grief arises mainly from the
conviction that his death was premature; that he was actually defrauded
of his life through unskillful treatment; that he might have been saved,
if we had not been so unfortunately situated at that time. This to be
sure, is not certain; and not being certain, it is only an ingredient of
consolation that we find in our cup of bitterness."
The pioneer was one of the most generous of givers. Poor indeed he was,
much beyond the common allotment of men of his intelligence and
abilities, but he was never too indigent to answer the appeals of
poverty. If the asker's needs were greater than his own he divided with
him the little which he had. To his home all sorts of people were
attracted, Abolitionists, peace men, temperance reformers,
perfectionists, homoeopathists, hydropathists, mesmerists,
spiritualists, Grahamites, clairvoyants, whom he received with unfailing
hospitality, giving welcome and sympathy to the new ideas, food and
shelter for the material sustenance of the fleshly vehicles of the new
ideas. He evidently was strongly of the opinion that there are "more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of" in the philosophy of any
particular period in the intellectual development of man. No age knows
it all. It was almost a lo, here, and a lo, there, with him, so large
was his bump of wonder, so unlimited was his appetite for the incredible
and the improbable in the domain of human knowledge and speculation.
Great was the man's faith, great was his hope, great was his charity.
He was one of the most observant of men in all matters affecting the
rights of others; he was one of the least observant in all matters
appertaining to himself. With a decided taste for dress, yet his actual
knowledge of the kind of clothes worn by him from day to day was
amusingly inexact, as the following incident shows: Before wearing out
an only pair of trousers, the pioneer had indulged in the unusual luxury
of a new pair. But as there was still considerable service to be got out
of the old pair, he, like a prudent man, laid aside the new ones for
future use. His wife, however, who managed all this part of the domestic
business, determined, without consulting him, the morning when the new
trousers should be donned. She made the necessary changes when her lord
was in bed, putting the new in the place of the old. Garrison wore for
several days the new trousers, thinking all the time that they were his
old ones until his illusions in this regard were dispelled by an
incident which cost him the former. Some poor wretch of a tramp,
knocking in an evil hour at the pioneer's door and asking for clothes,
decided the magnificent possessor of two pairs of trousers, to don his
new ones and to pass the old ones on to the tramp. But when he
communicated the transaction to his wife, she hoped, with a good deal of
emphasis, that he had not given away the pair of breeches which he was
wearing, for if he had she would beg to inform him that he had given
away his best ones! But the pioneer's splendid indifference to _meum_
and _tuum_ where his own possessions were concerned was equal to the
occasion. He got his compensation in the thought that his loss was
another's gain. That, indeed, was not to be accounted loss which had
gone to a brother-man whose needs were greater than his own.