(1805-1879)
William Lloyd Garrison, whose name is indissolubly connected with the
abolition of American slavery, was born in the seaport town of
Newburyport, Mass., on December 10, 1805. His father, Abijah Garrison,
was a sea-captain who came from New Brunswick to settle in
Newburyport. Deserting his wife and children while the subject of this
sketch was in infancy, his subsequent career is shrouded in mystery.
Fanny Lloyd, the mother of William Lloyd Garrison, was a woman of
remarkable character and personal attraction, with an intense
religious nature. Dependent upon her own efforts for the support of
the family, she cheerfully took up the calling of monthly nurse, and
endeavored to rear her children with care and forethought, and with
especial attention to their religious training. Upon her removal to
Lynn, in 1812, Lloyd was left to the care of Deacon Ezekiel Bartlett
and was sent to the Grammar School until, at the age of nine, he
joined his mother in Lynn and was taught shoemaking in the shop of
Gamaliel W. Oliver, a kind and excellent member of the Society of
Friends, where his elder brother James was already an apprentice. In
1815, Mr. Paul Newhall, a shoe manufacturer of the same town, deciding
to establish business in Baltimore, invited Mrs. Garrison and her two
boys to accompany him. There Lloyd was employed as an errand-boy and
James was again apprenticed at shoemaking. Mr. Newhall's venture
proving unsuccessful, Mrs. Garrison was constrained to resume nursing
and Lloyd was sent back to Newburyport, his brother betaking himself
to the sea. From Newburyport he was sent to Haverhill to learn
cabinet-making; but, in spite of kind treatment, he disliked the
occupation and ran away from his master, returning to Newburyport to
live again with his mother's old friend, Deacon Bartlett. In 1818,
Ephraim W. Allen, proprietor of the Newburyport _Herald_, accepted
Lloyd, then thirteen years of age, as an apprentice and taught him the
printer's trade. Here at once he found a vocation suited to his tastes
and became a rapid and accurate compositor. The printing-office proved
an excellent school for the young man, developing his literary taste
and ambition. He was fond of reading, and delighted in poetry and
fiction. Politics especially attracted him, and at the age of sixteen
he wrote anonymous articles for the columns of the _Herald_. His first
contribution was over the signature of "An Old Bachelor." He was an
ardent Federalist and his political articles attracted attention by
their forcible reasoning and direct style. Caleb Cushing, then editor
of the _Herald_, discovering the lad's abilities, encouraged and
befriended him. In 1826, Mr. Garrison, closing his apprenticeship with
the _Herald_, became editor and publisher of the _Free Press_
(Newburyport), within a few months of his majority.
[Illustration: William Lloyd Garrison.]
It was to this paper that Whittier made his first poetical
contributions anonymously, and, upon the discovery of his true name,
Mr. Garrison sought him out and encouraged him in his youthful
efforts.
After a brief existence of six months, the _Free Press_ was sold and
Mr. Garrison again became a journeyman printer, soon seeking
employment in Boston, where, after various vicissitudes, he was
employed by Rev. William Collier, a Baptist city missionary, upon
_The National Philanthropist_, devoted to the "suppression of
intemperance and kindred vices," becoming its editor in 1828. The
paper had the distinction of being the first temperance journal ever
printed, and among the earliest evidences of Mr. Garrison's interest
in the slavery question was an editorial article by him commenting
severely on the bill passed by the House of Assembly of South
Carolina to forbid the teaching of reading and writing to the
colored people.
To Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, and at that time editor of the _Genius
of Universal Emancipation_, in Baltimore--a paper devoted to the
gradual abolition of slavery--belongs the honor of first attempting
to awaken public sentiment on the subject. Upon his visit to Boston,
August 7, 1828, he made the acquaintance of Garrison, whose eyes he
opened to the iniquity of the slave system. During the same year Mr.
Garrison accepted the invitation of a committee of prominent
citizens of Bennington, Vt., to edit the _Journal of the Times_, a
weekly newspaper devoted to the re-election of John Quincy Adams
against Andrew Jackson. While started for campaign purposes, the
_Journal of the Times_ declared for independence of party and
advocated the suppression of intemperance, the gradual emancipation
of the slave, the doctrines of peace, and the so-called American
system of protection for fostering native industry.
Attracted by the anti-slavery utterances of Mr. Garrison, Lundy
resolved to invite him to share in the editorship of his paper,
walking from Baltimore to Bennington for the purpose. His
earnestness had the desired effect upon Mr. Garrison, who accepted
his proffer and relinquished the _Journal of the Times_. Before
going to Baltimore Mr. Garrison was invited to address the
Congregational societies of Boston on July 4th, at the Park Street
Church, and took for his theme "Dangers to the Nation." The poet
John Pierpont was present and wrote a hymn for the occasion. The
address was a stirring denunciation of slavery and a rebuke to the
nation for its pretentious devotion to liberty. The speaker was
accused by a Boston paper of slandering his country and blaspheming
the Declaration of Independence.
Upon his arrival at Baltimore, Garrison, having convinced himself of
the necessity of immediate and unconditional emancipation, it was
agreed, inasmuch as Lundy adhered to the methods of gradual
emancipation, that each should sign his own editorials.
Mr. Todd, a Newburyport merchant, having allowed his ship to be used
in the inter-state slave trade between Baltimore and New Orleans,
Mr. Garrison faithfully denounced in unmeasured terms his
fellow-townsman, and asserted the equal wickedness of the domestic
slave trade with that of the foreign traffic, which, at that time,
was in the law considered piracy. Arrested, tried, and convicted of
libel, although the facts were proven, Garrison was incarcerated in
the Baltimore jail, April 17, 1830, in default of a fine of $50 with
$50 costs. Undaunted in his captivity, he continued to write his
protest against slavery and to record in verse his feelings. His
famous sonnet, "The Immortal Mind," was written with pencil upon the
walls of his cell. Liberated at the expiration of forty-nine days,
through the generosity of Arthur Tappan, of New York, who paid his
fine, Garrison visited Boston and Newburyport, endeavoring to speak
in both places, but the doors of halls and churches were closed
against him. At last the hall used by a society of avowed infidels,
in Boston, to whom Abner Kneeland preached, was opened to Mr.
Garrison for three anti-slavery lectures, and among the audience at
his first lecture were Samuel J. May, Samuel E. Sewall, and A.
Bronson Alcott, who then gave in their adhesion to the cause. Dr.
Lyman Beecher was also present but made no sign.
On January 1, 1831, appeared the first number of _The Liberator_, in
Boston, bearing for its motto, "Our Country is the World--Our
Countrymen are Mankind." Mr. Garrison, as editor, was assisted by
Isaac Knapp, a fellow-printer from Newburyport, as publisher. The
paper was issued at No. 6 Merchants' Hall, at the corner of Congress
and Water Streets, in the third story, the partners making their
home in the printing-office. It was this office that Harrison Gray
Otis, the mayor, at the request of ex-Senator Hayne, ferreted out
through his police, describing it as "an obscure hole," containing
the editor and a negro boy, "his only visible auxiliary," while his
supporters were "a very few insignificant persons of all colors."
Lowell has thus described it in a different spirit:
"In a small chamber, friendless and unseen,
Toiled o'er his types, one poor, unlearned young man;
The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean,
Yet there the freedom of a race began."
In the initial editorial appeared the famous declaration of Mr.
Garrison, "I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not
excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard."
Although its circulation was meagre, the publication of _The
Liberator_ made a tremendous sensation throughout the South,
bringing upon its editor abusive and threatening language, and, at
the North, unpopularity and persecution. The Legislature of Georgia
offered a reward of $5,000 for his arrest and conviction.
In 1832, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was organized in
Boston, and the campaign for "immediate and unconditional
emancipation" begun. The Colonization Society, which Mr. Garrison
formerly supported but later denounced, became the object of special
attack as an ally of the slave power, and, to counteract its
designs, he sailed for England, May 2, 1833, to expose its
proslavery purposes to the English abolitionists. He was cordially
received by Wilberforce, Buxton, Zachary, Macaulay, Daniel
O'Connell, and their associates in the struggle for West India
emancipation, and before he left the kingdom he witnessed the
passage of the Emancipation Act, and was present at the funeral of
Wilberforce, in Westminster Abbey. Returning from his successful
mission abroad he narrowly escaped the hands of a New York mob on
landing upon his native soil.
In December, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, in
Philadelphia, and Mr. Garrison drew up its famous Declaration of
Sentiments, which numbered among its signers many of the men and
women destined to be distinguished in the anti-slavery cause, among
whom was the poet Whittier.
On September 4, 1834, Mr. Garrison was married to Miss Helen Eliza
Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn.; a fortunate and happy union.
In 1835, the eminent English orator, George Thompson, came by
invitation to the United States to assist in the emancipation of the
American, as he had of the West Indian, slave. The announcement
that he would speak at a meeting of the Ladies' Anti-Slavery
Society, held in Boston, October 21st, of the same year, was the
occasion of a mob composed of wealthy and respectable citizens of
Boston who aimed to suppress free speech and tar and feather Mr.
Thompson. He was, however, prevented from attending by his friends,
but the fury of the mob fell upon Mr. Garrison, who was seized and
led through the streets with a rope around his body, from which
position he was rescued through the efforts of Mayor Lyman and
imprisoned for safety in the Leverett Street jail. This outrage
created new friends and gave fresh impetus to the abolition
movement.
In 1840 Mr. Garrison again visited England as a delegate of the
World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, in which body, however,
he declined to sit, because the women who were his fellow-delegates
from America were excluded.
Occupied continuously with the care of _The Liberator_ and in
lecturing, Mr. Garrison led an intensely active life, not confining
himself alone to the anti-slavery reform but embracing among other
reforms those of temperance, non-resistance, women's rights, and
religious freedom. For, while educated by his mother in the strict
tenets of the Baptist faith, he early experienced a change of
theological views and cast off sectarian bonds. _The Liberator_ was
used for the expression of his individual beliefs and was not the
organ of any society.
In 1846, the Free Church of Scotland having sent emissaries to the
United States to collect funds from the slaveholders, Mr. Garrison
again went to England to urge the Church to return the money thus
contributed, and, in company with George Thompson, Frederick
Douglass, Henry C. Wright and others, agitated the question
throughout Scotland.
Convinced that the constitutional compact of the North with the
South to guard and protect slavery was immoral and unjust, in 1843
Mr. Garrison raised the banner of No Union with Slave-Holders, and
advocated the dissolution of the Union for the sake of freedom, a
step which added fresh fuel to the flames of persecution and
incurred the loss of many lukewarm adherents.
In 1850, the apostasy of Daniel Webster and the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law increased the national ferment. The same year
witnessed the famous Rynder's mob, in New York, and the anti-slavery
meeting at the Tabernacle, at which Mr. Garrison spoke, was
violently broken up.
The abolition movement had now assumed formidable proportions,
dominating the national parties and dictating issues. The Whig party
fell to pieces in consequence, and to it succeeded the Republican
party, with Sumner, Seward, Wilson, Giddings, and other earnest men
as leaders. Meanwhile Harriet Beecher Stowe, by her famous novel,
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," had given a vivid picture of the wrongs of
American slavery to the world. The "irrepressible conflict" was now
rapidly tending to its crisis, and, on the election of Abraham
Lincoln to the Presidency by the Republican party, in 1860, the
signal for civil war was given, and, in 1861, the struggle of arms
inaugurated by the attack on Fort Sumter replaced the peaceful
crusade of the abolitionists.
The moral agitation of thirty years had produced its legitimate
results, and when, in 1863, the President promulgated the
emancipation proclamation the anti-slavery chapter was closed. The
Union, which heretofore had been paramount to liberty, was now
subordinated to it, and Mr. Garrison's antagonism necessarily ceased
with the new amendment to the Constitution. He had been accustomed
to denounce that instrument as a "covenant with death and an
agreement with hell," but, as he expressed it, he had "never
expected to see Death and Hell secede." Foreseeing the inevitable
consequence of the war, he gave heartily his moral support to the
Government in the struggle between it and the slave power. His
non-resistance principles and abhorrence of war in no way diminished
his interest in the great conflict, and his sympathies of necessity
were with the soldiers of freedom. His eldest son, George Thompson
Garrison, not sharing his father's scruples, enlisted in the
Fifty-fifth Colored Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, attaining
the rank of captain.
The renomination of Lincoln for a second term, in 1864, developed a
breach in the ranks of the old abolitionists, Mr. Garrison and his
adherents supporting Lincoln, and others, under the lead of Wendell
Phillips, advocating the choice of General Frémont. The latter
candidate, however, withdrew from the field before the election.
In April, 1865, Mr. Garrison, with his English friend George
Thompson, was invited by the Government to be present as its guest
at the ceremony of raising the Stars and Stripes above the
surrendered Fort Sumter, and was received at Charleston with great
enthusiasm by the emancipated slaves. The news of President
Lincoln's assassination hastened the return of the party to the
North.
The practical extermination of the slave system by the adoption of
the 13th Amendment convinced Mr. Garrison that the purpose of the
Anti-Slavery Society and of _The Liberator_ had been accomplished.
He therefore withdrew from one and discontinued the other. After
thirty-five years of a stormy and precarious existence the last
number of _The Liberator_ was issued December 29, 1865. "Nothing
could have been more in keeping with the uniform wisdom of your
anti-slavery leadership than the time you chose for resigning it,"
wrote Lowell to Mr. Garrison a year later.
The recognition of the pioneer's unselfish service thereupon took
shape in a national testimonial reaching a sum exceeding thirty
thousand dollars, thenceforth lifting his life above the pecuniary
cares which had so long weighed upon it. A domestic grief in the
shape of a paralytic shock to his faithful wife occurred in
December, 1863, compelling a change of home from the city to an
attractive suburban house in Roxbury, known as Rockledge.
Although his great life-work was finished, Mr. Garrison abated no
activity in the various reforms in which he had enlisted. Both with
voice and pen he reached a wider and more attentive public, pleading
for justice to the freedman, for the legal emancipation of women,
the right of the Chinese to free immigration and Christian
treatment, freedom of trade (for he early eschewed his youthful
belief in the protective system), and for kindred causes.
Visiting England for the fourth time in 1867, a public breakfast was
given in Mr. Garrison's honor at St. James's Hall, June 29th. John
Bright presided, and among the addresses of welcome were those of
Earl Russell, the Duke of Argyll, John Stuart Mill, George Thompson,
and W. Vernon Harcourt. Later the freedom of the city of Edinburgh
was conferred upon the American abolitionist, and in August he
attended the International Anti-Slavery Conference at Paris,
representing the American Freedman's Union Commission, and meeting
Laboulaye, Cochin, and other eminent Frenchmen.
The troubled period of reconstruction, involving the defence of the
freedmen's rights, found no more interested observer and participant
than Mr. Garrison. The former hostile treatment which had been meted
out to him by press and party was of the past, and, like Lincoln,
"He heard the hisses change to cheers,
The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both in the same unwavering mood."
Unique among reformers, he received in life the reverence that
usually reveals itself in post-mortem honors which indicate the late
awakening of public consciousness and suggest the pathos of their
delay.
The felicities of domestic life were his in more than ordinary
measure, and "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," made his
closing years as serene as his opening career had been stormy.
Occasional ailments reminded him of advancing age, but his
temperamental cheerfulness and faith in human progress never forsook
him.
The death of his dear wife, in 1876, was a visible blow to him, and
in the next year, for physical and mental recuperation, he visited
England again for the last time, with his son Francis, enjoying a
delightful reunion with old friends and making new ones, as was his
wont.
In May, 1879, during a visit to his daughter in New York, he
breathed his last on the 24th of the month, with all his children
about him. He left four sons, named respectively, George Thompson,
William Lloyd, Wendell Phillips, and Francis Jackson, and an only
daughter, Helen Francis, the wife of Henry Villard. Two others, a
daughter and a son, died at an early age.
In 1885, Mr. Garrison's biography, written by his sons Wendell
Phillips and Francis Jackson, was published by the Century Company,
in four volumes, octavo. They contain not only the personal details
of a famous career, but a careful history of the abolition struggle.
To them the future historian must look for the most faithful picture
of the anti-slavery times and their leader.
A bronze statue of heroic size, executed by Olin L. Warner, of New
York, representing Mr. Garrison in a sitting posture, was presented
to the city of Boston by several eminent citizens, in 1886, and is
placed on Commonwealth Avenue, opposite the Hotel Vendome.
Mr. Garrison's calm estimate of himself has been preserved and may
fitly conclude this sketch:
"The truth is, he who commences any reform which at last becomes one
of transcendent importance and is crowned with victory, is always
ill-judged and unfairly estimated. At the outset he is looked upon
with contempt, and treated in the most opprobrious manner, as a wild
fanatic or a dangerous disorganizer. In due time the cause grows and
advances to its sure triumph; and in proportion as it nears the
goal, the popular estimate of his character changes, till finally
excessive panegyric is substituted for outrageous abuse. The praise,
on the one hand, and the defamation on the other, are equally
unmerited. In the clear light of reason, it will be seen that he
simply stood up to discharge a duty which he owed to his God, to his
fellow-men, to the land of his nativity."
[Signature: William Lloyd Garrison.]