ANTI-SLAVERY PIONEERS
The early Abolitionists were denounced as fanatics, or "fan-a-tics,"
according to the pronunciation of some of their detractors. They were
treated as if partially insane. The writer when a boy attended the
trial of a cause between two neighbors in a court of low grade. It was
what was called a "cow case," and involved property worth, perhaps, as
much as twenty dollars. One of the witnesses on the stand was asked by
a lawyer, who wanted to embarrass or discredit him, if he were not an
Abolitionist. Objection came from the other side on the ground that
the inquiry was irrelevant; but the learned justice-of-the-peace who
presided held that, as it related to the witness's sanity, and that
would affect his credibility, the question was admissible. It is not,
perhaps, so very strange that in those days, in view of the
disreputableness of those whose cause they espoused, and the
apparently utter hopelessness of anything ever coming out of it, the
supporters of Anti-Slaveryism should be suspected of being "out of
their heads."
Although Don Quixote, who, according to the veracious Cervantes, set
out with his unaided strong right arm to upset things, including
wind-mills and obnoxious dynasties, has long been looked upon as the
world's best specimen of a "fanatic," he would ordinarily be set down
as a very Solomon beside the man who would undertake single-handed to
overthrow such an institution as American slavery used to be. Such a
man there was, however. He really entered on the job of abolishing
that institution, and without a solitary assistant. Strange to say, he
was neither a giant nor a millionaire.
According to Horace Greeley, "Benjamin Lundy deserves the high honor
of ranking as the pioneer of direct and distinctive Anti-Slaveryism in
America."
He was slight in frame and below the medium height, and unassuming in
manner. He had, it is said, neither eloquence nor shining ability of
any sort.
At nineteen years of age he went to Wheeling, Virginia, to learn the
trade of a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells
us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh.
Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he
continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of
the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered into my
soul."
But much as Lundy loathed the business of the slave-dealers and
slave-drivers, he then had no idea of attempting its abolishment. He
married and settled down to the prosecution of his trade, and had he
been like other people generally he would have been content. But he
could not shut the pictures of those street scenes in Wheeling out of
his mind and out of his heart.
The first thing in the reformatory line he did was to organize a
local Anti-Slavery society in the village in which he was then living
in Ohio; at the first meeting of this society only five persons were
present.
About this time Lundy made some important discoveries. He learned that
he could write what the newspapers would print, and give expression to
words that the people would listen to. He was quick to realize the
fact that the best way to reach the people of this country was through
the press. He started a very small paper with a very large name. It
was ambitiously nominated _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_. He
began with only six subscribers and without a press or other
publishing material. Moreover, he had no money. He was not then a
practical printer, though later he learned the art of type-setting. At
this time he had his newspaper printed twenty miles from his home, and
carried the edition for that distance on his back.
But insignificant as Lundy's paper was, it had the high distinction of
being the only exclusively Anti-Slavery journal in the country, and
its editor and proprietor was the only professional Abolition lecturer
and agitator of that time.
Afterwards, in speaking of his journalistic undertaking, Mr. Lundy
said: "I began this work without a dollar of funds, trusting to the
sacredness of the cause." Another saying of his was that he did not
stop to calculate "how soon his efforts would be crowned with
success."
As Lundy spent the greater part of his time in traveling from place to
place, procuring subscriptions to his journal and lecturing on
slavery, he could not issue his paper regularly at any one point. In
some instances he carried the head-rules, column-rules, and
subscription-book of his journal with him, and when he came to a town
where he found a printing-press he would stop long enough to print and
mail a number of his periodical. He traveled for the most part on
foot, carrying a heavy pack. In ten years in that way he covered
twenty-five thousand miles, five thousand on foot.
He decided to invade the enemy's country by going where slavery was.
He went to Tennessee, making the journey of eight hundred miles, one
half by water, and one half on foot. That was, of course, before the
day of railroads.
He continued to issue his paper, although often threatened with
personal violence. Once two bullies locked him in a room and, with
revolvers in hand, tried to frighten him into a promise to discontinue
his work. He did not frighten to any extent.
Seeking what seemed to be the most inviting field for his operations,
he decided to move his establishment to Baltimore, going most of the
way on foot and lecturing as he went whenever he could find an
audience.
His residence in Baltimore came near proving fatal. A slave-trader,
whom he had offended, attacked and brutally beat him on the street.
The consolation he got from the court that tried the ruffian, who was
"honorably discharged," was that he (Lundy) had got "nothing more than
he deserved." Soon afterwards his printing material and other property
was burned by a mob.
He went to Mexico to select a location for a projected colony of
colored people. He traveled almost altogether afoot, observing the
strictest economy and supporting himself by occasional jobs of
saddlery and harness mending. In his journal he tells us that he often
slept in the open air, the country traversed being mostly new and
unsettled. He was in constant danger from panthers, alligators, and
rattlesnakes, while he was cruelly beset by gnats and mosquitoes. His
clothes in the morning, he tells us, would be as wet from heavy dews
as if he had fallen into the river.
Intellectually, Lundy was not a great man, but his heart was beyond
measurement. The torch that he carried in the midst of the all but
universal darkness of that period emitted but a feeble ray, but he
kept it burning, and it possessed the almost invaluable property of
being able to transmit its flame to other torches. It kindled the
brand that was wielded by William Lloyd Garrison, and which possessed
a wonderful power of illumination.
Garrison was beyond all question a remarkable man. In the qualities
that endow a successful leader in a desperate cause he has never been
surpassed. He had an iron will that was directed by an inflexible
conscience. "To him," says James Freeman Clarke, "right was right, and
wrong was wrong, and he saw no half lights or half shadows between
them." He was a natural orator. I never heard him talk, either on or
off the platform, but I have heard those who had listened to him,
speak of the singular gift he possessed in stating or combating a
proposition. One person who had heard him, often compared him, when
dealing with an adversary, to a butcher engaged in dissecting a
carcass, and who knew just where to strike every time,--a homely, but
expressive illustration. His addresses in England on a certain notable
occasion, which is dealt with somewhat at length elsewhere, were
declared by the first British orators to be models of perfect
eloquence.
Lundy and Garrison met by accident. They were boarding at the same
house in Boston, and became acquainted. Lundy's mind was full of the
subject of slavery, and Garrison's proved to be receptive soil. They
decided to join forces, and we have the singular spectacle of two poor
mechanics--a journeyman saddler and a journeyman printer--conspiring
to revolutionize the domestic institutions of half of the country.
They decided to continue the Baltimore newspaper. Garrison's
plain-spokenness, however, soon got him into trouble in that city. He
was prosecuted for libelling a shipmaster for transporting slaves, was
convicted and fined fifty dollars. The amount, so far as his ability
to pay was involved, might as well have been a million. He went to
prison, being incarcerated in a cell just vacated by a man who had
been hanged for murder, and there he remained for seven weeks. At the
end of that time Arthur Tappan, the big-hearted merchant of New York,
learning the facts of the case, advanced the money needed to set
Garrison free.
Undeterred by his experience as a martyr, Garrison--who had returned
to Boston--resolved to establish a journal of his own in that city,
which was to be devoted to the cause of the slave. _The Liberator_
appeared on the 1st of January, 1831.
In entering upon this venture, Garrison had not a subscriber nor a
dollar of money. Being a printer, he set up the type and struck off
the first issue with his own hands.
In the initial number the proprietor of the _Liberator_ outlined his
proposed policy in these words: "I will be as harsh as truth; as
uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest. I will not excuse; I will
not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard."
The first issue of the paper brought in a contribution of fifty
dollars from a colored man and twenty-five subscribers. It was not,
therefore, a failure, but its continuance involved a terrible strain.
Garrison and one co-worker occupied one room for work-shop,
dining-room, and bedroom. They cooked their own meals and slept upon
the floor. It was almost literally true, as pictured by Lowell, the
poet:
"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."
The effects produced by Garrison's unique production were simply
wonderful. In October of its first year the Vigilance Association of
South Carolina offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the
apprehension and prosecution to conviction of any white person who
might be detected in distributing or circulating the _Liberator_.
Georgia went farther than that. Less than a year after Garrison had
established his paper, the Legislature of that State passed an act
offering a reward of five thousand dollars to whomsoever should
arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute its publisher to conviction. The
_Liberator_ was excluded from the United States mails in all the slave
States, illegal as such a proceeding was.
There was, however, opposition nearer home. The _Liberator_
establishment was wrecked by a mob, and Garrison, after having been
stripped of nearly all his clothing, was dragged, bareheaded, by a
rope round his body through the streets of Boston until, to save his
life, the authorities thrust him into jail.
No man in this country was so cordially hated by the slaveholders as
Garrison. Of the big men up North--the leaders of politics and
society--they had no apprehension. They knew how to manage them. It
was the little fellows like the editor of the _Liberator_ that gave
them trouble. These men had no money, but they could not be bought.
They had no fear of mobs. They cared nothing for the scoldings of the
church and the press. An adverse public sentiment never disturbed
their equanimity or caused them to turn a hair's breadth in their
course.
It is true that Lundy and Garrison had very little to lose. They had
neither property nor social position. That, however, cannot be said of
another early Abolitionist, who, in some respects, is entitled to more
consideration than any of his co-workers.
James Gillespie Birney was a Southerner by birth. He belonged to a
family of financial and social prominence. He was a gentleman of
education and culture, having graduated from a leading college and
being a lawyer of recognized ability. He was a slave-owner. For a time
he conducted a plantation with slave labor. He lived in Alabama, where
he filled several important official positions, and was talked of for
the governorship of the State. But having been led to think about the
moral, and other aspects of slaveholding, he decided that it was wrong
and he would wash his hands of it. He could not in Alabama legally
manumit his slaves. Moreover, his neighbors had risen up against him
and threatened his forcible expulsion. He removed to Kentucky, where
he thought a more liberal sentiment prevailed. There he freed his
slaves and made liberal provision for their comfortable sustenance.
But the slave power was on his track. He was warned to betake himself
out of the State. The infliction of personal violence was meditated,
and a party of his opposers came together for that purpose. They were
engaged in discussing ways and means when a young man of commanding
presence and strength, who happened to be present, announced that
while he lived Mr. Birney would not be molested. His opposition broke
up the plot. That young man became a leading clergyman and was
subsequently for a time Chaplain of the United States Senate.
Birney went with his belongings to Ohio, thinking that upon the soil
of a free State he would be safe from molestation. He established a
newspaper in Cincinnati to advocate emancipation. A mob promptly
destroyed his press and other property, and it was with difficulty
that he escaped with his life. More sagacious, although not more
zealous, than Lundy and Garrison and a good many of their followers,
Birney early saw the necessity of political action in the interest of
freedom. He was the real founder of the old "Liberty" party, of which
he was the presidential candidate in 1840 and in 1844.
Of course, there were other early laborers for emancipation that, in
this connection, ought to be mentioned and remembered. They were
pioneers in the truest sense. The writer would gladly make a record of
their services, and pay a tribute, especially, to the memories of such
as have gone to the spirit land, where the great majority are now
mustered, but space at this point forbids.