William Lloyd Garrison commenced his literary and philanthropic labors
when a young journeyman printer, in his native place, Newburyport,
Mass. In 1825 he removed to Boston, and labored for a while in the
office of the _Recorder_. In 1827 he united with Rev. William Collier
in editing and publishing the _National Philanthropist_, the only
paper then devoted to the Temperance cause. And soon after he engaged
in conducting _The Journal of the Times_, at Bennington, Vt. In each
of these papers, especially the last, he took strong ground against
slavery. Believing the plan of the Colonization Society to be intended
to remove the great evil from our country, he espoused it with ardor,
and advocated it with such signal ability, that he was recalled to
Boston to deliver, in Park Street church, the annual address to the
Massachusetts Colonization Society, on the 4th of July, 1828.
Mr. Garrison’s writings attracted the attention of that devoted,
self-sacrificing friend of the enslaved, Benjamin Lundy, of whom I have
just now given some account. He urged him in 1828, and persuaded him in
the autumn of 1829, to remove to Baltimore, and assist in editing _The
Genius of Universal Emancipation_. There Mr. G. soon saw, with his own
eyes, the atrocities of slavery and the inter-state slave-trade; there
he discovered the real design and spirit of the Colonization scheme;
there the radical doctrine of _immediate, unconditional_ emancipation
was revealed to him. He soon made himself obnoxious to slaveholders
by his faithful exposure of their cruelties; and his unsparing
condemnation of their atrocious system of oppression.
After he had been in Baltimore a few months, a Northern captain came
there in a ship owned and freighted by a gentleman of Newburyport, Mr.
Garrison’s birthplace. Failing to obtain another cargo, said captain,
with the consent of his owner, took on board a load of slaves to be
transported to New Orleans. Such an outrage on humanity, perpetrated
by Massachusetts men, enkindled Mr. G.’s hottest indignation, and drew
from his pen a scathing rebuke. He was forthwith arrested as both a
civil and criminal offender. He was prosecuted for a libel upon the
captain and owner of the ship “Francis,” and for disturbing the peace
by attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection.
It would be needless to spend time in proving that, in the presence
of a slaveholding judge, before a slaveholding jury, surrounded by a
community of incensed slaveholders, the young reformer did not have a
fair trial. He was found guilty under both indictments. He was fined
and sentenced to imprisonment a certain time, as the punishment for his
alleged crime, and afterward, until the fine imposed for “the libel”
should be paid. It was then and there that his free, undaunted spirit
inscribed upon the walls of his cell that joyous, jubilant sonnet,
which could have been written only by one conscious of innocence in the
sight of the Holy God, of a great purpose and a sacred mission yet to
be accomplished.
“High walls and huge the body may confine,
And iron grates obstruct the prisoner’s gaze,
And massive bolts may baffle his design,
And watchful keepers eye his devious ways;
Yet scorns the immortal _mind_ this base control!
No chain can bind _it_, and no cell enclose.
Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole,
And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes.
It leaps from mount to mount. From vale to vale
It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers.
It visits home to hoar the fireside tale,
Or in sweet converse pass the joyous hours.
’Tis up before the sun, roaming afar,
And in its watches, wearies every star.”
After seven weeks of close confinement Mr. Garrison was liberated by
the noble, discriminating generosity of the late Arthur Tappan, then in
the height of his affluence, who, so long as he had wealth, felt that
he was an almoner of God’s bounty, and gave his money gladly, in many
ways, to the relief of suffering humanity. The spirit of freedom,--the
true American eagle,--thus uncaged, flew back to his native New
England, and thence sent forth that cry which disturbed the repose of
every slaveholder in the land, and has resounded throughout the world.
It so happened, in the good Providence “which shapes our ends,” that I
was on a visit in Boston at that time,--October, 1830. An advertisement
appeared in the newspapers, that during the following week W. Lloyd
Garrison would deliver to the public three lectures, in which he would
exhibit the awful sinfulness of slaveholding; expose the duplicity
of the Colonization Society, revealing its true character; and, in
opposition to it, would announce and maintain the doctrine, that
immediate, unconditional emancipation is the right of every slave and
the duty of every master. The advertisement announced that his lectures
would be delivered on the Common, unless some church or commodious hall
should be proffered to him gratuitously. If I remember correctly, it
was intimated in the newspapers, or currently reported at the time,
that Mr. G. had applied for several of the Boston churches, and been
refused, because it was known that he had become an opponent of the
Colonization Society. A day or two after the first I saw a second
advertisement, informing the public that the free use of “Julien Hall,”
occupied by Rev. Abner Kneeland’s church, having been generously
tendered to Mr. Garrison, he would deliver his lectures there instead
of the Common. I had not then seen this resolute young man. I had been
much impressed by some of his writings, knew of his connection with Mr.
Lundy, and had heard of his imprisonment. Of course I was eager to see
and hear him, and went to Julien Hall in due season on the appointed
evening. My brother-in-law, A. Bronson Alcott, and my cousin, Samuel E.
Sewall, accompanied me. Truer men could not easily have been found.
The hall was pretty well filled. Among some persons whom I did, and
many whom I did not know, I saw there Rev. Dr. Beecher, Rev. Mr. (now
Dr.) Gannett, Deacon Moses Grant, and John Tappan, Esq.
Presently the young man arose, modestly, but with an air of calm
determination, and delivered such a lecture as he only, I believe, at
that time, could have written; for he only had had his eyes so anointed
that he could see that outrages perpetrated upon Africans were wrongs
done to our common humanity; he only, I believe, had had his ears so
completely unstopped of “prejudice against color” that the cries of
enslaved black men and black women sounded to him as if they came from
brothers and sisters.
He began with expressing deep regret and shame for the zeal he had
lately manifested in the Colonization cause. It was, he confessed, a
zeal without knowledge. He had been deceived by the misrepresentations
so diligently given, throughout the free States by Southern agents,
of the design and tendency of the Colonization scheme. During his few
months’ residence in Maryland he had been completely undeceived. He
had there found out that the design of those who originated, and the
especial intentions of those in the Southern States that engaged in
the plan, were to remove from the country, as “a disturbing element”
in slaveholding communities, all the free colored people, so that the
bondmen might the more easily be held in subjection. He exhibited in
graphic sketches and glowing colors the suffering of the enslaved, and
denounced the plan of Colonization as devised and adapted to perpetuate
the system, and intensify the wrongs of American slavery, and therefore
utterly undeserving of the patronage of lovers of liberty and friends
of humanity.
Never before was I so affected by the speech of man. When he had ceased
speaking I said to those around me: “That is a providential man; he is
a prophet; he will shake our nation to its centre, but he will shake
slavery out of it. We ought to know him, we ought to help him. Come,
let us go and give him our hands.” Mr. Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up
with me, and we introduced each other. I said to him: “Mr. Garrison, I
am not sure that I can indorse all you have said this evening. Much of
it requires careful consideration. But I am prepared to embrace you.
I am sure you are called to a great work, and I mean to help you.”
Mr. Sewall cordially assured him of his readiness also to co-operate
with him. Mr. Alcott invited him to his home. He went, and we sat with
him until twelve that night, listening to his discourse, in which he
showed plainly that _immediate, unconditional emancipation, without
expatriation, was the right of every slave, and could not be withheld
by his master an hour without sin_. That night my soul was baptized in
his spirit, and ever since I have been a disciple and fellow-laborer of
William Lloyd Garrison.
The next morning, immediately after breakfast, I went to his
boarding-house and stayed until two P. M. I learned that he was poor,
dependent upon his daily labor for his daily bread, and intending to
return to the printing business. But, before he could devote himself
to his own support, he felt that he must deliver his message, must
communicate to persons of prominent influence what he had learned of
the sad condition of the enslaved, and the institutions and spirit of
the slaveholders; trusting that all true and good men would discharge
the obligation pressing upon them to espouse the cause of the poor, the
oppressed, the down-trodden. He read to me letters he had addressed to
Dr. Channing, Dr. Beecher, Dr. Edwards, the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, and
Hon. Daniel Webster, holding up to their view the tremendous iniquity
of the land, and begging them, ere it should be too late, to interpose
their great power in the Church and State to save our country from the
terrible calamities which the sin of slavery was bringing upon us.
Those letters were eloquent, solemn, impressive. I wonder they did not
produce a greater effect. It was because none to whom he appealed, in
public or private, would espouse the cause, that Mr. Garrison found
himself left and impelled to become the leader of the great antislavery
reform, which must be _thoroughly accomplished_ before our Republic can
stand upon a sure foundation.
The hearing of Mr. Garrison’s lectures was a great epoch in my own
life. The impression which they made upon my soul has never been
effaced; indeed, they moulded it anew. They gave a new direction to my
thoughts, a new purpose to my ministry. I had become a convert to the
doctrine of “immediate, unconditional emancipation,--liberation from
slavery without expatriation.”
I was engaged to preach on the following Sunday for Brother Young,
in Summer Street Church. Of course I could not again speak to a
congregation, as a Christian minister, and be silent respecting the
_great iniquity_ of our nation. The only sermon I had brought from my
home in Connecticut, that could be made to bear on the subject, was one
on Prejudice,--the sermon about to be published as one of the Tracts
of the American Unitarian Association. So I touched it up as well as I
could, interlining here and there words and sentences which pointed in
the new direction to which my thoughts and feelings so strongly tended,
and writing at its close what used to be called an _improvement_.
Thus: “The subject of my discourse bears most pertinently upon a
matter of the greatest national as well as personal importance.
There are more than two millions of our fellow-beings, children of
the Heavenly Father, who are held in our country in the most abject
slavery,--regarded and treated like domesticated animals, their rights
as men trampled under foot, their conjugal, parental, fraternal
relations and affections utterly set at naught. It is our _prejudice_
against the color of these poor people that makes us consent to the
tremendous wrongs they are suffering. If they were white,--ay, if only
two thousand or two hundred _white_ men, women, and children in the
Southern States were treated as these millions of colored ones are,
we of the North should make such a stir of indignation, we should so
agitate the country, with our appeals and remonstrances, that the
oppressors would be compelled to set their bondmen free. But will our
_prejudice_ be accepted by the Almighty, the impartial Judge of all,
as a valid excuse for our indifference to the wrongs and outrages
inflicted upon these millions of our countrymen? O no! O no! He will
say, “Inasmuch as ye did not what ye could for the relief of these,
the least of the brethren, ye did it not to me.” Tell me not that
we are forbidden by the Constitution of our country to interfere in
behalf of the enslaved. No compact our fathers may have made for us,
no agreement we could ourselves make, would annul our obligations to
suffering fellow-men. “Yes, yes,” I said, with an emphasis that seemed
to startle everybody in the house, “if need be, the very foundations
of our Republic must be broken up; and if this stone of stumbling,
this rock of offence, cannot be removed from under it, the proud
superstructure must fall. It cannot stand, it ought not to stand, it
will not stand, on the necks of millions of men.” For “God is just, and
his justice will not sleep forever.” I then offered such a prayer as my
kindled spirit moved me to, and gave out the hymn commencing,
“Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve;
And press with vigor on.”
When I rose to pronounce the benediction I said: “Every one present
must be conscious that the closing remarks of my sermon have caused an
unusual emotion throughout the church. I am glad. Would to God that a
deeper emotion could be sent throughout our land, until all the people
thereof shall be roused from their wicked insensibility to the most
tremendous sin of which any nation was ever guilty, and be impelled
to do that righteousness which alone can avert the just displeasure
of God. I have been prompted to speak thus by the words I have heard
during the past week from a young man hitherto unknown, but who is, I
believe, called of God to do a greater work for the good of our country
than has been done by any one since the Revolution. I mean William
Lloyd Garrison. He is going to repeat his lectures the coming week. I
advise, I exhort, I entreat--would that I could compel!--you to go and
hear him.”
On turning to Brother Young after the benediction I found that he
was very much displeased. He sharply reproved me, and gave me to
understand that I should never have an opportunity so to violate the
propriety of his pulpit again. And never since then have I lifted up my
voice within that beautiful church, which has lately been taken down.
The excited audience gathered in clusters, evidently talking about
what had happened. I found the porch full of persons conversing in
very earnest tones. Presently a lady of fine person, her countenance
suffused with emotion, tears coursing down her cheeks, pressed through
the crowd, seized my hand, and said audibly, with deep feeling: “Mr.
May, I thank you. What a shame it is that I, who have been a constant
attendant from my childhood in this or some other Christian church,
am obliged to confess that to-day, for the first time, I have heard
from the pulpit a plea for the oppressed, the enslaved millions in
our land!” All within hearing of her voice were evidently moved in
sympathy with her, or were awed by her emotion. For myself I could only
acknowledge in a word my gratitude for her generous testimony.
The next day I perceived, on his return from his place of business in
State Street, that my revered father was much disturbed by the reports
he had heard of my preaching. Some of the “gentlemen of property and
standing” who had been my auditors said it was fanatical, others that
it was incendiary, others that it was treasonable, and begged him to
“arrest me in my mad career.” The only one, as he soon afterwards
informed me, who had spoken in any other than terms of censure was
the great and good Dr. Bowditch, who said, “Depend upon it, the young
man is more than half right.” My father tried to dissuade me from
engaging in the attempt to overthrow the system of slavery which Mr.
Garrison proposed. He had come, with most others, to regard it as an
unavoidable evil, one that the fathers of our Republic had not ventured
to suppress, but had rather given to its protection something like a
guaranty. He thought, with most others at that day, that slavery must
be left to be gradually removed by the progress of civilization, the
growth of higher ideas of human nature, and the manifest superiority
and hotter economy of free labor. He admonished me that, in assailing
the institution of American slavery, I should only be “kicking against
the pricks,” that I should lose my standing in the ministry and my
usefulness in the church. I need not add that he failed to convince me
that “the foolishness of preaching” would not yet be “mighty to the
pulling down of the stronghold of Satan.” In less than ten years he was
reconciled to my course.
A few days afterwards I gave my sermon on Prejudice to my most
excellent friend, Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., who was then the purveyor
of tracts for the American Unitarian Association. He accepted the
discourse as originally written, but insisted that the interlineations
and the additions respecting slavery should be omitted. He would not
have done this, nor should I have consented to it, a few years later.
But we were all in bondage then. Unconsciously to ourselves, the hand
of the slaveholding power lay _heavily_ upon the mind and heart of the
people in our Northern as well as Southern States.
What a pity that my words in that sermon, respecting slavery, were not
published in the tract! They might have helped a little to commit our
Unitarian denomination much earlier to the cause of impartial liberty,
in earnest protest against the great oppression, the unparalleled
iniquity of our land. Of whom should opposition to slavery of every
kind have been expected so soon as from Unitarian Christians?
The insensibility of the people of our country to the wrongs, the
outrages, we were directly and indirectly inflicting upon our colored
brethren, when Mr. Garrison commenced the antislavery reform,--the
insensibility of the Northern people, scarcely less than that of the
Southern,--of New England as well as of the Carolinas and Georgia,
of the professing Christians, almost as much as of the political
partisans,--that insensibility, not yet wholly overpast, even in
Massachusetts, is a _moral phenomenon_. A more glaring inconsistency
does not appear in the whole history of mankind.
The love of liberty was an American passion. We gloried in our
Revolution. We thought our fathers were to be honored above all men
for throwing off the British yoke. Taxation without representation was
not to be submitted to. “Resistance to tyrants was obedience to God.”
We regarded the “Declaration of Independence” as the most momentous
document ever penned by mortal man, the herald note of deliverance
to the race. The first sentence of the second paragraph of it was as
familiar to everybody as the Lord’s Prayer; and almost as sacred as
that prayer did we hold the words “All men were created equal, endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And yet few had given a thought
to the fact that there were millions of men, women, and children in
our land who were held under a heavier bondage than that to which the
Israelites were subjected in the land of Egypt, were denied all the
rights of humanity, were herded together like brutes,--bought, sold,
worked, whipped like cattle.
All in our country who were descendants from the Puritans, especially
those of us who claimed descent from the fathers of New England, were
imbued with the spirit of _religious_ liberty, had much to say about
the rights of conscience; but we gave no heed to the awful fact that
there were millions in the land who were not allowed to exercise any of
those rights, were not permitted to read the Bible or any other book,
and were taught little else about God, but that He was an invisible,
ever-present, almighty overseer of the plantations upon which they were
worked like cattle, standing ready at all times, everywhere, to inflict
upon them, if they neglected their unrequited tasks, a thousand-fold
more dreadful punishment than their earthly tormentors were able even
to conceive.
We Americans, especially we New-Englanders, were, or thought we were,
all alive to the cause of human freedom. We were quick to hear the cry
of the oppressed, that came to us from distant lands. We stopped not
to ask the language, character, or complexion of the sufferers. It was
enough for us to know that they were human beings, and that they were
deprived of liberty. We hesitated not to denounce their tyrants.
The call for succor which came to us from Greece was quickly heard and
promptly answered in almost all parts of our country. And why? Not
because the Greeks were a more virtuous or more intelligent people
than their enemies. No; we had little reason to think them better than
the Turks. But they were the _injured_ party, and therefore we roused
ourselves to aid them. How much soever our orators and poets gathered
up the hallowed associations which cluster around that classic land,
they all were but the decorations, not the point, of their appeals. It
was the story of the _wrongs_ of the Grecians which found the way to
our hearts, and stirred us up to encourage and succor them in their
conflict for _liberty_. Dr. Howe will tell you that it was not their
admiration of Greece in her ancient glory, but their sympathy for
Greece in her modern degradation, that impelled him and his chivalrous
companions to fly thither, and peril their lives in her cause.
Coming to us from any other land, the cry for freedom sent through
American bosoms a thrilling emotion. We stopped not to inquire who they
were that would be free. If they were men, we knew they had a right to
liberty. No matter how the yoke had been fastened on them,--whether by
inheritance, or conquest, or political compromise,--we felt that it
ought to be broken. And although to break it the whole social fabric of
their oppressors must be overturned, still we said, _Let the yoke be
broken_!
Thus we quickly felt, thus we reasoned and acted, in all cases of
oppression excepting one,--the one _at home_, the one in which we were
implicated with the oppressors. We were blind, we were deaf, we were
dumb, to the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon one sixth part of the
population of our own country. In the Southern States the colored
people were held as property, chattels personal, liable to all the
incidents of the estates of their owners, could be seized to pay their
debts, or mortgaged, or given away, or bequeathed by them. To all
intents and purposes, they were regarded by the laws of those States,
and might be legally disposed of, and otherwise treated, just like
domesticated brute animals. In most of the Northern States they were
not admitted to the prerogatives of citizens. In none of them were they
allowed to enjoy equal social, educational, or religious privileges;
nor were they permitted to engage in any of the lucrative professions,
trades, or handicrafts. They were condemned to all the menial offices.
It was impossible not to respect and value many of them as servants
and nurses, but they were not suffered to come nearer to white people
in any domestic or social relations. Intermarriages with them were
illegal, and punishable by heavy penalties. They were not allowed to
travel (unless as servants) in any public conveyances. Their children
were excluded from the schools which white children attended, and they
were set apart in one corner of the places of public worship called
the houses of God,--_the impartial Father_ of all men. A certain shade
of complexion, though much lighter than some brunettes, consigned any
one guilty of it to the grade of the blacks, which was de-gradation.
We were educated to regard negroes as an inferior race of beings,
not entitled to the distinctive rights and privileges of white men.
Ignorance, poverty, and servitude came to be considered the birthright,
the inheritance, of all Africans and their descendants; and therefore
we did not feel the pressure of their bonds, nor the smart of the
wounds that were continually given them.
Prejudice against color had become universal. The most elevated
were not superior to it; the humblest white men were not below it.
_Colorphobia_ was a disease that infected all white Americans. Let me
give my readers one instance of its virulence.
In 1834, being on a visit to my father in Boston, I was requested
to call upon one of his old friends, that he might dissuade me from
co-operating any further with “that wrong-headed, fanatical Garrison.”
The honorable gentleman was very prominent in the fashionable,
professional, and political society of that city. He had always
expressed a kind regard for me, and had shown his confidence by
committing to my care the education of two of his sons.
I did not doubt that he had been moved to send for me by his sincere
concern for what he deemed my welfare. He received me with elegant
courtesy, as he was wont to do, but entered at once upon the subject
of “Mr. Garrison’s misdirected, mischievous enterprise.” He insisted
that, while the negroes ought to be treated humanely, the thought
of their ever being elevated to an equality with white men was
preposterous, and he wondered that a man of common sense should
entertain the thought an hour. He said: “Why, they are evidently an
inferior race of beings, intended to be the servants of those on whom
the Creator has conferred a higher nature,” and adduced the arguments
which were then becoming, and have since been, so common with those
who would maintain this position. At length I said to him: “Sir, we
Abolitionists are not so foolish as to require or wish that ignorant
negroes should be considered wise men, or that vicious negroes should
be considered virtuous men, or poor negroes be considered rich men.
All we demand for them is that negroes shall be permitted, encouraged,
assisted to become as wise, as virtuous, and as rich as they can,
and be acknowledged to be just what they have become, and be treated
accordingly.” He replied, with great emphasis: “Mr. M., if you should
bring me negroes who had become the wisest of the wise, the best of the
good, the richest of the rich, I would not acknowledge them to be my
equals.” “Then,” said I, “you might be laughed at; for, if there be any
meaning in your words, such men would be your superiors. Think, sir, a
moment of your presuming to contemn the wisest of the wise, the best of
the good, the richest of the rich, because of their complexion. This
would be the insanity of prejudice. Why, sir,” I continued, “Rammohun
Roy is soon coming to this country; and he is of a darker hue than
many American persons who are prescribed and degraded because of their
color.” “Well, sir,” he angrily replied, “I am not one who will show
him any respect.” “What,” I cried, “not take pains to know and treat
with respect Rammohun Roy?” “No,” he rejoined,--“no, not even Rammohun
Roy!” “Then,” I retorted, “you will lose the honor of taking by the
hand the most remarkable man of our age.” He was much offended, and, as
I afterwards learnt, chose that our acquaintance should end with that
interview.
Such was the prejudice that Mr. Garrison found confronting him
everywhere, and it still is the greatest obstacle in our country to the
progress of liberty and the establishment of peace.
“Truths would you teach to save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.”
Never, since the days of our Saviour, have these lines of Pope been
more fully verified than in the experience of Mr. Garrison. So soon as
it was known that he opposed the Colonization plan, and demanded for
the enslaved immediate emancipation, without expatriation, he was at
once generally denounced as a very dangerous person. Very few of those
who were convinced by his facts and his appeals that something should
be done forthwith for the relief of our oppressed millions ventured,
during the first twelve months of his labors, to help him. Even the
excellent Deacon Grant would not trust him for paper on which to print
his _Liberator_ a month. And most of those who assisted him to get
audiences wherever he went, and who subscribed for the _Liberator_,
and who expressed their best wishes, were intimidated by his boldness,
frequently half acknowledged that he demanded too much for our
bondmen, and could not be made to understand his fundamental doctrine
of “immediate unconditional emancipation,” often and clearly as he
expounded it.
In November, 1831, I happened again to be in Boston on a visit, when
it was proposed to attempt the formation of an antislavery society.
A meeting was called at the office of Samuel E. Sewall, Esq. Fifteen
gentlemen assembled there. We agreed in the outset that, if the
apostolic number of twelve should be found ready to unite upon the
principles that should be thought vital, and in a plan of operations
deemed wise and expedient, we would then and there organize an
association. Mr. Garrison announced the doctrine of “immediate
emancipation” as being essential to the great reform that was needed
in our land, the extirpation of slavery, and the establishment of the
human rights of the millions who were groaning under a worse than
Egyptian bondage. We discussed the point two hours. But though we were
the earliest and most earnest friends of the young reformer, only
_nine_ of us were brought to see, eye to eye with him, as to the right
of the slave and the duty of the master. Only nine of us were brought
to see that a man was a man, let his complexion be what it might be;
and that no other man, not the most exalted in the land, could regard
and hold him a moment as his property, his chattel, _without sin_.
Only nine of us were brought to understand that the first thing to be
done for those men held in the condition of domesticated brutes, was
to recognize, acknowledge their _humanity_, and secure to them their
God-given rights,--those rights of all men set forth as inalienable in
the immortal Declaration of American Independence. Only nine of us were
brought to see that the _first_ thing to be done for the improvement
of the condition of the slave is to break his yoke, to set him free,
and that what needs to be done first ought to be done without delay,
immediately. The rest of the company partook of the fear, common at
that day, that it would be very dangerous to set millions of slaves
free at once. Although liberty was announced to the world, in our
American Declaration, as the _birthright_ of all the children of
men, yet were the people of our country so blinded and besotted by
the influence of our slave system, that it was almost universally
pronounced unsafe to give liberty to adult men, who were slaves, until
they should be prepared for freedom, and deemed qualified to exercise
it aright. Mr. Garrison had had to meet and combat this senseless fear
everywhere, from the commencement of his enterprise. He had shown to
all who could see that slavery was not a school in which men could
be educated for liberty; that they could no more be trained to feel
and act as freemen should, so long as they were kept in bondage, than
children could be taught to walk so long as they were held in the
arms of nurses. Moreover, he argued, that if those only should be
intrusted with liberty who knew how to use it, slaveholders were of
all men the last that should be left free, seeing that they habitually
outraged liberty,--indeed, had been educated to trample upon human
rights. Still, his doctrine was generally misunderstood, egregiously
misrepresented, and violently opposed. And, as I have stated, only nine
out of fifteen of his elect followers, after he had been preaching
and publishing the doctrine a year, fully believed or dared to unite
with him in announcing it to the world as their faith. We therefore
separated in November, 1831, without having organized. I returned
disappointed to my home in Connecticut, eighty miles from Boston;
too far at that day, ere railroads were lain, to come, in the depth
of winter, to assist in the formation of the New England Antislavery
Society, which took place in January, 1832. So I lost the honor of
being one of the actual founders of the first society based upon the
true principle,--_immediate emancipation_.
That there was point, vitality, power, in this doctrine was proved by
the commotion which was everywhere caused by the promulgation of it.
From one end of the country to the other the cry went forth against
the editor of the _Liberator_, Fanatic! Incendiary! Madman! The
slaveholders raved, and their Northern apologists confessed that they
had too much cause to be offended. Grave statesmen and solemn divines
pronounced the doctrines of the New England Abolitionists unwise,
dangerous, false, unconstitutional, revolutionary. Encouraged by these
responses, the slaveholding aristocrats grew so bold as to demand
that “this fanatical assault upon one of their domestic institutions
should be quelled at once,” that the publications of the Abolitionists
should be suppressed, our meetings dispersed, our lecturers and agents
arrested. And scarcely had the _Liberator_ entered upon its second
year before a reward was offered by a Southern Legislature for the
abduction of the person, or for the life of its editor. And no Northern
Legislature expressed its alarm or surprise. No Northern paper, secular
or religious, reproved these assaults upon the liberty of the press and
the freedom of speech. Thus was the viper _cherished_ that has since
stung so deeply the bosom of our Republic, has inflicted a wound that
is still open and festering.
The grossest abuse was heaped upon Mr. Garrison; the vilest aspersions
cast upon his character by those who knew nothing of his private life;
the worst designs imputed to his great enterprise by those who were
interested directly or indirectly in upholding the system of iniquity
which he had resolved to overthrow.
One of the charges brought against him, the one which probably hindered
his success more than any other, was that he was an enemy of religion,
an infidel, and that his covert but real purpose was to subvert the
institutions of Christianity.
Now Mr. Garrison is, and ever has been since I knew him, a profoundly
religious man, one of the most so I have ever known. No one really
acquainted with him will say the contrary, unless it be under the
impulse of a sectarian prejudice, personal resentment, or a sinister
purpose. True, his doctrinal opinions and his regard for rites and
forms have come to differ from those of the popular religionists of
our day, as much as did the opinions of Jesus Christ differ from those
of the temple and synagogue worshippers of his day. It would have been
_politic_ in him not to have incurred, as he did, the opposition and
hatred of so many of the ministers and churches of our country. But
Mr. Garrison knew not how to counsel with the wisdom of this world.
He surely had as much cause and as frequent occasions to expose the
inhumanity and hypocrisy of our country as Jesus had to denounce the
scribes, Pharisees, and priests of Judea. He soon discovered, to his
astonishment, that the American Church was the bulwark of American
slaveholders. The truth of this accusation was afterwards elaborately
proved by the Hon. J. G. Birney. It was emphatically acknowledged by
the Rev. Dr. Albert Barnes, and has since been repeatedly declared by
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. Dr. Cheever, all honorable, orthodox
men. Now, pray, how ought a great captain, though his army be a small
one,--how ought he to treat the _bulwark_ of the enemy he means to
subdue? how but to assail and demolish it if he can? God be praised,
Christianity and the American Church were not then, and are not now,
identical. The religion of Jesus Christ is dearer to Mr. Garrison than
his own life. It was only the hollow-hearted pretenders to piety whom
he exposed, censured, ridiculed. He never uttered from his pen or his
lips a word that I have read or heard, or that has been reported to
me,--not a word but in reverence and love of the truth and the spirit,
the doctrines and the precepts, of Jesus Christ.
Many of those who were interested in Mr. Garrison’s holy purpose,
and wished him success, thought him too severe; many more thought
him indiscreet. He was remonstrated with often earnestly. But he
could not be persuaded that it was not right and wise to blame those
persons _most_ for our national sin who had the most influence on the
government, the policy, the prevailing sentiments, the customs, and,
above all, the _religion_ of the nation. Mr. Garrison would sometimes
argue, and argue powerfully, convincingly, with those who found fault
with his words of fiery indignation, and show that tamer language
would be inapt, unfelt. At other times he would say, “Do the poor,
hunted, hounded, down-trodden slaves think my language too severe or
misapplied? Do that wretched husband and wife who have just now been
separated from each other forever by that respectable gentleman in
Virginia,--the one sold to be taken to New Orleans, the other kept at
home to pine in the hovel made desolate,--do that husband and wife
think my denunciation of their master too severe, because he is a
judge, or a governor, or a minister, or because he is a member of a
Christian church, or even because he has been hitherto, and in other
respects, a kind master to them? Until I hear such ones complain of
my severity, I shall not doubt its propriety.” “If those who deserve
the lash feel it and wince at it, I shall be assured I am striking
the right persons in the right place.” “I will be,” are his memorable
words that rung through the land,--“I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On the subject of slavery I do not wish to
think or speak or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house
is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue
his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually
extricate her babe from the fire; but urge me not to use moderation
in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I
will not excuse; I will not retreat an inch; and _I will be heard_.”
Mr. Garrison will perhaps remember that, a few months after he
commenced the _Liberator_, when almost everybody was finding fault
with him, or wishing that he would be more temperate, I was one of
the friends that came to remonstrate and entreat. He and his faithful
partner, Isaac Knapp, were at work in the little upper chamber, No. 6
Merchants’ Hall, where they lived, as well as they could, with their
printing-press and types, all within an enclosure sixteen or eighteen
feet square. I requested him to walk out with me, that we might confer
on an important matter. He at once laid aside his pen, and we descended
to the street. I informed him how much troubled I had become for fear
he was damaging the cause he had so much at heart by the undue severity
of his style. He listened to me patiently, tenderly. I told him what
many of the wise and prudent, who professed an interest in his object,
said about his manner of pursuing it. He replied somewhat in the way
I have described above. “But,” said I, “some of the epithets you use,
though not perhaps too severe, are not precisely applicable to the sin
you denounce, and so may seem abusive.” “Ah!” he rejoined, “until the
term ‘slaveholder’ sends as deep a feeling of horror to the hearts of
those who hear it applied to any one as the terms ‘robber,’ ‘pirate,’
‘murderer’ do, we must use and multiply epithets when condemning the
sin of him who is guilty of the ‘_sum of all villanies_.’” “O,” cried
I, “my friend, do try to moderate your indignation, and keep more cool;
why, you are all on fire.” He stopped, laid his hand upon my shoulder
with a kind but emphatic pressure, that I have felt ever since, and
said slowly, with deep emotion, “Brother May, I have need to be _all
on fire_, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.” From that hour
to this I have never said a word to Mr. Garrison, in complaint of his
style. I am more than half satisfied now that he was right then, and we
who objected were mistaken.
A year or two afterwards I was in the study of Dr. Channing, who,
from the rise of the antislavery movement, watched it with deep and
increasing emotion, and often sent for me, and oftener for the heroic
Dr. Follen, to converse with us about it. I was in the Doctor’s study,
and had been endeavoring to explain and reconcile him to some measures
of the Abolitionists which I found had troubled him, when he said, with
great gravity and earnestness, “But, Mr. May, your friend Garrison’s
style is excessively severe. The epithets he uses are harsh, abusive,
exasperating.” I replied, “Dr. Channing, I thought so once myself. But
you have furnished me with a sufficient apology, if not justification,
of Mr. Garrison’s severity.” And taking from his bookcase the octavo
volume of the Doctor’s Discourses, Reviews, and Miscellanies, published
in 1830, I read parts of the passage commencing on the twenty-second
and closing on the twenty-fourth page, in which he replies to the
charge, brought against the great Milton’s prose writings, of
“party-spirit, coarse invective, and controversial asperity.” I wish
there were room here for me to quote the whole of it, it is all so
applicable to Mr. Garrison; but I will give only the close: “Men of
natural softness and timidity, of a sincere but effeminate virtue,
will be apt to look on these bolder, hardier spirits as violent,
perturbed, uncharitable; and the charge will not be wholly groundless.
But that deep feeling of evils, which is necessary to effectual
conflict with them, and which marks God’s most powerful messengers
to mankind, cannot breathe itself in soft and tender accents. The
deeply moved soul will speak strongly, and ought to speak so as to
move and shake nations. We must not mistake Christian benevolence
as if it had but one voice,--that of soft entreaty. It can speak in
piercing and awful tones. There is constantly going on in our world a
conflict between good and evil. The cause of human nature has always to
wrestle with foes. All improvement is a victory won by struggles. It is
especially true of those great periods which have been distinguished
by revolutions in government and religion, and from which we date the
most rapid movements of the human mind, that they have been signalized
by conflict. At such periods men gifted with great power of thought and
loftiness of sentiment are especially summoned to the conflict with
evil. They hear, as it were, in their own magnanimity and generous
aspirations the voice of a divinity; and thus commissioned, and burning
with a passionate devotion to truth and freedom, they must and will
speak with an indignant energy, and they ought not to be measured by
the standard of ordinary minds in ordinary times.
“Milton reverenced and loved human nature, and attached himself to its
great interests with a fervor of which only such a mind was capable.
He lived in one of those solemn periods which determine the character
of ages to come. His spirit was stirred to its very centre by the
presence of danger. He lived in the midst of battle. That the ardor
of his spirit sometimes passed the bounds of wisdom and charity, and
poured forth unwarrantable invective, we see and lament. But the purity
and loftiness of his mind break forth amidst his bitterest invectives.
We see a noble nature still. We see that no feigned love of truth and
freedom was a covering for selfishness and malignity. He did indeed
love and adore uncorrupted religion and intellectual liberty, and let
his name be enrolled among their truest champions.”
The Doctor bowed and smiled blandly, saying, “I confess the quotation
is not inapt nor unfairly made.”