William Lloyd Garrison

“ 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. ”

“ When the nation was apathetic, dead on the subject of slavery, he used every power which he possessed or could invent to galvanize it into life. But with the prodigious excitement which swept over the free States at the outbreak of the war, Garrison saw that the crisis demanded different treatment. Abolitionists and their moral machinery he felt should be withdrawn, for a season at least, from their conspicuous place before the public gaze, lest it happen that they should divert the current of public opinion from the South to themselves, and thus injure the cause of the slave. ”

“ The American Anti-Slavery Society, of which Garrison was the president from 1843 to the day of emancipation, was during all this period the nucleus of an intense and powerful moral agitation, which was greatly valued by many of the most faithful workers in the field of politics, who respected Garrison for his fidelity to his convictions. ”

“ William Lloyd Garrison took part in a discussion on the means of suppressing war in the Society for the Establishment of Peace among Men, which existed in 1838 in America. He came to the conclusion that the establishment of universal peace can only be founded on the open profession of the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence (Matt. v. 39) , in its full significance, as understood by the Quakers, with whom Garrison happened to be on friendly relations. ”

“ And so in March, 1833, the Board of Managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society notified the public of the appointment of "William Lloyd Garrison as their agent, and that he would proceed to England as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made, for the purpose of procuring funds to aid in the establishment of the proposed MANUAL LABOR SCHOOL FOR COLORED YOUTH, and of disseminating in that country the truth in relation to American slavery, and to its ally, the American Colonization Society." ”

“ That man is William Lloyd Garrison. Sir, I thank God for having given him to the age and country in which he lives. He is a man pre-eminently qualified for the mighty work in which he has engaged. May the God of the oppressed bless him, and keep him humble, and cheer him onwards in his rugged path! ”

“ A little more than forty years ago, William Lloyd Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate and unconditional emancipation, as the right of the slave, and the duty of the master. The men and women who gradually rallied around him, fully comprehended the solemn responsibility they were then taking, and seemed prepared to consecrate the best years of their lives to the cause of human freedom. Amid the moral and political darkness which then overshadowed the land, the voice of humanity was at length faintly heard, and soon aroused opposition ”

“ William Lloyd Garrison, the boldest and most aggressive non- resistant that ever lived, had, since 1831, been pouring forth once a week in the "Liberator" his earnest and eloquent denunciations of slavery, taking no account of the expedient or the possible, but demanding with all the fervor of an ancient prophet the immediate removal of the cause of offense. Oliver Johnson attacked the national sin and wrong, in the "Standard," with zeal and energy equally hot and untiring. Their words stung the slave-holding States to something like frenzy. ”

“ Garrison, as is stated in one of the letters which has just been read, to William Lloyd Garrison it has been given, in a manner not often permitted to those who do great things of this kind, to see the ripe fruit of his vast labors. Over a territory large enough to make many realms, he has seen hopeless toil supplanted by compensated industry; and where the bondman dragged his chain, there freedom is established for ever. ”

“ It is difficult to imagine a figure more heroic than William Lloyd Garrison with the rope about his body, the respectability of the town howling for his blood. The unselfishness of their devotion did not fail to extort respect. Such men could not be suppressed. ”

“ A few white victims must be sacrificed to open the eyes of this nation, and to show the tyranny of our laws. I expect and am willing to be persecuted, imprisoned, and bound for advocating African rights; and I should deserve to be a slave myself if I shrunk from that duty or danger." The story of the trial of William Lloyd Garrison, from which the above brave words are taken, fell into the hands of that noble man and munificent merchant, Arthur Tappan, of New York. ”

“ As Garrison burned to be about his work, help came to him from a man quite as penniless and friendless as himself. The man was Isaac Knapp, an old companion of his in Newburyport, who had also worked with him in the office of the Genius, in Baltimore. He was a practical printer, and was precisely the sort of assistant that the young reformer needed at this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a man like himself acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited capacity for the endurance of unlimited hardships. ”

“ I had been living four or five months in New Bedford when there came a young man to me with a copy of the Liberator, the paper edited by William Lloyd Garrison and published by Isaac Knapp, and asked me to subscribe for it. I told him I had but just escaped from slavery and was of course very poor, and had no money then to pay for it. He was very willing to take me as a subscriber, notwithstanding, and from this time I was brought into contact with the mind of Mr. Garrison, and his paper took a place in my heart second only to the Bible. ”

“ Garrison did not so much insist on the right of negroes to be free, as he denied the right of any man whatsoever, or of any body of men, to forcibly coerce another man in any way. For the purpose of combating slavery, he advanced the principle of struggle against all the evil of the world. ”

“ His enthusiasm for self-education was constantly stimulated. He appropriated some of his first earnings to subscribing for the Liberator, and was soon after introduced to Mr. Garrison. How Garrison appeared to a liberated slave may be a picture worth preserving, and we give it in Douglass' own words.
"Seventeen years ago, few men possessed a more heavenly countenance than William Lloyd Garrison, and few men evinced a more genuine or a more exalted piety. ”

“ Garrison, taken in all its dramatic features, is more like a chapter of fiction, with its strange and improbable incidents and situations, than a story of real life. The pioneer entered Georgia and trod the streets of Savannah, whose legislature thirty-three years before had set a price upon his head. In Charleston he witnessed the vast ruin which the war had wrought, realized how tremendous had been the death-struggle between Freedom and Slavery, and saw everywhere he turned that slavery was beaten, was dead in its proud, rebellious center. ”

“ The event of that year was not the "Bill of Abominations," great as was the national excitement which it produced; nor was it yet the then impending political struggle between Jackson and Adams, but the unnoticed meeting of Lundy and Garrison. Great historic movements are born not in the whirlwinds, the earthquakes, and the pomps of human splendor and power, but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits. Up to this time Garrison had had, as the religious revivalist would say, no "realizing sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. ”

“ At the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in May, 1865, Garrison contended for its dissolution, declaring that "Nothing is more clear in my own mind, nothing has ever been more clear, than that this is the fitting time to dissolve our organization, and to mingle with the millions of our fellow-countrymen in one common effort to establish justice and liberty throughout the land." ”

“ While physical resistance of the Slave Law was wholly out of the question with Garrison, he, nevertheless, refused to condemn the men with whom it was otherwise. Here he was anything but a fanatic. All that he required was that each should be consistent with his principles. If those principles bade him resist the enforcement of the Black Bill, the apostle of non-resistance was sorry enough, but in this emergency, though he possessed the gentleness of the dove, he also practised the wisdom of the serpent. That truth moves with men upon lower as well as higher planes he well knew. ”

“ Want renders most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age, absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee that the young recusant could never be starved into silence or conformity to popular standards. And with this stern, sad lesson treasured up in his heart, Garrison graduated from another room in the school-house of experience. ”

“ Garrison had stepped down from his elevated position as the publisher and editor of the Free Press. He was without work, and, being penniless, it behooved him to find some means of support. With the instinct of the bright New England boy, he determined to seek his fortunes in Boston. If his honesty and independence put him at a disadvantage, as publisher and editor, in the struggle for existence, he had still his trade as a compositor to fall back upon As a journeyman printer he would earn his bread, and preserve the integrity of an upright spirit. ”

“ The murderous assault upon Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber at Washington by Preston S. Brooks, served to intensify the increasing belligerency of the Northern temper, to deepen the spreading conviction that the irrepressible conflict would be settled not with the pen through any more fruitless compromises, but in Anglo-Saxon fashion by blood and iron.
Amid this general access of the fighting propensity, Garrison preserved the integrity of his non-resistant principles, his aversion to the use of physical force as an anti-slavery weapon. ”

“ So while the South thus early was seeking to frighten the North from the agitation of the slavery question in Congress, Garrison was unconsciously preparing a countercheck by making it dangerous for a Northern man to practice Southern principles in the National Legislature. He did not mince his words, but called a spade a spade, and sin, sin. He perceived at once that if he would kill the sin of slave-holding, he could not spare the sinner. ”

“ Garrison. But Mr. Garrison, with that extraordinary serenity of manner which was all his own, parleyed with the ruffian, as if he was no ruffian and had no mob at his back. "You ought not to interrupt us," he remonstrated with gentle dignity. "We go upon the principle of hearing everybody. If you wish to speak, I will keep order, and you shall be heard." Rynders was finally quieted by the offer of Francis Jackson to give him a hearing as soon as Mr. Garrison had brought his address to an end. ”

“ It was not only harmful in its principles and purposes. "It imperatively and effectually seals up the lips," so Garrison accused it, "of a vast number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they associate, and thereby leading to a dissolution of the compact, dare not expose the flagrant enormities of the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of holding human beings in bondage. They dare not lead to the onset against the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall the victory be won? ”

“ The conquering hero comes and his fanatical followers salute him forthwith with a new anti-slavery society, which means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife between the North and the South. "Are we tamely to look on, and see this most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society?" shrieked on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York Harbor, the malignant editor of the Courier and Enquirer. ”

“ In Boston we are all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in from his Liberator outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for championship, and to the Liberator as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace. ”

“ Our commerce with the South is bound with the shackles of the plantation—"Free-Trade and Sailors'-Rights" are every day violated in Southern ports; and we tamely submit to it as the slave does to the lash. Our natural, God-given right of free speech, though constitutionally recognised as sacred in every part of the country, can be exercised in the slaveholding States only at the peril of our lives. Slavery cannot bear one ray of light, or the slightest criticism. ”

“ Why should there not be twenty, thirty, fifty Slave States, as well as fifteen? Why should not the star-spangled banner wave over ten, as well as over three millions of Slaves? Why should not Nebraska be cultivated by Slave labour, as well as Florida or Texas? If men, under the American Constitution, may hold slaves at discretion and without dishonour in one-half of the country, why not in the whole of it? If it would be a damning sin for us to admit another Slave State into the Union, why is it not a damning sin to permit a Slave State to remain in the Union? ”

“ The present American Union, therefore, is only one in form, not in reality. It is, and it always has been, the absolute supremacy of the Slave Power over the whole country—nothing more. What sectional heart-burnings or conflictive interests exist between the several Free States? None. They are homogeneous, animated by the same spirit, harmonious in their action as the movement of the spheres. It is only when we come to the dividing line between the Free States and the Slave States that shoals, breakers and whirlpools beset the ship of State, and threaten to engulf or strand it. ”