Liberator

“ This strange change in France from liberator to despot is worthy of some attention. It is not good for a nation, any more than for an individual, to be too successful. Moreover, the doctrine of liberty, whether in the individualist or nationalist sense, if carried to extreme, is liable to abuse. ”

“ They represented the pure, abstract form of every principle as near as it is possible for it to be represented by human frailty. Free speech, free inquiry and freedom of conscience found perfect expression in their meetings, and the Liberator was the one paper in which any honest, well-meaning person might print any conscientious opinion, however contrary to those generally received in society. ”

“ Citoyen Général: The prisoners of Olmütz, happy to owe their deliverance to your irresistible arms, had, during their captivity, rejoiced at the thought that their liberty and their life were attached to the victories of the republic and to your personal glory. It is with the utmost satisfaction that they now do homage to their liberator. ”

“ We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the Liberator a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. ”

“ Birds of Killingworth, stanza 16.
[605]
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 1804-1879.
My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind. [605:1]
Prospectus of the Public Liberator, 1830.
I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be heard!
Salutatory of the Liberator, Jan. 1, 1831.
Our country is the world; our countrymen are mankind.
Motto of the Liberator, Vol. i. No. ”

“ And Slavery is trembling as trembled before
The oppression which fled from our fathers of yore,
[53] The oppression which fled from our fathers of yore.
We’re coming, we’re coming, with banners unfurled!
Our motto is Freedom—“our country, the World!”
Our watch-word is Liberty—Tyrants, beware!
For the Liberty army will bring you despair,
For the Liberty army will bring you despair.
We’re coming, we’re coming, we’ll come from afar,
Our standard we’ll nail to Humanity’s car. ”

“ Toil on, toil on, all hearts resolved—these captives shall be free.
O Liberty! can man e’er bind thee?
Can overseers quench thy flame?
Can dungeons, bolts, or bars confine thee,
Or threats thy Heaven-born spirit tame?
Or threats thy Heaven-born spirit tame;
Too long the slave has groaned, bewailing
The power these heartless tyrants wield;
Yet free them not by sword or shield,
For with men’s hearts they’re unavailing;
Have pity on the slave;
Take courage from God’s word;
Toil on! toil on! all hearts resolved—these captives shall be free!
FREEDOM’S STAR.
Air—Silver Moon. ”

“ How shall I describe my first experience of free life? Nothing can be greater than the contrast it affords to a plantation experience, under the suspicious and vigilant eye of a mercenary overseer or a watchful master. Day and night are not more unlike. The mandates of Slavery are like leaden sounds, sinking with dead weight into the very soul, only to deaden and destroy. The impulse of freedom lends wings to the feet, buoys up the spirit within, and the fugitive catches glorious glimpses of light through rifts and seams in the accumulated ignorance of his years of oppression. ”

“ In other words, does such a man retain his liberty? As he is borne away by force, and against [Pg 405] prayers, and tears, and struggles, does he remain free? Can a man be adjudged a slave; held, coerced, beaten as a slave; with all his powers and faculties of body and mind subdued and controlled as a slave’s, and yet possess or retain liberty? If such a proceeding does not deprive a man of his freedom, by what means can he be deprived of it? ”

“ May a free northern soil soon give freedom to all,
Who shall breathe in its pure mountain air.
O, God speed, &c.
THE SWEETS OF LIBERTY. AIR—Is there a heart, &c.
Is there a man that never sighed
To set the prisoner free?
Is there a man that never prized
The sweets of liberty?
Then let him, let him breathe unseen,
Or in a dungeon live;
Nor never, never know the sweets
That liberty can give.
Is there a heart so cold in man,
Can galling fetters crave?
Is there a wretch so truly low,
Can stoop to be a slave? ”

“ 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! ”

“ Since our Redeemer, the Maker of every creature, mercifully vouchsafed to take human flesh, that, breaking the chain by which we were held captive, he may, by the grace of his divinity, restore us to our first liberty, it is then salutary that they whom he at first made free by nature, and whom the law of nations subjected to the yoke of slavery, should in the nature in which they were born be restored to liberty by that kindness of their emancipator. ”

“ Therefore, in battling against the Rebellion, we battle against Slavery. Freedom is the growing inspiration of our armies and the just inscription of our banners. Such a war is not a war of subjugation, but a war of liberation, to save the Republic from a petty oligarchy of taskmasters, and to rescue four millions of human beings from cruel oppression. Not to subjugate, but to liberate, is the object of our Holy War.
And yet British statesmen, forgetting for the moment all moral distinctions, forgetting God, who will not be forgotten, gravely announce that our cause must fail. ”

“ Such, as the subsequent history of our country has shown, such was the spirit of the mind of that man who will be honored through all coming time, as the leader of the most glorious movement ever made in humanity’s behalf,—the movement for perfect, impartial liberty, which for the last thirty-nine years has rocked our Republic from centre to circumference, and will continue to agitate it until every vestige of slavery is shaken out of our civil fabric. ”

“ Many highly interesting facts have been communicated with regard to the freedmen—their natural endowments, their facility in acquiring knowledge in letters and arms, their industrial habits, their shrewdness in business transactions, their gratitude, their courage, their acquaintance with passing events, their confidence that the result of the rebellion will be the liberation of their people, and their piety. ”

“ But I confess frankly that I look with more hope and confidence to Liberation than to Confiscation. To give freedom is nobler than to take property, and on this occasion it cannot fail to be more efficacious, for in this way the rear-guard of the Rebellion will be changed into the advance-guard of the Union. ”

“ The great lesson for you in the future is to prove that we were right; to prove that you were worthy of liberty. We simply ask you, in the name of your friends, in the name of our country, to show by your good conduct, and by efforts to improve your condition, that you were worthy of freedom; to prove to all the world, even to your old [261] masters and mistresses, that it was a sin against God to hold you in Slavery, and that you are worthy to have your names enrolled among the freemen of the United States of America. [Great cheering.]
"We want you to respect yourselves ”

“ Now, those who are in liberation should govern those who are in bondage, and slaves are called to be released, not from the government of the free but from the yoke of brutal passions, as a consequence of which they cannot exist without masters. ”

“ But in contending for the birthright of freedom, we have learned to feel for the bondage of others, and in the libations we offer to the goddess of liberty, we contemplate an emancipation of the slaves of this country, as honorable to themselves as it will be glorious to us. ”

“ He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution as the promise of a day that was to banish war and slavery, and every form of vice and misery, from the face of the earth. ”

“ And let us, in the doing of our service to the man that we be slave unto, remember what we were wont to do about the same time of day while we were at our free liberty before, and would be well likely, if we were at liberty, to do again. ”

“ The progressive spirit of the times, on the one hand, and the chains of cruelty and oppression, on the other, inspired the apostles of American freedom to raise the standard of liberty, and unfurl its banner to the world as a warning to oppressors, and as the star of hope to the oppressed. ”

“ One step further, and you see one who, soldier to liberty, throughout a long and spotless life, when the task was far harder than it is to-day, when there were no greetings, no welcomes, when to serve was to peril name as well as liberty, never flinched from the first until now. He is crowned with the glory of the jail, that was his for no crime but for claiming the right to publish that wherein the noblest thought is uttered in the bravest words. ”

“ Come aid the poor slave’s liberation,
And roll on the liberty ball—
And roll on the liberty ball—
Come aid the poor slave’s liberation,
And roll on the liberty ball.
The liberty hosts are advancing—
For freedom to all they declare;
The down-trodden millions are sighing—
Come break up our gloom of despair. ”

“ Every one that may fall in this dispute will be justly esteemed a martyr to liberty, and his name will be had in precious memory while the love of freedom remains in the breasts of men. All whom God will favor to see a glorious victory, will return to their respective states with every mark of honor, and be received with joy and gladness of heart by all friends to liberty and lovers of mankind. ”

“ Thus the seeds of freedom have emanated from the tree of our liberties. They fill the air. They are wafted to every part of the habitable globe. And even in the barren sands of tyranny they are destined to take root. The tree of liberty will spring up every where, and nations shall recline in its shade. ”

“ Whenever you take Freedom's sacred name into your lips—whenever you unfurl the standard of partial liberty—you stand self-condemned. Despots keep men's minds in ignorance, that the voice of slavery and abject dependance may not be heard even in its defence. ”

“ It proclaimed liberty to eight hundred thousand human beings! When I told them they might rise, what an outburst of joy there was among that mass of people! The clock had ceased to strike, and they were slaves no longer! Mothers were hugging their babes to their bosoms, old white-headed men embracing their children and husbands clasping their wives in their arms. By and by all was still again, and I gave out a hymn. You may imagine the feelings with which these people, just emerging into freedom, shouted ”

“ Whatever our outward circumstances may be, if we are destitute of this spiritual liberty, we are in reality slaves, how much soever we may hate the name; if we possess it we are free indeed: [33] And our being free in this sense, will give us the best grounds to hope for temporal freedom, through the favour of heaven; and, at length, gain us admission into the regions of perfect and uninterrupted liberty, peace and happiness. ”

“ Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all tendencies to Liberty and ultimate Emancipation, that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our Independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return,—they must blow out the moral lights around us,—they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate there the love of Liberty ”

“ That the prisoners of the Revolution in all these goals were eager to recover their liberty, is a statement which may pass without dispute; and it is no less natural to suppose that they would have seized upon any means that offered a reasonable hope of escape. ”

“ The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings and praises if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them. Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. ”

“ As the Union armies advanced into the rebel States, slaves, inspired by the hope of personal freedom, flocked to their encampments, claiming protection against rebel masters, and offering to work and fight for the flag whose stars for the first time gleamed upon their vision with the radiance of liberty. Rebel masters and rebel-sympathizing masters sought the encampments278 of the loyal forces, demanding the surrender of the escaped fugitives ”

“ Had the Rebels prevailed, Slavery would have had voices everywhere, even in the Constitution itself. But it is Liberty now that must have voices everywhere, and the greatest voice of all in the National Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof. ”

“ Yes, I said; and loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her “slaves” who hug their chains, and men of naught; she would have subjects who are like rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are men after her own heart, whom she praises and honors both in private and public. Now, in such a State, can liberty have any limit? ”