WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. MY COUNTRY IS THE WORLD: MY COUNTRYMEN ARE ALL MANKIND. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON > 1805-1879 THE STORY OF HIS LIFE TOLD BY HIS CHILDREN VOLUME II. 1835-1840 NEW- YORK: THE CENTURY CO. 1885 Copyright, 1885, by WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON and FRANCIS JACKSON GARRISON. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. II. HELEN ELIZA GARRISON, at about the age of 42 Frontispiece. From a daguerreotype taken in Boston about 1853. MAP OF PART OF BOSTON in 1835 p. 19 By permission of Messrs. Cupples, Upham & Co. CITY HALL, BOSTON (OLD STATE HOUSE), in 1835 p. 23 By permission of the same. MAP OF PART OF BOSTON in 1835 . p. 25 By permission of the same. MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN, at about the age of 40 to face p. 34 From a daguerreotype. The engraving falls short of the rare beauty of the original. FRANCIS JACKSON, at about the age of 70 to face p. 60 From a photograph taken about 1859. ELLIS GRAY LORING, at the age of 45 to face p. 96 From a crayon portrait by Eastman Johnson, in the possession of Mrs. Anna Loring Dresel. THEODORE DWIGHT WELD, at about the age of 41. . .to face p. 116 From a daguerreotype taken about 1844. The color key of the engraving is too dark. SARAH MOORE GRIMKE, at about the age of 50 to face p. 134 From a daguerreotype. ANGELINA EMILY GRIMKE (MRS. WELD), at about the age of 39 to face p. 214 From a daguerreotype taken about 1844. vii viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. CHARLES FOLLEN, at about the age of 43 to face p. 228 After a photograph from the oil painting by Gambardella (1838). A steel engraving by H. W. Smith from the same orig inal is given in Hudson s History of Lexington, Mass., p. 359. WENDELL PHILLIPS, at about the age of 40 to face p. 274 From a daguerreotype group of Thompson, Garrison, and Phillips, taken in 1851. ABBY KELLEY (MRS. FOSTER), at the age of 44 to face p. 348 From a daguerreotype taken in 1855. TABLE OF CONTENTS. VOL. II. STOEM AND STRESS CONCLUDED. (1835-1840.) PAGES CHAPTER I. THE BOSTON MOB SECOND STAGE (1835).. 1-72 A highly respectable" mob, excited against George Thompson, vents itself on Garrison at a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society on October 21. Mayor Lyman rescues him, and shelters him in the City Hall, whence he is formally committed to jail as a rioter, nar rowly escaping the clutches of the mob on the way. The next day he leaves the city. Thompson returns to England. Garrison s partnership with Knapp ends. CHAPTER II. GERMS OF CONTENTION AMONG BRETHREN (1836) 73-120 111 health cripples Garrison s activity during this year, which he spends mostly at Brooklyn, Conn. He joins the Massachusetts remonstrants against legislative suppression of the abolitionists, at the State House, and attends the conference of the Seventy Agents in New York City, where he meets the Grimke sisters, of South Carolina. In criticizing Lyman Beecher s discourse on the Sabbath, he reveals his own views regarding the sanctity of that day, and alarms many of his orthodox associates. CHAPTER III. THE CLERICAL APPEAL (1837) 121-198 The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society ensures the finan cial support of the Liberator, without touching the editor s independence. An orthodox Pastoral Letter against the lecturing of the Grimke"s, as women, in Massachusetts, is followed by a disingenuous Clerical Appeal against the X CONTENTS. PAGES conduct of the Liberator as respects the clergy. This is redoubled on the manifestation of Perfectionist doctrines by Garrison, under the influence of J. H. Noyes. The New York A. S. managers rebuke him privately, and refuse to condemn the Appeal in their organ. Garrison maintains himself in Massachusetts, but the nucleus of a new organi zation is formed under clerical auspices. The murder of Lovejoy intervenes. CHAPTER IV. PENNSYLVANIA HALL THE NON-RESISTANCE SOCIETY (1838) 199-257 Garrison will no longer accept the aid of the Massachusetts Society, and give color to the charge that the Liberator is its organ. But this does not pacify the enemies of the paper. He takes part in the proceedings at the dedication of Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, and is obliged to flee the city when the building is burnt by a mob. At the New England Convention in Boston, his views as to the equality of the sexes in abolition membership prevail, leading to a clerical protest and secession. He also secures the admis sion of women on equal terms at a Peace Convention called in Boston, and draws up a Constitution and Declaration of Sentiments for a Non-Resistance Society thereupon formed. CHAPTER V. SHALL THE LIBERATOR LEAD? (1839) .258-332 A clerical plot to subvert the management of the Massa chusetts Society, discredit the Liberator, and establish an organ in place of it under clerical control, is unmasked by Garrison and defeated at all points. A secession takes place, and the Massachusetts Abolition Society is founded, with the Abolitionist for its organ. The New Organiza- tionists have the support of the Executive Committee of the American A. S. Society, who have been alienated from Garrison by his views on the Sabbath and on woman s rights, and especially by his non-resistant or so-called no- government doctrines, which interfere with their endeavor to convert the A. S. organization into a political party of voters. Garrison s opposition to a Third Party is generally seconded by abolitionists outside of New York State, and the Albany and Cleveland A. S. Conventions fail to end in nominating candidates for President and Vice-President. CHAPTER VL THE SCHISM (1840) 333-365 The nomination of Birney and Earle is finally effected in a pseudo-National A. S. Convention at Albany. The New York State A. S. Society becomes disorganized, and the Executive CONTENTS. xi PAGES Committee of the American Society call in its agents, dis pose of its organ, and shut up the office in New York City. At the annual meeting in May, Garrison and his New Eng land supporters outnumber the partisans of the Executive Committee, and recover control of the Parent Society. A secession ensues, upon the issue of equal female member ship, and the American and Foreign A. S. Society is formed, under the lead of the Tappans. Garrison is appointed one of the American Society s delegates to the World s A. S. Convention in London, and sails in May. CHAPTER VIL THE WORLD S CONVENTION (1840) ...366-420 Garrison s passage is over-long, and on arriving he finds that the Convention, under sectarian influences, has ex cluded all female delegates from America. He thereupon refuses to enter it, and sits as a spectator in the gallery. He receives much social attention, and, in company with N. P. Rogers, makes a tour in Scotland and Ireland, return ing to America in August. In the meantime the New Organizationists have been blackening his character at home and abroad. CHAPTER VIII. THE CHARDON-STREET CONVENTION (1840) 421-438 This October convention is called by friends of Universal Reform to examine the foundations of the prevailing view of the Sabbath, Ministry, and Church as divine appointments. Garrison does not sign the call, but takes part in the pro ceedings, as do many clergymen. The discussion is confined to the Sabbath, and he argues that the institution was done away by the coming of Christ. For this he is taxed by the New Organization clergy with heading an infidel conven tion ; and the financial mission of John A. Collins to Eng land, on behalf of the American A. S. Society, furnishes an opportunity for fresh defamation of Garrison abroad. WILLIAM LLOYD GABRISOK CHAPTER I. THE BOSTON MOB (SECOND STAGE). 1835. TT was now time for Mr. Garrison to descend into that CHAP. i. seething marl magno which, from the tranquil haven I 8^ 5 . of Friendship s Valley, he had calmly regarded for a full month. Leaving Brooklyn, in company with his wife, on September 24, 1835, he spent the following day in Provi dence, and reached Boston at noon on the 26th. He found there this greeting from David Lee Child, written at New York on the 23d : " Be of good cheer. The Devil comes not out without much MS. tearing and rending and foaming at the mouth. With all my confidence in my abolition brothers and sisters, you are the only one on whom I entirely rely for pine-and- faggot virtue not that I trust others less, but that I trust you more. The Southerners are mad past all precedent. The famous spouter, Governor Hamilton, is here, supposed for the countenancing and organizing of kidnappers and assassins. This is hardly credible, yet it is believed. The report now goes that $100,000 is the prize for Arthur Tappan s head, and that two vessels are in the offing to receive him. " Catch a fish before you cook it, Said the learned Mother Glass. " VOL. II. 1 i 2^ : WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [JET. 30. On October 2, Mr. Garrison writes to G. W. Benson : MS. " I have not got regulated yet, since my return from rusti cating in the country, and I already begin to sigh for the quietude and (selfish ease will out) irresponsibleness of Friend ship s Valley. . . . Boston is beginning to sink into apathy. Lib. 5 : 159, The reaction has come rapidly, but we are trying to get the ]ind\V l n>ng steam up again. We have held two public meetings, which Boston, were we jj attended, and all went off quietly." 1830, (i) pp. And still the South awaited the sign that the North that Boston would not put her off with empty words. Lib. 5:131, The " vagabond" Thompson, as the Boston Transcript called him the " wandering insurrectionist " first be gan after the Faneuil Hall meeting to experience the deadly hostility invoked against him there. From his Lib.$:2. peaceful labors in the "Old Colony" and its vicinity, at the close of 1834, he had passed in January to Andover, where he had the ear of the theological and academical students j to Concord, Mass. ; to various parts of Essex County, where the meeting-houses of Methodists, Bap tists, Unitarians and Friends were opened to him. In the intervals of these excursions he spoke frequently in Boston. In February, accompanied by the Rev. Amos A. Phelps and by Henry Benson, he visited southern New Hampshire and Portland, Maine, still enjoying the hospitality of the churches and promoting new anti- slavery organizations. Thence he proceeded in the same month to New York, where he spoke for the first time since his arrival in America, in the Rev. Dr. Lansing s church, without molestation or disorder of any kind ; in March, to Philadelphia, giving an address in the Re formed Presbyterian Church, after an introduction by David Paul Brown. Repairing to Boston for lectures and debates in the Anti-Slavery Rooms, he returned to New York in company with Mr. Garrison. In April he was again in Boston, using the only church open to him (the Methodist Church in Bennett Street) for a Fast-Day and other discourses, and a third time in New York, forming en route a female anti-slavery society in the ^ET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 3 Providence Pine-Street Baptist Church ; and then, once CHAP. i. more with Messrs. Phelps and Benson for companions, ^ he journeyed to Albany and Troy, where his success war ranted a long sojourn. In the second week in May we find him attending the anniversary meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, which were held in z#. 5:117. perfect security despite a placard intended to renew the scenes of October, 1833 ; in the last week, participating in the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in Boston, and, at the very close, holding in Julien Hall a debate Lit>. 5 :8 9 . with Gurley on the subject of colonization. His June campaign was made in the already well-worked field of Essex County, and thither he was recalled in July by the presence of Gurley in Andover. Nowhere had the interest and excitement produced by Mr. Thompson s eloquence been more intense, or the struggle severer, than on this occasion. But, though backed by Amos A. Phelps, he could not prevail against the alliance of Gurley with Professor Stuart to maintain the settled hostility of this theological centre. The quiet temper of the public mind was destroyed as in an instant by the Charleston bonfire and its imita tions at the North the town meetings in Boston, New Lib - . x York, Philadelphia and elsewhere, all concentrating their indignation and malice on the " imported travelling in cendiary." At a convention in Lynn on August 5, a stone meant for Mr. Thompson was thrown through the window and struck a lady in the audience. The next evening he lectured again, and was mobbed by three hun dred disturbers, from whom he only escaped by accepting MS 4uo . ? the escort of ladies. 1 Unable to remain in New York, l8 3S > H f?/y to G. W. whither on the 12th he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. D. L. Benson. Child despite the remonstrances .of his friends, his first test of the New England temper after the signal had been given from Faneuil Hall proved how much it had l A similar experience, in Julien Hall, is related on p. 248 of Mrs. Child s Letters, a plot to kidnap Mr. Thompson being foiled by a stratagem of the ladies present. See, also, p. 1 of Boston Commonwealth, Oct. 23, 1880. WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. . 30. CHAP. I. 1835- Lib. 5 : 163 Muy s Rec ollections, p. 123. Lib. 5 : 159, 194; 6:42; Thompson s Letters and Addresses, pp. 93-98. Lib. 5 : 194. Lib. 5 : 148, 149,152,165. Lib. 5 : 149. changed for the worse towards himself. The attack on him at Concord (N. H.), on September 4, followed close upon the mobbing of Mr. May at Haverhill, Mass. ; on September 17, the Brighton-Street gallows was set up before his late residence in Boston ; on September 27, an extraordinary onslaught was made on him in the rural village of Abington, Mass. At this time, too, a stupid or wilful perversion, by an Andover student from the South, named Kaufman, of Mr. Thompson s remarks in a private discussion on slavery, added fuel to the flames of his persecution. He was accused of having said that the slave masters ought to have their throats cut, and that the slaves should be taught so. What he was arguing was, that if it was ever right to rise forcibly against oppressors, the slaves had that right a commonplace of anti-slavery doctrine, now become one of the axioms of the civilized world. Finally, a trumped-up affidavit before some American consul pretended that Thompson had, for felony, come near being transported to Botany Bay. So the uproar went on. Subscriptions to a fund for procuring the heads of Garrison, Thompson and Tappan were invited to be made at a bookstore (!) in Norfolk, Va. Money rewards for the same object were offered from all parts of the South. Northern tradesmen were threatened with loss of Southern patronage, or with destruction of their Southern branch establishments, if they were known to be friendly to the abolitionists if they did not come out against them if abolitionists were permitted to hold meetings or publish papers in the town where the merchant did business. This chord was as effectively touched in the case of Boston as of any commercial city, and U A Calm Appeal" of the Richmond Enquirer "to put down for ever these wanton fanatics," had the maddening in fluence which was calculated for it. This article, highly prophetic in its picture of a future civil war between the States, following Southern secession in defence of -Ex. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. ^ 5 slavery, 1 warned the North against the slightest inter- CHAP. I. ference with that institution ; urged total non-inter- l ^ 5 . course, social or commercial, wtth the incendiaries , and inquired " Why, above all, does not Massachusetts, with whom Virginia Lib. 5 : 149. sympathized so keenly in the days of the Boston Port Bill, drive that audacious foreigner from her bosom who is so grossly abus ing the rights of hospitality, to throw our country into confusion ? It is outrageous enough for Tappan and for Garrison to be throw ing firebrands in to the South but for that impertinent intruder, Thompson, to mingle in our institutions ; for that foreigner, who has nothing American about him, in name, interest or principle the outrage exceeds all the bounds of patience." The Boston Commercial Gazette promptly caught up Lib. 5:157. the proposal of non-intercourse with abolitionists. Still more promptly, the Boston Centinel declared that Thomp- Lib. 5 : 153. son would never be allowed to address another meeting in this country. The Boston abolitionists had behaved during this try ing season with circumspection. After the Faneuil Hall demonstration, Mayor Lyman had, in a courteous if not Lib. 5 . 191 friendly manner, privately counselled them to discon- wrong tinue their meetings while the public mind was so heated, at the same time assuring them that he would protect them in their rights if they chose to exercise them. They in fact held only their constitutionally stated meet ings, and it was one of these which fell due on Wednes day, October 14, the anniversary of the formation of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Congress (formerly Julien) Hall was the place selected, and public notice was given in the papers and from several pulpits, including Dr. Channing s, in which the Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., happened to officiate. 2 " Ladies generally " were invited 1 " The Potomac maybe the dividing line, and she [Virginia] will become the border State. Her rivers would bristle with entrenchments, and her fields be turned into battle-grounds." 2 His imprudence or inadvertence in reading the notice caused great commotion in Dr. Channing s congregation (Lib, 5 : 166), and in the news papers. WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. . 30. CHAP. I. 1835- Ante, p. 3. to attend, and ladies only ; and an address was promised from George Thompson. 0^.12,1835. The Commercial Gazette of Monday affected great in dignation at this simple announcement, wondering " that Lib. 5 : 165. Thompson should dare to browbeat public opinion in this way." Remarking on his habit of protecting himself with petticoats, it urged his being taught that a female surrounding would no longer shield him from the conse quences of his " reckless and wicked conduct." Faneuil Hall meetings will be of no use " if Thompson, Garrison, and their vile associates in this city are to be permitted to hold their meetings in the broad face of day, and to continue their denunciations against the planters of the South. They must be put down if we would preserve our consistency." Why does Thompson persist in " driv ing [our citizens] to acts of lawless violence?" Predicting trouble on Wednesday, the Gazette added : " This resist ance will not come from a rabble, but from men of prop erty and standing, who have a large interest at stake in this community, and who are determined, let the conse quences be what they may, to put a stop to the impudent, bullying conduct of the foreign vagrant, Thompson, and his associates in mischief." The Gazette warned ladies to keep away from the tumult, and threatened that if Thompson appeared he should be lynched. Such a menace naturally alarmed the proprietor and the lessee of Congress Hall, and, explicitly adopting the Gazette s view of the respectable character of the mob, they required heavy bonds against possible damages in case of a riot. As this hall was the only one procurable, the Society gave notice on the appointed day that the meeting would be postponed. The Courier, however, on Lib. 5 : 167. the morning of the 14th, aggravated the criminality of the Gazette by a fresh incitement to violence, under pre tence of diverting indignation from the " scoundrel " and " vagabond " Thompson to " our own citizens who asso ciate with him." " He is paid for his services, and is Right and Wrong in Boston, 1836, (i). 10. ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. only fulfilling his part of a contract. . . . The poor CHAP. i. devil must live." l l8 ~ 5 This prepared the disorderly to place credence in false announcements, posted at Congress Hall and elsewhere, to the effect that the ladies were actually in session, and Thompson speaking, at Ritchie Hall. By a coincidence the Ladies 7 Moral Reform Society was assembled there, Lib. 5 : 166 ; and the crowd of "patriotic citizens " misled thither persisted in identifying it with the obnoxious organiza- tion ; besieging the doors and stairway and demanding Thompson, till dispersed by the arrival of the Mayor. The Gazette, however, treated the affair as a successful attempt to suppress Thompson, and reported (from its inner consciousness) that on the Mayor s complaint he had been bound over to keep the peace, " though the citizens generally would like to use him up in some other way"; and (on the same authority) that rioters had followed him to Abington (October 15) in order to prevent his speaking there again. This hint was not taken, and Mr. Thompson was undisturbed by local or imported ruffianism. The next advertisement of the meeting postponed from Congress Hall named as the appointed time Wed nesday afternoon, October 21, at 3 o clock, and the place the hall adjoining the Anti-Slavery Office at 46 Wash ington Street. " Several addresses n were promised, but l The editor of the Courier, too, had to live ; witness the following letter to Francis Jackson (MS.) : Courier Office, June 1, 1847. DEAR SIB : It would give me pleasure to oblige you by inserting your communication, if I could afford it. It would probably cost me two or three hundred dollars a sum much beyond what I am able to lose, to say nothing of what damage a jury might award in case of a suit for libel. I am sorry that my position does not permit me to publish all that I think right ; but it is a position from which I cannot escape without making sacrifices which I know you would not wish me to suffer. This is for your own private information. Respectfully your friend, JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM. 8 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. no names were mentioned. Mr. Thompson s presence Lib. 5 : 179. was not " deemed to be essential or expedient, either by himself or the Society. He therefore left the city on Tuesday, that there nlight be no pretext for causing an interruption of the meeting on the ensuing day." On the morning of Wednesday Mr. Garrison attended Henry Benson to the cars for Providence, placing in his hands a letter addressed to George Benson, of which the fol lowing extracts were a part : MS. Boston, vc .21,1 35. " My health has been extremely good since I left Brooklyn, or w ]2i c h^ as we li as for other mercies, continual gratitude is due to God. My mind is in a peaceful and happy frame ; for faith, and hope, and love make it their abode. I desire to cease wholly from man, and to rely upon nothing but the promises of Him who cannot lie. . . . " The spirit of the Lord is now striving mightily with this nation, and the nation is striving as mightily to quench it; and in doing so, it is revealing to the eyes of an astonished world an amount of depravity and heathenism that makes the name of our Christianity a reproach. Nevertheless, let the worst appear ; let not our sin be covered up ; let the number of the rebels, and the extent of the rebellion, fully appear ; let all that is dangerous, or hypocritical, or unjust among us be proclaimed upon the house-tops ; and then the genuine dis ciples of Christ will be able skilfully and understandingly to carry on the war. A larger number than Gideon had is left to us, and the same omnipotent arm is ready to be bared in our defence." On parting from his brother-in-law, Mr. Garrison pro ceeded to the Anti-Slavery Office, and in the course of the forenoon was visited by a deputy-marshal from the Mayor s office, to inquire whether Mr. Thompson was to address the meeting, or was in town. Mayor Lyman had the day before been petitioned by the occupants of stores in the neighborhood of 46 Washington Street to prevent the meeting, for fear of damage in case of a disturbance. The air was full of gathering violence, Lib. 5 : 179. which the Mayor hoped to be able to draw off harmless by the simple announcement to the mob that Thompson Charles B. Wells. Lib. 5 : 179. . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 1835- Lib. 5 : 179, 191 ; Garri son Mob, pp. 15, 68. was beyond their reach. Or, if such was not the fact, CHAP. I. he wished to be prepared against an outbreak. Mr. Garrison, at first resenting the inquiry, finally assured the deputy that Mr. Thompson was absent, and the Mayor "took, therefore, no other precaution than to have a small number of police officers assembled for the afternoon." Mr. Garrison, on his part, went to his home in Brighton Street, for an early dinner, at which a colored friend from Pittsburgh, Mr. John B. Vashon, Lib. 5 1203. was his guest. If their talk turned upon the probability of disorder, the following anonymous warning addressed to the editor of the Liberator, and written in a bold hand, threw some light upon the question. The date of its reception cannot now be determined : You are hereby notified to remove your office and not to MS. issue the paper any more. If it is issued again beware of your self you will have a coat of tar and feathers and you will do well if you get your life saved. We shall have no mercy on you after this Notification Beware THIRTY TRUCKMEN pr C. Adams secty. Please show Mr Garrison and Thompson this. In the meantime, about noon, this placard suddenly appeared upon the streets : THOMPSON, THE ABOLITIONIST!!! That infamous foreign scoundrel THOMPSON, will hold forth this afternoon, at the Liberator Office, No. 48 Washington Street. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out ! It will be a contest between the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar-kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant ! Boston, Wednesday, 12 o clock. Lib. 5:171. 10 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. The genesis of this murderous incentive is now, by j8^ 5 . the autographic confession of its author, traceable to the office and the editor of the Commercial Gazette. In a letter to a former apprentice, James L. Homer thus describes the circumstances under which the placard was got out a relation which shows how natural it was for Mr. Garrison to be made (in Mr. Thompson s language) "the vicarious victim of that wrath which has been kindled by the foreign emissary " : MS. Aug. " The Gazette had been for a long time in the habit of I9 Geo 52 C f abusing the abolitionists, and especially their organ and its Rand. leader and director. It was, at times, particularly severe upon the Female Anti- Slavery Society, of which Mrs. Chapman, a very intelligent, respectable, and energetic lady, was one of the main pillars. Indeed, I may say that she was a head and shoulders taller and stronger than any one of her associates in that Society. They had announced their annual meeting for the choice of officers, etc., on the afternoon of a certain day, at the Anti-Slavery Rooms, on Washington Street, near Corn- hill. There was much feeling, and much indignation expressed, in private, among business men, in relation to the proposed meeting the men thinking that women ought to be engaged in some better business than that of stirring up strife between the South and the North on this matter of slavery j that they ought to be at home, attending to their domestic concerns, instead of sowing the seeds of political discord in the Anti- Slavery Rooms. Many of our first men decided that the meeting should not be held, let the consequences be what they might ! " On the morning of the day of the meeting, I was waited upon by a committee of two Messrs. Isaac Stevens, now dead, and Isaac Means (who married old Tobias Lord s daugh ter), both merchants on Central Wharf 1 who requested me to write, print, and cause to be distributed an inflammatory handbill in relation to the meeting something that would wake up the populace and they would pay the expense. I complied, most cheerfully, as I considered it, at the moment, as merely a business transaction, and not dreaming that so light a flame would, in a few hours, produce so threatening a con- 1 Both, also, signers of the call for the Fanueil Hall meeting. Means was in the West India trade. ^ET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 11 flagration in the breasts of the multitude ! I wrote the hand- CHAP. I. bill, as fast as a horse could trot, at the long desk in the z ^~ counting-room, while the gentlemen looked over my shoulders. Having finished it and read it to the committee, they pro nounced it * just the thing, and left, ordering 500 copies of it. The handbill was short, was soon put in type, 1 and by one o clock the copies had all been distributed in the insurance offices, the reading-rooms, all along State Street, in the hotels, bar-rooms, etc. j and about one-third of the whole lot was scat tered among mechanics at the North End, who were mightily taken with it, as the mob subsequently gave abundant proof. . . . Tom Withington and several of the younger apprentices 2 distributed the handbills. The effect they produced you may remember. By three or four o clock in the afternoon both sides of State Street, near the Old State House ; 3 Washington Street, from Joy s Building to Court Street j the bottom of the latter street up to the Court House, etc., were densely packed with an excited mob, who were determined that the meeting should not ~be held. There were present from six to ten thousand men, 4 including many gentlemen of property and influence, an expression I used the next day in the Gazette in an editorial describing the mob." Such was the situation when Mr. Garrison arrived upon the scene, and his account of the sequel will now be given, Libf 5 :179 with such aids and checks as the best evidence permits. He had consented to address the meeting : ao/A Anni versary Bos- " As the meeting was to commence at 3 o clock P. M., I went ton Mob, to the hall about twenty minutes before that time. 5 Perhaps a ^ 24 1 The proof also was read to a " committee," including among others Henry Williams, a merchant on Central Wharf, and John L. Dimmock, afterwards president of the Shawmut Bank (E. N. Moore, in the Boston Sunday Budget, Mar. 18, 1883). 2 Including E. N. Moore, then a lad of seventeen, who says : " On Chat ham Street I left a bill at a famous oil store, and it was caught up by one of the firm, who read it, and loudly shouted for John to get him a bucket of green tar, and be ready to tar and feather a Abolitionist " (Sunday Budget, Mar. 18, 1883). 3 The then City Hall and Post-office. 4 An excessive statement. The throng was variously estimated at from two to five thousand. Homer did not see it, as he confesses in the letter quoted above ; but he had " several runners out," viz. : George C. Rand and E. N. Moore, who struck off the handbill (Boston Sunday Budget, Mar. 18, 1883) who reported " how the battle was going." 5 According to C. C. Burleigh, who accompanied him, at 2 P. M. (Lib. 5: 171. Compare Bight and Wrong in Boston, 1836, [1] p. 29). 12 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. CHAP. I. hundred individuals had already gathered around the street door and opposite the building, and their number was rapidly augmenting. On ascending into the hall, 1 I found about fifteen or twenty ladies assembled, 2 sitting with cheerful countenances, and a crowd of noisy intruders (mostly young men) gazing upon them, through whom I urged my way with considerable Right and difficulty. l That s Garrison, was the exclamation of some of iS^n?) tnese creatures, as I quietly took my seat. Perceiving that they /. 30. had no intention of retiring, I went to them and calmly said Gentlemen, perhaps you are not aware that this is a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those only who have been invited to address them. Understanding this fact, you will not be so rude or indecorous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting. If, gentlemen? I pleasantly continued, any of you are ladies in disguise why, only apprise me of the fact, give me your names, and I will introduce you to the rest of your sex, and you can take seats among them accordingly. I then sat down, and, for a few moments, their conduct was more orderly. However, the stairway and upper door of the hall were soon densely filled with a brazen-faced crew, whose behavior grew more and more indecent and outrageous. 3 1 It was up two flights. 2 " Mostly white, but some negroes and mulattoes " ( Garrison Mob/ p. 17). The names of some of these can be given : Miss Mary S. Parker, Miss Henrietta Sargent, Miss Martha V. Ball, Miss Elizabeth Whittier, Mrs. Thankful Southwick, Mrs. Lavinia Hilton, Miss Ann Greene Chapman, Miss Anne Warren Weston, Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman. Mrs. Garrison was among those excluded by the mob. She reached Washington Street in sight of it, and was taken by Mr. John E. Fuller to his home, where she passed the night. "Though she was conscious," says her husband, "of the danger to which in all probability I should be exposed, yet she made no plea in advance as to the duty or expediency of my remaining at home, at least for her sake ; but with calmness and fortitude was ready to suffer with or for me, as the emergency might require. . . . And . . . on no occasion, however perilous, during the whole anti-slavery conflict, did she ever counsel a less personal exposure or a more moderate course of action on my part " ( Helen Eliza Garrison : a Memorial, p. 25). 3 "The tumult continually increased, with horrible execrations, howling, stamping, and finally shrieking with rage. They seemed not to dare to enter, notwithstanding their fury, but mounted on each others shoulders, so that a row of hostile heads appeared over the slight partition, of half the height of the wall, which divides the Society s rooms from the landing- place. We requested them to allow the door to be shut ; but they could not decide as to whether the request should be granted, and the door was opened and shut with violence, till it hung useless from the upper hinge " ( Right and Wrong in Boston, by Mrs. M. W. Chapman, 1836, [1] p. 30). JET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 13 " Perceiving that it would be impracticable for me, or any other person, to address the ladies ; and believing, as I was the only male abolitionist in the hall, that my presence would serve as a pretext for the mob to annoy the meeting, I held a short colloquy with the excellent President of the Society, telling her that I would withdraw, unless she particularly desired me to stay. It was her earnest wish that I would retire, as well for my own safety as for the peace of the meeting. She assured me that the Society would resolutely but calmly proceed to the transaction of its business, and leave the issue with God. I left the hall accordingly, and would have left the building l if the staircase had not been crowded to excess. This being imprac ticable, I retired into the Anti-Slavery Office, (which is separated from the hall by a board partition), accompanied by my friend Mr. Charles C. Burleigh. 2 It was deemed prudent to lock the door, to prevent the mob from rushing in and destroying our publications. 3 " In the meantime, the crowd in the street had augmented from a hundred to thousands. The cry was for i Thompson ! Thompson ! but the Mayor had now arrived, and, addressing the rioters, he assured them that Mr. Thompson was not in the city, and besought them to disperse. 4 As well might he have attempted to propitiate a troop of ravenous wolves. None went away but the tumult continued momentarily to increase. It was apparent, therefore, that the hostility of the throng was not concentrated upon Mr. Thompson, but that it was as deadly against the Society and the Anti-Slavery cause. 5 This fact is 1 The ladies thought he had done so ( Right and Wrong, 1836, [1] p. 31). 2 Besides Mr. Burleigh and Mr. Garrison, the only gentlemen present were Mr. Henry G. Chapman and Dr. Amos Farnsworth, of Groton. The two latter retired from the hall with the expelled ladies. 3 " I immediately sat down, and wrote to a friend in Providence a de scription of the incidents of the day as they were transpiring" (W. L. G. ? 20th Anniversary, p. 25. So Mr. Burleigh, in Lib. 5 : 171). 4 This was at the bottom of the lower staircase, where the officers he had previously posted there prevented further ingress of the mob. 5 "The Mayor ought not to have concerned himself, or cared, whether Mr. Thompson was to be present or absent ; nor was it sound policy in him to comply with the demands of the rioters, by assuring them that Mr. Thompson was not in the city. By so doing he weakened his own authority, and strengthened the hands of violence. He erred, also, most grievously through weakness rather than malice, I doubt not in assuring them that I had left the building. It was not for them to know whether Mr. Thompson or myself was present but it was for the Mayor to disperse the mob, and maintain the supremacy of the laws " (Lib. 5 : 191). CHAP. I. Right and Wrong, 1836, (i) /. 30. Garrison Mob, pp. 16, 17- 14 WILLIAM LLOYD GABKISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. worthy of special note for it incontestably proves that the j8j 5 object of the respectable and influential rioters was to put down the cause of emancipation, and that Mr. Thompson fur nished merely a pretext for five thousand gentlemen to mob thirty Christian women ! . . . " Notwithstanding the presence and frantic behavior of the rioters in the hall, the meeting of the Society was regularly called to order by the President. She then read a select and an exceedingly appropriate portion of Scripture, and offered up a fervent prayer to God for direction and succor, and the forgiveness of enemies and revilers. It was an awful, sublime and soul-thrilling scene enough, one would suppose, to melt adamantine hearts, and make even fiends of darkness stagger and retreat. Indeed, the clear, untremulous tone of voice of that Christian heroine in prayer occasionally awed the ruffians into silence, and was distinctly heard 1 even in the midst of their hisses, threats, and curses for they could not long silently endure the agony of conviction, and their conduct became furious. They now attempted to break down the par tition, and partially succeeded but the little band of females still maintained their ground unshrinkingly, and continued to transact their business. " An assault was now made upon the door of the office, the lower panel of which was instantly dashed to pieces. Stooping down, and glaring upon me as I sat at the desk, 2 writing an account of the riot to a distant friend, the ruffians cried out 1 There he is ! That s Garrison ! Out with the scoundrel ! &c., &c. Turning to Mr. Burleigh, I said You may as well open the door, and let them come in and do their worst. But he, with great presence of mind, went out, locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and by his admirable firmness succeeded in keeping the office safe. 3 1 Even by Mr. Garrison in the adjoining office, the thinness of the partition permitting. Of this prayer he said, in 1855, " I shall never forget it. It was thrilling beyond description ; evincing the utmost trust in God, and complete serenity of soul, as she thanked God that while there were many to molest, there were none that could make afraid " ( 20th Anniversary/ p. 25). The point is of importance only because Mr. Garrison s testimony as to what took place in the hall after he left it, has been impugned ( Gar rison Mob, pp. 20, 51). Mr. Burleigh could hear likewise (Lib. 5 : 171). 2 This was at the front, where the light came from the windows on Washington Street. 3 A noteworthy example of non-resistance under trying circumstances ( 20th Anniversary/ p. 25). ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 15 " Two or three constables having cleared the hall and stair- CHAP. i. case of the mob, 1 the Mayor came in and ordered the ladies to l8 ~7 desist, assuring them that he could not any longer guarantee protection 2 if they did not take immediate advantage of the opportunity to retire from the building. Accordingly they adjourned, to meet at the house of one of their number [Mrs. Chapman s, at 11 West Street] , 3 for the completion of their iNot yet. "I found twenty or thirty persons (perhaps one half lads) crowding about the door of the room," says the posthumous account of Mayor Lyman ( Garrison Mob, p. 17). "I was not aware till that time that these individuals were in the building, but I suppose that they entered before Mr. Pollard [one of the Mayor s officers] reached the spot. And in consequence of the dense throng now in front, it was very difficult to get them out." This agrees with Mrs. Chapman s narrative: "The slight partition began to yield. The mob hurled missiles at the lady presiding. The secretary [Miss Ball] rose and began to read her report, utterly in audible from the confusion. At this moment Mr. Lyman entered" ( Right and Wrong, 1836, [1] p. 32). 2 Mrs. Chapman s report reads ( Right and Wrong, 1836, [1] p. 33) : " Mr. Lyman. Go home, ladies, go home. "President [Miss Parker]. What renders it necessary we should go home I "Mr. Lyman. I am the mayor of the city, and I cannot now explain; but will call upon you this evening. " President. If the ladies will be seated [they had been " all seated, ex cept the chairman ; but, on speaking to them," says Mayor Lyman, " sev eral rose and came towards me "], we will take the sense of the meeting. "Mr. Lyman. Don t stop, ladies, go home. " President. Will the ladies listen to a letter addressed to the Society by Francis Jackson, Esq. [offering the use of his house for the Society s meet ing or meetings] ? " Mr Lyman. Ladies, do you wish to see a scene of bloodshed and con fusion ? If you do not, go home. " One of the Ladies [Mrs. Chapman]. Mr. Lyman, your personal friends are the. instigators of this mob ; have you ever used your personal influ ence with them ? 41 Mr. Lyman. I know no personal friends ; I am merely an official. In deed, ladies, you must retire. It is dangerous to remain. "Lady [Mrs. Chapman]. If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere. "Mr. Lyman. Do you wish to prolong this scene of confusion ? [Accord ing to the Mayor s recollection : "I smiled, and replied, At any rate they could not die there. "] " President. Can we pass out safely ? " Mr. Lyman. If you will go now, I will protect you, but cannot unless you do. " A motion was then made to adjourn, which was carried. We passed down the staircase amid the manifestations of a revengeful brutality." 3 But not directly. They went first to Francis Jackson s on Hollis Street, according to his belated invitation. Finding Mrs. Jackson very ill, Mrs. 16 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. business; but as they passed through the crowd they were ~ greeted with taunts, hisses and cheers of mobocratic triumph, from gentlemen of property and standing from all parts of the city. 1 " Even their absence did not diminish the throng. Thompson was not there the ladies were not there but * Garrison is there ! was the cry. Garrison ! Garrison ! We must have Garrison ! Out with him ! Lynch him ! These and number less other exclamations arose from the multitude. For a moment, their attention was diverted from me to the Anti- Slavery sign ["Anti-Slavery Rooms"], and they vociferously demanded its possession. It is painful to state that the Mayor promptly complied with their demand ! So agitated and alarmed had he become that, in very weakness of spirit, he ordered the sign to be hurled to the ground, 2 and it was in- Chapraan asked the ladies to turn back to her house, where their officers were duly elected (MS. Nov. 12, 1882). 1 " When we emerged into the open daylight there went up a roar of rage and contempt, which increased when they saw that we did not intend to separate, hut walked in regular procession. They slowly gave way as we came out. As far as we could look either way the crowd extended evi dently of the so-called wealthy and respectable ; the moral worth, the influence and standing. We saw the faces of those we had, till now, thought friends ; men whom we never before met without giving the hand in friendly salutation ; men whom till now we should have called upon for condemnation of ruffianism, with confidence that the appeal would be answered ; men who have repeatedly said they were as much anti-slavery as we were, that our principles were righteous, and that they only ob jected to the rashness of upholding them. Yet they did not, like the Priest and the Levite, pass by on the other side, but waited with looks of satisfaction and approval to seethe result " ( Right and Wrong, 1836, [1] p. 34). With ready forethought, Mrs. Chapman whispered to her associates filing out, while she stood between them and the Mayor : " Two and two, to Francis Jackson s, Hollis Street, each with a colored friend," thus giv ing what protection a white skin could ensure a dark one (MS. Nov. 12, 1882). 2 Much controversy has arisen over this allegation and the ensuing cen sure. Mayor Lyman says ( Garrison Mob, p. 19), he was afraid the rioters would get to pelting the sign with stones as soon as it became dark, " and from the sign proceed to the window^ of the building, and then, perhaps, to the constables and others engaged in maintaining order. I therefore sent a person up the stairs to see if this sign could be taken into the room from the window. Instead of that being done, the man was interfered with by some of the lads and men already mentioned as being in the build ing, the sign-board torn off the hooks and thrown down into the street." In a foot-note (p. 20) he assents to the statement that he sanctioned the removal of the Society s sign." Testimony which, though anonymous, -2ET. 30.1 THE BOSTON MOB. II. 17 stantly broken into a thousand fragments by the infuriated CHAP. I. populace. 0, lamentable departure from duty 0, shameful j^L outrage upon private property by one who had sworn, not to destroy but to protect property not to pander to the lawless desires of a mob, however wealthy and respectable, but to preserve the public peace. " The act was wholly unjustifiable. The Mayor might have as lawfully surrendered me to the tender mercies of the mob, or ordered the building itself to be torn down, in order to pro pitiate them, as to remove that sign. Perhaps nay, probably he was actuated by kind intentions j probably he hoped that he should thereby satisfy the ravenous appetites of these human cormorants, and persuade them to retire ; probably he trusted thus to extricate me from danger. But the sequel proved that he only gave a fresh stimulus to popular fury : and if he could have saved my life, or the whole city from destruction, by that single act, still he ought not to have obeyed the mandate of the mob no indeed ! He committed a public outrage in the pres ence of the lawless and disobedient, and thus strangely expected to procure obedience to and a respect for the law ! He behaved disorderly before rebels that he might restore order among them ! Mr. HENRY WILLIAMS and Mr. JOHN L. DIMMOCK also deserve severe reprehension for their forwardness in taking down the sign. The offence, under such circumstances, was very heinous. The value of the article destroyed was of no consequence j but the principle involved in its surrender and sacrifice is one upon which civil government, private property and individual liberty depend. 1 must be respected because in part corroborating the Mayor s, was given in the Liberator for Oct. 31, 1835 (5 : 175). John L. Dimmock is reported as having said in conversation: "We [meaning Henry Williams and himself] told the Mayor it was entirely useless to say anything against it, the sign must and shall comedown. Well, the Mayor replied, don t com mit yourselves, don t commit yourselves, and I will send a peace officer to take it down. " The temporary editor of the Liberator adds : "It is, more over, a fact, as we are informed from another source, that one of the men who took down the sign, and indeed the first, if we mistake not, who laid hands upon it for that purpose, was a peace officer." The responsibility of the city aiithorities for its destruction was sought, in vain, to be en forced (by simple moral appeal) by the Anti-Slavery Society, which at last replaced the sign just a year after its removal (Lib. 6: 171). 1 The chips caused by Williams s detaching the sign and by its subsequent demolition in the street were eagerly caught up and carried off as relics. See Charles Burleigh s statement (Lib. 5: 171), and John C. Park s letter in the Boston Herald of Jan. 1, 1882. E. N. Moore relates: "I procured VOL. II. 2 18 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. " The sign being demolished, the cry for l Garrison ! was jjJT- renewed, more loudly than ever. It was now apparent that the multitude would not disperse until I had left the building $ and as egress out of the front door was impossible, the Mayor and his assistants, as well as some of my friends, earnestly be sought me to effect my escape in the rear of the building. 1 At this juncture, an abolition brother whose mind had not been previously settled on the peace question, in his anguish and alarm for my safety, and in view of the helplessness of the civil authority, said I must henceforth repudiate the principle of non-resistance. When the civil arm is powerless, my own rights are trodden in the dust, and the lives of my friends are put in imminent peril by ruffians, I will hereafter prepare to defend myself and them at all hazards. Putting my hand upon his shoulder, I said, Hold, my dear brother ! You know not what spirit you are of. This is the trial of our faith, and the test of our endurance. Of what value or utility are the principles of peace and forgiveness, if we may repudiate them in the hour of peril and suffering ? Do you wish to become like one of those violent and bloodthirsty men who are seeking my life ? Shall we give blow for blow, and array sword against sword ? God forbid ! I will perish sooner than raise my hand against any man, even in self-defence, and let none of my friends resort to violence for my protection. If my life be taken, the cause of emancipation will not suffer. God reigns his throne is un disturbed by this storm he will make the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder he will restrain his omnipo tence will at length be victorious. 2 a piece about three inches wide, and some six feet long, as a trophy of the battle, which I afterwards took to the office [of the Commercial -Gazette], where Homer had it cut up and distributed among his cronies. One piece was cut out to the shape of a coffin and sent to parties in New York" (Bos ton Sunday Budget, Mar. 18, 1883). 1 Mayor Lyman s account of his interview with Mr. Garrison for this purpose will be found on p. 19 of The Garrison Mob. He implies, how ever, that this occurred before the destruction of the sign, but such is not the order in Mr. Burleigh s relation (Lib, 5:171). Moreover, there is no corroboration of his statement that he advised Mr. Garrison to conceal himself in the garret, who accordingly "went up the attic stairs with alacrity," and the Mayor saw no more of him. The only surviving witness (1885), Mr. Sewall, strenuously maintains that Mr. Garrison was with diffi culty persuaded by himself and his other friends to leav.e a building in which, by the Mayor s confession, no protection could be afforded him, whether in the " attic" or elsewhere. 2 "Till this time [the ad vent of the Mayor]," says C. C. Burleigh (Lib , 5 : 171), Garrison had been seated in the office, manifesting no sign of alarm, 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 19 CHAP. I. 1835. A, Anti-Slavery Office, Washington St. B, City Hall (Old State- house). Enlarged from Smith s Map of Boston, 1835. either in deed, word or look ; and now, when he came out to the entry, he appeared as he had done through the whole tumult, calm, collected, and cheerful. I could perceive not the least change in his manner from that which he exhibits in the entire absence of danger, or of even the remotest apprehension of danger. Some of his friends united with the Mayor and officers in endeavoring to find a way of escape from the building, in which they at length succeeded. He complied with their request, and retreated from the window in the rear of the building [i.e., looking upon Wilson s Lane], after which one of the sheriffs announced to the populace that he had made diligent search for Wm. Lloyd Garrison, but that he could not be found. The dense crowd now began rapidly to grow thinner, and soon the street was almost wholly cleared. This I at first supposed was caused by the people s returning to their homes, but it was not long before I discovered my mistake. They were in chase of Garrison, having been informed, by some spy or looker-out, that he had escaped from a back window." So the Mayor (p. 21): "Perhaps ten minutes after I was told that Garrison had escaped, ... I observed the whole crowd in front of the building [the Mayor was again at the foot of the staircase] turn and run up Washington Street. I no longer had any doubt but that Garrison, or some one, was found. I left the passageway instantly, told the officers to follow, and ran with the mob. When I reached the street on the north side of the City Hall, I looked down and saw a vast throng passing to the south along the head of State Street. I continued on past the Post- office [in the west end of the City Hall building, on Washington Street]." 20 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. I>T. 30. John Reid " Preceded by my faithful and beloved friend Mr. J R Campbell. ^ ^ j ^Qppg^ f rom a back window on to a shed, and narrowly escaped falling headlong to the ground. We entered into a carpenter s shop, through which we attempted to get into Wilson s Lane, but found our retreat cut off by the mob. They raised a shout as soon as we came in sight, but the workmen x promptly closed the door of the shop, kept them at bay for a time, and thus kindly afforded me an opportunity to find some other passage. I told Mr. C. it would be futile to attempt to escape I would go out to the mob, and let them deal with me as they might elect ; but he thought it was my duty to avoid them as long as possible. We then went up stairs, and, finding a vacancy in one corner of the room, I got into it, and he and a young lad piled up some boards in front of me to shield me from observation. In a few minutes several ruffians broke into the chamber, who seized Mr. C. in a rough manner, and led him out to the view of the mob, saying, This is not Garrison, but Garrison s and Thompson s friend, and he says he knows where Garrison is, but won t tell. Then a shout of exultation was raised by the mob, and what became of him I do not know; though, as I was immediately discovered, I presume he escaped without material injury. " On seeing me, three or four of the rioters, uttering a yell, furiously dragged me to the window, 2 with the intention of hurling me from that height to the ground j but one of them relented and said Don t let us kill him outright. So they drew me back, and coiled a rope about my body probably to drag me through the streets. 3 I bowed to the mob, and, re- 1 Their employer, Joseph K. Hayes, included. Twenty years later, Mr. Hayes threw up his commission as a Captain of the Watch and Police rather than assist in the rendition of Anthony Burns, a fugitive from slavery (Lib. 24:90). 2 "It is not true [as the Transcript alleged, see Wiles Register, 49:194] that he was very much frightened, and fell down on his knees, clasped his hands, and begged hard for mercy. This is altogether false. Nor was I wholly dumb while in the hands of those who first seized me in the carpen ter s shop, and who seemed to be insanely frantic tearing my coat, shak ing me fiercely, &c. ; but I simply said to them, It is needless to make such extra-efforts of violence I shall go down to the mob unresistingly " (Lib. 5:179). 3 "The intention being, as I understood, to carry me to the Common, and there give me a coat of tar-and-feathers, a ducking in the pond, etc." ( 20th Anniversary of the Boston Mob, p. 26). The following anonymous MS. of the time was found among Mr. Garrison s papers: "Dear Sir: A well-wisher of yours has just learnt, and takes this opportunity of inform- ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 21 questing them to wait patiently until I could descend, went CHAP. I. down upon a ladder that was raised for that purpose. I fortu- T ^~ nately extricated myself from the rope, and was seized by two or three powerful men, to whose firmness, policy and muscular energy I am probably indebted for my preservation. 1 They led me along bareheaded, (for I had lost my hat), through a mighty crowd, ever and anon shouting, He shan t be hurt! You shan t hurt him ! Don t hurt him ! He is an American, &c., &e. This seemed to excite sympathy among many in the crowd, and they reiterated the cry, He shan t be hurt ! I was thus conducted through Wilson s Lane into State Street, in the rear of the City Hall, over the ground that was stained with the blood of the first martyrs in the cause of LIBERTY and INDEPENDENCE, by the memorable massacre of 1770 and upon which was proudly unfurled, only a few years since, with joyous acclamations, the beautiful banner presented to the gallant Poles by the young men of Boston ! What a scandalous and revolting contrast ! My offence was in pleading for LIBERTY liberty for my enslaved countrymen, colored though they be liberty of speech and of the press for ALL ! And upon that * consecrated spot 7 I was made an ing you, that previous to the meeting of the Society at their rooms, there was a considerable meeting of young men at which they planned measures in regard to their proceedings on that day. A barrel of tar, a bag of feathers, a corrosive liquor, and a quantity of an indelible ink was pro cured and in readiness. The plan was, to take you and Mr. Thompson to the Common, strip, tar-and-feather you, and then dye your face and hands black in a manner that would never change from a night negro color. One of the young men told me that nothing but the energy and decision of the Mayor and his assistants saved you from your destined fate." According to E. N. Moore, it was a room-mate of his and Rand s, "Ben. Willis, a very stout boy for his years, and full of the old Nick, " who directed the mob to Wilson s Lane, discovered Mr. Garrison in his concealment, and put the rope around his body, holding on to it till knocked away by the rescuers (Boston Sunday Budget, Mar. 18, 1883). " A cord was put around his body, under the arms. Several in the crowd sang out, Don t throw him out ! Don t hurt him I A plank or ladder was then placed in the door at an angle of about forty-five degrees ; in a sitting posture, facing the crowd, Mr. Garrison descended to the yard, the men in the loft holding the cord as he went down " { A well-known citizen of Cambridgeport, " one of those who discovered Mr. Garrison s hiding-place, in Boston Transcript, Mar. 12, 1884). l "They were the Messrs. Daniel and Buff [Aaron] Cooley, an eminent trucking firm on India Street. Their action at this particular juncture was a great surprise to all of their acquaintance, as their associates were nearly all opponents of the abolitionists " (E. N. Moore, in Boston Sunday Budget, Mar. 18, 1883), 22 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. object of derision and scorn, and my body was denuded of a j^T- large portion of its covering, in the presence of thousands of my fellow-citizens! 0, base degeneracy from their parent- stock ! ! 1 Josiah Quincy, Jr., afterwards Mayor of Boston, then President of the Common Council, saw the whole movement in Wilson s Lane from his office at 27 State Street. In obedience to his official duty, " I rushed down," he says, Jan. 7, 1870 ( Garrison Mob, p. 54), "and forced myself into his [Garrison s] immediate vicinity, and remained at his side until he was placed in a carriage and drove off." Charles Sprague, the banker poet, could also overlook the scene in Wilson s Lane : "I saw an exasperated mob dragging a man along without his hat and with a rope about him. The man walked with head erect, calm countenance, flashing eyes, like a martyr going to the stake, full of faith and manly hope. The crowd turned into State Street, and I saw him no more" (Quoted in Wendell Phillips s lecture on "The Lyman Mob" in Boston Music Hall, Nov. 17, 1870 Boston Journal, Nov. 18). At this point, Charles Burleigh takes up the tale: "Going to the Post-office, I saw the crowd pouring out from Wilson s Lane into State Street with a deal of clamor and shouting, and heard the exulting cry, They ve got him they ve got him. And so, sure enough, they had. The tide set toward the south door of the City Hall, and in a few minutes I saw Garrison between two men who held him and led him along, while the throng pressed on every side, as if eager to devour him alive. His head was bare, his face a little more highly colored than in his most tran quil moments, as if flushed by moderate exercise, and his countenance composed" (Lib. 5:171). And now the Mayor : "On my way from the Liberator office to the City Hall, a short distance, say one hundred and fifty yards, several persons said to me, They are going to hang him ; for God s sake, save him! at least ten or fifteen said this. I turned down the street south of the City Hall, and there I saw Garrison, without his hat, in the midst of what seemed a prodigious concourse of people. I rushed to his rescue. I met him a little to the east of the south door of the Hall. He was in the hands of two men, one holding him with great strength on each side. As soon as I reached Garrison he looked up (before, his head was bent to the earth) and smiled. [But not in recognition : Mr. Garrison had removed his glasses in fear of what might happen to his eyes, and became practically blind. This was an all-sufficient mode of blindfolding himself when playing at hide-and-seek with his children.] I said to the men who held him, Take him into my office. I placed myself before him and backed, as well as I could, towards the steps of the Hail" ( Garrison Mob, p. 21). Finally, Col. James W. Sever saw the mob rounding the eastern end of the City Hall, " having in custody William L. Garrison, in his shirt-sleeves, and without a hat, having a rope around his waist. As they turned towards Washington Street they were met by the Mayor and a force of constables. At this moment the cry was raised, To the Frog Pond with him ! followed by an appeal to the bystanders to assist the Mayor, when, among many others, the late [1870] Colonel Thomas C. Amory and myself aided in the rescue of Mr. Garrison from the crowd, and in placing him within the south door of the Old State House [City Hall], which was at once closed" ( Garrison Mob, p. 44). . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 23 " Orders were now given to carry me to the Mayor s office in the City Hall. As we approached the south door, the Mayor CHAP. I. 1835- City Hall, from the west end (Post-office). The door with the flight of steps is that by which Mr. Garrison was taken in. From Smith s Map of Boston, 1835. attempted to protect me by his presence ; but as he was unas sisted by any show of authority or force, he was quickly thrust aside and now came a tremendous rush on the part of the mob to prevent my entering the Hall. For a moment, the conflict was dubious but my sturdy supporters carried me safely up to the Mayor s room. 1 " Whatever those newspapers which were instrumental in stirring up the mob may report, throughout the whole of this trying scene I felt perfectly calm, nay, very happy. It seemed 1 "This was only effected," says Mayor Lyman, "by the use of great physical strength. The mob made no attempt to come in at the south door, but great numbers ran round and entered at the north so as to fill the lower hall. Garrison was, however, carried up stairs. I took my station at the foot of the staircase leading to the Mayor and Aldermen s room [at the east end of the building]. The crowd was extreme for a minute. I spoke to the people and said in substance that the law must be maintained, the order of the city preserved, and that I would lay down my life on that spot to effect these objects. These remarks were well received. The crowd continued intense in the street on the south side of the Hall. I therefore went to the window over the south door, and got out on the ledge or cap over that door, where I was able to stand, though the position was any thing but safe. I here again spoke to the people very much as in the Hall. These remarks were also well received" ( Garrison Mob, p. 22). 24 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. !>T. 30. CHAP. I. to me that it was indeed a blessed privilege thus to suffer j^T- in the cause of Christ. Death did not present one repulsive feature. The promises of God sustained my soul, so that it was not only divested of fear, but ready to sing aloud for joy. " Having had my clothes [it was a bran-new suit] rent asunder, one individual kindly lent me a pair of pantaloons another, a coat 1 a third, a stock a fourth, a cap as a sub stitute for my lost hat. After a consultation of fifteen or twenty minutes, the Mayor and his advisers came to the singu lar conclusion, that the building would be endangered by my continuing in it, 2 and that the preservation of my life depended upon committing me to jail, ostensibly as a disturber of the peace ! ! 3 A hack was got in readiness at the door 4 to receive 1 One of the last letters ever received by Mr. Garrison, bearing date of March 26, 1879, and signed by H. B. Thompson (presumably a lady), con tained these reminiscences of the mob: "I was at the house pf Mr. Nathaniel Vinal in Portland Street. Mr. Vinal was a grain merchant doing business on Vinal s wharf at the North End. He had a son, Spencer Vinal, a young man perhaps 25 years old. He, knowing, I suppose, what was to be done, kept about, looking on, but had no sympathy with you or your work. He came home to his father s house in the evening to supper, wearing your coat, from a pocket of which he took a handful of papers and letters, saying, I have got the whole abolition correspondence, I guess/ and then told us as follows : Garrison went into a carpenter s shop in Wilson s Lane. They followed him, dragged him from under the bench, put a rope round his neck, and brought him to the window to hang him out. I had thought it was good sport up to this time, but when I saw him standing there so pale I thought it was going too far, and said to Aaron Cooley, Let s go to the rescue ; and with some more who helped us we got him clear and ran him " into the City Hall. " . . . I exchanged coats [and I think he said hats] with him " (see Lib. 5: 187). 2 Perhaps the fact that the Post-office was in the same building had some thing to do with this decision. If so, it was only another instance of excluding " incendiary matter" from the mails. 3 The Mayor s account is : " Sheriff Parkman, who was present;, sa id that he would commit him as a rioter. The usual law paper was made out, and Garrison agreed to go to jail, on the condition (as I was informed by Park- man) that he should not be subject to any expense " ( Garrison Mob, p. 23). As to his consent, Mr. Garrison says (Lib. 5:197): "It is true, I made no objection, because freedom of choice did not appertain to my situation. But what could have been more rash than the attempt to drive me in a car riage to jail . . . ? That it was successful is truly a marvel; for the scene around the carriage was indescribably perilous." And, " Until I was called to listen to the reading of the warrant before the court on the ensuing day, I had not the slightest intimation or suspicion that I was incarcerated on a criminal charge." 4 The north door. By a ruse of the Mayor s, a carriage had been brought also to the south door, and the attention of the mob fixed upon it by the JET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 25 me and, supported by Sheriff Parkman and Ebenezer Bailey, Esq. 1 (the Mayor leading the way), I succeeded in getting into it without much difficulty, as I was not readily identified in my new garb. Now came a scene that baffles the power of descrip tion. As the ocean, lashed into fury by the spirit of the storm, CHAP. I. 1835- From the City Hall, State St., to the City Jail, Leverett St. From Smith s Map of Boston, 1835. formation of double lines of guards from the door to the carriage. See John C. Park s letter in Boston Herald of Jan. 1, 1882, and E. N. Moore s narrative in Boston Smiday Budget of Mar. 18, 1883, and compare with them the late Ellis Ames s singularly mixed account in Vol. 18 of the Mass. Hist. Society s Proceedings, pp. 341, 342. iMiss Anne Warren Weston relates (MS. April 14, 1883): "Mr. Ebenezer Bailey, the teacher of the Young Ladies High School, was in that year [1835] one of the Common Council of Boston. I had been partly educated at his school. . . . Though a man of great generosity and nobility of feeling, and though he had passed some months in Virginia, and sometimes told me of the painful scenes he had witnessed there, he yet shared the pro-slavery sentiment of the time. ... A day or two after the 21st of October, I dined at his house. He knew I had been one of the women 26 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. seeks to whelm the adventurous bark beneath its mountain j^~- waves so did the mob, enraged by a series of disappointments, rush like a whirlwind upon the frail vehicle in which I sat, and endeavor to drag me out of it. Escape seemed a physical impossibility. They clung to the wheels dashed open the d oors seized hold of the horses and tried to upset the car riage. 1 They were, however, vigorously repulsed by the police a constable sprang in by my side the doors were closed and the driver, lustily using his whip upon the bodies of his horses and the heads of the rioters, happily made an opening through the crowd, and drove at a tremendous speed for Leverett Street. But many of the rioters followed even with superior swiftness, and repeatedly attempted to arrest the progress of the horses. 2 To reach the jail by a direct course mobbed, and, of course, we met with much warmth and emotion. After the first few words, the following conversation occurred, that I remember textually. I said : Mr. Bailey, how did Garrison behave ? No man could have done better, was his reply. He showed perfect courage and self- possession. He was only very absurd in one thing. He kept saying, " Oh, if they would only hear me five minutes, I am sure I could bring them to reason." Now you know, continued he, that that was ridiculous, for they were all ready to tear him in pieces. He then went on to relate, with some pride and pleasure, the part he took in Garrison s rescue. He said that when Garrison approached the carriage, he was supported on one side by Sheriff Parkman, and on the other by himself. Fortunately, said he, I had with me a large, strong umbrella, and as we tried to get him into the carriage, there was such a rush made upon him that I struck with my whole strength in every direction, and thus we cleared the way. " 1 An anonymous reminiscent in the Boston Commonwealth of Oct. 23, 1880, a boy- witness, says : The foremost threw a rope probably the same that had done duty before in the affair over the coach-body, with the evident intent of overturning the vehicle. For a moment or less it seemed as though they would succeed, for, by pulling on the line outwardly, they lifted the coach from its perpendicular so that it tilted on its off -wheels. I expected to see it go over ; but the owner lashed his horses, and their momentum was too great for those holding the rope." Col. J. W. Sever testifies : "We found the constables in the act of putting Mr. Garrison in a carriage, and the crowd rapidly increasing, and endeavoring to prevent it ; some trying to overturn the carriage, large numbers hanging on to the wheels and calling out to Cut the traces ! cut the reins ! An individual drew his knife and made an attempt to do this, when he was seized by myself and thrust aside. The driver effectually applied his whip, and with difficulty succeeded in breaking away, when he drove rapidly up Court Street to the jail, followed by the mob " ( Garrison Mob, p. 45). So E. N. Moore, as already so often quoted. 2 James N. Buffum, of Lynn, was sitting in his buggy on Court Street as the struggling carriage approached. The horses drew off to the side nearest the buggy, " and, in doing so, the hubs of the two vehicles came -ET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 27 was found impracticable ; and after going in a circuitous direc- CHAP. I. tion, 1 and encountering many t hair-breadth scapes, 2 we drove ^ up to this new and last refuge of liberty and life, when another bold attempt was made to seize me by the mob but in vain. 3 In a few moments I was locked up in a cell, safe from my persecutors, accompanied by two delightful associates, a good conscience and a cheerful mind. In the course of the evening, several of my friends 4 came to my grated window to sympa thise and rejoice with me, with whom I held a pleasant conver sation until the hour of retirement, when I threw myself upon my prison bed, and slept tranquilly during the night. 5 In the so close together as to brush off the rioters from one side. This relief en abled the horses to get a headway, and they went off at a gallop " ( Woman s Journal, Oct. 26, 1878, p. 340). 1 At Bowdoin Square, the driver made as if going for Cambridge bridge, and this shook off a number of the pursuers ( Garrison Mob/ p. 23). 2 Lowell Mason, Jr., was on Leverett Street, about half way down, when the carriage dashed past. The pursuit was even then so determined that the mob jumped upon the steps and were thrust away by the constable within. Boy that he was, young Mason was struck by the composure of Mr. Garrison s countenance. The mob, he remembers, was not a rough one, in the present sense of that term : it was composed of young men (merchants clerks, as Mr. Ellis Ames describes them). Mr. Mason s observation should be noted in connection with the alleged gloomy sky on which much stress is laid in Mayor Lyman s apologia. 3 May or Lyman says : " Running the greater part of the way, I reached the jail before the carria.ge, which, however, soon came up, but not before between two and three hundred persons had assembled there. But a line was made to the jail by officers, and, on the door being opened, Garrison seemed to bound from the carriage to the jail door with a single leap " ( Garrison Mob, p. 23). This was certainly very precipitate action ! Mr. Henry Guild reports in 1869 (ibid., p. 39) that he was informed shortly after the affair "that Mr. Garrison, in relating his experience in a public meeting, stated that he never was so glad to get into a jail in his life." A similar statement was made in a long review of the anti-slavery movement in the N. Y. Herald of Feb. 7, 1861, and elicited this denial from Mr. Gar rison : " It is needless for us to say that no such exclamation ever came from our lips no such thought ever entered our mind. We make no boast of our courage ; but it is in the midst of such tumults we have always found our calmest self-possession" (Lib. 31:26). To this psychological fact his family are able, and have a right, to testify. * Among them Knapp, Whittier, and A. Bronson Alcott and his wife, a sister of Samuel J. May (Woman s Journal, Oct. 26, 1878, p. 340). Mr. Whittier relates that the prisoner said to them playfully, "You see my accommodations are so limited that I cannot ask you to spend the night with me." Mr. Vashon called in the morning, bringing a new hat (Lib. 5:203). 5 " Excepting an occasional throb of anxiety in regard to my dear wife " (MS. Oct. 26, 1835, to G. W. Benson). "When the tidings were brought to her of what had befallen me, she indicated her unshaken faith in my stead- 28 WILLIAM LLOYD GABRISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. 1. morning I awoke quite refreshed, and, after eating an excellent jjjT- breakfast furnished by the kindness of iny keeper, I inscribed upon the walls of my cell the following items : "Wm. Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 21, 1835, to save Mm from the violence of a respectable and influ ential mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine, that all men are created equal/ and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God. Hail, Columbia ! Cheers for the Autocrat of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey ! "Reader, let this inscription remain till the last slave in this despotic land be loosed from his fetters. l When peace within the bosom reigns, And conscience gives th approving voice ; Though bound the human form in chains, Yet can the soul aloud rejoice. Tis true, my footsteps are confined I cannot range beyond this cell; But what can circumscribe my mind ? To chain the winds attempt as well ! Confine me as a prisoner but bind me not as a slave. Punish me as a criminal but hold me not as a chattel. Torture me as a man but drive me not like a beast. Doubt my sanity but acknowledge my immortality. "In the course of the forenoon, after passing through the mockery of an examination, for form s sake, before Judge Whitman, 2 I was released from prison ; but at the earnest solid- fastness by saying, I do not believe my husband will be untrue to his principles " ( Helen E. Garrison : In Memoriam, p. 25). 1 Leverett-Street jail was demolished in 1852. 2 At the jail itself: the authorities were afraid to have it take place in court. The original complaint and warrant are here given as copied from the files, and published in Vol. 18 of the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, p. 343, by Mr. Ellis Ames : " To Edward G. Prescvtt, Esquire, one of the Justices of the Peace within and for the County of Suffolk. " Daniel Parkman, of said Boston, Esquire, complains and gives the said Justice to understand and be informed that William Lloyd Garrison, of Boston, in said county, printer, together with divers other persons to the number of thirty or more to your complainant unknown, on the twenty- first of October, instant, at Boston, aforesaid, in the county aforesaid, did, as your complainant verily believes and has no doubt, unlawfully, riotously and routously assemble, and then and there did disturb and break the peace ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 29 tation of the city authorities, in order to tranquillize the public CHAP. I. mind, I deemed it proper to leave the city for a few days, and ^~ accordingly took my departure, accompanied by Mrs. Garrison. 1 " My thanks are due to Sheriff Parkman for various acts of politeness and kindness ; as also to Sheriff Sumner, 2 Mr. Cool- idge, Mr. Andrews, and. several other gentlemen. " I have been thus minute in describing the rise, progress and termination of this disgraceful riot, in order to prevent (or rather to correct) false representations and exaggerated reports respecting it and myself. It is proper to subjoin a few reflections. "1. The outrage was perpetrated in Boston the Cradle of Liberty the city of Hancock and Adams the headquarters of the Commonwealth, and a riot did cause and make, to the terror of the good people of the Commonwealth, and against the peace and dignity of the same. " Therefore, your complainant prays that the said William Lloyd Garrison may be apprehended and dealt with as to law and justice shall appertain. " Dated at Boston, this twenty-first of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five. "DANIEL PARKMAN. "SUFFOLK, ss. > "BOSTON, Oct. 21, 1835. ) " Sworn to before me : EDWARD G. PRESCOTT, "Jus. Pads. " SUFFOLK, ss. " To the Slieriff of our County of Suffolk, or his Deputies, or any of the Constables of the City of Boston. " In pursuance of the foregoing complaint you are hereby re quired, in the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to apprehend the within-named William Lloyd Garrison forth with, and have his body before me, the subscriber, one of the Justices of the Peace of said county, or the Justices of the Police Court of said city, then and there to be dealt with according to law. " Dated at Boston, the twenty-first of October, A. D. 1835. "EDWARD G. PRESCOTT, " SUFFOLK, ss. October 21, 1835. "Jus. Pads. " I have committed the aforesaid Garrison to jail by virtue hereof. "DANIEL PARKMAN, Dep. Sheriff." 1 " It is not true that I left either the building [the A. S. Rooms] or the city because I was intimidated but I left both at the earnest entreaty of the city authorities, and of several friends, and particularly on account of the delicate state of Mrs. Garrison s health [who was soon to become a mother]" (Lib. 5:179). Sheriff Parkman drove Mr. Garrison to Canton, where he joined his wife on the train to Providence. The cars and stages leaving Boston that morning Were searched for him. 2 The manly father of Charles Sumner. 30 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. I. of refinement, literature, intelligence, and religion ! No coin- j^T- ments can add to the infamy of this fact. "2. It was perpetrated in the open daylight of heaven, and was therefore most unblushing and daring in its features. "3. It was against the friends of human freedom the liberty of speech the right of association and in support of the vilest slavery that ever cursed the world. " 4. It was dastardly beyond precedent, as it was an assault of thousands upon a small body of helpless females. Charleston and New Orleans have never acted so brutally. Courageous cravens ! " 5. It was planned and executed, not by the rabble, or the workingmen, but by gentlemen of property and standing* from all parts of the city and now [October 25] that time has been afforded for reflection, it is still either openly justified or coldly disapproved by the l higher classes, and exultation among them is general throughout the city. . . . u 7. It is evidently winked at by the city authorities. No efforts have been made to arrest the leading rioters. The Mayor has made no public appeal to the citizens to preserve order ; nor has he given any assurance that the right of free discus sion shall be enjoyed without molestation ; nor did he array any military force 1 against the mob, or attempt to disperse them except by useless persuasion ; on the contrary, he com plied with their wishes in tearing down the anti-slavery sign. He was chairman, too, of the pro-slavery meeting in Faneuil Hall, at which WASHINGTON was cheered for being a SLAVE HOLDER ! . . . " The conduct of Mayor Lyman on this occasion has now been honestly set forth. It was promptly arraigned #.5:182. in the Liberator by the Rev. Henry C. Wright, 2 and l"Once more let me add," says Mr. Garrison, at a later date (Lib. 5:197), "that I have condemned the Mayor only in view of the oath of office which he has taken, and of the form of government which he and the people believe they ought at all hazards to maintain. For myself I ask no physical violence to be exef ted for my protection, and I acknowledge no other government than that of the Most High." 2 Under the signature "Hancock." Mr. Wright was not satisfied with one nom de guerre: "Law," "Wickliffe," " Cato," "Justice," are others which he employed at this time in the Liberator. He was a native of Sharon, Conn. (1797), who turned from hat-making to the ministry, study ing at Andover from 1819 to 1823, and being licensed to preach in the latter year. He was settled till 1833 at West Newbury, Mass. He joined the New England A. S. Society in May, 1835, and first met Mr. Garrison on Nov. 6, 1835. See his Autobiography. -ET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 31 defended by Samuel E. Sewall ("An Abolitionist") and z^. 5 -.i86. " Another Abolitionist." It was reconsidered at great Lib. 5:190. length, and again condemned, by Mr. Garrison, who re- #.5:191, luctantly entered into the discussion " lest the charge I97 should be made that my ignominious treatment dis qualified me from being an impartial reviewer." A generation later it was reviewed in a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips in Boston, in November, 1869, out of which grew a newspaper controversy, and was thereupon summed up in a brochure (freely cited above) by the son Papers reiat- and namesake of Mayor Lyman, with the result, so far as Mr. Garrison was concerned, of finding him guilty of Mob, Boston, ingratitude and of a dishonorable change of feeling towards a benefactor. Mr. Garrison s allowances for Mayor Lyman, in the narrative just given, show that he did not impute to him motives inconsistent with a desire to preserve the peace and to save a citizen s life. He could not deny that (in the last instance) the Mayor had saved his life; 1 but then, he had thrice imperilled it first, by lending his official weight to a mobocratic demonstration in Faneuil Hall ; next, by counselling him to leave the anti-slavery building while besieged in front and rear by an eager mob; and then by taking him through the same mob, become still more desperate, a long distance to the city jail. Both the Mayor and his Garrison. son belittle the mob in view of its trifling damages to * ob J^ 3> person and property, but insist on its fury as a ground of gratitude on Mr. Garrison s part, and of excuse for the Mayor s inability to meet it squarely, and his conse quent resort to strategy, ending in the bouffe perform ance of committing the victim instead of the rioters. The Boston of that day was, like many other Ameri can cities, proving that its municipal organization had not kept pace with the growth of population and with the increase of the dangerous elements of society; and there can be no doubt, as Mr. Theodore Lyman, Jr., ibid., p. 52. l Much is made of expressions to this effect reported by Knapp and by Assistant-Marshal Wells ( Garrison Mob/ pp. 65, 68). 32 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. 30. Lib. 7 : . CHAP. i. shows, that the police force was miserably inadequate !8^ 5 . for an emergency like a riot. On the other hand, the city was still small enough to make the Mayor a well- known figure, his office possessed much greater dignity, and his presence inspired much greater awe, than it does to-day. This, while it makes his part in removing the anti-slavery sign (accepting his own version of it) an indefensible encouragement to the mob, would also, it must be said, justly qualify any present estimate of his personal bravery. Comparison has pertinently been made with Mayor Eliot s quelling of the ferocious Broad- Memoirof Street riot of June 11. 1837. between two fire-engine Chas. Sum- ner, 1:162; companies and the Irish, when missiles were flying, and personal intervention meant taking risks which Mayor Lyman had neither to encounter nor to fear. As to calling out the military, the Mayor perhaps had no statute authority to do so ; 1 and if he had, the militia was in the streets a part of the mob the thing to be put down. 2 Possibly the marines from the Charlestown Navy- Yard could have been got to guard the City Hall in defence of Federal property the Post-office as later they were available for escorting fugitive slaves south ward past the same building; but this was before the days of telegraphs, and the consent of a pro-slavery Administration might have been necessary. It must, however, be remembered, that Mayor Lyman had every reason to expect, and ample warning to prepare for, a disturbance, 3 and that the handbill did not rouse him to l Garrison Mob, p. 58 ; but compare B. F. Hallett s view of the Mayor s unlimited power, in his Daily Advocate, almost the only journal friendly to the abolitionists (Lib. 5 : 180). 2 So responded Col. John C. Park to Wendell Phillips, a member of his regiment, on the spot ( 20th Anniversary of Boston Mob/ p. 32). 3 His friend, Henry G. Chapman, the husband of Mrs. Chapman, had frequently brought him information to this effect, only to be told by the city marshal, " You give us a great deal of trouble" ( Right and Wrong, 1836, [1] p. 29). Moreover, while the Mayor was advising the abolitionists not to hold meetings that might draw mob violence upon them, it does not appear that he ever expostulated with editors whose incitement to that violence was constant, malignant, and potent. JS-r. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 33 a proper sense of the situation. In this respect he did not do what he must have done had his own " class" been in similar peril; 1 and he refused to the end, seeing his own class about him, to believe or pronounce it a mob. He knew, indeed, and it is no figure of speech to say so, that he was in the midst of the adjourned Faneuil Hall meeting, and he ought to have been pre siding over it, instead of " calling it to order." There is no pretence that he lost for a moment his sympathy with the pro-slavery animus of the mob, or that he had any loftier distress of mind than, ex officio, municipal dis order occasioned. He did no more for Mr. Garrison than he might have done for a murderer in danger of being lynched on the way to prison. The outrage on the right of free meeting and of free speech affected him so little that, as Mr. Garrison charged, he took no steps to bring the notorious instigators and ringleaders to trial, or proclaim his sense of the disgrace that had befallen the city. 2 His subsequent inaction, in short, naturally extinguished what dubious claim he had on Mr. Gar rison s gratitude ; and the more the editor of the Liber ator reflected upon the Mayor s behavior, the graver seemed that officer s responsibility for an outbreak in which the personal adventure was inconsiderable in comparison with the public rights that were trodden under foot. CHAP. I. 1835- Right and Wrong, 1836, (i) p. 33- l"He shamefully truckled to wealth and respectability," alleged Mr. Garrison (Lib. 5 : 197). "If it had been a mob of workingmen assaulting a meeting of the merchants, no doubt he would have acted with energy and decision, and they would have been routed by force. But broadcloth and money alter the case : they are above the law, and the imperious masters of poor men. Wo unto the city, and wo unto the land, in which such dis tinctions obtain ! And he is unfit to be vested with authority who makes these distinctions the rule of his conduct ! " 2 For instance, we do not find him calling a second Faneuil Hall meeting, as in August of the previous year, on occasion of the sacking of the Ursu- line Convent/ante, 1:448), to pledge the pro-Southern [Protestant] citizens of Boston, collectively and individually, " to unite with their anti-slavery [Catholic] brethren "in protecting their persons, their property, and their civil and religious rights," with H. G. Otis for chief speaker to the resolu tions (see Niles Register, 46:438). VOL. II. 3 34 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [.Err. 30. CHAP. i. Mayor Lyman may have been sincere, in offering, at I 8^ 5 . the foot of the staircase in the City Hall, to lay down his life in maintenance of law and order. But the occasion and the opportunity for such a sacrifice were presented at an earlier stage of the trouble. To the mob s cry for Thompson, instead of answering in a feeble voice, " He is not here," the Mayor should have thundered, "And if he ivere here, he should remain and speak, as is his right." A dead body as the cost of that proclamation would have been worth many exculpatory volumes. The de spised sign whose destruction he estimated in dollars and cents instead of in principles, was also a fit pretext for a magistrate s dying at his post. Finally, if the case had not, by these laches, grown too desperate, Mr. Garrison s right to remain in the building and be protected there furnished still another. But Mayor Lyman seems to have been profuse in declarations which, to use Mr. Lib. 5 1197. Garrison s words, in the sequel proved "mere declama tion." 1 Law offices in abundance overlooked the scene of the mob the legislators, in special session at the State House, John G-. Whittier among them, hastened down to become spectators. Law was everywhere, but justice was fallen in the streets. Here and there a not hostile face was visible, like George B. Emerson s, whom Mrs. Chapman called to witness as she passed him in the throng. Wendell Phillips, commencing practice in his native city, and not versed, perhaps, in the riot statutes, wondered why his regiment was not called out. Henry I. Bowditch, who had only heard of Garrison, felt his gorge rise at the spectacle, and, meeting an alderman, 2 vented his indignation at the " worse than contemptible 1 Mr. Sewall, who is in a sense the Mayor s own witness, " truly declared, that Mr. Lyman has always said, if the abolitionists chose to have meet ings in spite of the excited state of public feeling, he would defend the right of free discussion at the peril of his life " (Lib. 5 : 191). This, which was of Mr. Garrison s own knowledge, made the Mayor s default assume, in his eyes, almost the character of treachery. 2 Samuel A. Eliot, afterwards Mayor, and Representative in Congress. *^*~J> . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 35 Right and Wrong, 1836, (i) P-S7- mob that was going on," and offered his services as a volunteer to shoot the rioters down. " I found my city Boston official quite cool, and he intimated that, though it was the o&i^ittx. duty of the Mayor to put down the riot, the city govern ment did not very much disapprove of the mob to put down such agitators as Garrison and those like him." l The edi tor of the New England Galaxy overheard a justice of the peace remark: "I hope they will catch him [Garrison] and tar-and-feather him ; and though I would not assist, I can tell them five dollars are ready for the man that will do it." The " respectable " press of Boston had but one voice on Thursday concerning the occurrences of the previous day. 2 The Atlas (Webster Whig) charged the aboli tionists with the disturbance, while coyly repelling the imputation of having itself been mainly instrumental in getting it up an "Atlas mob." The Mercantile Journal called for the prevention of anti-slavery meetings "by the strong arm of the law," seeing that they were " but ibid., p. 61. the signal for the assemblage of a mob"; and would have Garrison, and Thompson arrested as " disturbers of the peace and manufacturers of brawls and riots," and made "to give security in a large amount for their future good behavior." The Transcript congratulated ibid., p. 59. the city on the absence from the mob " of what is called the rabble or canaille the vicious dregs of society who, 1 " I turned from him with loathing and disgust," continues Dr. Bow- ditch, "and from that moment became an abolitionist. The next day I subscribed for the Liberator." So presently did Charles Sumner ( Memoir, 1:157), though he had not witnessed the mob, and "did not express such anxiety about the affair" as did another lawyer to his informant, Ellis Ames (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 18:343). 2 We omit the Commercial Gazette, which was a low paper. Here we may as well record the fact bitterly commented on by Homer in his letter to George C. Rand (ante, p. 10), when his former apprentice had become an abolitionist that the Gazette s supreme bid for Southern patronage failed utterly, while its local support fell away, compelling a change of owners. Homer himself, the sad victim of poverty and drink, reappears for a moment begging work in a printing-office occupying the very premises whence Mr. Garrison descended to the mob ; and then, a vagrant, meets his forlorn end in the Baltimore lock-up (E. N. Moore, in the Boston Sun day Budget, Mar. 18, 1883). 36 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. . 30. CHAP. I. 1835. Lib. 5 : 174. Right and Wrong, 1836, (i) A 59- Lib. $ : 175. Lib. 5 : 184, 185. Right and Wrong, 1836. (i) /. 63. Society in America, i, $4- Autobiog- raphy, 1:346, and Society in America, I. $4- in other populous cities, give terrific features to popular and excited assemblages." The Courier thought it a most shamefully good mob. The Daily Advertiser " re garded the assemblage not $o much as a riot, as the prevention of a riot. . . . We consider the whole transaction as the triumph of the law over lawless vio lence, and the love of order over an attempt to produce riot and confusion/ 1 The religious press, except the New England Spectator and Zion s Herald (Methodist), was in accord with the secular. The Christian Watch man (Baptist) pronounced the abolitionists equally culpa ble with the mob. Tracy s Recorder (Congregationalist) said it was Mr. Garrison s "settled policy to provoke mobs as much as he can," and so "identify his cause with the cause of civil liberty," to the distress of worthy citizens thus forced to choose between him and the mob. The Christian Register (Unitarian) saw no adequate ex cuse for a mob in the meeting of " a few black and white ladies, in an hour of romance or revery," but rebuked them and their male associates for courting persecution. " As the friends of peace, they ought not to defy public opinion, however wrong." It was not otherwise with the most eminent professors and teachers of religion. Harriet Martineau, en route from Salem to Providence, had " passed through the mob some time after it had begun to assemble." Her fellow-passen gers, connecting the well-dressed crowd with the adjacent Post-office, naturally " supposed it was a busy foreign- post day." At Providence the truth reached her : " President Wayland [of Brown University] agreed with me at the time about the iniquitous and fatal character of the out- lAs an amusing instance of heredity, it should be recorded here that the Advertiser of Aug. 5, 1881, cited the legal falsehood employed to incar cerate Mr. Garrison as a striking illustration of the respect which has always been cherished here [in Boston] for legal forms." " If any one had attempted to seize the unfortunate prisoner as he left the Old State House, that person and all who abetted him would have been liable to a criminal prosecution for attempting to rescue a prisoner held by due process of law, as well as for inciting a riot." Dogberry could not have surpassed this in vention for putting the mob in the wrong. JET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 37 rage; but called on me, after a trip to Boston, to relieve mv CHAP. ]. anxiety by the assurance that it was all right, the mob having ^ been entirely composed of gentlemen ! l Professor Henry Ware, who did and said better things afterwards, told me that the plain truth was, the citizens did not choose to let such a man as Garrison live among them, admitting that Garrison s Compare opinions on slavery were the only charge against him. Law- ante \l^ 462 yers on that occasion defended a breach of the lawsj ladies were sure that the gentlemen of Boston would do nothing im proper ; merchants thought the abolitionists were served quite right, they were so troublesome to established routine ; the clergy thought the subject so low that people of taste should not be compelled to hear anything about it ; and even Judge Joseph Story, when I asked him whether there was not a public prose- St0f y- cutor who might prosecute for the assault on Garrison, if the abolitionists did not, replied that he had given his advice (which had been formally asked) against any notice whatever being taken of the outrage, the feeling being so strong against the discussion of slavery, and the rioters being so respectable in the city. These things I myself heard and saw, or I would not ask anybody to believe what I could hardly credit myself." For the second time in the space of three months the editor of the Liberator was exiled from the city of his adoption, and driven from a home which would be his no more. The sequel will appear in the following extracts from private letters : George Benson to George W. Benson. BROOKLYN, CONN., October 23, 1835. MS. This day we unexpectedly but cheerfully welcomed the arrival of dear Helen and her husband. I thought Boston was the last place that would suffer a riotous mob to annihilate law, and I ardently hope that a reaction friendly to the cause of justice may yet appear in that city. . . . Garrison says when the outrageous multitude were thirsting for his blood, he felt calm l William Goodell writes to Mr. Garrison from Providence, Feb. 25, 1836 : "Have you read Wayland s Elements [of Moral Science] ? There are a few pages in it that squint hard at a support of the authority of Government to judge of and punish incendiary publications. I am astonished that no one has noticed it. But all in good time. I am waiting to see his course in some matters now pending. We shall soon see how far he will go in playing the Lane Seminary game over again ! " (MS.) 38 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. [^Ex. 30. CHAP. I. and composed. It must have been alarming to your dear sister. jjjT,. I am thankful to a kind Providence for their protection. . . . The Mayor of Boston was very friendly to Garrison. 1 George W. Benson to W. L. Garrison, at Brooklyn. MS. PROVIDENCE, October 23, 1835. I have just returned from Boston, where I went in pursuit of you. ... I reached Boston at six o clock, and drove directly to 23 Brighton Street, but found no admittance. From thence J. x. Camp- to Campbell s in Brattle Street, who accompanied me to Mr. j E* Fuller. Fuller s in Pitts Street. There I was informed for the first time that you were probably where I started from. Here I passed the night. C. Burleigh called to see me. Everything was quiet except two or three alarms of fire. . . . This morning I arose at daylight, after having passed a sleepless night, my mind being too active for rest, and went forth into the city to look after friend Knapp. He was about the city yesterday, but I could not find him this morning. Three hands went to work early at the Liberator office, at his direction, but when I left at nine o clock, he had not been in. They are determined to have the paper out in season. Lib. 5 : 171. I made Burleigh promise that he would write a true account in general, leaving for you to give the particulars next week. I likewise saw Whittier, and made him promise to draw up an account of the affair, with an appeal to our fellow-countrymen, to be published immediately, and ordered three thousand copies for this vicinity. I further ordered one thousand copies of A. Ante, 1:518. Grimke s letter, with your introductory remarks, and your ad dress published in the Liberator several weeks since, with your Lib. 5 : 157. name appended, and Whittier s poetry on the times, 2 in a pam phlet form. I urged all our friends to redouble their exertions. They seemed well disposed to accept the advice, as nothing will now avail but thorough measures. Liberty or death. . . . They all praised Sister Helen s firmness, or calmness, in Bos ton. Dear girl ! she knows not what I felt for her. . . . They considered all danger of further violence as past for the present. 1 The reader has all the evidence in possession of Mr. Garrison s family- bearing on Mayor Lyman s " friendliness." After her husband was jailed, he called upon Mrs. Garrison, who found his manner cold and unsympathetic. 2 " Stanzas for the Times," following the Faneuil Hall meeting, and first printed in the Courier, signed A Farmer. " ^ET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 39 Charles C. BurleigJi to Henry E. Benson. BOSTON, October 26, 1835. MS. Everything is at present tranquil, and we hope will remain so. No injury has been done to us at the office, except the splitting down half the door and destroying the sign. We feel confident that the mob will be an advantage to our cause. Assurances come in to us from the country that it is benefiting us there ; and even in the city, I think we have reason to be lieve it has made us friends. We stand erect as yet. Our friends are in good spirits, and some of them say it is the best anti-slavery meeting we have yet had in Boston. The affairs of the Liberator are somewhat crippled, indeed, for on account of the excitement, and from apprehensions for their property, the owners of the building have notified Knapp to quit j and as he has no lease he must do so. He is somewhat perplexed to know what to do, or where to get another office, but perhaps he will give all necessary information respecting the Liberator affairs. No disturbance took place after Garrison left, though we felt much apprehension that there would be. I kept myself at and about the office a considerable part of the evening, taking care not to be where I should attract notice to the office, but still keeping an eye to it myself. I removed the Liberator books and office books, and what little money we had, that night and the next j but since that time the city has worn so tranquil an aspect that I have not thought it worth while to take the trouble. We also took the precaution on Thursday to send off all the * Oasis 1 to a place of safety, together with the greater part of our volumes and some of the pamphlets. We have a few volumes in the office, just to meet demands which may be made on us. You may keep yourself perfectly quiet where you are, till you get ready to come back. As for Garrison, I do not know but he would be safe enough here in the daytime, but in truth I don t feel myself competent to give any opinion on that point. . . . Garrison is insane, and Thompson has embarked for England. These are the current stories now. We have received no in telligence from Mr. May. 2 The Utica news you will find in s. J. May. 1 The anti- slavery volume edited by Mrs. L. M. Child in 1834. 2 It came presently. He was mobbed at Montpelier, Vt., on the two days following the Boston mob, while addressing the Vermont State Anti- Slavery Society in the hall of the House of Representatives (Lib. 5:174; May s Recollections/ p. 153). 40 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. CHAP. I. the Journal of Commerce, though that paper evidently gives a Ig ~ distorted account of the matter. 1 It bears the stamp of incon sistency on its very face. . . . "We have not forgotten here, and do not mean to forget, Stanton s version of the Abolition Constitution : Ar ticle first : All men are born free and equal. Article second: Stick and Hang. Isaac Knapp to W. L. Garrison. MS BOSTON, October 26, 1835. A f*m" S> M y neart is made g lad b y the receipt of your letter of the 24th inst. Thanks be to God that you are now comparatively safe from the fury of a misguided and ferocious mob. There has been no actual violence since you left. I have every reason, however, to believe that had you remained over Thursday night the house would have been attacked. The mobites, as you will perceive by all the papers of the city, with one exception, 2 are either directly or indirectly applauded for their outrages. They know that, so long as they confine their plunder and violence to the property and persons of anti- slavery men, they can act with perfect impunity. I say this in the fullest belief of its truth, and after having had an interview with the Mayor, Sheriff Parkman, and other civil officers. I most firmly believe it to be the determination of the authorities to use all their efforts to put down anti- slavery presses and anti-slavery discussions, rather than mobs. To effect their object, they magnify every danger and represent it to be impossible, should another disturbance occur, for them to have any power to prevent the mob from working their will in any way they may elect. As this fact becomes known to the public, now and then, there are individuals who boldly avow their determination to attend the next anti-slavery meeting fully equipped for military duty. These are not generally anti-slavery men, but men who cannot sacrifice their dearest rights without striking a blow. Every demand against the Liberator, of course, is now rush ing in. It is now in arrears to me $600, most of which I have borrowed from friends to meet current expenses. I am com pelled to move this day, yet not a shelter can I obtain for love 1 The mobbing of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society at its organi zation, on the day of the Boston mob (Niles Register, 49 : 162). 2 Hallett s Daily Advocate. .Ex. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 41 to me, to the cause, or for money. The only alternative I have CHAP. I. is to store the materials for a while, and get the paper set up in ~ driblets, as I can, in other offices. This plan is very expensive, and I cannot stand under it long unless the friends will advance money. Your landlord is apprehensive that his house will be de stroyed, and wishes you would give it up. This I think is the best way you can do ; and it should be done immediately, while he is in the mood. Let the furniture, &c., be carefully packed and stored forthwith. By all means stay in Brooklyn, if your dear friends there will risk the calamities which sheltering you may bring upon them. Even if there were no personal danger here , the cause, I believe, will be benefited by your rusticating awhile. My kind regards and best love to all the friends in Brooklyn. That the God of all will continue to you the light of his countenance and his guardian care, throughout all time, is my earnest prayer. Affectionately, and ever your unwavering friend. George W. Benson to Henry E. Benson. PROVIDENCE, October 26, 1835. MS. I think Brother Garrison had better dispose of his house in Boston, store a part of his furniture in some place of safety, and make an arrangement to board in Brooklyn this winter, for which opinion there are several reasons : one is, he can edit his paper much better, not being liable to constant interrup tion. Again, ... it would be much pleasanter for Sister Helen, and much cheaper for all excepting yourself and Brother Knapp. 1 . . . There appears to my mind but one serious objection, and that is, that our opponents may say that he dares not return to Boston. That can be obviated, however, by his going there and spending several weeks, and after that going there occa sionally, as his business or inclination may require. I do not believe that he would be in any danger of personal violence now or a few days hence. . . . Tuesday, 27. A Mr. Smith has just called to see me from Boston j says he wrote Brother Garrison yesterday, and that Sewall will write to-day. He represents everything as work- i Knapp was still an inmate of the Garrisons ; and Henry Benson like wise, while clerk in the Anti-Slavery Office in Boston. 42 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. 30. CHAP. I. 1835- Lib. 5 : 174, 175,181,190; May s Rec ollections, p. 162. ing admirably for the cause in Boston ; that it is perfectly safe for him to return immediately ; that they shall be able to start a daily very soon, &c. Our friends are anxious that Gar rison should return. . . . Boat arrived from New York. Glorious news ! A letter in the Commercial Advertiser (Col. Stone s), written by a man not an abolitionist, says the Convention assembled at Utica ; or ganized by appointing a chairman and enrolling six hundred members. A constitution was adopted for a State Society, when, being assailed by a mob, according to a previous under standing adjourned to Peterborough. 1 There an additional number of four hundred appeared and took their seats, making one thousand in all the largest convention ever assembled in that State for any purpose whatever. Judge Jay was elected President. . . . Gerrit Smith made a speech of one hour and a half ; said he had been the greatest obstacle in the way of abolition in that State, but that he was now thoroughly con vinced and with them in the most odious features of their measures. Samuel E. Sewall to W. L. Garrison. MS. BOSTON, October 27, 1835. I received your letter yesterday morning. I have very little time which I can well spare to answer it. I see no objection to your remaining at Brooklyn for the present, except that your friends here will be sorry not to see you. You will certainly have less interruption there in preparing matter for the paper. I believe you would be perfectly safe in Boston now, and might appear here in open daylight without molestation. Yet as Mrs. Garrison could not fail to be perpetually anxious on your account, if you should take up your residence here just now, it seems to me you had better stay where you are. Your life was undoubtedly in imminent peril last Wednesday, and your escape under all the circumstances was almost miraculous ; yet I do not believe even then that the mob intended to murder you, though heaven only knows what would have been the con sequences if you had remained in the hands of an exasperated and phrensied populace. They might have committed a crime which they would abhor in cooler moments, and of which a few hours before they would have felt themselves incapable. 1 To Gerrit Smith s home, on his invitation. JET. 30. J THE BOSTON MOB. II. 1835- Benj. B. Mussey ? You have no doubt been informed that Mr. Knapp has been CHAP. I. obliged to remove the presses, &c., from the Liberator office. He felt bound to Mr. Mussy to remove. It will be difficult for him to find another room to print the paper in. I have recom mended him to advertise for one, as the best mode of finding out if any place can be had. I trust there will not be even one week s interruption in the publication of the Liberator. Thompson, you have probably heard, is at Isaac Winslow s in Danvers. Mrs. Chapman told me she saw him there. He was in fine spirits then, and nothing daunted. I should not think it safe for him to appear in Boston now. I still continue of the opinion I expressed when we had the meeting at my office, that Thompson ought to publish a statement of the material circumstances in relation to the charge brought Ante, p. 4. against him. I think it would be believed, though I am far from supposing that it will do much towards allaying the public excitement against him. The state of things here is lamentable. The most respectable people either openly justify or coldly disapprove the riot, while they are loud in their condemnation and abuse of the aboli tionists, and especially of Thompson and Garrison, and the ladies who dared to hold a meeting in defiance of public opinion. The city authorities have not yet done anything in relation to the riot. 1 The general opinion of the abolitionists is, that some of the gentlemen who were most active in the mob ought to be prosecuted. This is my own opinion. I think nothing will do so much to prevent a repetition of these dis graceful proceedings as punishing a few reputable citizens. If such punishment can be inflicted, it will bring to their senses not only those who are punished, but many more who may feel that they deserve the same fate. A public meeting such as you suggest would have a good effect if called by any persons but abolitionists. The editor of the Advocate has taken a manly stand on this subject, but I do not believe there is virtue enough in the community to sustain him in the call for a public meeting. If you continue at Brooklyn, I shall be always ready to aid Mr. Knapp as far as I can in the publication of the Liberator. Remember me affectionately to Mrs. Garrison and her father and his family, with whom I am a little acquainted. I pray l This indifference and inaction, like the part played by Messrs. Stevens and Means in instigating the mob (ante, p. 10), was the measure of the sin cerity of the Faneuil Hall resolutions deprecating violence. B. F. Hal- lett. 44 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 30. CHAP. I. 1835- that heaven may ever protect and guide you in all the difficul ties to which your devoted services in the cause of humanity may expose you. MS. Wednesday morning. October 24, 1835. MS. Marblehead Beach, Oct. 22, 1835 Lib. 5 : 175. W. L. Garrison to Isaac Knapp. BROOKLYN, CONN., October 28, 1835. MY DEAR PARTNER IN THE JOYS AND HONORS OF PERSECU TION : I wrote a few hasty lines to you by yesterday s mail, stating that no intelligence had reached me from Boston since my departure. Last evening, however, I was overwhelmed with joy on receiving, by the kindness of Mr. Howard, a huge bundle of newspapers and a letter from you, and also one from friend Burleigh for brother Henry. I sat up till 2 o clock this morn ing, devouring the contents of the whole mass, and went to bed without feeling any fatigue, and have risen this morning with a cheerful heart. I shall now be able to drive my editorial quill somewhat freely. After perusing your affectionate letter, the Liberator of Sat urday came next in course. It gave me unalloyed satisfaction, as I think it is one of the best numbers we have ever published. Friend Burleigh s article, respecting the riot, is most admirably and graphically written, and I have scarcely anything to add to it. However, as something on the subject will naturally be expected from my pen, I shall make a simple statement of my seizure, committal to jail, etc. Accordingly, I have commenced it, and now send you the introduction. Altogether, it is prob able that it will be somewhat protracted, though I hope not tedious. I also send you, for conspicuous publication, the excellent letter written by dear Thompson, (of whom, by the way, you write nothing), which may answer a good purpose for him at the present time. It seems to me that my presence in Boston is indispensable, on many accounts. Something must be done to sustain the Liberator, immediately, or how can it survive beyond the present volume ? Something must be done, too, respecting the case of bro. Thompson. Then, as I am to break up housekeeping, it is proper that I should be present to give directions with regard to the disposal of things. Besides, I do not wish the charge to be made, that I have been driven out of Boston and dare not return. Unless you and the friends interpose a positive veto, therefore, I shall probably be in Boston on Saturday evening, ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 45 via Worcester. Henry and sister Anna will reach the city Anna Ben- probably on Monday evening next. son - Shall I come, or shall I not ? I wish to be governed by your advice and the appearance of things in the city but my desire is to be with you a few days. If you see Mr. Vinal, tell him that I shall give up the lease immediately i. e., as soon as I can remove my furniture. I dread to put up my things at auction, as the sacrifice must be great. But what else can I do ? You are right in surmising that there is a determination on the part of the city authorities to put down the anti-slavery cause in Boston, although they talk smoothly and make fair professions. They are not to be trusted. Old birds are not caught with chaff. Probably you will be hindered in getting out the next Liber ator, in consequence of being deprived of an office. Well, impossibilities must not be expected of us by our subscribers. Give my very best thanks to friend Burleigh for his editorials, and ask him to write for this week s paper as much as he can until I get regulated. Who wrote the Sonnet addressed to me 1 It is a fine one. 1 Lib. 5:171. Write to me immediately, so that I may hear from you by Friday s mail and govern my course accordingly. I shall send you the rest of my story to-morrow. Make such selections as you think best. Publish as much of the Utica Convention and uproar as you deem interesting. l To W. L. Garrison. Joy to thee, Son of Trial ! and so soon Hath it been given thee thy faith to prove? Joy! so may Heaven only grant this boon, That naught on earth thy steadfastness may move! Yet when, but yesternight, I saw thee go Surrounded by that fierce, insensate throng, Drunk with the wine of wrath, for evil strong, I felt my soul with bitterest fears o erflow. O! with what earnestness of passion went, Forth from my heart, my whole soul after thee! I knew that, though to bonds and prison sent, Thou from all stain of evil still wert free ; Yet a strange feeling, half of joy arose, That friend of mine should have such men his foes. Oct. 22, 1835. The author, " An Old Acquaintance," is still unknown. 46 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [!T. 30. CHAP. i. Has my lost hat yet been found? I left my cloak at the I ^~ 5 Anti-Slavery Office is it safe ? Do not suffer my anti-slavery articles, at home, to be scattered. Hope Whittier will write something apropos respecting the Boston riot. My Helen is in good health, and so am I. W. L. Garrison to his Wife. MS. BOSTON, November 4, 1835. I seize my pen to inform you of my safe arrival in Boston, this evening say, one hour ago. Of course, as it was some what dark when I arrived, it is not yet known by my mobo- cratic friends that I am here. George Ben- Father, I presume, will tell you, in his epistle, of the pleasant and comfortable ride that we had from Brooklyn to Providence. He seemed to be as little fatigued as myself at the end of the journey. We were both exceedingly disappointed at the G. W. Ben- absence of brother George. I saw, however, William Chace, 1 his father, Mr. Stanton, Mr. Goodell, and many other of our abolition brethren -and I need not add that we had a joyous meeting together. I rode to Boston in one of the open cars, filled with the " common people," and thus saved 50 cents no trifling sum in these days of penury and persecution. I do not know that I was recognized on the way. Instead of ordering the coachman to drive me to No. 23 Brighton Street, I thought it most prudent to be set down at J. E. Fuller. Friend Fuller s. Was just in season to eat supper there, though he and his wife had gone to Newton. After tea, friend Tillson took my arm, and we sallied out into the street for my home, or rather the place that was once our home. But we took another route for he communicated a secret to me viz., that our noble and persecuted brother, George Thompson, was staying at Friend Southwick s, 2 (unknown even to the abolition friends generally), and thither we went to see him. Found him in good health and spirits. After mutual gratu- lations and a rapid conversation, though brief, I said, a Give me a sheet of paper, ink and a pen, for I must not fail to 1 The partner of George W. Benson. 2 Joseph (husband of Thankful) Southwick, of the Quaker stock of Cassandra Southwick, commemorated in Whittier s poem. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Sentiments (ante, 1 : 397), and was elected President of the Mass. A. S. Society in 1835. . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 47 M . Sullivan. Mary Parker. send a line to my anxious wife by to-night s mail." Just at Henry Ben- that moment, Henry and friend Burleigh burst into the room, Catherin and then Mrs. Grew, Miss Sullivan, and Miss Parker. What a collection of raving fanatics and dangerous incendiaries! A happy meeting this ! I have left them all below, for a few moments, to scribble these few imperfect and scarcely legible lines, which Henry will take to the post-office immediately. Now, my dear wife, disburden your mind of uneasiness as much as possible, on my account. Be assured I will not need lessly run into danger, but shall use all proper precaution for my safety. I feel excellently well, both in body and mind. All the dear ladies, with Henry, Thompson, and Burleigh, send the best remembrances to you. Mr. Knapp I have not yet seen, but shall probably see him this evening. Do not yet know where I shall sleep to-night probably here or at bro. Fuller s. T^. L. Garrison to his Wife. 23 BRIGHTON STREET, BOSTON, November 7, 1835. You perceive that I write in the house that we fondly expected to call our home, in which we have spent so many happy hours, but which can be our home no longer. Everything looks, if possible, more than natural at least seems dearer to me than ever. The carpets tables chairs sofa looking-glasses, &c., &c., seem almost to have found a tongue, to welcome my return, and to congratulate me upon my escape out of the jaws of the lion. The clock ticks an eniphatical and sonorous wel come. As for puss, she finds it a difficult matter, with all her purring and playing, to express her joy. Then, to pass to the reception which I receive at the hands of my friends : it is so kind, and sympathetic, and joyful, that one might almost covet to be mobbed, to obtain such a return. One anonymous indi vidual has made me a present of forty-five dollars, 1 which comes most seasonably. I wrote to you on the evening of my arrival, at the house of my esteemed friend Southwick. That night I slept at home, in 1 Accompanied by this note: "Mr. Garrison is requested to receive the enclosed trifle from a friend who owes to him, (under God), in expanded Christian affections and in rectified principles, what money can never repay" (Lib. 5:179). MS. Saturday afternoon. 48 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. . 30. CHAP. I. 1835- Henry Ben son. J. E. Fuller. J. South- wick. our chamber and as you were absent, I permitted puss to occupy the outside of the bed, as a substitute. We reposed very lovingly until morning, without any alarm from mobs without, or disturbance from rats within. Mr. Knapp rose as regularly and as early to prepare breakfast as if he were hired "help," and, Henry completing the trio nay, Mr. Burleigh made a fourth companion we sat down and partook of a very comfortable entertainment. . . . Well, after breakfast on Thursday morning, I sallied out into the streets to see and to be seen "the observed of all obser vers," peradventure. After all, I did not prove to be so great a curiosity as I had anticipated : very few stared at me or seemed to know me, notwithstanding the previous exhibition of myself to four or five thousand " gentlemen of property and standing from all parts of the city." I went directly to the Anti- Slavery Rooms, (having no printing-office that I could first visit), and there busied myself some time in shaking hands with various friends, answering inquiries, and asking questions. In a short time, a long procession marched by the office, with a band of music in full blast, and followed by a squad of spectators j and what do you think they had with them ? It was a large board, on which were drawn two figures, quite conspicuously viz., George Thompson and a black woman. Over the head of Thompson were the words, " The Foreign Emissary " and the black woman asking him, "When are we going to have another meeting, brother Thompson ? " It is fortunate, perhaps, that this company did not know that I was then in the Anti-Slavery Office else they might have stopped in front of it, made a dem onstration of contempt, and excited another uproar. In this shameless manner they paraded through the streets until they were satisfied, and then went out of the city to make a target of Mr. T. and his sable companion. The city authorities made not the slightest attempt to interfere. As it was possible that our house might be disturbed that night, I slept at Mr. Fuller s, and last night at Mr. Southwick s ; but everything has been perfectly quiet in the city and although I have walked freely in all parts of Boston, yet no one has insulted me, or called for any manifestation of displeasure. Nay, many talk of putting me on the list of representatives to the Legislature, to be chosen on Monday next. There is a strong reaction already in our favor, and the news from the interior is most encouraging. . . . Mr. Thompson will probably sail for England in the course of a fortnight but this must be kept private. Mrs. T. is going . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 49 to make a visit to her sister in Baltimore, and will follow her husband in the course of a month or two. . . . Thus we are to lose our eloquent and devoted brother but he will still labor for us in England. Heaven s choicest blessings go with him and his ! It will be almost like tearing myself in twain when he departs. . . . I have seen the Misses Weston, 1 and they speak of you in the kindest terms. On asking them where I could get a room to store our furniture, they said that they occupied a large house, with scarcely anything in it, and I might fill it if I chose. Accordingly I shall move the things there next week, excepting such as Henry and Knapp may want to furnish their room. W. L. Garrison to his Wife. BOSTON, November 9, 1835. Yesterday (Sabbath) forenoon, I concluded not to go to church, because, to confess the truth, I had not replaced my torn pantaloons, 2 and as the weather was too warm to justify the wearing of a cloak. About eleven o clock, one of Mrs. Southwick s daughters came down to our house, and gave me the startling information that my dear friend Thompson would leave the country in the course of an hour that he was going to sail in a packet for St. John and that he wished to see me immediately. Of course, I went in all haste and with much 1 Sisters of Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman; a Weymouth (Mass.) family, daughters of Warren and Anne Bates Weston, of Pilgrim descent. Mrs. Chapman s services to Mr. Garrison were inestimable, her co-operation with him perfect ; and on her, more than on any other woman, the conduct of the cause rested. She was baptized into it in 1834, became the soul of the Boston Female A. S. Society, and from 1840 her administrative energy maintained the organ of the American A. S. Society, and so virtually the Society itself. She was, in her Right and Wrong series (1836-40), the chronicler of a critical epoch, and in countless other ways her pen was effec tively employed, both in prose and in verse, in the Liberator, the Liberty Bell, the. Standard, etc. She was born in 1806 ; her husband, Henry Graf- ton Chapman, in 1804. He was the son of Henry and Sarah Greene Chapman of Boston. The elder Chapman was the only one of those then reckoned the Boston merchants par excellence to make the anti-slavery cause his own : his wife paid, through the Boston Female A. S. Society, the counsel fee in the Med case (see hereafter). Both Mrs. M. W. Chapman and her husband joined the ranks of the abolitionists against the earnest remonstrances of their pastor, Dr. Channing, and under the condemnation of all their friends and acquaintances. 2 Namely, of his " best suit," destroyed by the mob. VOL. II. 4 CHAP. I. 1835- MS. New Bruns wick. 50 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. . 30. 1835- H. G. Chap man. CHAP. I. trepidation ; for the idea of separating from him perhaps till the close of life filled my soul with anguish. I found his wife in tears. . . . My heart swells with sorrow, my cheeks burn with indigna tion, when I think of the treatment which Thompson has received at the hands of the people of this country. If he were a murderer, or parricide, he could not be treated more shame fully than he has been. To think of his being in danger of assassination, even in broad daylight nay, even in the streets of Boston ! Shame infamy upon the city ! But I have no time to moralize you will feel deeply, without the aid of my comments. Suffice it to say, Mr. Chapman took Mr. T. down to the wharf in a carriage, saw him safely on board the packet, and the vessel move down the harbor. So we trust he is now on his way to a place of safety and rest. From St. John he will sail for England. Mr. Knapp will probably go down to him, 1 to convey his baggage safely. Our election, to-day, has passed off quietly. Several votes Ante, p. 48. have been cast for me, but how many is not yet known. 2 We have not been disturbed at the house, and I walk through the city without receiving any insult. . . . P. S. I am now at the house, and have broken open the letter to enjoin secrecy upon you and the rest of the family, respecting Thompson s departure. Here, in Boston, we shall say nothing about it, for the present. . . . New subscribers to the Liberator still continue to come in not less than a dozen to-day. Am much obliged to the mob. W. L. Garrison to Ms Wife. MS. BOSTON, November 14, 1835. Well I expected it. Expected what? Why, a gentle Ante, p. 29. scolding for speaking of Mrs. Garrison s " delicate " state of health, in the Liberator. My dear wife is much more sensitive than the Queen of England, in a matter like this. But necessity was laid upon me thus to write, in order to exculpate myself from the base charge of cowardice preferred against me by the newspaper press. I beg your pardon or, rather, it is the duty of the mob to ask pardon of us both, for reducing us to such a dilemma. l In the end Henry Benson was sent. 2 From 70 to 80, all told. ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 51 Was ever married man more unfortunate with houses ? CHAP. I. Four times within sixteen months have I removed my furniture, ^ and we have the authority of Benjamin Franklin for saying that three removals are as bad as a fire ; so that I have one fire and a third ! . . . Our city is quiet enough. The piece in the Liberator, to-day, Lib. 5 : 182. respecting the Mayor, 1 will probably make some talk. The ladies 2 hold their meeting at Francis Jackson s house next week. In the afternoon of the day appointed for this meeting, November 18, Mr. Garrison took the cars for Providence to rejoin his wife at Brooklyn. On the day following Thanksgiving he wrote to Gr. W. Benson : " A letter from friend Burleigh, at the Anti-Slavery Rooms, MS. Brook- informs me that letters had just been received from Henry and ^ 1835. Thompson. Both arrived safely, and had good passages. . . . Henry Ben- What a mighty void is created by the return of G. T. ! It is G. Thomp- like the loss of a general to an army, whose presence gave in spiration and courage to the humblest soldier. Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public with subtle sophists and insolent scoffers f It is true, we have the lion-hearted, invin cible Weld, at the West, and our strong and indefatigable T. D. Weld. brother Stanton in Rhode Island j but the withdrawal of H. B. Stan- Thompson seems like the loss of many agents. . . . " By the way looking at the thing in its true light, this custom of appointing one day in the year to be specially thank ful for the good gifts of God is an absurdity, tending, I think, to keep up the notion that it is not very material whether we are particularly thankful, or not, during the remainder of the year. The appointment, too, of a thanksgiving by a civil officer is strictly a union of Church and State. I am growing more and more hostile to outward forms and ceremonies and observances, as a religious duty, and trust I am more and more appreciating the nature and enjoying the privileges of that liberty where with the obedient soul is made free. How can a people fast or be thankful at the bidding or request of any man or body of men? IThe Eev. H. C. Wright s "Hancock" article, entitled, "Theodore Lyman, the Mayor of Boston, Co-operating with a Mob, 1 and preceded by the motto Qui non vetat, cum debeat et possit, Jwbet. 2 The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. 52 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. . 30. CHAP. I. 1835- MS. Right and Wrong, 1836, (i)/. 94. H. Marti- neau s Auto biography, 1 : 347- MS. " Gerrit Smith has at last waived all his scruples and joined our ranks. No doubt you have seen his letter in the Emancipator. You perceive he boggles a little at some of us and our measures, but never mind he will soon be as rampant as any of us. We must remember that he has been our antag onist, and that he constituted one of the main pillars of the Colonization Society. 1 Whether he has wholly swung clear of that Society does not appear ; indeed, he does not allude to it. But as he declared in his speech at Peterboro , that he could go with us even in our most odious sentiments, and as he has now connected himself with a Society which aims to destroy his long-cherished scheme, he must be strangely inconsistent if he can still support the Colonization Society. He certainly deserves much credit for the Christian manliness and magna nimity which he manifests in joining our ranks at this perilous crisis. So much for the mob at Utica ! " W. L. Garrison to Nary Benson, at Providence. BROOKLYN, November 27, 1835. Much as my mind is absorbed in the anti-slavery cause, there are other great subjects that frequently occupy my thoughts, upon which much light remains to be thrown, and which are of the utmost importance to the temporal and eternal welfare of man. As to the Peace question, I am more and more convinced that it is the duty of the followers of Christ to suffer themselves to be defrauded, calumniated and barbarously treated, without resorting either to their own physical energies, or to the force of human law, for restitution or punishment. It is a difficult lesson to learn. . . . Harriet Martineau, the distinguished authoress from Eng land, has . . . shown true moral courage in attending the meeting of the Boston Female -Anti- Slavery Society, and avowing her approval of its principles. W. L. Garrison to G. W. Benson, at Providence. BROOKLYN, November 30, 1835. The Liberator gets along tolerably well during my absence ; but the proof-sheet is not read so critically as I could desire. 1 At the annual meeting of the Colonization Society, in January, 1834, Mr. Smith moved the raising of a subscription of $50,000, heading the list with a pledge on his own part of $5,000. Seventeen other pledges were made at the same time, amounting to but $4,570 (Niks 1 Register, 45:394). ^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 53 Typographical blunders meet my eye rather too frequently. CHAP. I. But it is a blundering world. ... x ~ Accompanying this is an excellently written epistle, both as to its composition and its penmanship, from Rachel Robinson, wife of Rowland T. Robinson, of Ferrisburgh, Vt. . . . Not a particle of the productions of slave labor, whether it be rice, sugar, coffee, cotton, molasses, tobacco, or flour, is used in her family, and thus her practice corresponds admirably with her doctrine. But I cannot say that I have as yet arrived at clear satisfaction upon this point, so as to be able to meet the diffi culties that cluster in our path. Mr. Sabin has started the rumor that the Liberator is to be printed in this village ! and considerable oppugnation has been manifested, it is said, on the part of the " friends of the Constitution." They will not have it here not they ! This is very amusing, and serves to lessen the amount of melan choly in our sombre world. Think you, the dignity and self- importance of little villages are behind those of great cities ? I tell you, nay. Did not Canterbury take the lead ? And did not New York, Philadelphia and Boston obsequiously follow ? You must not calculate upon my being present at your State Convention in February. A crisis comes at or about that time to me and mine, which is of too much importance to allow me to be absent. It relates, you know, to a question of domestic emancipation and let the South interfere if it dare ! W. L. Garrison to Henry E. Benson, at Boston. BROOKLYN, December 5, 1835. MS. Your safe arrival at Boston has removed a load of anxiety from all our minds, and filled us with joy. . . . The Liberator was received yesterday, and its contents eagerly and critically perused. Bro. Thompson s farewell Lib. 5 : 195. letter is most happily conceived, and powerfully expressed, and well calculated to revive the hearts of our abolition brethren. With what alarm and fury will our enemies read his promise to expose their baseness and cruelty before the people of Great Britain even to call them by name! He will hardly be safe from their murderous designs, even with the Atlantic rolling between. How earnestly do I desire that he may have a safe voyage, and that all those vitally impor- 54 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. . 30. CHAP. I. tant materials which he has so industriously accumulated, 1 jjjTj. may also obtain a safe conveyance ! . . . How many new subscribers has the Liberator received since the riot up to the present time ? and what is proposed as to its continuance another year? I wish it could be enlarged, safely but it would be hazardous to make the experiment. The engraving we will lay aside, and substitute a plain head The Liberator? This alteration will admit of more reading in the paper. Let the present motto remain we cannot have a Ante, i : 219. better, although I made it. There s egotism for you ! I long to hear that friend Knapp has succeeded in hiring a printing-office, especially as the year is so near its close j for I know it must be exceedingly vexatious to be under the neces sity of resorting to other printing establishments. I send a letter to your care for bro. H. C. Wright, which I wish him to receive as soon as convenient. He is a valuable acquisition to our cause a fearless, uncompromising and zealous Christian. A.A.Phelps. It strengthens and animates me to hear that bro. Phelps is to remain in Boston. You know how highly I appreciate his worth, and what unwavering confidence I place in his judg ment, integrity and devotion. His presence, with bro. Wright s co-operation, will make my absence from the city more ex cusable. . . . I perceive by the Christian Register that Dr. Channing has at last given publicity to his thoughts on slavery. Send me the work in the next bundle of papers, for I am anxious to review it. The extract from it in the Register is singularly weak and inconclusive but I suppose it is the most rotten spot in the Sidney Wil- volume, else Prof. Willard would not have quoted it as the *"? !* soundest. . . . So, it seems, because I suffered a communication to go into the Liberator, reprimanding the Mayor for his pusillanimous conduct, our friend E. M. P. Wells 3 has captiously ordered his paper to be stopped. Very well " Good-by." The pretext is most ridiculous. See what it is to have respect unto persons ! Surely, " An Abolitionist " and " Another Abolitionist " two 1 Six volumes of extracts from Northern and Southern papers, besides tracts, volumes, placards, etc. (Lib. 5 : 195). 2 This change, happily, was not made. 3 An Episcopal clergyman, Principal of the Boston Asylum and Farm School, of which Mayor Lyman was President and a liberal benefactor (see Josiah Quincy s Figures of the Past, p. 5). . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 55 against one ought to atone for the essay of " Hancock." I am disgusted with this squeamish regard for Mr. Lyman, and think it very unwise, as well as positively criminal, for any to attempt to exonerate him from blame. CHAP. I. 1835- Ellis Gray Loring 1 to W. L. Garrison, at Brooklyn. BOSTON, Dec. 5, 1835. I write you in behalf of Miss Susan Cabot, a sister of our friend Mrs. Follen, and a firm supporter of the abolition faith. She is about to pass some weeks in Philadelphia, and has a strong desire to become acquainted with Miss Grimke, who wrote the admired letter in the Liberator addressed to you. . . . I have just read with intense interest Dr. Channing s tract on Slavery. It is the most elaborate work on the philosophy of Anti-Slavery I have ever seen, and appears most seasonably when iniquity is claiming to pass for an angel of light. I am grieved at some few censures of the abolitionists in it, put forth, I think, on insufficient grounds, but nineteen-twentieths of the book are sound in principle, and I will not grudgingly bestow my gratitude and praise for this splendid testimony to the truth. You see, I presume, the storm of abuse which Miss Mar- tineau has called on herself from the newspapers, for her independent conduct at the ladies meeting. In addition to l Mr. Loring was born in Boston, in 1803, the only son of a mother widowed shortly after his birth. At the Latin School, where he was dis tinguished for scholarship, he had a friend and companion in R. W. Emerson. A gentle and delicate boy, he greatly endeared himself to his classmates and his teachers. He was admitted to the bar in 1827, and attained immediate success. His espousal of the anti-slavery cause at once cost him the larger number of his clients ; and the sudden coldness of the Ticknors, Prescotts, and other leading Boston families put an end to his hitherto intimate social relations with them. He never regretted what he thus forfeited, and never wavered in his adhesion to the cause, in the management of which his counsel was invaluable. His decisive support of the Liberator in its deadly pecuniary crises has been already shown. No one of the Boston circle of abolitionists was more beloved for his amiable spirit, or more trusted for judgment and integrity. (See the tributes in Lib. June 4, 18, 1858.) At least half of Dr. Channing s anti-slavery reputation belongs to Ellis Gray Loring. "It was from his hand, marked with his now so familiar writing," said Wendell Phillips, "that I received the first anti-slavery pamphlet, in the record of his appearance before the [Mass. ] Senate to protest against the attempt to punish meetings like these with the State Prison" (Lib. 28:91). Eliza Lee Fallen. A. Grimke. Ante,T. :5i8. 56 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. i. this, she is beset in private, incessantly, to give some explana- l8 ~ 5 tion, which may be published. She quietly replies that the facts do not admit of explanation : that if any one wishes to know what she said, and how she said it, he must look at " the Lib. 5 : 187. perfectly faithful report " in the Liberator. She says she spoke of her full agreement with the principles of the abolitionists, because she knew what they were j but that she did not know enough of their measures to venture to pronounce upon them. She feels evidently a very strong interest in the Anti- Slavery Society, though she has taken up Dr. Channing s notion (a mistaken one, I think) of the superiority of individual to associated action. On our corner-stone principles she is clear and strong. She believes in the propriety and duty of creating and exerting a moral influence against slavery, in the free States. She told me yesterday, that if she could control events in the U. S. she would emancipate immediately every slave in it. She goes even further than some of us, for she denies that the slaveholder has any RIGHT to claim com pensation, if his slaves should be taken from him. (You know some of us think that he has a legal, not a moral right to regard the emancipation of his slaves as the taking away of property.) Respecting, as I do, Miss Martineau s profound judgment and wide information (second only to the truth and sweetness of her moral character), I am gratified at her adhering to imme diate emancipation, as well in an economical as in a moral point of view. Miss M. wishes to know you. She is to be at my house about Jan. 10th. I hope you will be in Boston at that time. What is the probable prospect ? W. L. Garrison to S. J. May, at Boston. BROOKLYN, Dec. 5, 1835. I have just read the scandalous attack upon Miss Martineau, in Lib. 5 : 201. the Daily Advertiser, to which you refer in your letter. It will confirm her in the faith, for it is too passionate to convince or alarm a steadfast and enlightened mind like hers. To think that the Advertiser has at last become so vulgar and malignant as to quote with deference and strong approval the vile slang of the Courier and Enquirer ! Mr. Hale has lately had a failure in his pecuniary matters, and he now seems to be zealous to become a bankrupt in his editorial character as soon as pos- -fflr. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 57 sible. 1 "We ought not to be surprised, however, that the CHAP. i. attendance of Miss Martineau at the anti-slavery meeting ~ creates a stir among our opponents, for it is as if a thunder bolt had fallen upon their heads. I believe, could they have foreseen this event, to prevent its occurrence they would have permitted even George Thompson to address the ladies without interruption, and have chosen to sacrifice the honor and glory accruing from a mobocratic victory. It is thus that the wicked are taken in their own craftiness, and the counsels of the froward are carried headlong. Surely, it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. Well, it is announced that the great Dr. Channing has pub lished his thoughts upon the subject of slavery ! Of course, we must now all fall back, and " hide our diminished heads." The book I will not condemn until I peruse it ; but I do not believe it is superior either in argument or eloquence to many of our own publications. However, I am heartily glad that he is now committed upon this subject ; for, however cautiously and tenderly he may have handled it, if he does not soon have a Southern hornets nest about his ears, then it will be because hornets have respect unto the persons of men ! They will sting him unmercifully, and he will suffer greatly if he is not pro vided in advance with the genuine abolition panacea. . . . If the extract from the work [in the Christian Register] be a fair sample of the whole of it, it is weak and incoherent enough indeed, that alone is enough to spoil a good book, especially a book upon moral reform. The Doctor says there are slaveholders who " deserve great praise." Why? Because they profess to " deplore and abhor the institution." So did all the slaveholders until they were compelled to tear off their hypocritical mask ; and now they go in a body synods, pres byteries, and all in open advocacy of the bloody system ! But the Doctor s meritorious slaveholders "believe that partial emancipation, in the present condition of society, would bring unmixed evil on bond and free." So do all of them slave- drivers, slave-traders, and slave-robbers ! But these good souls further believe, that " they are bound to continue the relation [what a nice, soft term !] until it shall be dissolved by compre- 1 The reference is to Nathan Hale, whose offence has been surpassed in the second generation. The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in a seventy years review of the course of the Boston Advertiser (Jan. 19, 1883), glories in its having been " pitiless in its denunciations of such foreign carpet-baggers as the Thompsons and Martineaus " ! 58 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. CHAP. I. hensive and systematic measures of the State " ! " They are jZ" 5 appalled by what seem to them the perils and difficulties of liberating multitudes, born and brought up to that condition " ! Here is a mantle of charity (?) broad enough to cover the sin of the world. I hope uncommon pains will be taken by our abolition breth ren to circulate large quantities of this week s Liberator before the types are distributed. Bro. Thompson s letter is full of the majesty of truth and the power of love. The defense of his character is most happily written, and together they ought to traverse the length and breadth of the land. Lib. 5 : 194. " He has gone ! " wrote Mr. Garrison in the Liberator, of George Thompson s departure. " The paragon of modern eloquence the benefactor of two nations the universal philanthropist the servant of God, and the friend of all mankind is no longer in our midst. . . . He has gone ! But not to cease from his labors in the cause of mercy. He has a mighty work to per form in England. . . . It is by the pressure of public sentiment abroad, as well as at home, that the bloody system is to be tumbled into ruins." Only the lapse of years, in fact, could disclose the full import of that Ameri can mission which Mr. Garrison had instigated, and which, even had it ended here, must have been pronounced successful. 1 The moral and material alliance with Eng land, already ensured by his own visit to that country, was now, however, to be indissolubly cemented by Mr. Thompson s expulsion from the United States. In a parting letter to Henry C. Wright, dated St. John, N. B., November 25, 1835, the fugitive laid down the programme to be faithfully carried out in his native land : MS. u In leaving America I consulted usefulness, not safety. Un derstand me. I believe my life was sought. I believe many were prepared to take it many more prepared to rejoice over the deed ; and I left your country under the conviction that I l "I keep within the bounds when I say that my mission has far tran scended my most sanguine expectations " (Geo. Thompson at Glasgow, Jan. 25, 1836, Lib. 6 : 69. See also Letters and Addresses by Geo. Thompson during his Mission in the United States/ Boston, 1837). 2ET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 59 could not go abroad without the almost certain prospect of CHAP. i. death. But still, had there been reason to believe that by stay- ~ ing and falling on your soil, I should thereby have done the will of Grod, and the best thing to advance the cause, I trust I should not have hesitated to remain and be offered up. The finger of Providence seemed to point to Great Britain as a scene of labor not to be neglected for the problematical good which a longer continuance in the U. S. might effect. There was a field wide, open, secure, rich, waving already, white unto the harvest the public in the fittest possible state to receive the infor mation I had collected, and the appeals I was qualified to found upon that evidence. After viewing the matter deliberately, and I trust prayerfully, I came to the decision that the path of duty lay across the waters ; and then, through the length and breadth of the kingdom, publishing everywhere the wrongs of the Ameri can slave, and calling upon man, woman and child to join in one united and overwhelming remonstrance against the un matched wickedness of American slavery." On this side, meantime, Mr. Thompson was leaving behind him an imposing number of anti-slavery societies almost called into being by his eloquence, 1 an increased zeal among those already existing, and the reputation (teste Peleg Sprague) of having given "their greatest Ante, 1:497. prevalence and intensity" to the anti-slavery doctrines he had been invited to propagate. 2 Nowhere was the impression made by his year s labors more profound than at the South. From them Jefferson Davis dates the Rise and " public agitation " for abolition, and the deliberate at- Confederacy, tempt to dissolve the Union and the author of a notable secession work 3 likewise declares Thompson to have been " the controlling spirit of this effort to array North and South on geographical lines," and renews the charge that r he went about " repeating in conversation that every slaveholder should have his throat cut. " 1 Of the 328 societies reported as formed during the year 1835-36 (Lib. 6 : 78), a significant number must have been the immediate product of Mr. Thompson s exertions. 2 Mr. Thompson had delivered no less than 220 addresses (Lib. 6 : 49). 3 The Cradle of the Confederacy, by Joseph Hodgson. Mobile, 1876. (Page 222.) 60 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. [^T. 30. CHAP. i. But, more than in all this, the significance of Mr. Thomp- !8^s. son s experience is to be found in the demonstration which it afforded of Southern control over Northern liberties. None too soon it was discovered that this execrated Eng lishman s right to enjoy the immunities guaranteed, under the laws, to every inhabitant of the Union, could not be denied without involving the suppression of native free dom of speech, and the imperilling of every American s life who refused to be dumb on the subject of slavery. Mr. Garrison s vicarious suffering for his foreign col league proved that the assault of slavery was directed not against individuals or against nationalities, but against rights the most lawful, the most sacred, the most indispensable. The liberties of the race at the North (at the South, after the ransacking of the mails with the connivance of the Federal Administration, they were com pletely extinguished) were now put upon the defensive in the persons of the despised abolitionists. The struggle for the next decade, whatever its phases, was to turn upon the right to speak and to publish. It was the necessary prelude to any attack upon slavery in its own domain, and had been foreseen by Mr. Garrison when he answered for himself the mocking question, " Why don t you go South?" (after having been there), and went and set up his stan dard under the shadow of Bunker Hill. It was precipi tated, as it deserved to be, by Mr. Thompson s coming to America ; and the debt of gratitude the North owed him for his instrumentality in arousing it to a sense of its own servitude, 1 will only seem greater as time goes on. 1 For a lofty expression of the true Northern and American spirit, "the spirit of the Puritans and of the principles of 76," as John Farmer phrased it (MS. Feb. 15, 1836), one can never point to any thing better than Francis Jackson s reply to S. J. May s letter conveying the thanks of the Massa chusetts A. S. Society for his hospitality after the mob to the Female A. S. Society (Lib. 5 : 191 ; Right and Wrong in Boston, 1836, [1] p. 98) : " But in tendering them the use of my dwelling-house, sir, I not only had in view their accommodation, but also, according to my humble measure, to recover and perpetuate the right of free discussion, which has been shamefully trampled on. A great principle has been assailed one which lies at the very foundation of our republican institutions. JET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 61 We return to Mr. Garrison s correspondence : W. L. Garrison to Henry E. Benson, at Boston. CHAP. I. 1835- MS. A. A. Phelps. BROOKLYN, December 10, 1835. I am glad that bro. Phelps is to labor for the regeneration of Connecticut. He is admirably qualified for the work in this State. True, it will be arduous but what citadel of prejudice or oppression can withstand the artillery of truth, and " the sacramental host of God s elect " ? . . . I have read Channing s work. It abounds with useful truisms expressed in polished terms, but, as a whole, is an in flated, inconsistent and slanderous production. I would not give one dozen of Rankin s " Letters " for one hundred copies Ante, 1:305. of Channing s essay. You must apprise me, without delay, of the result of the meeting respecting the Liberator. If my presence is indispen sably necessary in Boston, I will go on immediately ; but if not, I had rather not incur the loss of time and the cost of the journey, needlessly. . . . I wish bro. Knapp to take special care of all the pieces I IsaacKnapp. send, and make a choice selection from my selections. On the " If a large majority of this community choose to turn a deaf ear to the wrongs which are inflicted upon their countrymen in other portions of the land if they are content to turn away from the sight of oppression, and pass by on the other side so it must be. But when they undertake in any way to impair or annul my right to speak, write, and publish upon any subject, and more especially upon enormities which are the common concern of every lover of his country and his -kind so it must not be so it shall not be, if I for one can prevent it. Upon this great right let us hold on at all hazards. And should we, in its exercise, be driven from public halls to private dwellings, one house at least shall be consecrated to its preservation. And if, in de fence of this sacred privilege, which man did not give me, and shall not (if I can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls shall be levelled to the earth, let them fall if they must ; they cannot crumble in a better cause. They will appear of very little value to me after their owner shall have been whipt into silence. . . . "Happily, one point seems already to be gaining universal assent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion. Hence the efforts of the friends and apologists of slavery to break down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in its preservation. The contest is therefore substantially be tween liberty and slavery. "As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty breathe without it. Losing this, we, too, shall be no longer freemen in deed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we now seek to emancipate." 62 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKBJSON. [-ET. 30. CHAP. I. first page of next paper, I wish him to put the extracts jjT" from McDuffie s Message x and those of the other governors which accompany this. They form one complete picture. Amos A. Phelps to W. L. Garrison, at Brooklyn. MS. FARMINGTON, CONN., December 10, 1835. I regretted exceedingly that I did not find you in Boston the other day, on several accounts. . . . And first, in reference to Dr. Channing s book. You have doubtless seen it before this, and very likely have begun to dissect it and to set Dr. C. over against Dr. C. Be this as it may, I hope you will take it in hand and give it a thorough review. Some of our good Unitarian friends, I think, are biassed in their judgment of it by their partialities for the Dr. They need to see the Dr. tested by an impartial and unbiassed pen. And I have another reason for saying the Dr. should be thus reviewed. On my return I called on Dr. l This message of Governor McDuffle to the Legislature of South Caro lina (Lib. 5 : 198) contained the whole gospel of slavery. Beginning with the pictorial and other incendiary documents sent to South Carolina, which were descanted upon at length with the most extraordinary Southern rhetoric, the Governor designated Thompson as "the felon renegado who flees from the justice of his country," and declared it to be his deliberate opinion that interference like that of the abolitionists with slavery should be made punishable " by death without benefit of clergy," and the authors of it regarded as " enemies of the human race." South Carolina should set the example, and also demand of the North, on grounds of "international law," that it punish the agitators. Slavery existed by the will of God, Africans being fit for no other condition. Emancipation would be a curse to them : they were better off than English operatives or Irish peasants, were cheerful and contented. Servitude was necessary in every com munity that had ever existed or should exist ; and in another generation the North might be driven to choose between its adoption and anarchy. It superseded the necessity for an order of nobility. If the slaves were freed and made voters, no rational man could live in such a state of society. " Domestic slavery, therefore, instead of being a political evil, is the corner stone of our republican edifice." The North should be informed that the South makes no distinction between ultimate and immediate emancipation. As the abolitionists cannot hope to convince slaveholders, they must mean to instigate the North to Federal emancipation, against which the Legisla ture should protest. Finally, cotton and slavery were inseparable. For the other gubernatorial messages referred to above, see Lib. 5:205: Gov ernor Lumpkin, of Georgia ("Upon this subject [slavery] we can hear no arguments : our opinions are unalterably fixed ") ; Governor Swain of North Carolina (the North should suppress abolitionism " totally and promptly ") ; and Governors Wolf, of Pennsylvania, and Vroom, of New Jersey, who deprecate agitation but deny that it can be legally repressed. . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 63 Hawes, Hartford, and found that he had come out as boldly on the subject, Thanksgiving Day, as lie dare. He has since been requested to preach the sermon to the Free Church in Hartford. He told me [he] thought of drawing it up with more care, and, after preaching it there, give it to the public. I replied, I hoped he would if it was orthodox. He said, yes, yes, he was true to the principles, but then he couldn t go exactly with all our movements ; and intimated that he had taken some ex ceptions to them just enough, to use his own expression, to " save his shins." The plain English of the whole of it, then, is this, that he and he is but one of a hundred such can t keep still any longer on the subject, but cannot bear to come out on the subject without taking sundry exceptions, just to " save their shins" from the kicks we have had to take, as well as to seem to have some justification for their long and guilty silence. Winslow, I understand, is coming out also with his famous sermons. Others, I doubt not, will follow suit. In this state of things, it seems to me all-important that every such man who comes out should be reviewed without respect of his person ; and where he is naked, let his nakedness be made visible. It is better to keep the rod over them, and make them hold still, than to have them come out mere go-betweenities. Still, while we show them no mercy, let us treat them with due respect, and ac knowledge the good they say, and thank them for it, and at the same time make the public see how, by their contradictions, they eat and re-eat their own words. I intend, if Wright wishes it, to review Channing in the Quarterly Magazine. CHAP. 1835- Rev. Hub- bard Wins- low ; ante, i : 478. Elizur Wright, Jr. W. L. Garrison to Henry E. Benson, at Boston. BROOKLYN, December 15, 1835. The bundle of papers, via Worcester, was safely conveyed and put into my hands on Friday evening, and great was my surprise, as well as pleasure, to receive a copy of the Liberator. In my article on Mr. Cheever s sentence, you perceive I broached my ultra doctrines respecting reliance upon the civil arm and appeals to the law. Tracy will probably nibble at it, and perhaps start anew the cry of " French Jacobinism ! " but so be it. I am more and more convinced that the doctrine is inseparably connected with perfect Christian obedience. 1 IThe Rev. George B. Cheever, of Salem, Mass., had been convicted in June of libel for a temperance allegory entitled Deacon Giles s Distillery, MS. Dec. ii, Dec. 12, 1835- Ed. Boston , i : 472. 64 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. . 30. MS. Lib. 5 : 190. See Memoir by Dr. Isaac Parish, 1837, or Still s Un derground Railroad, p. 698, and Whittiers Memorial Stanzas, Lib. 6 : 200. By Gov. Mc- Duffie, ante, p. 62. Ante, i : 477, 478. W. L. Garrison to Thomas Shipley, at Philadelphia. BROOKLYN, December 17, 1835. Be assured that I am deeply affected in view of the sym pathy and regard which some of my beloved friends in Phila delphia have recently manifested for me, especially on account of my ill-treatment by an infuriated mob, a few weeks since. Among their names I was truly gratified to see that of Thomas Shipley, whose labors in the cause of bleeding humanity have been so indefatigable, so disinterested, and, in a multitude of cases, so abundantly successful. I am young in the service, you are old ; and if, since our acquaintance happily com menced, we have not always seen precisely alike as to the best mode of advancing the sacred cause of liberty, yet our prin ciples have run pari passu, and our hearts beat spontaneously together. It is cheering to see that the unsophisticated disciples of Christ, and the true friends of emancipation, are beginning to see and feel and act alike, as it respects both principles and measures. They would have coalesced much earlier, had the same horrible developments of Southern and Northern senti ments, which now affright them by their enormity, been made at an earlier period. Now that it is proclaimed from the high places of power, that " domestic slavery is the corner-stone of our republican edifice " ; now that the punishment of death is denounced against those who shall plead for emancipation, whether immediate or ultimate ; now that the " self-evident truths " of the Declaration of Independence are religiously de clared to be mere "rhetorical flourishes"; now that churches, and presbyteries, and synods are impiously voting that slavery is divinely sanctioned, and may properly be perpetuated ; now for which he had previously been assaulted publicly (Lib. 5 : 27). Mr. Gar rison came to his support by reprinting the article in the Liberator (5 : 32). For the subsequent stages in this cause celebre see Lib. 5 : 36, 56, 107, 112. An extract has already been made (ante, 1 : 478) from Mr. Garrison s com ments on Attorney-General Austin s argument at the June term. The article now in question (Lib. 5: 199) was concerned with the same lawyer s argument on the appeal, on Nov. 4, 1835. In the course of it the recent victim of an atrocious mob declared " I believe that all those who name the name of Christ, and profess to be his followers, and to be willing to follow him through good and through evil report, through flood and fire, as lambs in the midst of wolves, ought never to trust in an arm of flesh for protection, but should wholly cease from man ought never to prosecute, or imprison, or put to death, for any injury done to them by their enemies." -ET.30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 65 that no man, however venerable in years, or high in station, or CHAP. I. estimable in character, can openly plead the cause of more ^ than two millions of stolen men, women and children, without losing his reputation and subjecting himself to every species of insult, injury and peril j now that lawful and benevolent meet ings are systematically broken up, or suppressed by mobs headed by " respectable " and " honorable " men j now that guiltless citizens are seized ruthlessly, and with perfect im punity tarred and feathered, or beaten with stripes, or driven away by force, or suspended upon gibbets, and that a tempting price is put upon the heads of others ; and finally, now that there is a loud clamor for the passage of laws that shall deprive us of the liberty of speech and the liberty of the p ress . I S ay, now that this is the state of the controversy, and this the condition of our country, and this the direful alternative that is presented to us, hereafter all " good men and true," all who fear God and hate covetousness, and all who love their country and their kind, will rally under a com mon standard, adopt common measures, and cherish common principles. . . . I join with you in high commendation of the speech of Gerrit Smith before the Convention at Peterboro . It will be preserved and read when monuments are crumbling into dust. . . . Most cordially, too, do I agree with you in your views re specting the duty of procuring an amendment to our national Constitution of that part of it, which is wet with human blood, which requires us to send back into bondage those who escape from the lash and the chain. It makes us as a people, and as a State, the abettors of human degradation and soul- murder ; and shall we not, if possible, by a constitutional process, blot out that bloody stain ? The course of events during the present session of Congress will undoubtedly indi cate what steps we may wisely take upon this subject. . . . It is quite refreshing to see Friend Lundy and the Genius of Universal Emancipation again in the field together. They are Lib. $ : 203. bullet-proof. Thou murderer Lynch, avaunt ! . . . Rev. Dr. Channing has just published a sort of Ishmaelitish work on slavery. He modestly asks us to give up our watch word " Immediate Emancipation," to disband our societies, and to keep our publications from the slaveholders ! His book is an 18mo [full 1 ?] of contradictions, and contains some un merited defamation of abolitionists, although he confesses he VOL. II. 5 66 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. |>T. 30. CHAP. I. has never attended one of their meetings nor heard one of j JT" 5 their addresses ! However, there are many eloquent and power ful passages in it. W. L. Garrison to 8. J. May, at Boston. MS. BROOKLYN, December 26, 1835. As to-morrow is the Sabbath, I shall defer leaving for Boston until Monday, via Worcester. . . . I am happy to learn that there is a disposition, on the part of the abolition brethren, to place the Liberator, if possible, in a better condition than it has been heretofore. Two or three things are certain. 1st. The debts of the Liberator ought to be liquidated. 2d. If they are not, it must of necessity be discon tinued. 3d. The publishers are wholly unable to discharge the debts. Now it is for the friends of our cause to consider whether this is one of those cases in which it is a gospel duty to " bear one another s burdens." I presume if a frank statement, signed by a responsible committee, were drawn up and circu lated among abolitionists in various parts of the country, the sum that is needed would readily be obtained. . . . Whatever change is made, of course the feelings and desires of Mr. Knapp must be consulted as well as mine. Should he wish to contract for the printing of the paper, at the same rates as others print, he ought to have the preference. 1 I am in clined to think that our friends, wholly ignorant as they are, generally, respecting the losses and crosses of every newspaper concern, more or less, hardly do us justice as to our past man agement. I admit that we have not been methodical or sharp in keeping our accounts ; but we suffer much more from the negligence of our subscribers than from our own. We have not squandered or misapplied, but, on the contrary, as a whole, been careful of our means. Recollect that we have passed through a struggle of five years. . . . Yet we are in arrears only about $2500. . . . How many religious and political papers have perished, (though supported by sectarian and political zeal), since we started the Liberator ! I thank you for your hints respecting Dr. Channing. I mean to be only as severe as truth and justice require. His book, as a whole, I do not like : it is entirely destitute of magnanimity, l The dissolution of the partnership of Garrison & Knapp, which was formally announced at the beginning of the new volume, is here regarded as a foregone conclusion. . 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 67 CHAP. I. 1835- MS. H. E. Ben son. President and it requires of us about as much, in fact, as do our Southern opponents. Probably I shall not commence my review until the second edition appears. W. L. Garrison to his Wife, at Brooklyn. ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, BOSTON, Monday evening, December 28, 1835. "Without accident or detention, I have safely arrived in Boston, having been only eight hours on the journey. . . . Dear brother Henry was at the depot, and clapped his hand upon my shoulder as soon as I put my foot upon the soil, giving me quite a brotherly welcome. We then rode to Miss Parker s * (where I am to remain), and were just in season to take tea. Boston Fem. It was quite refreshing to see familiar faces once more. Mr. and Mrs. May sat at my right hand, propounding many ques tions about the Brooklynites, to which I responded as rapidly as possible. As soon as I had finished my supper, I came down to the office, and having first chatted a little with brother Henry and friend Knapp, then read the last Liberator, I have now seized my pen to write to one who is dearer to me than any other earthly object. . . . Brother Phelps has been mobbed in Farmington. A large brickbat was thrown through the window, almost with the velocity of a cannon-ball, and narrowly missed his head. Had it struck him, undoubtedly he would have been killed on the spot. He went on with his lecture, however, and told the people he would not cease to plead the cause of enslaved humanity in that place, until either mob law was put down, or he should fall a victim. The next evening his meeting was slightly disturbed, but the third evening he carried his point triumphantly. About twenty of the rioters have been arrested all " men of cloth." Rev. Mr. Grosvenor has been mobbed in Worcester County. Mass. Charles Stuart has been mobbed in the western part of the State of New York. A brickbat struck him on the head, which made him senseless for a time ; but as soon as he recovered, he began to plead for the suffering and dumb, until he was per suaded by a clergyman to desist. Rev. George Storrs has been mobbed (according to law) in Ltt.6: New Hampshire. In the midst of his prayer, he was arrested, and violently shaken, and carried before a justice of the peace as a l In Hayward Place. The Mays boarded with her. Dec. 26, 1835- Conn. 68 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. . 30. CHAP. f. 1835- Ante, pp. 63, 64. MS. Henry Chap man, Senior. vagrant, idler, and disturber of the peace ! ! by gentlemen, too ! ! But they could find nothing against him legally, and so he was dismissed. These shameful transactions will doubtless be multiplied, but our safety and strength lie in an omnipotent arm. " The Lord reigneth," we have no other, and desire no better consolation. A sharp Review of Dr. Channing s book has just appeared, 1 said to be from the pen of James T. Austin, the famous Attorney- General in the case of Mr. Cheever. Of course I have not had time to read it. The anti-slavery debate in Congress 2 continued five days ! Mr. Slade, of Vermont, 3 spoke nobly. They did not dare to reject the petitions, but laid them on the table. The South erners were very fierce. W. L. Garrison to Ms Wife, at Brooklyn. BOSTON, December 30, 1835. To-day has been the day for the Ladies Fair 4 but not so bright and fair out of doors as within doors. The Fair was held at the house of Mr. Chapman s father, in Chauncey Place, in two large rooms. Perhaps there were not quite so many things prepared as last year, but the assortment was nevertheless va rious. There were several tables, as usual, which were under the superintendence of the Misses Weston, the Misses Ammidon, Miss Paul, Miss Chapman, Mrs. Sargent (who, by the way, spoke in the kindest manner of you), and one or two other persons, whom I did not know. I bought a few things, and had one or two presents for Mrs. Garrison. The Fair will be con tinued to-morrow, but I do not think the proceeds will equal the sales of last year. Everything has been conducted in a pleasing manner. Friend Whittier s and Thompson s portraits 5 l Remarks on Dr. Channing s Slavery. Two editions were sold within a fortnight (Lib. 6:3). It was reviewed in turn by Mr. Garrison in Lib. 6:11. 2 Over the reception of petitions for the abolition of Slavery in the Dis trict of Columbia, beginning Dec. 18, 1835 (Lib. 5:206; 6: 1, 2, 8, 19, 20, 24, 26, 28, 32). 3 William Slade, Representative from Vermont 1831-43. In 1844 he was made Governor of that State. 4 This was the second year of the anti-slavery bazaar, which became so important an auxiliary in providing the means for agitation. 5 Mr. Thompson s portrait was painted by S. S. Osgood, by order of Mrs. M. W. Chapman. It was sold to Mr. John S. Kimball, who afterwards had it lithographed. It is now in the possession of Mr. Garrison s family. The likeness was not thought very satisfactory (Lib. 9 : 55). JET. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 69 were hung up to observation mine 1 has gone on to Phila delphia to be engraved. Henry, Knapp, and myself sleep (all in a row) in the office, H. E Ben in good style and fine fellowship one of us upon a sofa-bed stead, and two upon settees, which are not quite so soft, to be sure, as ours at Brooklyn. I have had invitations to stay with friends Fuller, South wick, and Shattuck, and at Miss Parker s, but prefer to be independent. The arrangements for the Liberator are not yet definitely made, but I think all past affairs will soon be settled. Our friend Sewall s " intended," Miss Winslow, is now in the S.E.Sewall. city, and was at the Fair to-day, with two sparkling eyes and a pleasant countenance. How soon the marriage knot is to be tied, I cannot find out. Don t you think they are unwise not to hasten matters ? . . . This evening I took tea at Mr. Loring s. He has been some what ill, but is now better, though still feeble. His amiable wife was at the Fair, selling and buying, and giving away, with her characteristic assiduity and liberality. Both of them were very kind in their inquiries after my wife. This forenoon bro. May and myself, by express invitation, S. J. May. visited Miss Martineau at Mr. Gannett s house. The inter view was very agreeable and satisfactory to me. She is a fine woman. Ellis Gray Loring. Rev. E. S. Gannett. Miss Martineau s account of this interview is more circumstantial. In her Retrospect of Western Travel, after saying that, " having heard every species of abuse of Garrison," she ought in fairness to see him, she continues : * " I was staying at the house of a clergyman 2 in Boston, when a note was brought in which told me that Mr. Garrison was in town, and would meet me at any hour, at any friend s house, the next day. My host arrived at a knowledge of the contents of the note quite against my will, and kindly insisted that Mr. Garrison should call on me at home. At ten o clock he came, accompanied by his introducer. His aspect put to flight in an instant what prejudices his slanderers had raised in me. I was wholly taken by surprise. It was a countenance glowing with iByM. C. Torrey (Lib. 5:190), engraved in mezzotint by John Sartain. The frontispiece to Volume I. of the present work is from the original. 2 The Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett, colleague of Dr. Channing. 218. Rev. S. J. May. 70 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. CHAP. I. 1835- Cf. ante, i : 403. Retrospect of Western Travel, 2 : 219. health, and wholly expressive of purity, animation, and gentle ness. I did not now wonder at the citizen who, seeing a print of Garrison at a shop window without a name to it, went in and bought it, and framed it as the most saintlike of countenances. The end of the story is, that when the citizen found whose por trait he had been hanging up in his parlor, he took the print out of the frame and huddled it away. " Garrison has a good deal of a Quaker air ; and his speech is deliberate like a Quaker s, but gentle as a woman s. The only thing that I did not like was his excessive agitation when he came in, and his thanks to me for desiring to meet one so odious as himself. I was, however, as I told him, nearly as odious as himself at that time ; so it was fit that we should be acquainted. On mentioning afterward to his introducer my impression of something like a want of manliness in Garrison s agitation, he replied that I could not know what it was to be an object of insult and hatred to the whole of society for a series of years; that Garrison could bear what he met with from street to street, and from town to town ; but that a kind look and shake of the hand from a stranger unmanned him for the moment. How little did the great man know our feel ings towards him on our meeting ; how we, who had done next to nothing, were looking up to him who is achieving the work of an age, and, as a stimulus, that of a nation ! * " His conversation was more about peace principles than the great subject. It was of the most practical cast. Every con versation I had with him confirmed my opinion that sagacity is the most striking attribute of his conversation. It has none of the severity, the harshness, the bad taste of his writing; it is as gladsome as his countenance, and as gentle as his voice. Through the whole of his deportment breathes the evidence of a heart at ease ; and this it is, I think, more than all his dis tinct claims, which attaches his personal friends to him with an almost idolatrous affection." Miss Martineau s narrative has already slipt away from the first meeting and first impressions, but it is as well to dispose here of what follows, or most of it : i u I do not pretend to like or to approve the tone of Garrison s printed censures. I could not use such language myself towards 1 Miss Martineau did not make allowance for Mr. Garrison s respect for so eminent a writer, and his own modesty and unconsciousness. Add the embarrassment of communicating with her through an ear-trumpet. -^T. 30.] THE BOSTON MOB. II. 71 any class of offenders, nor can I sympathize in its use by others. CHAP. i. But it is only fair to mention that Garrison adopts it warily ; x jj~ and that I am persuaded that he is elevated above passion, and has no unrighteous anger to vent in harsh expressions. He considers his task to be the exposure of fallacy, the denun ciation of hypocrisy, and the rebuke of selfish timidity. He is looked upon by those who defend him in this particular as holding the branding-iron ; and it seems true enough that no one branded by Garrison ever recovers it. He gives his reasons for his severity with a calmness, meekness, and softness which contrast strongly with the subject of the discourse, and which convince the objector that there is principle at the bottom of the practice. . . . " He never speaks of himself or his persecutions unless com pelled, and his child will never learn at home what a distin guished father he has. He will know him as the tenderest of parents before he becomes aware that he is a great hero. I found myself growing into a forgetf ulness of the deliverer of a race in the friend of the fireside. One day, in Michigan, two friends (who happened to be abolitionists) and I were taking a drive with the Governor of the State, who was talking of some recent commotion on the slavery question. i What is Garrison like ? said he. l Ask Miss M., said one smiling friend : Ask Miss M., said the other. I was asked accordingly ; and my answer was, that I thought Garrison the most bewitching per sonage I had met in the United States. The impression cannot but be strengthened by his being made such a bugbear as he is ; but the testimony of his personal friends, the closest watchers of his life, may safely be appealed to as to the charms of his domestic manners. " Garrison gayly promised me that he would come over when ever his work is done in the United States, that we may keep jubilee in London. I believe it would be safe to promise him a hundred thousand welcomes as warm as mine." This engagement was punctually fulfilled on both sides. Meantime, nothing could have seemed more Utopian. A full year before, when as yet there was no Southern Dec . 10, panic over incendiary matter in the mails, no Charleston bonfire, no "well done!" from the Postmaster- General, no slave-drivers demand on the North, no truckling Faneuil Hall meeting, no State-Street mob, Mr. Gar- 72 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. lyET. 30. Ante i : 484. rison, still fancying himself a year older than he really was ; had composed this birthday sonnet : Lib. 5 : 39. Ye angels, and the spirits of the just ! Crowii d as ye are, and thron d in royal state ! In full seraphic strains congratulate, Upon his waning years, a child of dust, Who, as he fades, doth firmer find his trust In GOD and holds the world at a mean rate, But upon heaven puts a high estimate ! This fills his soul with joy that, with disgust. The thirtieth round of my brief pilgrimage To-day is ended tis perchance the last I shall complete upon this earthly stage j For toils increase, and perils thicken fast, And mighty is the warfare that I wage: Yet tis my f oes, not I, that stand aghast ! CHAPTER II. GERMS OP CONTENTION AMONG BRETHREN. 1836. " TT is fortunate for the country that the good sense, the Lib. 5:199; J_ generous feeling, and the deep-rooted attachment of B Thi^ S the people of the non-slaveholding States to the Union, and Years View, to their fellow-citizens of the same blood in the South, have given so strong and impressive a tone to the sentiments enter tained against the proceedings of the misguided persons who have engaged in these unconstitutional and wicked attempts [" to circulate through the mails inflammatory appeals ad dressed to the passions of the slaves, in prints"], and especially against the emissaries from foreign parts who have dared to interfere in this matter, as to authorize the hope that those attempts will no longer be persisted in. ... I would . . . respectfully suggest the propriety of passing such a law as will prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." In these terms President Jackson, in his message to Congress, December 7, 1835, introduced, for the first time in such documents, an allusion to abolitionism. His allegations were cruelly false ; his implicit approval ,of the mob violence of the past summer and autumn, as infamous in a chief magistrate as it was short-sighted in a statesman ; and his proposition to close the mails against anti-slavery publications, audaciously unconsti tutional and despotic. 1 Nevertheless, they gave the key note to the policy of repression which, during the next year, was sought to be enforced by continued popular outrages, by State legislative and Federal Congressional 1 See the telling protest of the American A. S. Society, Lib. 6 : 6. 73 74 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. [^T. 31. CHAP. ii. enactments. Above all, they fixed the political character 1836. of the agitation against which they were directed. The Southern delegates in Congress could not agree as to modes of repression ; they even had still some Lib. 6 : 26, respect for Constitutional principles. Calhoun would not trust Congress with the power to determine what was incendiary, and what tended to excite insurrection : the abolitionists would in time form a great political party, and might thus become the judges of their own incendiarism. Moreover, he admitted that " to prohibit circulation is in effect to prohibit publication," and hence an abridgment of the liberty of the press. He therefore insisted on the "historically reserved" rights of the Annual Re- State 1 to preserve internal peace, and reported a bill port Mass. , . . . A. s. Soc., making it penal for postmasters knowingly to receive any letter, paper, or pictorial representation addressed to a State where it was prohibited. But the Senate threw Lib. 6:103, it out by a majority of six, with Benton, Clay, and Crit- ton^s Thirty tenden among them. Meantime the debate had been Yea voi. I raging over the treatment of petitions for the abolition Chap. 131. of s i a very in the District. The honester Southern members acknowledged the power of Congress in the premises ; others, following the lead of Calhoun, denied Benton, Vol. it, and were for summarily rejecting the petitions in 130, 135. other words, suppressing the right of petition on that subject. The South Carolinian was again defeated, by a majority of twenty -five, but the Senate readily adopted the practice of rejecting the petitions in ques tion without reference to a committee. In the House, Annual Re- Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina, incurred the bitter A. s. Soc., wrath of his colleagues and of his section 2 bv origin- 1837, P. is ; 1 Benton considered Calhoun s argument on this point " the corner-stone of the doctrine of nullification, and its corollary, that the laws of nations were in full force between the several States, as sovereign and independ ent communities except as modified by the compact " ( Thirty Years View, 1:581). 2 He was actually "presented" by the Grand Jury of Dallas Co., Ala.* for his " treachery " (Lib. 6 : 93), after the example of the presentment of President Jackson by the Grand Jury of Davidson Co., N. C., in 1834 (Niles 1 Register, 46 : 155). His own district threw him out, and refused to return him to Congress (Lib. 7: 211). . 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 75 ating and reporting resolutions not more peremptory Lib. 6 . 26, 97 ; f : ^ than that Congress had no authority to interfere in any way with slavery in the States ; l that (though it might have the power) it ought not to interfere with it in the District ; and that all resolutions to that end should be (not rejected, but) laid on the table without printing. Still, in the large majority who joined him in placing this ineffectual gag upon Northern freemen, the South had many representatives. Northern governors and legislatures differed with the South as to the lawfulness of the measures of repression demanded of them, and among themselves as to their willingness to try what they could do. Governor Marcy, of New York, refused his assent to the constitutional gloss Lib. 6 -. 13. by which Governor G-ayle, of Alabama, made requisition for Ransom G. Williams, publishing agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society at New York, under an act of Con gress concerning " fugitives from justice." Williams had been indicted as "late of said [Tuscaloosa] County"; and Governor Gayle, while not pretending that he had been in the State u when his crime was committed," or had "fled therefrom," nevertheless held that he had " evaded the justice of our laws," and hence was a fugitive to be delivered up. Governor Marcy, however, Lib. 6 -, 13. mingled with his admirable exposure of this attempt on the "sovereignty" of New York some hearty abuse of the abolitionists. Shortly afterwards, in transmitting the requisition and his response to the New York Legisla ture, with resolutions adopted by the Legislature of Lib. 6:33. South Carolina, asking for penal enactments against the abolitionists, he expressed his belief that these might properly be framed, to prevent " the citizens of this State and residents within it from availing themselves with impunity of the protection of its sovereignty and laws, while they are actually employed in exciting insurrection 1 It was in refutation of this dogma that John Quincy Adams made that splendid extemporaneous speech in which he asserted the absolute control of Congress over slavery under the " war power " (Lib. 6 : 97), and furnished the weapon for emancipation under Lincoln. 76 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [J*r. 31. CHAP. ii. and sedition in a sister State, or engaged in treasonable !^ 6 . enterprises, intended to be executed therein. 77 Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, was even more obsequious, proclaiming his belief that " whatever by direct and necessary operation is calculated to excite insurrection among the slaves may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law." No Northern governor Mass. Senate wa s left unsupplied with resolutions from the Carolinas, 1 1836. from Alabama, from Georgia, from Virginia. But the result was not encouraging. Mr. Garrison, writing from Newport, June 22, 1836, of the abandonment of the Lib. 6 : 73. attempt to pass in the Rhode Island Legislature resolu tions advising punishment of the abolition " conspira tors," reviewed the situation at that date : Lib. 6: 107. " A gentleman from Dover informs me, that the committee appointed by the New Hampshire Legislature to consider and report upon the pro-slavery documents from the South, have not been able to agree, and the whole subject has been post poned to the next session, which is tantamount to an indefinite postponement. 2 The legislatures of Maine and New York have adopted some weak resolutions, censuring the abolitionists j Massachusetts and Connecticut have refused to act upon the Southern documents ; Vermont is yet to act, and no doubt her Lit. 6: 112, Legislature will imitate that of Pennsylvania, 3 viz., by vindi cating the right of free discussion, and maintaining the duty of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The Legislature of this State [Rhode Island] resolves to do nothing upon the subject. What will the South say now? " South Carolina said, speaking through Governor Mc- LM.6-.2oi. Duffle s message, that but three of the States in which abolition societies had been formed had even conde- 1 Those from South Carolina were made more impressive by an "in spired" article, styled "The Crisis," which appeared simultaneously in^ the Charleston Mercury. Anticipating "the adjournment of the legisla tures of the Northern States without adopting any measures effectually to put down Garrison, Tappan and their associates," the article appointed a convention of the slaveholding States to assume towards the North " the relation of open enemies " (Benton s Thirty Years View, 1 : 610). 2 The subservient element prevailed at the next session (Lib. 1 : 14, 25), but legislation against the abolitionists was discountenanced. 3 It did, Nov. 16, 1836 (Lib. 6: 193). ^ET. 31.] GERMS OF CONTENTION. 77 scended to notice her appeal, while not one had " taken any CHAP. n. step towards suppressing the injurious practices of which 18^5. we so justly complained." She regarded this "entire neglect" as a " silent but significant indication of the alarming state of public opinion " in the non-slavehold- ing States, and thought it now time for discussion and entreaty to cease. Virginia, too, was disheartened, hav- Lib. 6 -. 205. ing got response only from Maine, New York, and Ohio, and satisfaction from no quarter ; but was disposed to make a last appeal. Repression by popular violence " the reign of terror 77 continued unabated, in spite of its notorious effect in multiplying anti-slavery organizations upon the very heels of the mob. Typical cases were the town-meeting appointment of a vigilance committee to prevent anti- Lib. 7:13. slavery meetings in Canaan, N. H. ; the arrest of the Rev. George Storrs, at Northfield, in the same State, in a friendly pulpit, at the close of a discourse on slavery, as Lib. 6: 19, a " common brawler/ 7 and his subsequent sentence by a "justice of the peace to hard labor in the House of Correction for three months (not sustained on appeal) ; and the repeated destruction of Birney s Philanthropist Lib - 6 22 > printing-office by the " gentlemen of property and 158 ; Remi- ,** .. i i niscences of standing " in Cincinnati an outrage bearing a close Levi Coffin, resemblance to that engendered by the Faneuil Hall Chap I5> meeting, and ending in a midnight raid upon the colored homes of the city, with the connivance of the mayor. As in the case of Boston there was no " mob. 77 Accord ing to the distinction so well formulated by Judge Lawless, of Missouri, when a colored man had been burnt Lib. 6 -. 102. at the stake, it was " not the act of numerable and ascer- tainable malefactors, but of congregated thousands/ 7 seized by a " mysterious, metaphysical and almost elec tric phrenzy/ 7 and therefore not indictable. Well did Emerson write to Carlyle, October 7, 1835 : " We have had Emerson s - , , ., , . Correspond" in different parts of the country mobs and moblike legis- enc e, i : 8 4 . lation, and even moblike judicature, which have betrayed an almost godless state of society." 78 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKBISON. [^T. 31. CHAP. ii. The churches were deeply engrossed in putting down j8^6. anti-slavery sentiment within and without the South- #.6:5,93, ern religious bodies with a common voice holding up the abolitionists to public reprobation. A reputed vice gerent of the Almighty, Alexander Campbell, founder of Lib. 6 : 69. the " Christian " sect, proclaimed the divine right of slavery and the impiety of interference with it. The Northern churches were divided, but the weight of ex pression was on the side of the slave-driver. The Meth- #.6:83, odist General Conference at Cincinnati met some mild reprobation of slavery transmitted by the English Wes- leyan Conference with unqualified repudiation of " mod ern abolitionists," and particular censure of two of its own delegates who had lectured on the " agitating topic" Lib. 6:119, of slavery; and earned from the editor of the Liberator the characterization of " a cage of unclean birds, and syn agogue of Satan." The Presbyterian General Assembly Lib. 6 . 99. at Pittsburgh found it inexpedient to express any opinion upon slavery, regarding it as a purely political institu tion; yet, for failing to call it divine, nearly lost its #.6:163. Southern members. The Maine Universalists held the same views of expediency. Even the Orthodox Friends of New York, in yearly meeting, while favorable to eman- #. 6: 173. cipation, kept aloof from the abolitionists, " endeavoring to concentrate within the Society that moral influence which it possesses." On the other hand, in small locali ze. 6: 173. ties, the beginning of non-communion with slaveholders and non-fellowship with slaveholding religious associa tions was made. Lib. 6 : 69. The theological schools and reviews maintained their evil traditions. The Princeton Biblical Repertory found a clear sanction for slaveholding in the Scriptures, and admissions in the New Testament of its consistency with the Christian character and profession. Leading North- #.6:71. ern publishers apprised the South of their resolve to reprint no English work involving a condemnation of slavery, and not to make their publications " a medium of * incendiary circulation/ " One in Baltimore expur- ^ET. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 79 gated an English history of the United States that had #.6:156. been found objectionable on this score in South Carolina. To make assurance doubly sure, General Duff Green ob tained of the Legislature of that State a charter for a Southern Literary Company, to prepare school-books #.6:173, suitable for a slaveholding community. The main business of the abolitionists, besides extend ing their organization, which they did at the rate of #.6:183. nearly one new society a day, including a vigorous State Society in Rhode Island, and one in Pennsylvania, was #. 6 : 22, to defeat the legislative movements directed against the right of free speech ; to keep up the bombardment of Congress with petitions for emancipation in the Dis trict; to vindicate in the courts the right of slaves brought North to their liberty, and of fugitives to the ordinary safeguards of freemen on trial ; and to oppose, on the one hand the admission of Arkansas as a slave State into the Union, on the other, the inevitable bent of the Government towards aiding Texas in her pro-slavery revolt against Mexico, with a view to ultimate annexation. A counter-stroke in Massachusetts to the "Southern documents " was the petition to the Legislature to remon- #. 6 : 55, strate against the treatment of the State s colored sea men and other citizens in Southern ports and cities, not forgetting the still outstanding reward offered by Georgia for the apprehension of the editor of the Liberator. Judicial decisions like those in Pennsylvania and New #.6:62, Jersey, claiming rather than asserting for alleged fugi tives the right of trial by jury ; and like Judge Shaw s in the famous Med case in Boston (won by the exertions Lib. 6:168, of Messrs. Sewall and Loring), which, for the first time in and wrvng- the history of this country, applied the common law of tf^JJ England to slaves taken to a free State voluntarily by / 6 4- their masters, and declared them free, made a profound impression at the South. It was high time, for not a month passed without. some atrocious case of kidnapping. Lib. 6 . 127, The progress of the Texan revolt had culminated in I5I> * the defeat of the Mexican forces by Houston, and the #. 6 : 82. 80 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 31. capture of Santa Anna j and the agents of the province Lib. 6 : 69. were despatched to the United States to hasten the re cruiting of volunteers for the final struggle, and promote Lib. 6:86, demonstrations of public sentiment and State action in 204. favor of recognizing the independence of Texas. Mean time, the Federal Senate admitted Arkansas with a con stitution making slavery perpetual, while the House Lib. 6 . 62. applied the gag-law for District petitions to remonstrances against confirming the action of the Senate, and then completed the iniquity. The champions of freedom in Annual Re- the struggle of 1820 were now either dumb or impotent : A. s. Sol ., the Missouri Compromise had extinguished their sensi- 18371 * 39 tiveness to the extension of the area of servitude. 1 But the North was, if helpless, not indifferent. She viewed with alarm the threatened increase of the Slave Power, and its new aggressiveness beyond its own bounds. She felt herself on the defensive ; and indeed, from this time the abolitionists no longer had to arouse the public conscience merely or mainly to the sin and shame and danger of the status quo, but could point to the porten tous development of pro-slavery lust for power, and to act after act of aggrandizement for which no warning l Webster dodged the vote in the Senate. His predecessor, Harrison Gray Otis, was no longer heard from. In 1820 the latter had said in the same body that he should " strenuously and forever oppose the extension of slavery, and all measures which should subject a freeman, of whatever color, to the degradation of a slave ; . . . which should divest him of his property and rights, and interdict him from even passing into a country of which he was a legitimate co-proprietor with himself" (Columbian Centinel, Jan. 24, 1821). Mayor Lyman had also opposed the Missouri Compromise in a 4th of July oration in 1820, and in 1821 had, as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, reported against a pro posed law to check the immigration of pauper blacks. He, too, was now satisfied with the "Compact," as was John Quincy Adams, so far as con cerned the bare admission of Arkansas as a slave State (Benton s Thirty Years View, 1: 636). Benton compliments the Northern members of Con gress on their magnanimity in voting to ratify the treaty for the removal of the Cherokees (to make way for slavery), to enlarge the area of Missouri, by altering the compromise line so as to " convert free soil into slave soil," and to admit Arkansas with its slaveiy-perpetuating constitution all in the session of 1835-36, amidst and in spite of " offensive criminations" on the part of the South for the failure to suppress the abolitionists (Ibid., 1 : 626, 627). -T. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 81 could be too shrill, no language too harsh. In other CHAP. u. words, the South itself became their ally in the con- t jjJ 6 version of the North. 1 Calhoun, personifying the re morseless logic of slavery; Houston, exemplifying its reckless filibustering spirit, combined to draw after them the more moderate elements. Benton, "from the beginning of the Missouri controversy up to the year Thirty 1835, . . . looked to the North as the point of danger iTfcsT" from the slavery agitation " j after that date, to the South. Northern politicians first began to feel themselves between two fires, being called upon to satisfy the antagonistic sentiments of the constituencies they rep resented and the powerful section they wished to pro pitiate. John Quincy Adams, speaking to the Pinckney resolutions, admonished the other side: "In a large ibid., 1:623. portion of this country every individual member who votes with you will be left at home at the next election, and some one will be sent who is not prepared to lay these petitions on the table." Senator Preston, of South Carolina, in the debate on the same petitions, March 1, 1836, affirmed that in future canvasses and elections the Lib. 6 . 4 s. abolitionists would be courted by the two political par ties at the North ; and his words were speedily verified at the approaching Presidential election. The Liberator Lib. 6 . 163, warned abolitionists against voting for Van Buren, z ite, 7 ?^. 1 White, or Harrison; opposed the reelection of Gov ernor Everett, and the election to Congress of Richard Fletcher. The Presidential candidates and aspirants were themselves brought to book. General Harrison was decried at the South for believing in the constitu tionality of emancipation in the District. Judge White denied the power of Congress, or the expediency of exercising it, in the premises, and pledged himself to ^.6:65. l Charles Sumner writes to Dr. Lieber, Jan. 9, 1836 : " We are becoming abolitionists at the North fast ; the riots, the attempts to abridge the free dom of discussion, Governor McDuffie s message, and the conduct of the South generally have caused many to think favorably of immediate eman cipation who never before inclined to it " ( Memoir, 1: 173). VOL. II. 6 82 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. [2E.T. 31. CHAP. II. 1836. Lib. 6 : 65. Lib. 6 : 48. Annual Re port Mass. A. S. Soc., 1837, P- Si- Lib. 6 : 86. act accordingly if elected. Van Buren, with character istic two-facedness, admitted the power, but said the objections to its exercise, against the will of the South, were so " imperative in their nature and obliga tions 7 as to amount to a want of constitutional power 5 and gave the same pledge as his rival. He went further on this side, anticipating the repression of agitation, and that "for some time, at least, we shall have no more foreign agents to enlighten us on the subject/ 7 as the foreign public will take heed of "recent results here." 1 This optimistic view was not shared by his Southern auditors. They knew, in fact, as Senator Preston de clared, that " in England and in France the develop ments of popular sentiment are all against us. 2 The denunciations heard there reverberate throughout our own country." The Liberator, indeed, for 1836 is one long reverberation of Thompson s triumphant tour through England and Scotland, rehearsing in assembly rooms and chapels his American experience, setting forth the aims and character of the abolitionists and the relations of par ties in the United States, exposing the Texas conspiracy, and. fanning to a fresh heat a zeal which already he was preparing to turn against the apprenticeship system in lit was of this manifesto that Mr. Garrison wrote to G. W. Benson, April 10, 1836 (MS.) : "Political abolitionists are now placed in an awk ward predicament. "What an outrageous letter Martin Van Buren has written to certain political rascals in North Carolina, respecting slavery in the District of Columbia ! No consistent abolitionist can now vote for him. It seems that our alternative must now be between Webster or Harrison. I should prefer the former. Van Buren, you will observe, covers the Society of Friends with the slime of his panegyric, and draws a broad line of distinction between them and the abolitionists. Why ? Simply because the Friends in North Carolina are numerous, and their votes are wanted to turn the scales in favor of the Magician. " 2 The French Society for the Abolition of Slavery, through its secretary, Count Alexandre de Laborde, apprised Mr. Garrison, by letter of July 23, 1836, of his having been elected a corresponding member. A similar honor had been bestowed by Scotland. "A powerful union," he says (Lib. 6 : 159), " is now formed between the abolitionists of England, France and America, for the extirpation of slavery and the slave trade from the face of the whole earth." -T. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 83 the British West Indies. 1 Under his inspiration, new anti-slavery societies were formed and funds raised, and Lib. 7:3-9. nearly every dissenting body in the United Kingdom adopted resolutions and addresses on the subject of slavery. Northern pro-slavery religious papers, like the New York Observer, remarked on the consequent attitude Lib. 6 : 177. of non-intercourse assumed by the anti-slavery religious associations in England toward those in America. In the Southern Religious Telegraph, a Southerner abroad #.6:204. testified to the lively abhorrence manifested by the Dis senters among whom Mr. Thompson had labored, " not only of the system of slavery, but also of the principles which are advocated by the greater part of Southern Christians " an abhorrence naturally extended (to their discomfort) to the advocates themselves on their travels. By way of increasing this impediment to Christian in tercourse, Mr. Thompson also squared his cis-Atlantic Lib. 6 -. 133, account with Drs. Cox and Hoby, and held a prolonged debate with the American colonizationist, Dr. Robert J. Lib. 6 . 135, Breckinridge. cmtel\ \ 449. During this momentous year Mr. Garrison was less conspicuous than in any since the founding of the Liberator. The first nine months were spent in Brook lyn, Conn. ; for, on the eve of his wife s confinement (in February), it would have been impracticable to begin housekeeping afresh in Boston, and after that event many reasons combined to prolong his absence from the hot and crowded city, with its manifold interruptions of editorial work. The severe regimen, the irregular habit, and the excitement of the period before and immediately after his marriage had begun to tell upon his system. He suffered much from a scrofulous affection manifesting itself in various parts of the body, and from a wound in the leg incurred by jumping from the garden wall. The l Liberator, passim; and A Voice to the United States of America from the Metropolis of Scotland ; being an account of various meetings held in Edinburgh on the subject of American slavery, upon the return of Mr. George Thompson from his mission to that country (Edinburgh, 1836). 84 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. L^T. 31. customary debate at the close of each volume of the Lib. 6 ; 3, Liberator had ended in 1835 in Garrison and Knapp dissolving their partnership, and the latter (to his ulti mate sorrow) assuming all pecuniary liabilities and be coming sole publisher of the paper. The editor s salary was otherwise provided for. During his stay in Brook lyn, Charles Burleigh, more than any one, acted as his locum tenens ; and as Mr. Garrison s relaxed and ailing bodily condition kept him from contributing regularly to the paper, the place was no sinecure. His associates in the Anti-Slavery Office and in the Board of Managers deplored his absence and pressed him to return. He admitted the inconvenience of it, and its injurious effect upon the interests of the Liberator; but it was not until the end of September that he again became a Bostonian, and ceased to be a self -banished man. 1 Still, though out of health and at a distance, he continued to direct and advise . Mr. Garrison to Henry Benson, at Boston. MS. BROOKLYN, January 16, 1836. I have almost grown tired in waiting for a copy of Channing s second edition. If it should not come next week, I must " fire off " my gun. The subscription of Mr. Chapman s father, towards liquidat ing our debt, is as generous as it is unexpected, and manifests a thorough-going anti-slavery spirit. I am thankful to hear that the Committee are actively endeavoring to get the whole sum made up as fast as possible, because everything in such a case depends upon despatch. Whoever else may be called upon E. Dole, to aid, I hope friend Dole, of Hallowell, will not be appealed to again, as he has already on various occasions contributed more liberally to the support of the paper than any other person in like circumstances. I think each one who is requested to give anything should be impressed with the fact, that he is not paying for u a dead horse " for it is not only participating in the credit that may attach to the Liberator, for what it has done in waking tip l The family, for it now consisted of three, took rooms at Miss Mary S. Parker s, No. 5 Hayward Place. . 31.] GERMS OF CONTENTION. 85 a lethargic public sentiment, but it is continuing the life and usefulness of the paper. As soon as the sum is completed, I [will] write a letter of thanks to each of the subscribers, in be half of friend Knapp and myself. . . . If we can get along without E. M. P. Wells s subscription, I shall be glad; because I wish no man to pay money for the support of the Liberator, if such an act goes against his con science. It is true he justly owes the money but he says he now dislikes the paper. . . . Let me know whether friend K. has got into his new office. Tell him to make everything else give way (communications, edi torials, and all) to the debates in Congress upon the petitions for the abolition of slavery in the D. of C. The sooner we publish the debates, the greater will be the interest in their perusal. Let him select the best reports he can find. It is im portant, too, that we should publish all official documents, in opposition to our cause, instanter, that we may not be antici pated by other papers. In the next Liberator (i. e., Jan. 23), if possible, insert the accompanying extract from Gov. Marcy s message, and also the correspondence between him and Gov. Gayle, of Alabama, respecting Williams especially the latter. Give as good an account pf the annual meeting to the readers as the time will permit. Probably E. M. P. Wells would prefer not to be one of the officers of our Society. Let the Vice-Presidents be as influential as possible, without relying too much upon names. We can select them from all parts of the Commonwealth. The Managers should be the truest of the true. I should be glad to see our brother Wright one of the number. CHAP. II. 1836. Isaac Knapp. District of Lib. 6 : 17, 13- Mass. A. S. Society. Rev. H. C. Wright. W. L. Garrison to Samuel J. May, at Boston. BROOKLYN, January 17, 1836. Accompanying this I send a letter, which, if you think proper, you may read to the meeting on Wednesday next, and then ^.20,1836. hand it over to friend Knapp for publication in the Liberator. 1 Boston is yet a^ stronghold of slavery. By Henry s letter re ceived yesterday, it seems you have applied in vain for the use of a meeting-house or hall in which to hold the annual meet ing. Sixteen refusals successively! And yet the people of Lib.6-.-LS- H. E. Ben son. 1 The Scriptural tone of this letter is remarkable. 86 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 31. CHAP. II. Boston are strongly opposed to slavery! Pardon my hard j^g language " they are liars, and the truth is not in them." They stand ready, at any moment, to crush the slaves and to co-operate with the masters. While such a city behaves so wickedly, I do think we ought to be more tender of the South or, rather, we ought to be more impartial in our denuncia tions. Spare not your hypocritical and callous-hearted city, but at your meeting hold it up in all the infamy which attaches to its professions and conduct. Woe unto thee, Boston ! for if the mighty works which have been done in thee, had been done in Charleston or Savannah, peradventure they had repented long ago. I hope bold and emphatic resolutions will be adopted, re- Ante, p. 62. specting the murderous proposition of the Nero McDuffie in his Ante, p. 75. message, and the equally despotic suggestions of the Domitian Marcy; for every proper occasion should be seized upon to bear testimony against such dangerous documents. Strong resolutions should also be passed against tho continu ance of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and especially in reprehension of the inhuman policy and base servility of our Northern representatives in Congress, upon this subject. v Our brother Thompson will be greatly strengthened and gratified, if a resolution should be passed in kind remembrance of him and those who sustained his mission. I think our bro. Stuart ought also to be remembered, inasmuch as he is labor ing " with all his might," 1 most nobly, successfully, and dis interestedly, in our sacred cause. . . . The Annual Report, I am confident, will confer credit upon your head and heart. You know something of my anxiety re specting its remarks upon Dr. Channing s work : let there be an impartial mixture of praise and reproof. I think our anti- slavery brethren, generally, ought to be warned to give no heed to the Dr. s advice to us, to abandon our societies, to give up our watchword Immediate Emancipation, to the charge of fanaticism, etc., etc. The imputation upon us ought to be repelled, that, in spite of all our toils, perils, sacrifices, ay, and successes, "nothing seems to have been gained"! but " perhaps something has been lost to the cause of freedom and humanity " ! Et tu Brute f Our enemies have never stabbed more deeply than this. . . . 1 And being mobbed for it e. g., at Winfield, N. Y. (Lib. 6 : 11). -ET. 31. J GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 87 Would it not be well to remember Miss Martineau honorably CHAP. II. in a resolution applaud her moral courage, and rebuke her ^ foul calumniators ? . . . P. S. Would not Prof. Follen consent to occupy the place of E. M. P. WeUs as Vice President ? At this meeting, as at divers local anti-slavery meet ings, the first of their respective organizations since the mob of October 21, Mr. Garrison s hands were natu rally upheld by resolutions of praise and confidence. To the censorious comments of the religious press on such tributes he replied : " I have not solicited the applause of Lib. 6 . 59. any man, or body of men ; nor have I spared any man or body of men not even my generous benef actor, Arthur Tappan, or Samuel H. Cox, or Gerrit Smith, or William Ellery Channing for the sake of preserving or enlarg ing my reputation." With no one of these had he dealt more faithfully or severely than with Gerrit Smith, as to no other had he more liberally granted space in the Lib erator for counter criticism of himself and of the anti- slavery movement. George Benson writes to his son Henry, at Providence, February 13, 1836 : " Your brother MSm Garrison had a letter yesterday with a check from Gerrit Smith (for thirty dollars), who may read in the Liberator Lib. 6 . 26. of this day some severe animadversions on his palpable inconsistency. But Garrison intends to write to him a friendly letter, which I much approve/ 7 These animadver sions had been called out by Mr. Smith s formal leave-tak ing of the Colonization Society, as printed in the Liberator Lib. 6 . 23. of February 6. Mr. Garrison defended that Society against the pretence that it had changed for the worse so that an abolitionist could no longer remain in it ; and the anti-slavery organization against the implication that it had abandoned the aims and methods which up to the time of the Utica mob had been reprobated by Mr. Smith. The letter of withdrawal was pronounced " not ingen uous," and full of error, the proof and product of confusion of mind. 88 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. Lib. 6: 22. So distinguished a convert, bringing a New Year s gift of a thousand dollars, might, it seemed to many of the abolitionists, have been spared this inhospitable wel come to their ranks. Lewis Tappan wrote from New MS. York to Mr. Garrison, February 25, 1836 : " Your re marks on Mr. G. Smith have given uneasiness, I learn, to some abolitionists, but they were well-timed. We ought to deal kindly with such a man as Mr. Smith, but until he confesses his faults he ought to be rebuked publicly." The sequel showed that a magnanimous mind like Gerrit Smith s could well endure his critic s inflexible application of principles. The wounds made left no scar, as should ever be the effect of friendly shafts that "only pierce for healing. 77 In a letter to Lii>.6:io6. the Liberator, dated June 24, urging Mr. Garrison, as against Judge Jay, to make abstinence from slave- products a personal practice and a part of the anti- slavery creed, Mr. Smith said : " I acknowledge with pleasure that I am more indebted to your writings than to those of any other man for my abhorrence of slavery. Nor is the pupil in this case any the less grateful be cause the master has occasionally boxed his ears. 77 They had meantime met, for the first time, in May, at the anniversary meeting in New York, and Mr. Garrison Lib. 6: 78. writes : " On personal acquaintance, I am delighted with him as a man and a Christian. 77 In December, there was fresh evidence of Mr. Smith 7 s personal regard : MS. Boston, " I have received," writes Mr. Garrison to Henry Benson, " a 1836 7 letter from Gerrit Smith, enclosing a check of $50 upon the Utica Bank, as a donation to help sustain the Liberator, l which paper, 7 he says, is, and ever should be, dearer to the heart of the thorough American abolitionist than any other anti-slavery periodical. It broke ground in our great and holy cause. It has been, and still is, a most able and eloquent defender of that cause ; and whatever may have been its errors, they have not sprung from dishonesty or timidity. The discontinuance of the Liberator would be deeply reproachful to our abolitionists, and would furnish the enemy with an occasion for the wildest exultation. It would be also exceedingly cruel to yourself, to ^T. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 89 subject you to the painful necessity of seeing your paper die CHAP. n. for the want of patronage. After the wide difference which ^ 6 has existed between us, and the many severe things I have written in reference to his colonization conduct, is not the donation generous, and the panegyric still more liberal ? Noble man! not ashamed to praise that which he once repudiated. What would Joseph Tracy and Leonard Bacon say, were I to publish his letter ? Perhaps I shall yet do so, as no prohibition is contained in it though it is not probable that he intended % it for publication. He evidently is willing I should do with it as I think proper." l The extracts already given have foreshadowed Mr. Garrison s judgment of Channing s essay on slavery as ultimately recorded in a formal review. Before coming to this, he answered some taunts of Tracy s Recorder about Channing s censure of the abolitionists and of Thompson by saying: "But we ["the Garrison party"] Lib. 6:3, do claim all that is sound or valuable in the book as our Jan 2l I8s6 " oivn; its sole excellencies are its moral plagiarisms from the writings of abolitionists, which the Dr. has taken, without having the magnanimity to intimate that they are the very principles which we have cherished as the apple of our eye, whatever may have been the indis- creetness of our measures, or the t rashness of our zeal: nay, he puts them forth to the world as if they were some new moral discoveries." George Thompson wrote from Liverpool, January 14, 1836: "To me it Lib. 6:42. appears that Dr. C. has done little more than republish the PRIMER of the abolitionists, appending thereto cer tain remarks which show his lamentable ignorance of the state of public opinion around him, and, as a natural consequence, of the means necessary to carry on and complete the reformation which is to purify and bless your country." William Goodell thought himself personally aggrieved, MS. Feb. and that Dr. Channing had helped himself freely to the 2S> l8s6 1 It was printed in Lib. G : 206, with an editorial introduction in the above sense. The gift was spontaneous on Mr. Smith s part, on learning through the Liberator itself of its necessities. 90 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON. 31. July-Nov., 1835- Mrs. Child s Letters, p. Ante, i : 464. Charming s Life, p. 537. Lib. 6: 53. Right and Wrong, I8 3 6, [2] p. ideas contained in his monthly articles on "Human Rights" published in the Emancipator, and suggested that this be shown by parallel passages in the Liberator. But the indebtedness was general. As for his impulse to write at all, Dr. Channing told Mrs. Child in 1833 that the reading of her Appeal 7 had aroused his con science to the query whether he ought to remain silent on the subject. Mr. Garrison s direct private exhorta tion early in the following year must have kept him (or any man) awake to his duty. But it was not till after the mob of October 21 that he was " heartily engaged in writing on the subject of slavery." 1 Mrs. Child, in an open letter to him, written after she had read his essay, declared: "Had it not been for the honest enthusiasm of Wm. L. Garrison, I should have never felt, thought, or written on this subject. How far this is the case with Doctor Channing, no mortal, not even himself, can tell." In no spirit of jealousy, however, did Mr. Garrison approach his review, which, after all, was less elaborate and extended than he had contemplated. The thing to be noticed in his attitude is the same as in the case of Gerrit Smith: an unyielding purpose to expose and refute the errors, fallacies, and misrepresentations of every proselyte to the cause, or every ally, however great his name or desirable his accession. He had watched for the second edition of the essay, and found a few more pages added, but no improvement on the score of consistency or fairness. It reiterated all the offensive allusions to and unmerited charges against the immedi ate emancipationists ; it withdrew, but without apology, the endorsement of Kaufman s libel on George Thomp son. Mr. Garrison summed up his objections under twenty-five heads, showing that the book "is utterly destitute of any redeeming, reforming power that it is calumnious, contradictory, and unsound and that it l The book went to press the first week in November, 1835 ( Life of W. E. Channing, Centenary Memorial edition, p. 537). ^T. 31.] GEEMS OF CONTENTION. 91 ought not to be approbated by any genuine abolitionist. CHAP. n. He that is not with us is against us. 7 " 1 I8 T^ While this censure was in the press the following was * being penned for private reading : TF. L. Garrison to William Goodell, at Providence. BROOKLYN, February 26, 1836. MS. MY DEARLY BELOVED COADJUTOR : Your very kind, instruc tive and acceptable letter of yesterday has been received, for which I return you many thanks. I perceive that bro. George has misapprehended me, respect- G. W. Ben- ing my contemplated review of Dr. Channing s book. Whether I shall give my criticisms to the public through the medium of the Liberator exclusively, or whether they will appear in another form, I have not yet determined, for they remain to be written. At the longest, I shall make only a small pamphlet not "a book." Nor is it my design to taunt the Dr. on the ground of II plagiarism," because many of his thoughts are like our thoughts, and much of his language is like our language. It would partake too much of the ridiculous, and savor too strongly of vanity or churlishness, for any abolition writer to plume himself upon having anticipated other writers in vindi cating certain fundamental doctrines, appertaining to govern ments and the rights of man. Be assured, such a course is foreign both to my disposition and purpose. It is true, I mean to draw some parallel resemblances between Dr. Channing and certain ll ultra " abolition writers, i. e., from their disquisitions and for several reasons. First To show l Compare this judgment, for severity, with John Quincy Adams s (from quite another point of view), in the following extract from his Diary under date of Jan. 8, 1836 : " Read part of a pamphlet on slavery by the Rev. Dr. Channing, of Boston. He treats the subject so smoothly that some of the Southern slaveholders have quoted it with approbation as favoring their side of the question ; but it is in fact an inflammatory, if not an incendiary publication. There is a chapter containing an exposition of the nature and character of slavery ; then, one upon rights ; and then, one of explana tions. These have a very Jesuitical complexion. The wrong or crime of slavery is set forth in all its most odious colors j and then the explanations disclaim all imputation of criminality upon the slaveholders. There are some remarks, certainly just, upon the relaxation of the moral principle in its application to individual obligation, necessarily resulting from ancient and established institutions. But this is an exceedingly nice and difficult line to draw, and belongs at least as much to the science of casuistry as to that of ethics." 92 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 31. CHAP. II. that the Dr. has not made any new moral discoveries, which his j^Tg admirers would fain make a great doctor-of-divinity-worship- ping public believe is the fact. Secondly To show that the Dr. endorses those very principles which peculiarly characterize the abolitionists as a party, and for the dissemination of which they have been scorned, traduced, injured, and mobbed, as fanatics, madmen and traitors. Thirdly To show that the Dr. has acted disingenuously, and evinced a want of magna nimity, in not even slightly intimating that the abolitionists, with all their zeal and fanaticism, have uniformly and consist ently maintained the great essential doctrines upon which human rights find an immovable basis. My object, in this last particular, is not so much to bring honor to any particular individuals, (though the rule is a good one " Honor to whom honor is due "), as it is to vindicate the anti-slavery cause, as such, from the misrepresentations which have been cast upon it, even by some of the very men who are now lauding Dr. C. s book to the skies. They who have been maligned ought to possess their souls in patience ; but they certainly have a right mod estly to acquit themselves, if they can. I think that you and I will agree as to the propriety and utility of such a presentation of the case. Some other parallelisms will be drawn, which will be quite as afflicting to the Dr. and his admirers. These will show that his book abounds with inconsistencies, and neutralizes every useful truth contained in it. Abolitionists, in my opinion, have been hasty and unwise in praising the book, and taking special Lib. 6: 35. pains to circulate it. You will probably see, in the Liberator of to-morrow, twenty-four reasons why I think they ought not to laud or commend the work. The graphic picture which you have painted in your noble and disinterested speech in Boston, (a speech which ought to have been spoken in your behalf, not mine, for you are a much older and a better soldier, and with out your early co-operation the anti-slavery cause would have dragged heavily), I say, that picture of the effect produced upon an individual " remotely connected with slaveholding," in reading Dr. C. s book through, shows plainly the inefficacy, nay the deleterious tendency, of such a give-and-take-again production. Your other objection is a vital one " Dr. C. s separates the sinner from his sin." This is a radical defect ; and a book which is radically defective will never aid in reforming a radically corrupt nation. -ET. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 93 There is one individual whom Dr. C. deigns to quote approv- CHAP. II. ingly but he is not an abolitionist viz., Pres. Wayland. ^ 6 I cannot think that Dr. C. is ignorant of the writings of abolitionists. He has long been a subscriber to the Liberator, and has been presented with many other anti-slavery publica tions. The Emancipator, as the official organ of the national society, I presume he has carefully perused ; and there is the strongest possible evidence that your essays upon " Human Rights " were before him when he wrote his chapter upon the same subject. I shall have occasion to allude to your essays in my review. I have read them all, carefully, with delight and profit. Is it said by some of our number, "It is true, Dr. C. uses us rather ungenerously but then, his opposing us will only cause his book to obtain a greater circulation, and to be read more candidly"? I answer the cause and the advocates of the cause are closely identified. Separate them, and the cause at once encounters defeat. We deceive ourselves if we imagine that hostility to the abolitionists is no evidence of hostility to emancipation. George Thompson would never have been driven from this country, foreigner as he was, if he had not branded slavery as sin, and held up the duty of immediate re pentance. Why is J. Gr. Birney in such peril, even in Ohio ? Or why were you tracked to Brooklyn by the bloodhounds in New York city ? The mobocrats scarcely know a man of us personally ; and, aside from the cause that we espouse, they find no fault with us. Now, Dr. C. brings two grievous (because slanderous) accusations against the whole body of abolitionists to wit, that they are fanatics, and that some thing has probably been lost to the cause of human liberty by their efforts ! ! We may complacently smile at such accusa tions ; but the reputation of Dr. C. gives them an influence disastrous to our cause yea, they are a two-edged sword, wounding us and our cause by the same blow. It was the preaching of the gospel alone that made Peter and Paul, and Silas and Stephen, "pestilent fellows," " stirrersup of sedition," etc. It appears to me that Dr. C. s book has no just claim upon us as to a particularly tender treatment : nay, it ought to be reviewed sharply, not acrimoniously, and with all fidelity. I wish I could persuade you to undertake this review, because I think it would be more skilfully done j and if you will promise to write it, I will desist. 94 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. Ante, p. 87. What say you, my dear friend ? Were my late strictures upon Gerrit Smith merited or not ? His letter to Gurley was not, I think, magnanimous. He seems to be wholly unwilling to allow that he himself has erred in his views or principles at any time, but is- liberal in rebuking both the Anti- Slavery and the Colonization Societies. Elements of My copy of Wayland s Elements, (first edition), I have left in Science Boston. I meant to have noticed the work ere this. The part to which you allude I had marked for review. Another edition of the work has been published, " abridged and adapted to the use of schools and academies," a copy of which is before me. The work is almost entirely rewritten, and, as a ivhole, is of some value. On the subject of slavery, he is corrupt and op pressive. " If," he says, " the slave be able to take care of himself, [the master is to be judge and jury, you will observe], the master will either immediately manumit him, or, V3T by allowing him such wages as are just, enable him, in process of time, to liberate himself " ! ! that is, will make him pay roundly for an inalienable right ! In his chapter on Benevolence, he is equally inconsistent. Speaking of injuries received, he says " Our blessed Saviour spent his life in doing good to his bitterest enemies, unmoved by the most atrocious and most malignant injustice. So we are commanded to bless them that curse us, &c. God has made it the condition of the pardon of our offences." " On our obedience to this command is suspended our only hope of salvation." Yet he immediately adds " If a man break into my house, it does not follow that I should not take proper means to have him put in prison " ! ! I3P Go to Utica, by all means. True, you are wanted very much in Connecticut, at this crisis, and perhaps you can so arrange matters as to labor here till the May meeting. At all events, go. to Utica. I would rather see you in charge of an abolition paper, or any other moral reform paper, than any other man in the range of my acquaintance. You may do much, I know, as a correspondent of the Emancipator, but you ought never to vacate the editorial chair as long as you have strength to fill it. Write me again soon. Yours affectionately, WM. LLOYD GARRISON. It was barely a week after the appearance of the editorial review in the Liberator that Dr. Channing and Mr. G-arri- ^ET. 31.] GEEMS OF CONTENTION. 95 son met for the first time, drawn to one place by a common CHAP. n. interest in preserving liberty of speech in Massachusetts. z ^ 6 . The Southern legislative entreaties for repression of the abolitionists, together with that portion of Governor Everett s message which intimated that the common law would serve the purpose, had been referred by the Mas sachusetts Legislature to a joint committee of five, of Account of which Senator George Lunt (from Essex County) was -views, etc.; chairman. Before this committee, on the 4th of March, Li ^>f^f 1836, the Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society was, on its M l* t %~ own request, granted a hearing, less in self-exculpation PP- 185-202. than in order to defeat the Southern and pro-Southern design on a common right. Mr. Garrison, summoned by the Board of Managers for the occasion, left his wife and infant on Wednesday, the 2d of March, and, in com pany with S. J. May, proceeded on that day as far as Providence. W. L. Garrison to Ms Wife, at Brooklyn. BOSTON, March 5, 1836. MS. . . . At 8 o clock, next morning, we left for Boston in the stage-coach, (on runners), the rail-cars being obstructed by the ice. Arrived safely at 3 o clock P. M. Mr. May was delighted to find his wife and his little one in prosperous health. A very kind reception was given to me by all the friends at Miss Parker s. Called immediately upon Mrs. Chapman, who was exceedingly glad to see me again in the city, especially at this crisis. In the course of the afternoon, our Board of Managers held a meeting at Mr. Sewall s office, with reference to the de fence that we should make the next day before the Legislative Committee. It was finally arranged that Mr. May should open the defence by stating the prominent facts respecting the rise and progress of the abolition cause, and the object and motives of those who were united together in the anti-slavery societies j and also by showing the moral obligations which rested upon us, as men, as patriots, and as Christians, to plead for the suf fering and the dumb. It was then proposed that I should next follow, vindicating ourselves from the charge of endeavoring to excite the slaves to revolt, by quoting from our official docu- 96 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. CHAP. II. 1836. Henry Ben son. Friday, March 4, 1836. ments those sentiments of forgiveness, submission, and non- resistance which we have so frequently inculcated. Ellis Gray Loring was to follow me, proving that we had done nothing, and proposed to do nothing, that was repugnant either to the letter or the spirit of the U. S. Constitution, or the Constitution of this State; and, consequently, that the Legislature could have no authority to legislate upon the subject of abolition. Mr. Sewall was to succeed Mr. Loring, and show that not only had we not violated the Constitution, but that we had not infringed upon any statute or law of the State or of Congress, etc., etc., etc. In the evening I took tea at Mrs. Chapman s ; after which, as I sat holding a brisk conversation with the Westons and Chap- mans, who should come into the room with bro. May but our esteemed friend Wm. Goodell from Providence ? It seems that he had heard of the contemplated examination, and was at once deputed by our abolition friends in P. to be present. It was at once arranged by us that he should address the Committee on this point what a law against abolition would not do, and what it would do i. e., it would not put down the anti-slavery cause, nor suppress excitement, nor gag the abolitionists it would only disgrace the Commonwealth. That night I tarried at Mr. Chapman s, having first seen bro. Henry and friend Knapp, whom I found to be in good health. Yesterday afternoon, we went up to the State House to pre sent ourselves and our cause before the august committee, &c. The gallery of the Senate was filled at an early hour with a choice and crowded assembly of ladies, who had got informa tion that Paul and King Agrippa were to have an interview. The committee seemed, for some time, to be resolved that our meeting should be a failure, as they kept us waiting for an hour and a half longer than the appointed time. However, they at last concluded to allow us to go into the spacious hall of the House of Representatives, and our audience soon became large and highly respectable, many members of the Legislature being present, and also the Westons, the Chapmans, Miss Mar- tineau, Miss Jeffery, 1 Mrs. Follen, Dr. Channing, &c. I was introduced to Dr. C. on the spot, and shook hands with him, but had no opportunity to converse with him. 2 1 Miss Martineau s travelling companion. 2 It was this handshaking that prompted Mrs. "Righteousness and peace have kissed each other." Chapman s remark : " It was," says Mrs. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 97 Mr. May began the defence, and spoke pretty [welH] for nearly an hour, but was frequently interrupted by the mem bers of the committee, who, with one exception, behaved in an insolent and arbitrary manner. Mr. Loring then spoke for about fifteen or twenty minutes in a very admirable manner. Mr. Goodell then followed at some length, very ably, but was cramped by the committee. I succeeded him pretty warmly, but without interruption. 1 Prof. Follen began next, with great boldness and eloquence, but had not proceeded far before he was stopped by the chairman of the committee, very imperti nently, 2 who said it was a mere matter of favor that we were permitted to be heard at all. We resented the imputation, and asserted our right to be heard and finally told the committee that we should petition the Legislature for leave to be heard as a matter of right, which we did to-day, and are to be heard next week. The effect has been good for our cause. May s Rec ollections, p. 188. Ebenezer Moseley. Life of Fol len, p. 389. Chapman herself (MS. November, 1882), " a mere jend esprit whispered in the ear of Mrs. Follen, who told Harriet Martineau of it, and so it reached the ears of the Channings, and thereiipon Dr. Channing said he did not know it was Mr. Garrison." Miss Martineau s version, in her article on the " Martyr Age of the United States," in the Westminster Review for Decem ber, 1838, is, that Dr. Channing " afterwards explained that he was not at the moment certain that it was Mr. Garrison, but that he was not the less happy to have shaken hands with him." 1 Mr. Lunt, not content with his many outrageous interruptions on this occasion, had the dulness to invent another, of which he represented Mr. Garrison to have been the victim (see p. 108 of his preposterous Origin of the Late War/ Boston, 1866, and the citation from it in a letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser of Feb. 17, 1883). There is no mention of it in the official pamphlet Account of the Interviews which took place on the 4th and 8th of March, etc., published by the Mass. A. S. Society. Mr. Gar rison s opening ran as follows : " Mr. Chairman, inasmuch as your honor able committee have said to the abolitionists, Paul, thou art permitted to speak for thyself, I, for one, am disposed to reply with all sincerity, I thank thee, King Agrippa. Yet I am not willing to consider it merely as & favor that we are permitted to appear before you " (Lib. 6 : 50). 2 Dr. Follen had been showing the relation of cause and effect between the Faneuil Hall meeting and the mob of October 21, as foreshadowing the result of legislative resolutions censuring the abolitionists. " Would not the mobocrats again undertake to execute the informal sentence of the General Court ? Would they not let loose again their bloodhounds upon us ? " He was interrupted by Mr. Lunt : " Stop, sir. You may not pursue this course of remark. It is insulting to this committee and to the Legisla ture which they represent." This farce was repeated at the second hear ing. "Am I, then, to understand that speaking disrespectfully of mobs is disrespectful to this Committee ? " inquired Dr. Follen (Lib. 6 : 47 ; Life of Follen, p. 396). VOL. II. 7 98 . 31. MS. March 5. Henry Ben son. March 6. Sunday, March 6. WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. W. L. Garrison to Ms Wife, at Brooklyn. BOSTON, March 7, 1836. Since my return to the city, my numerous anti-slavery friends have vied with each other in proffering their kind nesses to me. It strengthens me exceedingly to know that their confidence and esteem have suffered no abatement, nay, that absence has but greatly augmented them. Saturday night I slept with Knapp and Henry in the office, and had as com fortable a time as such a berth could possibly give, be it more or less. Sabbath forenoon, Mr. May, Henry and myself went to hear Dr. Channing preach, 1 and were happily not disap pointed. The sermon was full of beauty and power, worthy to be written in starry letters upon the sky. The text was, " Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." . . . I have had two long and very satisfactory interviews with Miss Martineau. She is plain and frank in her manners, and not less so in her conversation. I can assure you that we abolitionists need not fear that she will ever print anything, either in this country or in England, inimical to us, or in favor of the Colonization Society. She is now abiding under the roof of Dr. Channing, and no doubt will do him much good. 2 Last evening, there was a circle gathered by special invitation at Mr. Loring s house, among the number being Miss Martineau, Miss Jeffery, Mr. and Mrs. Chapman, Mr. May, Messrs. Rantoul 1 This may have been the occasion of which Mrs. Chapman speaks (MS. November, 1882) : "It was about this time [the mob time] that Mr. Garrison expressed to us a wish to hear Dr. Channing preach, and we invited him to take a seat in the pew kindly placed at our disposal by one of Dr. Chan- ning s friends, Mr. Stephen Higginson, and which we then occupied. Mr. Garrison accepted the invitation. Next day came a notice to us from Mr. Higginson that he could not allow us seats in his pew any longer." 2 During Miss Martineau s stay at Dr. Channing s, relates Mrs. Chapman (MS. November, 1882) : "I invited her with Dr. and Mrs. Channing to tea, to meet Mr. Garrison. She came to me next day, with much satisfaction on her face, saying, I think he ll come ; and afterwards she told me, He would have come if you had not said to meet Mr. Garrison. " Evidence of this avoidance might be multiplied. Mr. Garrison was clearly an excep tion to Dr. Channing s profession, in a letter to J. G. Birney, following the destruction of the Philanthropist (ante, p. 77) : "I feel myself attracted to the friends of humanity and freedom, however distant ; and when such are exposed by their principles to peril and loss, and stand firm in the evil day, I take pleasure in expressing to them my sympathy and admiration " (Lib. 7:1). But neither after the Boston mob, nor at any other time, so JET. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 99 and Hillard, of the Legislature, 1 Dr. Follen, Dr. Bradford, myself, etc., etc. The evening was profitably spent in earnest discussion of some of the great topics of reform. The visitors left about half -past 10 o clock. I went home and tarried with the Chapmans. Yesterday afternoon, Mr. May, Mr. Goodell and myself at tended meeting in the African meeting-house, Belknap Street. Our colored friends beheld us gladly, and were particularly careful to let me know how happy they felt to hear that Mrs. G. had got a fine little son. Indeed, that event tickles them beyond measure. We are doubly dear to them on that account. My Sonnets seem to be universally admired. Mr. May said that Mr. Alcott wept as he read them, with excess of feeling. I am writing this letter at friend Fuller s, who is the same kind, disinterested man as ever, and who, with his excellent wife, desires me to send special remembrances to you. All the friends are extremely anxious to see you and the dear babe, and stand ready to give a welcome reception to you both. . . . The committee of the Legislature have not yet granted us a hearing again, but will probably do so in the course of a few days. Whether I shall address them again will depend upon my feelings and circumstances. Mr. Goodell leaves the city to-morrow morning. He has drawn up for us a very able Memorial, to be presented to the Legislature. The Sonnets in question were those " addressed to an infant 2 born on Saturday last, February 13th, 1836, by far as is known, did Dr. Channing so much as address a line to Mr. Gar rison. "Abolition is still the exciting topic," he wrote from Newport on Oct. 27, 1835 the editor of the Liberator having gone to jail on Oct. 21. " The mobs still interfere with the anti-slavery meetings, and the South alarms many at the North by threatening us with separation. Happily, the great prosperity of the country and the pressure of business do not allow people to think much on the subject" 1 . ( Memoir, 3:170). No wonder this letter was suppressed in the Centenary edition of the Memoir. 1 Robert Rantoul, then a Democrat, and at the beginning of his honor able political career. George S. Hillard, a lawyer like Rantoul, after wards an eminent orator ; but his course in regard to slavery was an anti-climax. 2 A son named for George Thompson, who quickly returned the compli ment in April, when Mrs. Thompson presented him with a son. The editor of the Norwich (Conn.) Aurora chronicled the former naming, and advised Mr. Garrison to call his next boy Benedict Arnold (MS. April 10, 1836). Gamaliel Bradford. Sunday, March 6, 1836. A. Branson Alcott. John E. Fuller. 100 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 31. CHAP. ii. the Editor," and printed in the Liberator of February 20. jsje. They here follow : Lib. 6:31; Heaven s long-desired gift ! my first-born child ! Writings^/ Pledge of the purest love ! my darling son ! /. 261. Now do I feel a father s bliss begun, A father s hopes and fears, babe undefiled ! Shouldst thou be spared, I could be reconciled Better to martyrdom, so may be won Freedom for all, and servile chains undone. * For if, amid this conflict, fierce and wild, With the stout foes of God and man, I fall, Then shalt thou early fill my vacant post, And, pouring on the winds a trumpet-call, Charge valiantly OPPRESSION S mighty host; So captive millions thou shalt disenthral, And, through the mighty GOD, of victory boast. n. Remember, when thou com st to riper years, That unto GOD, from earliest infancy, Thy grateful father dedicated thee, And sought His guidance through this vale of tears. Fear GOD then disregard all other fears ; Be, in His Truth, erect, majestic, free; Abhor OPPRESSION cling to LIBERTY Nor recreant prove, though horrid Death appears. I charge thee, in the name of HIM who died On Calvary s cross, an ignominious fate, If thou wouldst reign with the GREAT CRUCIFIED, Thy reputation and thy life to hate : Thus shalt thou save them both, nor be denied A glittering crown and throne of heavenly state ! in. Flesh of my flesh ! now that I see thy form, And catch the starry brilliance of thine eyes, And hear, sweet music ! thy infantile cries, And feel in thee the life-blood beating warm, Strange thoughts within me generate and swarm ; 31.] GEEMS OF CONTENTION. 101 Streams of emotion, overflowing, rise ; CHAP. n. Such joy thy birth affords, and glad surprise, T ~ g nursling of the sunshine and the storm! Bear witness, Heaven! do I hate Slavery less, Do I not hate it more, intensely more, Now this dear babe I to my bosom press ? My soul is stirred within me ne er before Have horrors filled it with such dire excess, Nor pangs so deep pierced to its inmost core ! IV. Bone of my bone ! not all Golconda s gold Is worth the value of a hair of thine ! Yet is the Negro s babe as dear as mine Formed in as pure and glorious a mould: But, ah ! inhumanly tis seized and sold ! Thou hast a soul immortal and divine, My priceless jewel! In a sable shrine Lies a bright gem, "bought with a price" untold! A little lower than th angelic train Art thou created, and a monarch s power, My potent infant ! with a wide domain, O er beast, bird, fish, and insect, is thy dower : The Negro s babe with thee was made to reign As high in dignity and worth to tower! v. 0, dearest child of all this populous earth ! Yet no more precious than the meanest slave ! To rescue thee from bondage, I would brave All dangers, and count life of little worth, And make of stakes and gibbets scornful mirth! Am I not perilling as much to save, E en now, from bonds, a race who freedom crave *? To bless the sable infant from its birth? Yet I am covered with reproach and scorn, And branded as a madman. through the land! But, loving thee, FREE ONE, my own first-born, I feel for all who wear an iron band: So Heaven regard my son when I am gone, And bless and aid him with a liberal hand! 102 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 31. W. L. Garrison to Geo. W. Benson, at Providence. MS. BROOKLYN, March 15, 1836. Bro. Goodell has told you, no doubt, the results of his visit to Boston a visit which was very opportune, and highly ser viceable to the cause of. human rights. Our abolition friends were all delighted to see and hear him. In the interview we Right and had with the Legislative committee, he spoke exceedingly well, Boston^L&$6, better than anybody else, and was for that very reason more (2) p. 8; insolently treated by the chairman of the committee than any otitctions, of our number, not excepting even Prof. Follen. 1 He drew up / I 9 I ; Lib. a very able defence of the principles and measures of the aboli tionists, which was adopted by our abolition committee, and is now probably in the hands of the members of the Legislature, in a pamphlet form. 2 Since he left, our Society sent in another memorial to the Legislature, setting forth that our rights had been disregarded as freemen, that the committee would not suffer us to be fully heard in self-defence, and remonstrating afresh against the passage of any law or resolutions in deroga tion of anti-slavery men or measures. In the Senate, the memorial was laid upon the table. In the House of Eepresentatives, as soon as it was read, Mr. Walley, 3 of Boston, (a member of Dr. Beecher s church, I am told, and a hot-headed colonizationist,) rose and moved that it be not received by the House ! falsely and furiously declaring that it was insulting in its language, and that it was prejudging the committee, etc., etc. This bold attempt to kick the memorial out of the chamber, and to trample under foot the sacred right of petition and remonstrance, excited the strongest general indignation among the members. It made at once many aboli tion converts, and was overruled for good, great and lasting good. A very spirited debate ensued, in the course of which Mr. Walley received a severe castigation, and stood alone in his infamous proposition. That debate was worth more than a 1 Dr. Follen s outspoken connection with the abolitionists had already cost him his Harvard professorship, which was allowed to lapse without renewal (May s Recollections, p. 254; Hudson s History of Lexington, p. 360). 2 A Full Statement of the Reasons which were in part offered to the Committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts, etc. (Boston : Isaac Knapp, 1836). 3 Samuel Kurd Walley, Jr., afterwards Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and Whig Representative in Congress. He was a Harvard graduate (1826), and a member of Park-St. Church. . 31.] GERMS OF CONTENTION. 103 thousand dollars to our cause. George Blake, of Boston, (though opposed to the abolitionists), said that our funda mental principles were incontrovertible; that slavery could not long continue in our land ; that it stood on the same level with the Genthoo sacrifices j and that he did not believe a man, or any body of men, could be found in that assembly, who would dare to propose any law, or any resolutions, censuring the anti- slavery society, or any other. Mr. Rantoul of Gloucester, Mr. Foster of Brimfield, Mr. Hillard of Boston, Mr. Longley of [Hawley], all spoke in favor of our rights; also, Mr. Ward of Danvers, and Mr. Durfee of Fall Eiver. Mr. Durfee said he was proud to acknowledge himself as one of the proscribed abolitionists, and he thanked God that he stood where he could vindicate his own rights and the rights of others. A motion was now made to lay our memorial upon the table ayes 204, noes 216. It was then referred to the committee. The next day a warm debate ensued in the Senate. I cherish strong hopes that our Legislature will pass no resolutions against us a gag law is out of the question. Massachusetts is still the sheet-anchor of our country. Mr. Garrison did not speak at the second hearing. The significant portion of his remarks at the first will here be given : u Mr. Chairman, there is one aspect of this great question which has not yet been presented to the committee. The liberties of the people of the free States are identified with those of the slave population. 1 If it were not so, there would be no hope, in my breast, of the peaceful deliverance of the 1 A truth beautifully expressed in verse, years afterwards, by Whittier, in his " At Port Eoyal " : " Rude seems the song; each swarthy face, Flame-lighted, ruder still : We start to think that hapless race Must shape our good or ill ; " That laws of changeless justice bind Oppressor with oppressed; And, close as sin and suffering joined, We march to Fate abreast. " Sing on, poor hearts ! your chant shall be Our sign of blight or bloom, The Vala-song of Liberty, Or death-rune of our doom!" CHAP. II. 1836. Festus Foster. Thomas Long ley. Joshua H. Ward. Gilbert H. Durfee. ,#. 6:50. 104 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [JEv. 31. CHAP. n. latter class from their bondage. Our liberties are bound to- i8~6 gether by a ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese twins. The blow whicji cuts them asunder, will inevitably destroy them both. ^Let the freedom of speech and of the press be abridged or (Destroyed, and the nation itself will be in bondage; let it remain untrammelled, and Southern slavery must speedily come to an end. " Sir, we loudly boast of our free country, and of the Union of these States. Yet I have no country ! As a New Englander, and as an abolitionist, I am excluded by a bloody proscription from one-half of the national territory j and so is every man who is known to regard slavery with abhorrence. Where is our Union? . . . The right of free and safe locomotion from one part of the land to the other is denied to us, except on peril of our lives ! . . . Therefore it is, I assert, that the Union is now virtually dissolved. . . . Look at McDlime s sanguinary message! Read Calhoun s Report to the U. S. Senate, authorizing every postmaster in the South to plunder the mail of such Northern letters or newspapers -as he may choose to think incendiary ! Sir, the alternative presented to the people of New England is this they must either submit to be gagged and fettered by Southern taskmasters, or labor unceasingly for the removal of slavery from our country. . . . " In Massachusetts, a colored citizen stands on the same equality with the Governor of the State. He is entitled to vote, and may be elected to fill any office in the gift of the people. No slaveholding State, therefore, can legislate against his rights, any more than against the rights of Mr. "Webster or Mr. Everett, without violating the American Constitution. But what is the fact ? Why, sir, the South does with our colored citizens just as she pleases, in the haughtiness of her heart and the omnipotence of her oppression. They cannot tread upon her soil without being seized and thrust into a loathsome prison, and amerced with a heavy fine, which, if they cannot pay, often causes them to be sold into perpetual bondage to the highest bidder ! ... It is thus that the South adheres to our boasted Constitution. Where, then, are the rights of the citizens of this Commonwealth *? Ay, sir, where are our STATE RIGHTS 1 " The report of the Lunt committee, though confining itself, in its resolves, to disapprobation of the anti- slavery agitation as unconstitutional, visionary, and perilous to . 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 105 the Union, and to admonishing the abolitionists to CHAP. n. abstain from discussion, and all good citizens of the ^ 6 Commonwealth to refrain from mob violence, failed of adoption. Mr. Garrison, who had again gone to Boston in April, thus wrote to his wife on Saturday, the 16th : " On Thursday evening, we had a large meeting of anti- slavery friends, both male and female, at Mrs. Chapman s, which did not break up till about 11 o clock. Prof. Follen and wife, Ellis G. Loring and wife, Mrs. Child, Miss Ammidon, the Westons, Miss Chapman, Mr. Sewall, Mr. Southwick, Mr. Knapp, Mr. Kimball, Mr. Fairbanks, &c., were present. Mrs. Child looks in remarkably good health, and made some remarks at the ladies meeting on Wednesday last, which manifested that she was as vigorous in spirit as in body. Her husband is at present out of the city, but will return in a few days. They are, I am sorry to say, going with Friend Lundy to Matamoras, near Texas, in all next month. What a hazardous project ! 1 "But to return to the meeting: as we are disappointed in getting a meeting-house or hall in which to hold the N. E. Convention, except our own little hall at 46, we discussed the expediency of having the Convention held either in Providence or Lowell. Mr. Kimball proposed that we should hire a vacant lot of ground in this city, and erect upon it a large shanty, capable of holding two or three thousand people saying that he would give $25 towards it. It was generally thought, how ever, that, if erected, it would be torn down before we could occupy it, and would be likely to excite a mob without doing us any benefit, as the market is now getting to be somewhat glutted with deeds of violence. For several good reasons, we have concluded, if we cannot do better, to hold the Conven tion in Eoxbury or Cambridgeport. 2 . s . . 1 This trip was abandoned by both parties. In August, Lundy began in Philadelphia a new weekly, the National Enquirer, and resumed the monthly publication of his Genius ( Life, p. 289 ; Lib. 6 : 131). 2 This stirring Convention, the published call for Which had 3,000 signa tures (Supplement to Lib. May 14, 1836), and which was attended by 500 delegates, was held in the Rev. Mr. Blagden s Salem-Street Church, Boston, through no good-will of the pastor ( Right and Wrong, 1836, [2] p. 9), whose retirement, a few months later, to become pastor of the Old South (Lib. 6 : 163), was thought to be in consequence of this Convention. Samuel Pessenden, of Portland, presided (Lib. 6:87). MS. John S. banks. 106 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. . 31. CHAP. II. 1836. MS. April 18, 1836. Sunday, April 17. Amos A. Phelps. " Mr. Lunt s Report will be suffered to lie upon the table until it rots. The Senate will not touch it. Good ! " Two days later he again wrote to Mrs. Garrison : " I have indeed been very busy with the paper and other matters since my return j so busy that I have visited nobody, except the Chapmans and Miss Sargent, and then rather in the way of business. Last evening I was at Miss S. s, in company with Mrs. Child and several other friends, and had a very agreeable visit. Miss S. is a most excellent lady, so excellent that it is a pity (don t you think so ?) she is not some good man s wife. She speaks of you affectionately, and will be glad to hail your return to the city. 1 Arid so will many others. . . . " We have just had a letter from bro. Phelps at New York, stating that Mr. Slade of Vermont had just sent on the agree able information, that the bill for the admission of Arkansas as a slave State would not get through the House of Represen tatives, at Washington, short of three or four weeks, and that it will probably create another Missouri excitement. To-day we have had two hundred petitions printed on a letter-sheet, which will be scattered throughout the Commonwealth for signatures, remonstrating against the admission of that State with slavery into the Union. . . . " Yesterday, I went to hear Dr. Channing preach in the fore noon. His sermon was a very excellent one, in vindication of the equality of man, and the duty of attempting to elevate the lowest classes of society to the highest intellectual and social improvement. He spoke in liberal terms of the workingmen. It was, I should think, too republican a dose for his aristo- cratical congregation." It was expressly in view of Dr. Channing s aristocratic surroundings that Mr. Garrison, while declaring his book on slavery necessary to be rejected as a whole, gave him credit not only for pure intentions but for moral courage Lib. 6 : 43. in publishing it. " Dr. Beecher," he added, " stands very far below him, in moral dignity, in relation to the great question of slavery." Dr. Lyman Beecher s Thanksgiv ing sermon in Cincinnati, rather tardily reported in the Lit. 6:41. Liberator, was the immediate occasion of this remark. 1 To the close of a green old age Miss Henrietta Sargent was one of the most generous and attached friends of Mr. Garrison s family. April 17, 1836. Mi. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 107 * It was a virtual defence of slavery against foreign criti- CHAP. n. cism by the old tu quoque retort Our laboring class is jjj^. better off than yours ; and distinctly took ground against immediate emancipation. 1 Mr. Garrison dismissed it curtly, having yielded the floor to a correspondent on the spot ; but, in spite of his physical indisposition to write at length on any subject, he was led some months after ward into an elaborate critique of the same divine, with consequences too important to permit of its being passed over. "As you have publicly reported me on the sick list," he writes to Knapp from Brooklyn, July 19, 1836, " you may now say that I am somewhat better. I send Lib. 6 . us. you some strictures upon a speech recently made by Dr. Beecher, at Pittsburgh, respecting the Sabbath. If they are not so vigorous as they might be, ascribe the deficiency to my bodily debility." Four columns of fine print followed this announcement, with no trace of bodily debility to be found in them. The public meeting addressed by Dr. Beecher had been called "to take into consideration the increasing " desecration of the Sabbath day." The subject was one to which Mr. Garrison was fully alive. A few days before composing his editorial article, he had written as follows to his wife from Providence, while en route to Fall River: 2 "As a specimen of the growing wickedness of the times, take MS. July 2, the fact that a military company is to arrive here by appoint ment to-morrow (the Sabbath), from New York, and that another military company is to turn out here to escort them through the streets ! In the afternoon they are to march to the Rev. Dr. Crocker s meeting-house, where I suppose they have been specially invited. Gruns, bayonets, swords, plumes, ban ners, epaulets in church on the Sabbath ! It seems a studied, and is a most aggravated, profanation of the day." 1 As later before a Colonization meeting at Pittsburgh (Lib. 6 : 118). 2 To deliver a 4th of July address. On the night of the 3d (Sunday) an effigy of straw was attached to a post on the Main Street, with a placard marked "Garrison the Abolitionist: a fit subject for the gallows" (Lib. 6:111). 108 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON. CHAP. ii. He began his criticism of Dr. Beecher by attacking js^e. the assertion that " the Sabbath is the great sun of the moral world? as preposterous and extravagant, and not authorized by the Gospel. It was making the outward observance of one day in the week paramount. But the Sabbath of the decalogue was kept neither by Dr. Beecher nor by most Christians j and, after all, the Fourth Commandment was but one of ten. In the Ian-* guage of the Psalmist, "The LORD GOD is a sun." Christ and the evangelists and apostles are all silent upon this alleged attribute of the Sabbath ; Paul even makes the day of small account. " Certain we are," con tinued Mr. Garrison, " that all attempts to coerce an observance of the Sabbath by legislation have been, must be, and ought to be, nugatory." Again: "Let men consecrate to the service of Jehovah not merely one day in seven, but all their time, thoughts, actions and powers." Passing to the origin of the Sabbath, he found it a sign and covenant between Jehovah and the Israel ites, with special reference to their deliverance from Egypt. The Puritans Sabbath-keeping was of the strict est while they were banishing Baptists and lacerating and hanging Quakers. Half his space had been exhausted when Mr. Garrison became aware that he had been led into a course of remark which he did not contemplate at the outset. His central idea had been to rebuke Dr. Beecher for being so strenuous in behalf of the Fourth Commandment while giving his protecting influence to slavery, which annihi lated the ivhole decalogue, and excluded two and a half millions of his countrymen from all the benefits of the Sabbath. Dr. Beecher advocated leaving the system alone, as being sure to come to an end in the course of a couple of centuries. He had gagged his students at Lane Seminary until they seceded en masse. He was denouncing atheism, but not the slave system based upon it ; and fatalism, while supporting the Colonization Society, which held that the blacks were fated to remain ^T. 31.] GEEMS OF CONTENTION. 109 degraded in this country. He professed to have blushed CHAP. 11. (though alone) while reading the socialistic tracts of ^^ Robert Owen and Fanny Wright 5 but when had he done so, in public or in private, at the practical and legal annihilation of the marriage institution among the slaves by Christians of all denominations ? Mr. Garrison returned to the subject, strictly in its relations to slavery, in the next two numbers of the Liberator, accompanying his last article on Dr. Beecher Lib. 6:123, with a long one maintaining the sinfulness of all war, and the Christian character of non-resistance ; and a shorter one (inspired by a current news item) on Sab bath-breaking, ridiculing the customary religious moral izing on fatalities overtaking those engaged in secular pursuits on Sunday. The conclusion ran thus : " These remarks are made, not to encourage men to do Lib. 6:127. wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious and super stitious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that extraor dinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon certain transgressors (of the Sabbath, particularly and almost exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its sanctity. " Supposing the Fourth Commandment to be, not a Jewish provision merely, but obligatory upon all mankind, we are nowhere taught in the Bible that its violation is worse than that of the third, or fifth, or sixth, or seventh. But it is seldom pretended, even by the most credulous, that special judgments, i speaking the divine disapprobation, are visited upon the heads of those who commit adultery, or kill, or covet, or will not honor their father and mother. No a monopoly of pun ishment is given to the Sabbath, to ensure its strict outward observance ! " From friends and foes of the Liberator protestations #.6:135. were quickly heard against this heterodox doctrine. On August 11, Mr. Garrison writes from Brooklyn to Henry Benson : " My review of Dr. Beecher s speech seems to MS. 110 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 31. make some fluttering in certain quarters, especially my MS. remarks upon the sanctity of the Sabbath " j on the 18th he reports to the same that further censure had been visited upon him, as he had anticipated ; and on the 21st, that there was still no end of it : MS. " The only thing that I regret is, the insertion of a commu nication by Knapp, (written by friend Oakes 1 ), headed The Lib. 6 : 122. New and Old Puritans, because it is written in a manner cal culated to exasperate, and not to convince. I know how im portant it is that I should keep the columns of the Liberator clear of sectarianism, nor have I ever intended to assail any denominational feelings or peculiarities. The Sabbath ques tion is not sectarian, but general yet the discussion of it is not exactly proper in the Liberator. I have received several letters remonstrating with me on account of my sentiments, but chiefly on the erroneous supposition that I was about making my paper the arena of a sabbatical controversy. Some of these are expressed in kind and friendly language. Not so is the one sent to me by young Hyde of this village [a theo logical student at New Haven]. Although he has paid in advance up to September, he says that he does not wish to receive another number of the paper and he considers me l a dangerous member of the community, deserving the reproba tion of every lover of his country ! ! " But the letter which grieves and surprises me most is that of Rev. Jonathan Farr, of Harvard, 2 with whom I believe you are somewhat acquainted. He says : * I had supposed you a very pious person, and that a large proportion of the abolitionists were religious persons. ... I have thought of you as another Wilberforce but would Wilberforce have spoken thus of the day on which the Son of God rose from the dead ? . . . I have supposed, that, in your great and incessant exertions in the anti-slavery cause, you were influenced by no worldly nor political motive that yours was a holy zeal and a Christian benevolence, etc., etc. Here is Christian charity for you ! Because, with Calvin, Belsham, Paley, Fox, Whitby, Barclay, Gill, Selden, Luther, and many other distinguished commen tators and pious men, I maintain that, under the gospel dis pensation, there is no such thing as a * holy day, but that all 1 William Oakes, of Ipswich, Mass. 2 That is, of the town of Harvard, Mass. Mr. Farr was also a graduate of Harvard College (1818). ^T. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. Ill our time ought to be sanctified by works of righteousness and CHAP. II. in well-doing, it follows, according to the insinuations of l{ j~ 6 Mr. FaiT, that I am not a pious person that abolitionists are not religious that I am influenced by worldly or political motives that mine is not a holy zeal and a Christian benevo lence ! "And yet this same individual complains in his letter as follows * Though belonging to a denomination of Christians who are denied the Christian name by multitudes, etc. Surely, it is time for him to take the beam from his own eye ; surely, if he is disposed to stigmatize me as an infidel, or shut me out from the pale of Christianity, because I differ with him as to the sanctity of an outward observance he ought not to com plain if he is treated in the same manner by others, because he differs with them as to the scheme of salvation and the essen tial dignity of Jesus Christ. He asks, Would Wilberforce have spoken thus, &c. What then ? Is Christ or Wilberforce our example ? And I ask Mr. Fair in reply, l Would Wilber force have denied the identity of Christ with the Father ? or would he have been a Unitarian, to gain the applause of the world ! Such questions are not arguments, but fallacies, un worthy of a liberal mind. Bro. May is much grieved at Farr s letter." Mr. Garrison apologized publicly for the insertion of #.6:134. Mr. Oakes s communication, but in the next number of the Liberator aroused anew the bigotry which he sought Lib. 6: 138. in a manly way to propitiate. " We have received sev eral letters," he began, " from persons of various religious sects some expressive of strong condemnation, and others by way of caution respecting our late remarks upon the Sabbath question, which is now widely agitat ing the Christian community." The editor did not mean to be diverted from the special advocacy of the one great cause, or to make the Liberator the arena of a foreign controversy. His sabbatical strictures upon Dr. , Beecher were purely incidental, and to the point that the obligation of nine commandments was ignored in favor of one. He was not opposed to the voluntary religious observance of the first day of the week; but he was " decidedly of opinion that every attempt which is made 112 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 31. CHAP. ii. to enforce its observance, as a peculiarly holy day/ by 1836. pains and penalties, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is positive tyranny, which ought to be resisted by all the Lord s freemen, all who are rejoicing in the glorious liberty of the sons of God." In support of this position he cited the authorities just enumerated (in the letter to Henry Benson), whom he confessed he had consulted for the first time after his review of Dr. Beecher, being ignorant till then of the views of any commentator. He had, as he expected, brought down upon himself " the mint-aud-cummin editors of the Vermont Chronicle, Neiv Hampshire Observer," and their kind. The Observer, in order to injure the anti-slavery cause through him, had alleged that he did not belong to the Church of Christ. This was true : " On account of many religious scruples, we have not felt at liberty in conscience to be come the partisan of a religious sect, nor to bind our selves by a human creed, nor to unite in the observance of certain forms and ceremonies. 77 The Observer had furthermore charged that he kept his eye fixed intently on one object. " Not exactly," replied Mr. Garrison ; " he is watching all the great moral and benevolent move ments of the age, as any one l with half an eye ? may see, on examining the file of the Liberator from its com mencement." However, he meant not to be deviated from the abolition cause, and, so far as the Liberator was concerned, then and there took leave of the Sabbath con troversy ; but, considering the effort making to sanctify the first day of the week as a holy day, he should probably without much delay present his thoughts elaborately in a pamphlet. 1 His clerical foes, however, would not relax their pursuit of him. Not only his Quaker views of the Sabbath, but his Quaker non-resistance and so-called non-government Lib. 6 : 126. doctrines, as set forth in his article on Peace, were open Lib. 6: 146. to attack. The Vermont Chronicle warned the Liberator s l Like many other projects incompatible with his absorbing occupation, this came to nothing. ^T. 31.] GERMS OF CONTENTION. 113 subscribers of their responsibility for such heresies. Mr. CHAP. n. Garrison met the "base and insidious efforts" of the x ^ 6 religious press to create distrust and division between himself and his abolition brethren (prompted by jealousy of his early, consistent, and effective advocacy of the anti- slavery cause), by assuming the entire responsibility for all his utterances on slavery or any other topic. Never theless, " I trust it will be understood," he said, " that I Lib. e -. 147. do not make these remarks by way of apology for any thing that I have uttered, or in order to propitiate any of my subscribers. The Liberator shall be free to myself, or to any of its patrons, while it continues in existence. I have never solicited the support or favor of any man ; nor do I fear the censure or condemnation of any man." His more orthodox associates, though uneasy, and not in agreement with him, would not suddenly desert him. Amos A. Phelps defended him in the Emancipator, while Lit. 6 -.147. disclaiming sympathy with his Sabbath notions, and regretting his mistake in "turning aside" from his main business with Dr. Beecher. Ray Potter stood up for him in the Pawtucket Record, saying pertinently and forcibly, "Our association with you, brother Garrison, as aboli- #.6:147, tionists, is not to build up a CHURCH, but to pull down SLAVERY." Both accused his assailants of sectarian bigotry. But their very disclaimers showed that the enemy knew the breaching spot in the anti-slavery out works. A New York "Abolitionist," writing to the Lib. 6:141. Liberator, whom we can certainly identify with Lewis Tappan, saw in the Sabbath discussion " the germ of animosity and contention among brethren." At the semi annual meeting of the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society Lib. 6 . 158. on September 15, a resolution of Charles Burleigh s, urging support of the Liberator, found Sabbatarian ob jectors, though the vote was finally unanimous. A week later, Mr. Garrison writes to Mr. May, from Brooklyn : " Now that my sabbatical, as well as some of my other re- MS. Sept. ligious sentiments are known, it is pretty certain that the Liberator will sustain a serious loss in its subscriptions at the VOL. II. 8 114 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [Mr. 31. CHAP. II. close of the present volume ; and all appeals for aid in its j^Tg behalf will be less likely to prevail than formerly. I am con scious that a mighty sectarian conspiracy is forming to crush me, and it will probably succeed, to some extent. Well from the heart I can say, The Lord is my portion I will not fear what men can do unto me. 0, the rottenness of Christendom ! Judaism and Romanism are the leading features of Protestant ism. 1 I am forced to believe, that, as it respects the greater portion of professing Christians in this land, Christ has died in vain. In their traditions, their forms and ceremonies, their vain janglings, their self -righteousness, their will-worship, their sectarian zeal and devotion, their infallibility and exclusiveness, they are Pharisees and Sadducees, they are Papists and Jews. Blessed be God that I am not entangled with their yoke of bondage, and that I am not allied to them in spirit or form." In the anti-slavery propagandism of the year, the chief event is thus referred to in the Liberator of November 5, Lib. 6 : 179. 1836 : " Not less than seventy Agents have lately been engaged, and are shortly to go forth, in the anti-slavery cause some * during the war, and others for a definite period of action." The prospect inspired Mrs. Chapman Lib. 6 -. 179. to address them in her refined verse, full of ardor ; and Lib. 6: 191. the occasion of their protracted meeting in New York for instructions, prior to their dispersion in apostolic service, seemed a proper one for Mr. Garrison s presence and counsel : MS. Anna Ben son. W. L. Garrison to Henry E. Benson, at Brooklyn, Conn. BOSTON, December 3, 1836. My wife, I suppose, has written Anna an account of our trip to New York a city which she had long been wishing to see, not because "five thousand gentlemen of property and stand ing," as in Boston, once turned out to mob her husband, (you Ante, 1:381. remember the uproar in October 5 1833,) for she declares that she loves me dearly, and if you will not doubt her word I will not, but because it is the capital city of America, and swarming, l "We [the Perfectionists] believe all the essential features of Judaism and of its successor, Popery, may be distinctly traced in nearly every form of Protestant " (John Humphrey Noyes, in the first number of the Per fectionist, Aug. 20, 1834). ^T. 31.] GERMS OF CONTENTION. 115 of course, with all kinds of attractions. Little, however, did CHAP. II. either of us dream, on leaving Boston, that she and our dear babe would accompany me farther than Providence ; but our warm-hearted friend Lewis Tappan laid claim to us all in the cars, and declared that, nolens volens, to New York we should all go that he would pay our expenses in going and return ing, entertain us comfortably at his house during our sojourn in the city, and allow us to remain as long or as short a period as we might choose. This was too generous an offer to be negatived; I therefore said, " Yea," and also easily persuaded Helen to reply in the affirmative. As for " Dordie Tompit," l he seemed to be ready for any new adventure, and was full of fun and frolic all the way, both in the car and in the steamboat. Soon after we left Providence, his mother began to feel sick and dizzy, on account of the motion of the boat. I went into the Ladies Cabin, and found her with her head reposing upon her pillow, and was rejoiced to observe little George, as I thought, asleep in her berth ; but it turned out to be somebody else s babe. My attention was drawn to a lively little fellow crawling about the cabin with great glee, who seemed greatly to enjoy the rocking of the boat and the novelty of the scene around him. Many eyes were fastened upon him, but no one seemed to have charge of him. " Well," thought I, " you are a smart little shaver, truly ; but I wonder your mother don t ob serve your movements more narrowly." In a moment, he had crawled to a pile of bowls, and was in the act of pulling it down, when, deeming it time for me to interfere if nobody else would, I took hold of him, drew him back, and lo ! it was my own darling babe ! for Helen was too sick to attend to him, and he was revelling in unrestrained liberty. 2 . . . 1 Parental nursery lingo for " George Thompson." 2 " DEAR BROTHER GARRISON: Did I not see an experienced phrenolo gist examine your head? While under his manipulation, did I not hear him say of you, You are extremely fond of children ? And I have better evidence than the configuration and size of your bumps, that, in you, children will ever find a friend. I have seen children made happy by your smiles and gentle caresses. Yes, you, whom slaveholders and their abet tors denounce as a cruel and ferocious fanatic and incendiary, have a heart to enter into the feelings and sympathies and sports of little children. From the time I first understood your interest in children, and your love of their society, and your aptitude to win their gentle and tender hearts, and their unsuspicious confidence, I felt that whatever was said of your cruel and ferocious spirit must be false " (H. C. Wright, Jan. 4, 1837 ; Lib. 7:10). 116 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. . 31 1836. CHAP. II. My own dilatory habits aside, you may be disposed to query, why I did not write to you in New York. The truth is, I was too busily employed in convention, and out of it, even to bestow the least attention upon my wife i. e., I did not walk out with her once hence, you received no letter from me. Now, a word as to the convention. With the exception of the meeting which organized the New England Anti- Slavery Society, and that which was held in Philadelphia in 1833, I regard this convention of Agents as of higher importance than any meeting or convocation which has been held to advance the anti- slavery cause. I am sure that its deliberations and proceedings have not been equalled in interest. About thirty of the fifty Agents actually engaged were present all of them men of talents, amiable in their Theodore D. manners and religious in their professions : Weld was the central luminary, around which they all revolved. Indeed, we must have been a very stupid body if, among so many, and making common stock of all our minds, we could not make our sessions full of interest and pleasure. We held three meetings a day, scarcely allowing ourselves time to eat j and yet, when a fortnight had been thus incessantly occupied, it. seemed as if we were but just entering upon the threshold of the great question of slavery so exhaustless is the theme, so vast the relations involved in the well-being and freedom of man. Beriah Green, Weld, and Stuart were the chief speakers, although every one present participated more or less in the discussions. I spoke repeatedly, but very briefly as I am wont to do. 1 The questions discussed were manifold such as, What is slavery ? What is immediate emancipation ? Why don t you go to the South ? The slaves, if emancipated, would overrun the North. The consequences of emancipation to the South. Hebrew servitude. Compensation. Colonization. Prejudice. Treatment and condition of our free colored population. Grad ualism, etc., etc. All the prominent objections to our cause were ingeniously presented, and as conclusively shown to be futile. It was a wise stroke of policy in bringing the Agents together, that they might see and hear each other, understand each other s feelings and sentiments, cheer each other s hearts, and form a personal friendship with each other. It was a happy l "You know that I always speak in public with reluctance, especially if my remarks be not written down and to read is a slavish mode of speak ing, if speaking it can be called " (MS. April 10, 1836, W. L. G. to G. W. Benson). ^T. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 117 circumstance, too, that I was present with them, and that they CHAP. n. had an opportunity to become personally acquainted with me ; l{ j~ 6 for, as I am a great stumbling-block in the way of the people, or, rather, of some people, it would be somewhat dis astrous to our cause if any of our Agents, through the influence of popular sentiment, should be led to cherish prejudices against me. I was most kindly received by all, and treated as a brother beloved, notwithstanding the wide difference of opinion between us on some religious points, especially the Sabbath question. My friend Lewis Tappan had some conver sation with me respecting my religious views ; but, though we could by no means agree, we harmoniously agreed to differ. $3T He did not show me his written creed, but I should have been gratified to see it. Mrs. Garrison had been obliged to return home with out her husband. A letter to her, dated New York, November 22, 1836, contained a few more particulars con cerning the convention the last, of great importance : "It is still my purpose, the Lord willing, to be with you on MS. Saturday morning j but I shall find it extremely difficult to Nov. 26, leave, and, on some accounts, shall be reluctant to leave ; for the Convention is not to be dissolved until some time next week, and there are many great themes yet to be discussed and illustrated. . . . " Last evening, we had a large and crowded meeting of our Nov. 21, colored people, with many of our leading abolitionists. Several of the former addressed the meeting, in a very interesting manner. I was then called upon to make some remarks, and was received with grateful applause. I spoke about half an hour, and was followed by Weld, who delighted and moved all T. D. Weld. hearts. Seldom have I witnessed a more thrilling scene. Our hearts were one, and love reigned over all. . . . " Our Convention has unanimously invited the Grimkes, Angelina and Sarah, (who punctually attended our meetings), to speak whenever they think proper, and to state such facts respecting slavery as they may choose. Sarah has just said, that, although brought up in the midst of slavery, and having conversed with hundreds of well-treated slaves, she has never found one who did not long to be free." One other incident of this November visit to New York deserves to be recorded. Mr. Garrison, sharing the pre- 118 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. [-ET. 31. CHAP. ii. vailing interest in phrenology, offered himself for cranial ^6. examination to Mr. L. N. Fowler, to whom he was a total stranger. What, in the language of the time, was called the " phrenological development of the character/ 7 here follows in full, as a contribution (for what it is worth) to the history of the science : Lib, 8:152. "This gentleman has an active mind, quick perception, strong investigating powers, great imagination, great deter mination and pride of character. He is capable of undergoing great mental excitement. " His love is pure and platonic. He becomes strongly at tached to friends and children. He is always interested in the Ante, p. 115. society of children, and gratified by instructing them ; yet he always secures their obedience, because he commands their respect. " His courage is moral, not physical ; he uses a moral weapon instead of a physical one. He is not contentious, and avoids difficulty j yet he always defends his character and maintains his opinion, and braves danger when good is to be done. " His destructiveness is large ; he uses effectual measures, and generally accomplishes whatever he begins. " He is sarcastic when excited, and can say much in a few words. "He generally keeps his plans and feelings to himself, and carries his plans into execution without divulging them. 1 " He is very independent, and always thinks for himself. He is sometimes too regardless of the opinion of others, and cares not for the smiles or frowns of men. " Approbativeness is small j he has not affability enough to balance his independence. He is more proud than vain. He is too high-minded to be nattered, and feels himself above noticing common remarks. " Self-esteem and firmness are very large, giving him great independence and determination. He glories in standing alone and meeting danger single-handed ; and relies more on himself than on any human aid. He never begs, and scorns to ask a favor for himself. He is more willing to give than to receive. iThis characterization of secretiveness, with that contained in the eleventh and twelfth succeeding paragraphs, was used by his opponents to discredit Mr. Garrison in later years (2d Annual Report Mass. Abolition Society, in Free American, 3:57; and compare p. 243 of Pillsbury s Acts of the A. S. Apostles ). ^ET. 31.] GEKMS OF CONTENTION. 119 " When lie is once convinced that it is right to do anything, CHAP. n. he engages in it, regardless of consequences and does^ it l{ j~ 6 through pleasure more than duty. 11 Self-esteem and benevolence give him a desire to promote the happiness of man to protect the injured and dependent, and defend the weak. It [sic] also gives him a love of liberty, and national pride. u His firmness sometimes makes him obstinate, united with large self-esteem. He would listen to nothing but what he thought was right. u His religion consists in the exercise of benevolence and veneration, and he is strongly inclined to venerate and adore. On the subject of religion he takes general and liberal views, and is not guided at all by creeds and ceremonies. He puts no confidence in anything supernatural or strange. His faith is purely the result of reason. He is rather incredulous and sceptical. " He has a strong desire to promote the happiness of man, and has great sympathy for persons in distress. 1 His benevo lence is very large ; he is never satisfied but when he is doing good on a large scale. He would sacrifice everything for friends and country. " His imagination is very strong. He unites reason and im agination, thought and good style, with wit and poetry. His mind always expands on subjects the longer he dwells on them : the more he says, the more he has to say. " His talent is both practical and theoretical. He is a great observer of men and things, and is always studying into the character, nature and designs of men. He is also fond of phi losophy, both moral and mental, and of metaphysical investiga tion. His imitation is large, joined with large comparison, wit and language, with ideality. He is very natural in his descrip tions, happy in his illustrations, and uses natural comparisons. " He has something of a theatrical tact. He can easily adapt himself to society. He soon becomes acquainted, and is always at home. He becomes all things to all men, and has great in fluence over others. He was born to take the lead, rather than be led. He always engages with his whole soul in anything he undertakes, and drives Jehu-like, yet drives safely. He always wants the reins in his own hands. l "You would make a roaring abolitionist," said O. S. Fowler, in ignor ance both of his brother s deductions and of the personality of the sitter. 120 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. I>ET. 31. CHAP. II. " He is called reckless by many, yet he always succeeds better ^~ 6 than his strongest friends anticipated. He has more fore thought than he manifests. " He has great literary ingenuity, and is full of new schemes and projects. He shows a great deal of tact as a writer and reasoner. He seldom or never commits himself. He unites wit and sarcasm, and always adapts his remarks to the occasion. " His memory of principles, new ideas, historical facts, of faces, shapes, locations, and the expressions of others, is good. " He is very wordy, and always has something to say. He has an uncommon talent for a writer. He reasons both by analogy and induction. He is very systematic. He is some times over-particular about the arrangement of things. He has a mathematical and mechanical talent, and wishes to have everything done according to rule. He is very happy in his illustrations of the passions and natural inclinations of man, and in portraying the human heart ; also in making everything simple, clear and plain, easily understood by a child. " He wants to engage in business on a large scale. He is willing to ask advice, yet always does what he thinks to be right. His friends are his strong friends, and his enemies are most bitter. He is not so well calculated to please as he is to subdue. He always uses mild measures first, and then the more severe. His firmness is almost too strong, and he is at times too decided and positive. He never compromises to secure the approbation of others, but acts totally regardless of what others ma^think or say." The year which had opened joyously with a birth, had been clouded by the rapidly failing health of the beloved Henry Benson, whose predisposition to consumption had been stimulated by his conscientious application to the duties of the Anti-Slavery Office. It closed in mourning Dec. ii, for the death of his venerable father, George Benson, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. His daughter Helen and her husband were at his bedside in his last moments. "Mr. Benson/ 7 said his son-in-law in the Liberator, "was a rare example of moral excellence among mankind. In justness, he was an Aristides in peaceableness, a Penn in philanthropy, a Clarkson." CHAPTER III. THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 1837. HENRY BENSON followed his father to the grave Jan. 6, 1837. in less than a month, in the first half of his twenty- third year ; so young, and yet already a veteran in the cause. "At the age of sixteen his mind had the maturity Lib. 7:15. of manhood." He was only nineteen when he threw Ann. Report himself ardently into the defence of Prudence Crandall sn* , 1837, against her persecutors. He took a leading part in * f. fe organizing the Providence Anti-Slavery Society and in revolutionizing the public sentiment of Rhode Island. He was the last abolitionist to bid good-bye to George Thompson, whose travelling associate and secretary he had been. His services to the Liberator, as its editor Lib. 7:15. testified, contributed largely to its permanent support. Elected in July, 1835, Secretary and General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, he proved the most valuable business man who had ever filled that post. "The adjoining room witnessed his incessant toil," said Lib. 7 -26. Mr. May, at the first meeting of the Society after its loss ; January 27, "there he labored with an assiduity which spared not himself and there, I hesitate not to say, he sacrificed his life. We saw his health failing we remonstrated but he saw the cause suffering for just such labors as his he went on he lingered a little while and died." The speaker could not proceed for his emotion. MS- F $- " Nearly all present were in tears." G. to Anna At this meeting, not unfittingly, the perennial subject of the financial condition of the Liberator was brought 121 122 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. up. Another crisis had arisen with the new year, and it 1837. was scarcely less urgent (so vast had become the anti- slavery literature of the day) to enlarge the paper than to maintain it, and it was still far from being self-sup porting. Mr. Garrison wrote from Boston on February 4, 1837, to Anna Benson : MS. " About three hours were occupied in discussing the merits of the Liberator and its editor. The Sabbath question was also taken up. I dare not tell you, dear Anna, what fine things were said about me. To my surprise, notwithstanding that t delicate subject, the Sabbath, was alluded to in connexion with my review of Dr. Beecher s speech, there was but one feeling manifested toward me, and that of the most enthusi astic kind. What was peculiarly pleasing was to find men of various sects joining in one common panegyric. Among Samuel the speakers were Rev. Mr. Norris, Methodist j Isaac Wins- R N B n Hall. low > Friend; Rev. Mr. Hall, Congregationalist 5 Rev. Mr. Alanson St. St. Clair, Unitarian, etc., etc. 1 Bro. May poured out his soul S. J. May. as usual, and said that the same ball which laid Garrison Henry B. i ow? WO uld carry him down also. Stanton spoke nobly and George W. generously. Well, does bro. George ask what was done as Benson. we jj as 8a ^ f Something that will delight him ! It was unan imously voted, that the Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society should henceforth assume the responsibility of printing and editing 2 the Liberator, and that the abolitionism of the Com monwealth should be pledged to sustain it. 3 The paper, however, is not to be the organ of our Society, nor is any body to control my pen. This arrangement will relieve friend Knapp and myself of a heavy burden, which has long 1 Amasa Walker said that the success of the Liberator was identified with that of the cause. Even now the enemy was exultant because the Liberator was languishing for want of support. It ought to be adopted as the centre, the organ of the Society. "We do not all feel perfectly pleased with all Mr. Garrison says. Like Martin Luther, his language is rough and some times violent. But Mr. Birney has said, My anti-slavery trumpet would never have roused the country Garrison alone could do it. " The Lib erator s fault and merit was that "it is always a little ahead of public sen timent," i.e., ultra (Lib. 7 : 26). 2 The context seems to show that this was a slip of the pen for pub lishing." "The editorial responsibility rests, as heretofore, with Mr. Garrison" (Official circular, March 8, 1837). 3 Our sole reliance is now on the prompt action of auxiliary and other so cieties " (Official circular). ^T. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 123 crushed us to the earth. It is probable that we shall soon CHAP. ill. enlarge the paper." 1 ~ Mr. May s tribute drove his friend from the room, and Lib. 7 : 26. called for remarks in modest abnegation on his return. Further " One word as to the Liberator. I have no desire that it Lib. 7:26. should be supported any longer than it is regarded as a useful instrument in the anti-slavery cause. I ask no man to approve of every sentiment contained in its columns, or to patronize it, except on the ground of its advocacy of the rights of plundered millions. It is neither my aim nor expectation to please every individual subscriber to the Liberator, in every particular : such a coincidence, while men differ so widely in their tastes and notions on various subjects, is utterly impracticable. It must suffice that free discussion is its motto, and that those who are opposed to me in sentiment are always invited to occupy its pages. " There must not, there cannot be a spirit of competition between the Liberator and the publications of the American Society. But it will be seen at once that the Liberator, if left to depend upon its subscription-list alone, cannot maintain its ground whilst the Emancipator, for instance, sustained by the funds of the Parent Society, is issued on a much larger sheet, and afforded on the same terms. I do not wish the Liberator to be the organ either of this or any other Society, nor any body of men to be responsible for every sentiment it may promul gate ; and I am quite sure that I shall not permit any persons to control my pen, or establish a censorship over my writings. " As the Sabbath question has been alluded to, allow me to say, that it has not been the object of the Liberator to maintain my peculiar views on that subject. I have inserted in its columns many articles advocating, either directly or indirectly, the generally received opinions respecting the Sabbath j but none of my numerous subscribers among Friends has in con sequence discontinued his subscription. In reviewing Dr. Beecher s speech, it was my object not only to convict him of gross inconsistency, but to enforce the truth that we are to be wholly consecrated to God at all times to maintain a perpetual l This enlargement was made with the tenth number (March 4, 1837). The size of the printed page now became about 16 x 23 inches. By mid summer the subscribers numbered some 3,000 (MS. June 14, 1837, W. L. G. to G. W. Benson). 124 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. III. Sabbath to observe every day as holy unto the Lord. It was jj~ no Jacobinism that I wished to advocate. But the leading, all- absorbing object of the Liberator shall continue to be, as it has been hitherto, the overthrow of American slavery not to conflict with any religious sect or political party." Before this seemingly happy settlement of the Libera tor s continuance this unlucky makeshift, as the event proved and amid the depression caused in the Benson circle by their two-fold bereavement, 1 Mr. Garrison sat down to compose the fifth annual report of the Massa chusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Not a trace of despond- Report, p. 3. ency was to be found in the opening sentence : " The tone which the Managers . . . would assume ... is one of joyful hope to the manacled slaves of sincere congratulation to the friends of human liberty, univer sally of ardent gratitude to God." Yet these words were read in the loft of a stable, the only place obtain able by the Society for its meeting : Report, p. 6. "Let the winds carry the tale to the four quarters of the earth in Boston, in the year of our Lord, 1837, in the sixty- first year of American independence, not a single meeting house, not a hall of any magnitude, can be obtained on any terms, not even for money at an exorbitant price ! in which abolitionists may plead the cause of the trampled slave ! But, it is believed, there is not a single pulpit in this city * to which a slaveholding preacher cannot find ready access, even for the avowed purpose of vindicating the soul-destroying system of slavery as a divine institution, from the Holy Scriptures ! Nor is there, we presume, a public hall which cannot be occupied by jugglers, mountebanks, ballad- singers, rope-dancers, reli gious impostors, etc., etc., as they shall wish to hire." 2 "*With one exception Pine Street" [but even this congregation re fused their house for the meeting]. 1 " I never knew a family which seemed to me to be bound together more closely in the bonds of brotherly and sisterly love than the Bensons, and it almost seems as if I could feel to my own heart s core the vibration of that string which has now been struck in theirs" (C. C. Burleigh to Ed ward M. Davis, after Henry Benson s death. MS. Jan. 23, 1837). 2 The Free Church, which had a lease of Julien Hall for its own services, was turned out for having offered hospitality to the abolitionists (Lib. 7:19). ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 125 The loft in question was that of the stable attached to CHAP. in. the Marlboro 7 Hotel, and had been put at the Society s ^ disposal by Willard Sears, the owner of the property. Before beginning his reading, Mr. Garrison said : Lib. 7 . 21. " There might be some fears on the part of the audience in regard to the security of the loft ; but he assured them that the floor was well propped, and he felt grati fied with the consciousness that Abolition, to-day as on every day, stands upon a stable foundation." But some thing better was in store for the outcasts from the churches a marvellous sign of the spread of anti- slavery sentiment since the Boston mob. An applica tion to the Legislature for the use of the hall of the House of Representatives, for an evening session, was granted without debate, though not without a nearly successful attempt to revoke the concession. "When Lib. 7:18. Boston votes," said Stanton in the hall itself, " the Anti- Slavery Society goes into A STABLE. When the State votes, it goes "into THE STATE HOUSE." Mr. Garri son thus wrote, to Anna Benson, of these extraordinary occurrences : " The annual meeting of our State Society was held last MS. Feb. 4, week in this city, and of course I was altogether too much engrossed with its concerns to indulge in correspondence. Bro. George, having been present at the first meeting in the Jan. 25, stable-loft, has no doubt given you all the particulars; and such as he has not been able to detail, by his subsequent absence, you will find recorded at length in the last and in this Lib. 7 : 19, week s Liberator. It will hardly be necessary to occupy this sheet on that subject. Suffice it to say, that we had five public meetings, four of them crowded to excess, without any disturb ance, and that, in genuine abolition spirit and brotherly kind ness, they exceeded all that have hitherto been held in Boston. You can form but a faint idea of the life and glow which pervaded them all, by reading the speeches as reported in to-day s Liberator. One needed to be present to realize all that Lib. 7:21. transpired. The utmost kindness and cordiality were extended to me by all present, and every speaker was more or less pro fuse in his encomiums upon myself and the Liberator. When ever my name was alluded to, a round of applause was sure to 126 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. follow 1 which clearly demonstrated, not so much that any ~ merit belongs to me, as that the meeting was deeply and thoroughly saturated with Garrisonism. Indeed, there was a great deal too much said in my praise. If I did not know that I have nailed my natural vanity and love of human praise to the cross of Christ, such things would be likely to puff me up. But, t God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ, by whom I am crucified unto the world, and the world unto me. It cannot but cheer my heart to know that I have secured the approbation and love of the best people in the land, because it has naturally followed my advocacy of a righteous though unpopular cause j 2 but mere human applause is in itself no evidence of personal worth. "At the State House, our meeting was thronged to excess. One of our daily papers estimates that not less than five thousand persons went away, being unable to obtain admittance ! It was expected that our enemies would rally strongly on that occasion ; but, as a test of the character and feelings of the audience, I will merely state that when Ellis Gray Loring, in the course of his speech, bestowed a strong panegyric upon my name, 3 a burst of applause followed from every part of the house. When 1 " Tremendous applause " was given when an ex-slave, a native of Africa, after reciting some horrible tales from his experience, turned suddenly to Mr. Garrison with " Dat man is de Moses raised up for our deliverance " (Lib. 7:22). 2 " Par justice, il [M. le due de la Valliere] m a h on ore" d une estime que j ai merited ; car si Pamiti6 s accorde, 1 estime s exige, et si 1 une est tin don, 1 autre est une dette" (Beaumarchais, Memoirs). 3 Mr. Loring had summarized the anti-slavery career of Clarkson, and then proceeded : " Posterity looks upon such men and deeds in a vastly different light from contemporaries. Five or six years ago, a poor and solitary individual of the working class came among us, with nothing to depend upon but his God and the native powers which God gave him. He raised the thrilling cry of immediate emancipation. His encouragement was at first small indeed. But the grand, the true, the vital idea of im mediate freedom to the slave burned bright within him and supported him. He, too, at length, had his twelve associates, and the first Anti- Slavery Society was formed. From this small beginning, and owing mainly, I believe, under God, to the clear vision, the purity of character, the energy, and the intrepidity of that individual, our cause has advanced till it numbers 800 societies. An anti-slavery society has been formed in the United States every day for the last two years. There are 300 societies in the single State of Ohio, one of which numbers 4,000 members. Yet the individual who started this mighty movement, is rejected and scorned by the great and little vulgar of our day. No matter. Posterity will do justice to the name of William Lloyd Garrison " (Lib. 7 : 23). -ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 127 it died away, a few hisses were heard in one of the galleries. CHAP. in. These elicited another tremendous round of applause. Again jj~ a hiss was heard, and then followed another and still more powerful manifestation of enthusiastic approbation of my labors in the anti-slavery cause. I mention this fact to show how vain have been the attempts of my enemies to make me odious even among my abolition brethren." As every one present must have felt, the mere meeting at the State House was a personal triumph for Mr. Garrison, which eulogy and applause might emphasize, but which no amount of hissing could diminish. Nor had it yet reached its climax. A week before, the re- January 19, newal in Congress of the presentation of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District, chiefly through the untiring instrumentality of John Quincy Adams, had led the House of Representatives to pass a fresh resolu- Lib. 7 : 18. tion to suppress and discourage them.* "All petitions, .,-,,. ... , ,. port Mass. memorials, resolutions, propositions, or papers, relating A. s. Soc. t * in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery, or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid on the table, and no further action whatever shall be had thereon." The sub- missiveness of the North to this outrage was confidently reckoned on by the perpetrators of it, both from the large majority secured for it, and from the precedent of the Pinckney gag of the previous session. They over- Ante, p. 74. looked, however, three important factors the tenacious character and parliamentary skill of Mr. Adams, the indomitable purpose and efficient machinery of the agita tors, and the immense growth of the anti-slavery senti ment at large during the twelvemonth. Redoubling their efforts to send up petitions, the abolitionists at the Lib. 7 : 26. same time appealed from the free States betrayed and misrepresented in Congress to the same States in their respective assemblies. On the 21st of March, Mr. Garri- Lib. 7:54. 1 Moved by Hawes, of Kentucky. The Speaker ruled unexpectedly that the previous gag-rule expired with the session (5th Ann. Report Mass. A. S. Society, p. 22). 128 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. son listened in the lower house of the Massachusetts Lib. 7:51. Legislature to the reading and almost unanimous adop tion of a report emphatically upholding the right of petition (which had been virtually denied), especially " for the removal of a great social, moral and political evil " ; denouncing the assumption of power in the obnoxious resolution as doing violence to the Constitu tion and to the inherent, absolute and inalienable rights of man j cordially approving the conduct of the State s representatives, and reaffirming the authority of Con gress to abolish slavery in the District. The Massa- Lib. 7:55, chusetts Senate followed with even stronger resolutions. 59- MS. April " We have had," writes Mr. Garrison to George W. Benson, " and are yet having, lively times in onr Legislature on the subject of slavery. You will see, by the last Liberator, how the question has been carried in one branch by a vote of 378 to 16, 1 in the other by a vote of 33 to none ! 2 in our favor, too ! It is the most extraordinary change in political action, on a moral subject, in the annals of legislation. However, a strong effort is now making, by our enemies, to suppress all the reso lutions upon the final vote for concurrence. It is not probable Lib.7-.s9- that they will succeed, but our majority will be reduced. No matter : the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts will do her duty in grand style, and pioneer the way for her sister States in the cause of emancipation. We shall secure this session, undoubtedly, the right of trial by jury to runaway slaves." 3 After the middle of June, Mr. Garrison, for the better health of his family, removed again to Brooklyn, leaving Lib. 7 ; 99 ; his friend Oliver Johnson as sub-editor in charge of the 14/1837. Liberator, but aiming to write regularly for the paper. Since the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society he had attended four others, to each of which a word must be given. One was the quarterly 1 Including, among the nays, James L. Homer, of the Commercial Gazette. 2 This vote was on a substitute for the final House resolution, and pressed Congress to the " early exercise " of its power over the District (Lib. 1 : 55). 3 This significant measure passed both houses almost without dissent (Lib. 7:65-67). A similar law was- enacted in New Jersey shortly after ward {Lib. 7: 94), but was rejected in Pennsylvania (Lib. 1 : 11, 47). -Ex. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 129 meeting of the same Society at Lynn, March 28, memo- CHAP. in. rable for the maiden speech, in the anti-slavery cause, !^J 7> of Wendell Phillips, 1 who " charmed and surprised the Lib. 7:55, audience," and signalized his complete adhesion to the movement and his abandonment of legitimate worldly ambition by urging a resolution, which would be heard Lib. 7 : 62. from again, "That, having a great work to do, and but comparatively feeble means wherewith to do it, our influence and effort should be devoted mainly to the cause of abolition." From his speech on this subject of " special consecration " let us take a passage, prophetic in its aspiration, and noteworthy as the tribute of an eye-witness of the Boston mob to its victim : "We would have ourselves the joy of seeing this work #.7:63. accomplished. Before our eyes close, we wish to see the happy day which shall proclaim liberty to the captive. If it be pos sible, let the shout of emancipated millions rise, before his ear is dust whose voice first waked the trumpet-note which is l Son of John Phillips, the first mayor of Boston ; a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1831. He had studied law, as has been already noticed (ante, 1:453), and been admitted to the Suffolk bar. His high social po sition, his profession, his fascinating person, his extraordinary oratorical gifts, made any career he might have chosen practicable for him. His sacrifice in renouncing public honors and advancement has hardly any parallel in the history of the cause. The poet Lowell has thus em balmed it : "He stood upon the world s broad threshold: wide The din of battle and of slaughter rose; He saw God stand upon the weaker side, That sank in seeming loss before its foes ; Many there were who made great haste and sold Unto the cunning enemy their swords. He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, and gold, And, underneath their soft and flowery words, Heard the cold serpent hiss ; therefore he went And humbly joined him to the weaker part, Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content So he could be the nearer to God s heart, And feel its solemn pulses sending blood Through all the wide-spread veins of endless good." See also the tribute of the Board of Managers of the Mass. A. S. Society, evidently from Mr. Garrison s pen, in Lib. 9 : 95, on the eve of Mr. Phillips s departure for Europe. VOL. II 9 130 CHAP. III. Speech on J/ F India Bill, Dec. i, 17 3 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. 32. rocking the nation from side to side. To him (need I name him ?) with at least equal truth may be applied the language of Burke to Fox : It will be a distinction honorable to the age, ^ a * *k e rescue of the greatest number of the human race from the greatest tyranny that was ever exercised, has fallen to the lot of one with abilities and dispositions equal to the task ; that it has fallen to the lot of one who has the enlargement to comprehend, the spirit to undertake, and the eloquence to sup port so great a measure of hazardous benevolence. " At the anniversary meeting of the American Anti- Slavery Society, Mr. Garrison was put upon a committee i with Whittier and Stanton and the Rev. Orange Scott, to consider a resolution of Whittier s on political action. Lib. 7 : 9- He reported for himself and colleagues a resolution, which was adopted, that abolitionists ought neither to organize a distinct political party, nor attach themselves as abolitionists to any existing party, yet were " solemnly bound, by the principles of our civil and religious insti tutions, to refuse to support any man for office who will not sustain the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of petition, and the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia and the Terri tories 5 and who will not oppose the introduction of any new slave State into the Union." On his own behalf, Mr. Garrison introduced resolutions directed against the annexation of Texas, which he declared the main topic for anti-slavery agents in their discourses, and the urgent motive for active petitioning to Congress and persuasion of Congressmen, and against which the duty of a general remonstrance belonged especially to the clergy and to religious bodies. These, too, received the Lib. 7 -. go. Society s endorsement, as did resolutions offered by George Bourne in censure of prominent ecclesiastical palliations or bold defences of slaveholding during the past year. Such, for example, was the popish action of the Congregational General Association of Connecticut (at Norfolk, Litchfield County) in June, 1836, under the lead of Leonard Bacon, in opposition to the practice of ^thAnn.Re port Am. A S. Soc. ; Lib 7:89. JET. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 131 Lib. 7 : 79, 90,98; Right and Wrong, 1837, p. 32. itinerant agents enlightening the members of churches CHAP. in. "without the advice and consent of the pastors and I ^ 7< regular ecclesiastical bodies." Mr. Garrison s part at the Ladies Anti-Slavery Convention held at the same time with the American anniversary, and presided over by Mary Parker, was necessarily that of a spectator. But, among the sev enty-one delegates, he renewed his acquaintance with the Grimke sisters, who had of right entered themselves as from South Carolina, rather than from their present home in Philadelphia. Before the year ended he was to meet them again, under circumstances of the greatest importance to himself and to the cause. At the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in June, which was studiously excluded from every church in Boston save three the Methodist Church in Church Street, the Congregational in Salem Street, and (for a marvel) the Park-Street Church (Congregational) the relation of the clergy to the anti-slavery movement was naturally foremost among the topics for discussion. Lit tle opposition was shown to resolutions demanding the purification of the churches, by denying membership to slaveholders, by abolition prayers and preaching, and by " coming out " from churches which were hopelessly given over to pro-slavery influences. William G-oodell repeated the New York protest against the Connecticut attempt to consign to pastors the right to designate the amount and character of religious instruction to be im parted to their people "a prerogative comprising in essence one of the most despotic powers claimed by the slave-master over the slave." The unanimity of these pro ceedings, and their harmony with the whole course of Mr. Garrison and his associates with reference to a pro-slavery church and ministry, portended nothing of the sectarian conspiracy against the editor of the Liberator which was shortly to interrupt his well-earned summer repose. It would be unjust to say that the signal for this was given by Dr. Channing, for it proceeded from a very Lib. 7 : 86. Lib. 7 : 91. Lib. 7 : 91. 132 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. different camp. Nevertheless, in the early days of Janu- xsjj. ary, 1837, while the fate of the Liberator hung trembling in the balance, that clergyman issued a pamphlet letter Ante, p. 98. to J. G-. Birney, written in the previous November on occasion of the destruction of the Philanthropist, in which he virtually singled out the elder paper for con demnation. His language, it is true, was general, and applied to the abolitionists " in the main " : " Their writings have been blemished by a spirit of intolerance, sweeping censure, and rash, injurious judgment." But . when he expressly made an "honorable exception" of the Philanthropist, 1 and of other publications within his knowledge, any one could read Garrison and the Liber ator between the lines. And yet this letter was osten sibly, and primarily in its author s intent, a vindication of abolitionists against persecution ; an act of personal gratitude for their sufferings in defence of the liberty of thought, speech, and of the press ; an explicit endorse ment of their eminent blamelessness of character, and disposition " to adopt a rigid construction of the Chris tian precepts. 7 It first appeared in the Philanthropist, Lib. 7:1. from which it was copied into the Liberator, with the editor s customary tolerance for the views of critics and Lib. 7 : 3. opponents, and with the editorial comment : " A million letters like this would never emancipate a single slave, but rather rivet his fetters more strongly." When the letter took the shape of a pamphlet, it was furnished Lib. 7: ii. with an appendix, embracing fresh censure of the aboli- 1 Birney disclaimed the compliment. "Our country was asleep, whilst slavery was preparing to pour its leprous distilment into her ears. So deep was becoming her sleep that nothing but a rude and almost ruffian- like shake could rouse her to a contemplation of her danger. If she is saved, it is because she has been thus treated" (Lib. 7 : 2). But Channing took the professional clerical view of the matter, as was shown two years later by an eminent Congregational clergyman, the Rev. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford, in a discourse on slavery. " The first movement here at the North," said he, "was a rank onset and explosion. . . . The first sin of this organization was a sin of ill-manners. They did not go to work like Christian gentlemen. . . . The great convention which met at Phila delphia, drew up a declaration of their sentiments ... by which they wilfully and boorishly cast off the whole South from them " (Lib. 9 : 29). ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 133 tionists on account of their political activity, and the CHAP. in. Doctor s old complaint because of their organization, z ^ 7 intensified in view of their gathering numbers and strength. " It is one of the evils attending associations/ 7 Lit. 7: 13. he said pointedly, " and an argument against them, that, by growing popular, they attract to themselves un worthy members, lose their original simplicity of pur pose, become aspiring, and fall more and more under the control of popular leaders." It will appear later how far these strictures owed their weight and significance to their clerical rather than to their personal origin. The next assaults on the agitation and its leader were, though equally impersonal at first, distinctly clerical and sectarian. The Pastoral Letter of the General Association of Massachusetts to Li6.7-.iag. the Orthodox Congregational churches under its care was issued about the middle of July. 1 It had two dis tinct aims one, to complete the sealing of the churches against anti-slavery lecturers ; the other, to draw off their communicants, both* male and female, from the public lectures of the Grimke sisters, who, during the month of June, had excited unprecedented interest in Eastern Massachusetts by their eloquent appeals (gener ally in churches) on behalf of the slave. Historically, this document marks the transition from the general political use of the New England meeting-house, since the days when " the church and the organized town New Eng- T lander, May, consisted of the same persons," to its special use and 1883, /. 332. estimation as a sanctuary ; or, in other words, from the Puritan theocratic form of government to the separa tion of church and state. Moreover, it was, in connec tion with Miss Catherine Beecher s newly published * Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with reference to the duty of American Females, addressed to Miss A. l The Association met at Brookfield, June 27, 1837 ( Eight and Wrong in Boston, 1837, p. 45). The author of the Pastoral Letter Was the Rev. Ne- hetniah Adams, of Boston, whose apologetic work, A Southside View of Slavery (1854), afterwards earned for him the sobriquet of " Southside Adams." 134 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. . 32. 1837- Right and Wrong in (i) pp. 6,47, et seq. CHAP. in. E. Grimke, 1 the beginning of the woman s rights agita tion in America. The equality of the sexes in Christian duty had, indeed, been implied and asserted by the female anti-slavery organizations, particularly by the Boston Society, against those who charged them with quitting their sphere. It was now, however, to become a burning and dividing question for the abolitionists themselves as well as for the country at large. The Pastoral Letter, as it may still be read in the Lib. 7 : 129. Refuge of Oppression " of the Liberator of August 11, 1837, asserts, without naming either slavery or " Caro lina s high-souled daughters," that " the perplexed and agitating subjects which are now common amongst us . . . should not be forced upon any church as matters for debate, at the hazard of alienation and division." There is, it continues, a perceptible loss of deference to the pastoral office j a " zeal to violate the principles and rules of Christian intercourse, to interfere with the proper pastoral influence, and to make the church, into l Angelina Grimke" s able and admirable reply to Miss Beecher was pub lished in thirteen successive letters in the Liberator (7 : 102, 106, 111, 119, 122, 126, 130, 139, 147, 155, 159, 167, 179), and afterwards in pamphlet form. The eleventh is mainly concerned with the " woman question." Sarah Grimke continued the discussion in a series of letters, on the province of woman, addressed to Mary S. Parker, and intended for publication in the New England Spectator (Lib. 8 : 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28). In a letter to H. C. Wright, from Groton, Mass., Aug. 12, 1837, Sarah says: " The Lord . . . has very unexpectedly made us the means of bringing up the discussion of the question of woman s preaching, and all we have to do is to do our duty. ... I cannot consent to make my Quakerism an excuse for my exercising the rights and performing the duties of a rational and respon sible being. . . . All I claim is as woman, and for any woman whom God qualifies and commands to preach his blessed gospel. I claim the Bible, not Quakerism, as my sanction, and I wish this fully understood. . . . Brother Amos A. Phelps wrote us a long, kind, admonitory letter, recom mending our desisting from our present course, and confining our labors to our own sex ; proposing several plans by which this might be effected, or the responsibility of holding public meetings for men and women not rest on us ; but we wrote him word that we could not consent to adopt any other course than that which seemed clearly to be our duty, and advised him to examine the subject, and not identify himself with the authors of the Pastoral Letter." On Aug. 27, she writes to the same that, after a personal interview, Phelps had given up the idea of publishing a protest against the sisters. For the correspondence between them, see Lib. 11 : [34]. Mf. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 135 which we flee from a troubled world for peace, a scene of CHAP. in. doubtful disputations. " The zealots are accordingly ^ cautioned " not to disturb the influence of those minis ters who think that the promotion of personal religion amongst their people, and the establishment of Christians in the faith and comfort of the gospel, is the proper object of their ministry. 7 There is a default of deference to the pastoral office when you encourage " lecturers or preachers on certain topics of reform to present their subjects within the parochial limits of settled pastors without their consent. ... If there are certain topics upon which he [the pastor] does not preach with the frequency or in the manner that would please you, it is a violation of sacred and important rights to encour age a stranger to present them." Attention is also t directed to dangers now seeming "to threaten the female I character with widespread and permanent injury." The New Testament clearly defines " the appropriate duties and influence of women." " The power of woman is in her dependence. . . . When she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary ; we put ourselves in self -defence against her, she yields the power which God has given her for protection, and her character be comes unnatural " the vine usurps the role of the elm. Their conduct is sadly mistaken " who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance any of that sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character of public lecturers and teachers." Like its forerunner in Connecticut, the Massachusetts Ante, p. 130. Pastoral Letter arrogated to the clergy individually the sole right of presenting moral topics to their parish ioners : in this field each must have no coadjutor not of his own choosing, and no rival. 1 In a word, if the l"Many years ago," wrote the Rev. Nathan Lord, President of Dart mouth College, on May 30, 1839, " I studied the history of primitive Chris tianity in connection with that of the Reformation, and particularly of 136 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. |>ET. 32. CHAP. in. 1837. Right and i837//Aso- Lib. 7 : 134. Ante, 1:481. Li6.7-.Bo. Lid. 7:133; Ante, p. 105. Lib. 7 : 133. anti-slavery reform could not work through, clerical (Orthodox) channels and under clerical (Orthodox) cen sorship, it was irreligious and ungodly. The new bull would, in spite of the sermons by which it was immediately enforced, in all probability have fallen flat such was the anti-slavery leaven in the churches but for its speedy bolstering by an " Appeal of Clerical Abolitionists on Anti-slavery Measures/ pub lished in the New England Spectator of August 2, and bearing the signatures of five clergymen, viz., Charles Fitch, Boston ; David Sanford, Dorchester ; Wm. M. Cornell, Quincy ; Jonas Perkins, Weymouth ; and Joseph H. Towne, Boston. The first and last alone were known for their anti-slavery connection $ and, in the discussion to which the Appeal instantly gave rise, they had no further support from their co-signataries. The author ship of the document was divided between them. Fitch was the pastor of the First Free Congregational Church, whose organization against clerical repression and in the interest of close anti-slavery communion has been already mentioned. He was the author of a recent pamphlet, Slaveholding Weighed in the Balance of Truth/ and had in his speeches at anti-slavery meetings been remarkable for his " hard language/ out-Garrison ing Garrison. Towne was the pastor of the Salem-Street Congregational Church, succeeding the Rev. George "W. Blagden, the chief opponent of the Free Church in the Congregational council which recognized it; and Ms distinction had been the holding of a brief anti-slavery the English Puritans, in reference to the question of civil and religious liberty. Since that time I have not believed that Pastors and Ecclesiastical bodies are the only proper conservators of the public welfare in respect to religion and morals, nor that they have rights, immunities, duties, and discretion with which a stranger may not intermeddle, in reference to all matters and influences affecting the public sentiment in these particulars. . . . That Pastors and Ecclesiastical bodies may set up a claim so general and imperative as some even in New England have done, ... I cannot regard but as an unwarranted and dangerous usurpation. It is virtually the assertion of a principle belonging only to the times of the Sanhedrim, or of the Star Chamber and High Commission " (Lib. 9 : 117). THE CLEEICAL APPEAL. 137 agency in Essex County, prior to which, as the pastor of CHAP. in. a church in Amesbury, he too had used noticeably strong I ^ 7 . language on the guilt of slavery, and had advised favor- Lib. 7: 151. ing the anti-slavery charity as both the most needy and the most important. These gentlemen, now feeling the weight of the cause to be somehow resting on their shoulders, came forward, in the name of " nine-tenths " of the abolitionists, to unfold their budget of complaints against Mr. Garrison and the Liberator. Uniform prece dents might have assured them of ready access to the columns of that paper, but, for reasons that quickly came to light, they chose the Spectator for their medium. With a like want of directness, though the plot had been some time in hatching, its development was deferred till Mr. Garrison was out of dangerous proximity ; and the first flaws that were picked were in the editorial conduct of his substitute, Oliver Johnson, whose articles were always signed with his initial. The Clerical Appeal was of course at once transferred to its legitimate place in fhe Liberator. Its grievances ^.7:130. were (1) the " hasty, unsparing, almost ferocious denun ciation " [in the Liberator] of a minister from the South who had been preaching in Boston, on the ground of his being a slaveholder a charge believed by the appellants to be not true. (2) Insinuations [in the Liberator] that the Rev. Dr. Blagden was a slaveholder meaning Mr. Johnson s repeated inquiry whether that was true which was currently reported of that gentleman, who paid no attention to the " insinuation. 7 (3) The Liberator s " de mand" that ministers should read anti-slavery notices handed them to read, whereas they had a right to suppress them, and anti-slavery clergymen exchanging with them should in deference likewise suppress these notices. (4) The diverting of support from home and foreign missions and other church efforts to the anti-slavery cause [in the spirit of Wendell Phillips s Lynn resolution, Ante, p. 1*9. which had been seconded by Mr. Johnson in the Liberator]. (5) The abuse of gospel ministers and excellent Chris- 138 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. CHAP. in. tians not ready to unite with anti-slavery societies an !8j 7 . injustice to individuals and a great hindrance to our work, said the appellants. Its effect was "to prevent many worthy men from appearing in favor of immediate emancipation. We Jcnoiv this to be a fact. . . . They suppose that the great body of abolitionists approve of these things, because they suffer them in silence." Unless a change took place, some already in the cause would have to abandon it in despair, " and weep in secret places." Lib. 7:131. Mr. Johnson promptly made a brief reply, in the course of which he quoted a notorious passage from the Southern clergyman s 1 recent speech in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church : " My presbytery will never, no never, give up their right to hold slaves to this Assembly, nor to any other assembly than the 1 General Assembly of the First-born in Heaven. 7 " 2 At far greater length, Amos A. Phelps, the new General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 3 re- #.7:134. viewed the Appeal in the next number of the Liberator, his eight columns being preceded by as many from the pen of Mr. Garrison himself. The latter wrote in great haste, from a house which had been like a hospital for a fortnight, and in which he was perhaps the most debili tated, from his old scrofulous trouble. But his heart was light for the encounter : MS. Aug. li What is in the wind now ? " he writes to Knapp from 9. 1837. Brooklyn. " Only think of a public * clerical admonition ! 1 The Eev. Elipha White, a native of Massachusetts (Lib. 1 : 147). For the Spectator s handling of this clerical " man-thief " in its issue of July 26, 1837 just one iveek before it printed the Appeal see Lib. 8 : 9. 2 Compare his action at the Charleston (S. C.) Union Presbytery in the spring of 1838 (Lib. 8 : 74). 3 June 14, 1837, Mr. Garrison writes from Boston to G. W. Benson : " We have been very fortunate in securing the services of bro. Phelps as our General Agent. He is expected in Boston on Saturday [June 17], to com mence his labors in good earnest " (MS. Lib. 7 : 95 ; Right and Wrong in Boston, 1837, p. 25). Mr. Phelps s orthodoxy was regarded as an especial qualification, since the Unitarianisrn of Mr. May, lately the Corresponding Secretary of the Mass. A. S. Society, and of other leading Boston aboli tionists (e. </., Mr. Sewall, Mr. Loring, Mr. Jackson, etc.), had been an unconcealed pretext for the hostility of the Orthodox hierarchy. ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 139 Do not ecclesiastical terrors take hold of you, as publisher of CHAP. in. the Liberator? Have you done penance and obtained absolu- ^ tion ? For my own part I am growing more and more irrever ent, and must be given over as incorrigible. Surely you must be a pugnacious man to employ such an Ishmaelitish editor. 1 Woe is me, my mother ! for I was born a man of strife. What latent feelings, think you, have stirred up Messrs. Fitch and Towne to make such a strange Appeal ? Tell me whether there is not some sectarian ill-will, some clerical apprehen sion, at the bottom of this movement. You are very good, as a Yankee, in guessing but perhaps the facts in the case are too palpable to need a single surmise. My review of the Ap peal will probably ensure you the loss of a few subscribers, and perhaps add a few more to your list." In this review Mr. Garrison took to himself the attack Lib. 7 : 133. really levelled at the temporary editor of the Liberator, whose conduct of the paper in his absence he now ex plicitly endorsed. The selection of another medium than the Liberator for the publication of the Appeal, he regarded as "an impeachment far more offensive than the Appeal itself." As for that document, it would be welcomed by the Tracys, by Leonard Bacon, Asa Cum- mings, and Wilbur Fisk, 1 and by the religious (Congre gational) press generally, for it was their thunder. It consisted of the commonest and most flippant objections to the cause. So far as related to its defence of the two "slandered" pro-slavery clergymen, neither had com plained nor could complain, and the defence of them was laughable. The defamation, such as it was, was valid only among abolitionists. Fitch, during his pas torate in Hartford, had been dumb on the subject of slavery, and only flamed out when called to the Free Church in Boston. In his work already cited, he had Ante, p. 136. pronounced slavery worse than infidelity, popery, in temperance, theft, murder, fornication, treason ; had 1 President of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., a conspicuous clerical apologist for slavery, an aggressive Colonizationist, and one of the most abusive and malignant opponents of George Thompson (Lib. 5 : 45, 66, 77; 7:95). 140 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [J3-r. 32. CHAP. in. abounded in exhortations to pulpit and minister, and I sJ 7 . in denunciations of clerical apology for slaveholding ; had denied that the language of abolitionists was exces sively harsh. As he and his colleague Towne did not wish to be longer identified with the holders of views like these, Mr. Garrison proceeded to read them out of the anti-slavery ranks. Coming to the main question (for the other matters were mere fetches), he asserted that ministers of the gospel were not necessarily "excellent Christians." "Christi anity indignantly rejects the sanctimonious pretensions of the great mass of the clergy in our land. It is becom ing more and more apparent that they are nothing better than hirelings, in the bad sense of that term that they are blind leaders of the blind, dumb dogs that cannot bark, spiritual popes that they love the fleece better than the flock that they are mighty hindrances to the march of human freedom, and to the enfranchisement of the souls of men." To this there were, of course, many splendid exceptions, and he had never denounced any man or minister merely because he was not connected with the anti-slavery cause, but solely as a defender of slavery on republican and Biblical grounds. " Clerical abolitionists " were unknown to abolitionism, which was a terrible leveller of distinctions. The movement to crush out Garrisonism, as Orson S. Lib. 7 : 150. Murray correctly defined it in his Vermont Telegraph adding that to this end much greater strength was being put forth than to crush slavery met with the antici pated encouragement in sectarian quarters. The Chris tian Mirror said : " We know not how Mr. Garrison will stand this rebuke. Heretofore, the moment any one, even a real friend, has put a foot out of the traces, he has turned the butt of his whip and laid on his blows most unmercifully." But the spell was now broken. #.7:141, The Vermont Chronicle, the New York Evangelist and Observer, all hailed with rejoicing the "revolution" in the anti-slavery ranks, and looked to the sloughing off ^T. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 141 of the leaders complained of, or to the formation of CHAP. HI. a new organization for " affectionate, Christian re- I8 ~ 7 . monstrance/ in the manner of the defunct American Union. Meantime, before Messrs. Fitch and Towne were ready with their rejoinder to the triple assault upon their position, another Appeal was issued, by aboli tionists of the Andover Theological Seminary, bearing date of August 3 (ostensibly a hasty, instant endorsement of the parent Appeal, and, like it, first published in the Spectator). This, too, affected to speak in behalf of the #. 7 :i 39 . great body of New England abolitionists, though many of the thirty-nine signers had suddenly joined the Society ad hoc. Its impeachment, however, was broader. It grieved over damaging remarks on the gospel ministry ; over statements prejudicial to the American Board of Foreign Missions ; over " speculations which lead inevi tably to disorganization and anarchy, unsettling the domestic economy, removing the landmarks of society, and unhinging the machinery of government " ; over the loading of the cause with " foreign and repulsive associ ations"; over resolutions prescribing the conditions of church membership ; over public lectures by females, albeit Quakers; over certain discourses to children meaning those by Henry C. Wright, the " children s agent," etc. These vague complaints would be made clearer presently. The Spectator next printed a letter received by Messrs. Fitch and Towne, while waiting for just such indications of clerical and sectarian sentiment to warrant their second proceeding. The Rev. James T. Woodbury, of Acton, Mass. 1 (who, as amusingly happened, had been prominent in making the statements prejudicial to Lib. 7:81. the American Board namely, proving that it held slaves at the South which so shocked the Seminary l Brother of Levi Woodbury, the then Secretary of the Treasury, whose political standing being compromised by the clergyman s activity some took to be the cause of the latter s change of front (Lib. 7 : 175). Prior to this change he had been conspicuously severe upon the pro-slavery clergy (Lib. 8:10). 142 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. CHAP. in. appellants), wrote, on August 17, that he had been !8^ 7 . much pleased with the general tone of the Appeal, and continued : Lib. 7:141. " I am an abolitionist, and I am so in the strictest sense of the term ; but I never swallowed Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and I never tried to swallow him. ... I have seen, as I think, in Mr. Garrison, a decided wish, nay, a firm resolve, in laboring to overthrow slavery, to overthrow the Christian Sabbath and the Christian ministry. His doctrine is, that every day is a Sabbath, and every man his own minister. There are no Christian ordinances, there is no visible church. Here I would add also the notion of his, that the people have no right under God to frame a government of laws to protect themselves against those who would injure them, and that man can apply physical force to man rightfully under no circumstances, and not even the parent can apply the rod to the child, and not be, in the sight of God, a trespasser and a tyrant." Mr. Woodbury had thought this incidental and inad vertent, but was now " well satisfied that, with the cause of abolition, lie [Mr. Garrison] is determined to carry for ward and propagate and enforce Ms peculiar theology. . . . Slavery is not merely to be abolished, but nearly every thing else." With such associates he could not act, any more than with infidels, like Fanny Wright l and Abner Kneeland, 2 should they declare for abolition. He was "willing to act with all those who hold to the funda mentals of Christianity." " Good men say, We are aboli- 1 A remarkable woman, born in Scotland Sept. 6, 1795 ; died (Mme. Darusmont) in Cincinnati Dec. 14, 1852. Her attempted community in Shelby Co., Tenn., in 1825, was a notable early anti-slavery enterprise. She was an eloquent public lecturer, and as such often mobbed for her political and religious doctrines (Lib. 8:173), a socialistic co-worker with Robert Owen, and a co-editor with Robert Dale Owen of the N. Y. Free Inquirer (see Noyes s American Socialisms, chap. 7; Life of Charles Follen, p. 471 ; and biographies by John Windt and Amos Gilbert). 2 An orthodox clergyman of Massachusetts, who became a rationalist by way of Universalism. In 1832 he founded the Boston Investigator. His trial and imprisonment for "blasphemy" in 1834-1838 are famous in the history of church and state in this country "a disgrace to the Common wealth of Massachusetts and a proof of the corruption of modern Chris tianity," Mr. Garrison termed it (Lib. 8 : 107). Kneeland was born in 1774, and died in 1844. ^ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 143 tionists, and would go with you most heartily if your CHAP. in. lecturers and writers did not attack the Sabbath, and ^ the Christian ministry and the churches, and all civil and family government. . . . We are not willing, for the sake of killing the rats, to burn down the house with all it contains." Mr. Woodbury would not there fore desert the cause of abolition : " No, never. But desert Mr. Garrison I would, if I ever followed him. But I never did. I once tried to like his paper took it one year and paid for it, and stopped it because that, though it did well on abolition on one page, it would say something on the other to injure it, which something, too, did not concern the point of abolishing slavery." Alluding to a talk on family government between H. C. Wright and the Grimkes that had appeared in the Lib- Lib, 7:118. erator, Mr. Woodbury declared : " I. had as soon my son should be taught that the Bible is not true, as that I have not the right, under God, to chastise him ; for he now understands that if done it is done by the direct sanction of the Almighty." Finally, in a postscript, the appellants were admonished "No doubt, if you break with Garrison, some will say, You are no abolition ists, for, with some, Garrison is the god of their idolatry. He embodies abolition. He is abolition per sonified and incarnate." At this point our narrative must, for the proper understanding of what succeeds, be interrupted for a retrospect. We have already seen that in the Thanks- Ante, p. $2. giving season immediately following the Boston mob, Mr. Garrison s thoughts, so far from being driven in and concentrated upon the one abolition reform, were taking a wider range, among subjects " upon which much light remains to be thrown, and which are of the utmost im portance to the temporal and eternal welfare of man." In this he was but sharing the spirit of the age a spirit of almost universal ferment, which perhaps ex hibited its greatest activity and its greatest moderation in Massachusetts. As Mr. Frothingham well says, in his 144 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. . 32. p. 125. Goodeii s ^Anfi^siav- e>y, p. 387. Socialisms, * 6l4< ,/. 615. Am. Social- 15 1879! I2> Life of Theodore Parker, " all institutions and all ideas went into the furnace of reason, and were tried by fire. Church and state were put to the proof, and the wood, hay, stubble everything combustible were consumed." The beginning of this period may be sought as far back as 1825, 1 in the millennial ardor of the missionary, tract, an( j Bik^ societies for evangelizing the world, the kin dred labors and hopes of the peace and temperance societies, the " revivals of religion " more particularly the great so-called Finney revival of 1831, coincident with the founding of the Liberator. This religious awakening took an especial hold on John Humphrey Noyes, a native of Brattleboro , Vermont, who was six years Mr. Garrison s junior. In February, 1834, it had "landed him in a new experience and new views of the way of salvation, which took the name of Perfectionism" a doctrine at first socialistic neither in form nor in theory. In the spring of 1837, 2 he called at the Anti- Slavery Office in Boston, and " found Garrison, Stanton, Whittier, and other leading abolitionists warmly en gaged in a dispute about political matters." " I heard them quietly," he continues, u and when the meeting broke up I introduced myself to Garrison. He spoke with interest of the Perfectionist [a monthly paper, pub- 1 R. W. Emerson refers this "era of activity," this schism between " the party of the Past and the party of the Future : the Establishment and the Movement," to 1820 and the twenty years following. " It seemed a war between intellect and affection : a crack in nature which split every church in Christendom into Papal and Protestant, Calvinism into Old and New schools, Quakerism into Old and New; brought new divisions in politics, as the new conscience touched temperance and slavery. The key to the period appeared to be that the mind had become aware of itself. Men grew reflective and intellectual. There was a new consciousness" (Atlantic Monthly, October, 1883, p. 529; and see the whole of this acute observer s "Lecture on the Times," Dec. 2, 1841). There was a corre sponding activity in England, manifested in the Reform Bill of 1832, the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, the Tractarian movement, Catholic Emancipation, and a hundred other ways. 2 March 30, by Noyes s own account in the American Socialist, June 12, 1879 ; but pretty certainly either March 20 or an earlier date. See the date of the letter presently to be quoted, which was received early in April (Lib. 7 : 123). ^ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 145 lished at New Haven by J. H. N. and others] ; 1 said his CHAP. in. mind was heaving on the subject of Holiness and the jg^. Kingdom of Heaven, and he would devote himself to them as soon as he could get anti-slavery off his hands. I spoke to him especially on the subject of government, and found him, as I expected, ripe for the loyalty of heaven." "A few days after this interview," he sent Mr. Garrison the following letter, which made a pro found impression on the recipient : John Humphrey Noyes to W. L. Garrison. NEWARK, N. J., March 22, 1837. Lib. 7- 166; Am. Social- DEAR BR. GARRISON : In addressing you, I use the liberty ist, June 12, which ought to exist between every member of a race which l879> God made of one blood. Moreover, the fact that I was once most heartily engaged in the cause you advocate, and am now separated from it only by devotion to a kindred object, entitles me to call you brother, with peculiar emphasis. When I saw you in Boston, we spoke of the kingdom of God, in its relations to the kingdoms of this world. I rejoiced to find in you a fellowship of views and feelings on this subject which has long been a rarity to me. I proposed to show you a written declara tion of my principles, but was prevented. I write now to fulfil that proposal. I am willing that all men should know that I have subscribed my name to an instrument similar to the Declaration of 76, renouncing all allegiance to the government of the United States, and asserting the title of Jesus Christ to the throne of the world. When I wish to form a conception of the government of the United States (using a personified representation), I picture to myself a bloated, swaggering libertine, trampling on the Bible its own Constitution its treaties with the Indians the petitions of its citizens : with one hand whipping a negro tied to a liberty-pole, and with the other dashing an emaciated Indian to the ground. On one side stand the despots of 1 The first number bears date of Aug. 20, 1834. Probable evidence of acquaintance with the paper on Mr. Garrison s part as early as the fall of 1836 has been given above (p. 114), and it is not impossible that a file of it was in his hands a year earlier, or that he had read the Perfectionist regu larly from the commencement. VOL. IL 10 146 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. III. Europe, laughing and mocking at the boasted liberty of their jjjT neighbor; on the other stands the Devil, saying, " Esto per- petua." In view of such a representation, the question urges itself upon me "What have I, as a Christian, to do with such a villain ? " I live on the territory which he claims under the protection, to some extent, of the laws which he promul gates. Must I therefore profess to be his friend ? God forbid ! I will rather flee my country. But every other country is under the same reprobate authority. I must, then, either go out of the world, or find some way to live where I am, without being a hypocrite or a partaker in the sins of the nation. I grant that " the powers that be are ordained of God," and this is not less true of individual than of national slaveholders. I am hereby justified in remaining a slave but not in remain ing a slaveholder. Every person who is, in the usual sense of the expression, a citizen of the United States, i.e., a voter, politician, etc., is at once a slave and a slaveholder in other words, a subject and a ruler in a slaveholding government. God will justify me in the one character, but not in the other. I must therefore separate them and renounce the last. Holding simply the station of a subject, as a Christian I may respect the powers that be, for the Lord s sake, but I cannot make myself a partaker of their ungodly deeds by mingling in their counsels or assisting their operations. " Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful." Thus I find a way to " cease to do evil " now I would "learn to do well." I have renounced active co-operation with the oppressor on whose territories I live j now I would find a way to put an end to his oppression. But he is manifestly a repro bate : reproof and instruction only aggravate his sins. I can not attempt to reform him, because I am forbidden to " cast pearls before swine." I must therefore either consent to remain a slave till God removes the tyrant, or I must commence war upon him, by a declaration of independence and other weapons suitable to the character of a son of God. I have chosen the latter course for the following reasons : 1. As a believer in the Bible I know that the territory of the United States belongs to God, and is promised, together with the dominion under the whole heaven, to Jesus Christ and his followers. , 2. I therefore know that the charter of every government now existing is limited by the will and prediction of him who ordained it j and every nation that expects or hopes for per- ^ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 147 petual existence outside of Christ s kingdom is thereby proved CHAP. III. guilty of infidelity. ^ 3. By the same authority I know that the nations are to be dashed in pieces before the Kingdom of God can come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The present govern ments stand in the way of God s kingdom, just as Colonization once stood in the way of Abolition. They occupy the ground, without effecting the object. 4. I regard the existing governments as bearing the same relation to a dispensation that is to come, as that which the Jewish dispensation bore to the Christian that is, they are preparatory forms of discipline, fitted to the childhood of the race " shadows of good things to come," which are to be taken away when the substance appears. 5. By the foregoing considerations I am authorized not only to hope for the overthrow of the nations, but to stand in readi ness actively to assist in the execution of God s purposes. . . . 6. The Son of God has manifestly, to me, chosen this country for the theatre of such an assault a country which, by its boasting hypocrisy, has become the laughing-stock of the world, and by its lawlessness has fully proved the incapacity of man for self-government. My hope of the millennium begins where Dr. Beecher s expires viz., AT THE OVERTHROW OF THIS NATION. 7. The signs of the times clearly indicate the purpose of God to do his strange work speedily. The country is ripe for a convulsion like that of France ; rather, I should say, for the French Revolution reversed. Infidelity roused the whirlwind in France. The Bible, by anti-slavery and other similar move ments, is doing the same work in this country. So, in the end, Jesus Christ, instead of a bloodthirsty Napoleon, will ascend the throne of the world. The convulsion which is coming will be, not the struggle of death, but the travail of childbirth the birth of a ransomed world. I have stated to you only in the letter the principal things which God has urged upon me by his Spirit, and by which he has moved me to nominate Jesus Christ for the Presidency, not only of the United States, but of the world. Is it not high time for abolitionists to abandon a government whose President has declared war upon them ? I cannot but think that many of them hear the same great voice out of heaven which has waked me, saying, " Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and of her plagues." You said your mind was heaving on certain momentous subjects, and you only waited to set Anti-slavery in the sunshine before you turned 148 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. III. your mind to those subjects. Allow me to suggest that you l8 ~7 will set Anti-slavery in the sunshine only by making it tribu tary to Holiness j and you will most assuredly throw it into the shade which now covers Colonization if you suffer it to occupy the ground, in your own mind or in others, which ought to be occupied by UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION FROM SIN. All the abhorrence which now falls upon slavery, intemperance, lewd- ness, and every other specific vice, will in due time be gathered into one volume of victorious wrath against unbelief. I wait for that time as for the day of battle, regarding all the previous movements as only fencing- schools and manoeuvres of military discipline or at best as the preliminary skirmishes which pre cede a general engagement. I counsel you, and the people that are with you, if you love the post of honor the forefront of the hottest battle of righteousness to set your face toward perfect holiness. Your station is one that gives you power over the nations. Your city is on a high hill. If you plant the standard of perfect holiness where you stand, many will see and flow to it. I judge from my own experience that you will be deserted by many of your present friends ; but you will be deserted as Jonah was by the whale the world, in vomiting you up, will heave you upon the dry land. . . . We see the working of this communication in the following letter written a few weeks later : W. L. Garrison to Henry C. Wright, in New York. MS. BOSTON, April 16, 1837. It is a great disappointment to me to hear that dear bro. The wM D ^ e ^ W ^ ^6 a ^ sen * from New York during the anniversary week. We need the aid of his sagacious, far-reaching, active mind on that occasion ; yet I grant that the preservation of his health and life is of more consequence. May he obtain a speedy restoration, and be more provident of his bodily ener gies in time to come ! I long to know that he has embraced our ultra pacific views, and is ready to stand boldly forth in their defence. You cheer my heart by the information that our beloved sisters, Sarah and Angelina E. Grimke, are now satisfied that the followers of Him who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, and, when nailed to the cross, exclaimed re specting his murderous enemies, " Father, forgive them, they know not what they do ! " are not authorized to combine ^ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 149 together in order to lacerate, sue, imprison, or hang their CHAP. III. enemies, nor even as individuals to resort to physical force to jZ_ break down the heart of an adversary. And, surely, if they cannot do these things as a body, or in their private capacity, they have no right to join with the ungodly in doing them. The remedy, however, will not be found in anything short of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Human governments will remain in violent existence as long as men are resolved not to bear the cross of Christ, and to be crucified unto the world. But in the kingdom of God s dear Son, holiness and love are the only magistracy. It has np swords, for they are beaten into ploughshares no spears, for they are changed into prun- ing-hooks no military academy, for the saints cannot learn war any more no gibbet, for life is regarded as inviolate no chains, for all are free. And that kingdom is to be established upon the earth, for the time is predicted when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. When they visit us in this quarter, we shall give those excel lent women a welcome reception. You may tell them that the " Friends" in New England are fast ceasing to be abolitionists ex officiOj and are becoming such in spirit and in truth. I shall endeavor Deo volente to be in New York the week preceding the anniversary meeting. If we can find time, we will then freely interchange our religious views. My own are very simple, but they make havoc of all sects, and rites, and ordinances of the priesthood of every name and order. Let me utter a startling assertion in your ear There is nothing more offensive to the religionists of the day than practical holi ness ; and the doctrine that total abstinence from sin, in this life, is not only commanded but necessarily obtainable, they hate with a perfect hatred, and stigmatize entire freedom from sin as a delusion of the devil ! Nevertheless, " he that is born of God cannot commit sin" " he that committeth sin is of the devil." " How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein ? " " There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of sin and death." " Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." " For by orie offering he hath forever perfected them who are sanctified." " If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature." 150 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. CHAP. in. I have many things to say to you, but no time now. What j^T anxiety, and distress, and confusion, among bankers, and brokers, and merchants, and speculators at the present time ! 1 I pity all those who have not treasures laid up in heaven. O the emptiness of this sin- stricken world ! . . . N. B. The Vermont Chronicle, New York Observer, and Leonard Bacon in the New Haven Religious Intelligencer, are out upon certain articles of yours in the Liberator. They are "out" in a double sense out in their columns and out of their minds. f Except for the hospitality given to these obnoxious ^.7:85, sentiments of Henry C. Wright s, and the author s de fence of them (embracing the un-Darwinian dictum, "Man can never originate a moral obligation"), the read ers of the Liberator had little intimation of the editor s speculations on human government until the issue of Lib. 7 : 103. June 23, or the week following his retirement to Brook lyn, where his thoughts regained their freedom. A cor- Lib. 7:102. respondent, in a brief essay on that subject, had argued scripturally that " we have no political or moral right to sit in judgment over laws already made," and Christians must " obey magistrates, not only for truth s but for conscience sake." At some length^Mr. Garrison con tended that human governments Care the results of human disobedience to the requirements of heaven; and they are better than anarchy just as a hail-storm is pre ferable, to an earthquake, or the small-pox to the Asiatic cholera^ From the silence of the Bible as to the form of such governments, he inferred not that each might claim a divine sanction, "but that the kingdom which Christ has established on earth is ultimately to swallow up or radically to subvert all other kingdoms." The main pillars which support these are Lib. 7:103. "1st. Unbelief, or a distrust in the providence and promises of God, to protect those who will take up the cross and follow Christ. 2nd. Ambition, or a love of distinction, preferment, or power over our fellow-creatures. 3d. Pride, or a refusal to 1 The great panic of 1837. ^ T - 32 -l THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 151 acknowledge the equality and brotherhood of mankind. 4th. CHAP. in. Retaliation] the spirit of an abrogated code, (< an eye for an ^ eye, and a tooth for a tooth, ) in order to obtain redress for injuries committed against our persons or property, or friends or kindred. 5th. Self -Righteousness, or the belief that we are able to manage not only our own sins, but those of other men, by the aid of dungeons and gibbets, constables and sheriffs, judges and lawgivers, and thus work out the righteousness of God. 6th. Fanaticism, or the delusion that we are capable of governing ourselves and others, while we are rebels against GLodj and refuse to be crucified with Christ, that we may reign with him in his spiritual kingdom. 7th. Selfishness, or an un willingness to jeopard reputation, property, personal security, life itself, for Christ s sake, in all cases whatsoever, at home or abroad, without having in reserve some constabulary force or posse comitatus, some military band, armed and equipped as the law directs, to aid us in arresting and punishing our enemies." To those who might ask, Is not a despotic government better than anarchy ? the editor would reply : " The question is an absurdity ; for human society cannot live in a state of anarchy without rapidly annihilating itself. . . . So tha^TtJ-S idle to talk of a government ceasing to exist over a sinful people, for their very disobedience renders it necessary until they are willing to submit to Christ. What then? Shall we, as Christians, applaud and do homage to human government ? or shall we not rather lay the axe at the root of the tree, and attempt to destroy both cause and effect together ?" Foolish are the speculations about the best form of human govern ment : " What is government but the express image of the moral character of a people ? "*1 The hand of Noyes was first made visible in the Lib erator of July 28, when the editor reported his own Lib. 7:123. Fourth of July address before the Anti-Slavery Society of Providence (in the High-Street meeting-house). It was, he said, " somewhat peculiar, and couched in solemn language." In the course of it he had read an extract of a letter " from an esteemed friend, in which the follow ing startling passage occurred: i My hope of the millen- 152 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. CHAP. in. mum begins ivhere Dr. Beeclier s expires, viz., AT THE 1837. OVERTHROW OF THIS NATION ! " This passage, which. " had deeply affected his mind," he developed in contrast to the noisy celebration of the national holiday, with its impious assumption that the nation bore a charmed life and was immortal. He enumerated the several dis couraging " signs of woe that all is lost," partly from the mystical standpoint already employed in the article on human government, partly from the standpoint of peace, and partly in view of recent phases of the anti- slavery conflict which made him declare, " The political dismemberment of our Union is ultimately to follow." There was, for example, the appalling fact of a union of church and state in support of slavery, of which it could be predicted that as the corruptions of the church were more deep and incurable than those of the state, the church would first be dashed in pieces. 1 Above all, there was the impending, the inevitable iniquity of Texan annexation, which had caused him in this sombre dis course to speak so despairingly of the salvation of his . country. Such were Mr. Garrison s politico-religious heresies as published to the world on the eve of the first Clerical Appeal, which, as has been seen, was not concerned with them. Two days after Mr. Woodbury s letter had been printed in the Spectator, there appeared in the Liberator Lib. 7 : 140. of August 25 a poem entitled " True Rest," forwarded by the editor from Brooklyn, with a prefatory note bearing date of August 14 and headed "Universal Emancipa tion " the best expression of the new ideal which had taken possession of the writer. The note ran thus : " What an oath-taking, war-making, man-enslaving reli gion is that which is preached, professed, and practised in Ante, p. n 4 . this country. ... Its main pillars are Judaism and Popery, and no wonder the crazy superstructure is tot tering to its fall. But God is preparing something better l The dismemberment of the great denominations did, in fact, consider ably precede that of the Union. ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 153 to redeem, regenerate, and give rest to this troubled world. CHAP. HI. Out of the ruins of the various religious sects (for they ^37. all to be destroyed by the brightness of the coming of Christ), materials of holiness shall be gathered to build up a spiritual house, and to constitute a royal priesthood." The poem need not be quoted at length, nor need we add the Scriptural illustrations thickly subjoined in foot notes. These were partly identical with the texts already used in the letter to Henry C. Wright (written just after the composition of the poem), and their general bearing was that the blameless life (" practical holiness ") is at tainable by any one who is truly " born of God." Here is a portion of the poem, from its opening : " If thou shouldst fail to find true rest On earth, thou lt find it not in heaven. " Thou mayst have joined some chosen sect, And given thy sanction to a creed, And been pronounced among the elect, And zealous been in word and deed Most orthodox of proselytes, Strict in observing seasons, days, Church order, ceremonies, rites, Constant at church, to pray and praise Munificent in all good works, That with the gospel may be blest All heathen tribes, Jews, Greeks and Turks Yet still a stranger be to REST. For what is REST ? Tis not to be Half saint, half sinner, day by day; Half saved, half lost; half bound, half free; Half in the fold, and half astray; " One instant, boasting of free grace, The next, God s pardoning mercy doubting! Now sinning, now confessing 1 sin; i " True Best," under the title of " Christian Rest," was retained in the collection of Sonnets and Other Poems by William Lloyd Garrison, published in Boston by Oliver Johnson, in 1843 a persistence worth re membering in the present discussion. Some verbal alterations were there made, and "confessing," in the line above, became "denouncing," sin. 154 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^ET. 32. CHAP. III. Filled with alternate joy and sorrow; ig To-day, feel all renewed within, But fear a sad relapse to-morrow ! " What, then, is REST 1 It is to be Perfect in love and holiness ; From sin eternally made free ; Not under law, but under grace j Once cleansed from guilt, forever pure; Once pardoned, ever reconciled ; Once healed, to find a perfect cure ; As JESUS blameless, undefiled ; Once saved, no more to go astray ; Once crucified, then always dead; * Never from rectitude to swerve, . Though by the powers of hell pursued ; To consecrate, without reserve, All we possess, in i doing good. to keep Not one in seven, but all days holy ! " Having thus placed another weapon in the hands of his enemies, Mr. Garrison returned to Boston and his editorial chair, and began by paying his respects to the Rev. James T. Woodbury and the second Clerical Appeal, Lib. 7: 143. reproduced in full in the Liberator of September 1. The former s letter he pronounced " a clerical curiosity," of which the severest thing that could be said, for those acquainted with the writer, was that it was perfectly characteristic. The attack was not made upon himself alone, but upon William Goodell, Elizur Wright, and the host of abolitionists who had given him the right hand of fellowship, as Woodbury, on his part, had hitherto done. As for " swallowing Garrison," everybody had done so who had abandoned the Colonization Society and signed the National Anti-Slavery Declaration, for that made a man a Garrisonite. ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 155 " Your complaint in the postscript to your letter is, that I Lib. 7: 143. 1 embody abolition, and am abolition personified and incarnate that is, with some. What do you mean by such language ? If nothing more than that my abolition principles are regarded by the friends of immediate emancipation as irrefragably true, then you are in the same predicament with them for you pro fess to agree with me in those principles. If you mean, (and this is doubtless the insinuation you intend to convey), that those who co-operate with me would swallow me even if I should abandon the anti-slavery ground that if I should espouse the Colonization Society they would still obsequiously regard me as abolition personified and incarnate then I have only to repeat that your poisoned arrows are aimed at other bosoms besides my own, and that you are guilty of wholesale calumny. I l embody abolition just as a thorough-going, consistent tem perance-man embodies temperance and in no other light. " Is it an abolitionist who reproaches me and calumniates others because my advocacy of human rights has been consis tent and just, and has won the respect and confidence of a great multitude of good men ? How has it happened that I have brought around me, in delightful association, men of all political, parties and of all religious sects, notwithstanding the mightiest efforts have been made all over the nation to crush me to the earth, and to make me appear vile in the eyes of the people ? It is a problem which has puzzled all the popularity- hunters both in Church and State. But you know something of the rise and progress of the anti- slavery cause, through my humble instrumentality. I was a poor, self-educated me chanic without important family connexions, without influ ence, without wealth, without station patronized by nobody, laughed at by all, reprimanded by the prudent, contemned by the wise, and avoided for a time even by the benevolent. I stood alone, an object of wonder, pity, scorn and malevolence. You can realize nothing of the trials, discouragements and perils through which I have had to pass. The pressure upon me was like an avalanche, and nothing but the power of God sustained me. The clergy were against me the rulers of the people were against me the nation was against me. But God and his truth, and the rights of man, and the promises of the Holy Scriptures, were with me ; and having found a partner whose vision was as clear, whose faith was as strong, and whose self-denial was as great, as my own, I commenced that warfare which is now going on with such glorious success. 156 WILLIAM LLOYD GABKISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. From the very first moment that I buckled on my armor, I was j^T assured that I could not maintain my ground j that I should retard instead of aiding the cause of emancipation ; that my language was not to be tolerated ; that my principles and measures were wild and untenable j and that no person of sane mind would rally under my standard. The entreaties, and warnings, and prophecies, and rebukes which my determina tion elicited, were numberless ; and had I been influenced by them, had not God made my forehead strong against the fore heads of the people, the bark of abolition would have been wrecked upon the rocks and quicksands of human expediency. " I will not stop to trace the progress of this great enterprise. Suffice it to say, that its growth has been such as to astonish nations. Now, sir, if I possess any influence, it has been ob tained by being utterly regardless of the opinions of mankind ; if I have acquired any popularity, it has been owing to my sturdy unwillingness to seek that honor which comes from men j if I have been swallowed by anybody, it is because I have always refused to confer with flesh and blood. I have flattered no man, feared no man, bribed no man. Yet having made myself of no reputation, I have found a reputation ; hav ing refused to be guided by human opinions, I have won golden opinions from the best of men ; having sought that honor which comes from God, I am not left without honor among my countrymen." For the rest, Mr. Garrison declared that he had never, as an abolitionist, tried to enforce his own views as to the Sabbath, the. Christian ordinances, the ministry, or human and family governments. Lib. 7 : 145. In the second Clerical Appeal, Messrs. Fitch and Towne partly reiterated their former charges, but largely, shift ing their ground, availed themselves of the fresh matter afforded both in the replies to them and by their own supporters. They found a new motive for their " Pro test " (as they preferred to call it) in the alleged fact that the Liberator was now the organ of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. " It has been adopted as their paper ; they, and they only, stand pledged to meet all the expenses connected with its publication." Mr. Fitch, as a member of the Board of Managers, had a personal ^ET. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 157 responsibility laid upon him. The paper could no longer CHAP. in. be circulated by those who loved the institutions of the ^37. gospel. The Society must have " at least a new public organ " (videlicet, the Spectator). From Mr. Garrison s reply they picked the passage on the sanctimonious pre- Ante, p. 140. tensions of the clergy, which they called unparalleled railing. " We confess/ they said, " that from the mo ment of Mr. Garrison s attack upon the Sabbath, we have entertained suspicions of the Liberator." They now regarded it as more dangerous than open infidelity. Add the sifting in of doctrine looking to the abolition of civil government, the visible church, the Christian ordi nances and ministry. " In a piece of poetry from his pen, in the last number, he speaks of keeping l Not one in seven, but all days holy. The whole effusion breathes the genuine spirit of Perfectionism, and is throughout a singular production." The wise and good cannot much longer countenance these evils. The aim to create a sectarian division, by personally discrediting the editor of the Liberator both with his own subscribers and with the great body of the aboli tionists, was now manifest. It became incumbent on the Board of Managers to meet the accusation of the schismatics, which they promptly did. More than two- Lib. ^ -. 147. thirds of the Board were members of " evangelical " de nominations ; but their Statement brought little comfort to Messrs. Fitch and Towne. They asserted that the cause was not identified with any sect or party, and was not responsible for the views of any individuals. They rehearsed the steps which led to their being instructed Ante, p. 122. at the annual meeting, notwithstanding the Sabbath article, to take such measures as they judged necessary to maintain the Liberator, leaving the editorial control with Mr. Garrison. They had made a contract for the current year accordingly, and had heard no complaint from their colleague, Mr. Fitch. " We deem the Appeal," they said, "peculiarly unseasonable and unkind, unjust in its allegations, and inconsiderate if not ungenerous and 158 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEEISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. unchristian in the manner of preferring them." They !8^ 7 would never expend the Society s funds in behalf of sec tarian or party views, or other and extraneous subjects. Lib. 7 : 157, A third Clerical Appeal ended the ostensible partner ship of the two signers. It was an enlargement of their original position as to the rights of pro-slavery pulpits and pastors against "invasion/ 7 and left no room for further debasement of the standard of anti-slavery prin ciple. The debate was now transferred to the Spectator, which, from being a medium, turned participant on its own account. It had lately become the property of John Gulliver, one of Mr. Fitch s deacons in the Free Lib. 7:155. Church, who was thought to have repented of his bar gain, and to be seeking a way to make it profitable by converting it into an organ of sectarian abolitionism. To do this it was necessary to make the movement secta rian, which it had not heretofore been, and to break down the man and the paper which barred the way to such a consummation. In the meantime, words of cheer and confidence began to reach Mr. Garrison from all quarters, and with the *. 7:150, advent of the cooler weather the various anti-slavery etc 1 " societies, from West to East, in an unbroken roll, de nounced the Appeal, and upheld the intended victim of it in formal resolutions of approbation. Naturally, the Quaker element was only attached to him more closely by his peace utterances, and the support sent up from Pennsylvania was consequently of the strongest. Good- #.7:146. ell, in his Friend of Man, expressly asserted the right of Garrison and the Grimkes to their opinions along with other Quakers like Elliott Cresson, for example. Whit- tier, as might have been expected, was not wanting Lib. 7:154. with a letter of encouragement. N. P. Rogers, in the Lib. 7:158. Herald of Freedom, declared of his friend: " Under God, William Lloyd Garrison is the mover of American Anti-slavery. But for him I know not why there should be now a single anti-slavery society in the whole land " ; and added, that the clerical dissenters "cannot take a . 32.] THE CLEEICAL APPEAL. 159 Lib. 7 : 154, 163, 178. single anti-slavery position but what Garrison holds the right of discovery and preoccupancy." The colored citi zens of Boston and Philadelphia rallied to uphold the arm of their Moses. " We feel fully persuaded/ said they of ^.7:178. the latter city, with singular felicity of diction, " that the day cannot be far distant when you will be acknowledged by the very lips of those who now denounce, revile, and persecute you as the vilest and basest of men, the uprooter of all order, the destroyer of our country s peace, pros perity and happiness to be its firm reliance, its deliverer, the very pillar of its future grandeur." In New York alone the Appeal found an echo or excited apprehension. Upon his removal from Brooklyn (Conn.) to Boston, Mr. Grarrison wrote to his brother-in-law : " I have seen a good many of our best abolition friends since my return, and have received a very cordial greeting from them all. The Fitch party would be * less than nothing, were it not for the co-operation of our enemies with it. Bro. Fuller assures me that there are not more than three members in the Free Church who can swallow the Appeal. Mr. Fitch will not probably remain here long. Bro. Whittier arrived here yester day from New York. I learn from him that our friends in New York will not be disposed to make themselves a party in this controversy though I do not see how they can fairly stand aloof from it. It behooves them to remember that silence gives consent and if they refuse to answer the Appeal, the enemy will construe their silence into a virtual approval of it. Bro. Stanton is also here, but expects to leave for New York on Monday or Tuesday. He is somewhat cau tious about committing himself, though he is disposed to stand by us. Father Bourne left to-day noon for New York. I have just read a letter from our friend Lewis Tappan, addressed to bro. Phelps, in reference to the l clerical disaffection. He says H. C. Wright will be recalled by the Executive Committee unless he ceases interweaving his no government views with aboli tionism. 1 He thinks it is unfortunate that the Massachusetts 1 Two months later, Mr. Wright s commission having expired, the Exec utive Committee would not renew it because of his peculiar peace views, and because he declined giving a pledge to confine himself to the discussion of abolitionism (MSS. Oct. 20, 1837, Abby Kelley to W. L. G. ; Nov. 13, 1837, C. C. Burleigh to J. M. McKim). MS. to G. W. Benson, Aug. 2,6, 1837- John E. Fuller. 160 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. . 32. 1837- CHAP. in. Anti-Slavery Society is connected at all with the Liberator, as it gives the enemy some advantage in saying that the Society is responsible for all that I write and publish. We are to have a August 28. Board meeting on Monday, expressly on this point ; and what will be the result, I can hardly predict. Probably friend Knapp and myself will have to resume the pecuniary responsibilities of the paper, but these will probably be met by some of our brethren. If not, the paper cannot be sustained after the first of January next. " I feel somewhat at a loss to know what to do whether to go into all the principles of holy reform, and make the abolition cause subordinate, or whether still to persevere in the one beaten track as hitherto. Circumstances hereafter must deter mine this matter." At the same date Sarah Grimke, from the hospitable home of Samuel Philbrick, 1 in Brookline, Mass., was reporting to Henry C. Wright : lt Dear Angelina is quite troubled : she is more downcast than I have yet seen her, because our coming forth in the anti- slavery cause seems really to be at the bottom of this clerical defection. . . . Brothers Whittier and Weld are anxious we should say nothing on the woman question ; but I do not feel as if I could surrender my right to discuss any great moral subject. If my connection with Anti-slavery must continue at the expense of my conscience, I had far rather be thrown out of the anti-slavery ranks ; but our business at present seems to l Samuel Philbrick was born at Seabrook, N. H., in 1789. His parents, Joseph and Lois Philbrick, were Quakers ; the father, a farmer, being a preacher in that denomination. His schooling was finished at the academy in Sandwich, Mass. , and he began his business career in Lynn, after mar rying in 1816 Eliza, only daughter of Edward and Abigail Southwick, of Danvers. His sympathy with Mary Newhall s " New Light " movement led to the sectarian disownment of himself and wife. As already noted (ante, 1 : 145), he was one of the earliest agents of Lundy s Genius. His admitting a colored child, in charitable training at his own home as a housemaid, to his pew in the First Congregational Church in Brookline (where he went to reside in 1830) was resented as a "breach of decorum " ; and he separated from the church sooner than permit the girl to be relegated to the negro pew." He soon acquired a competence as a leather merchant in Boston, and in 1836 retired from active business. He was a most sagacious coun sellor in the anti-slavery cause, which he liberally endowed, and rendered invaluable service as Treasurer of the Massachusetts Society for nearly twenty years. Mr. Garrison and the Liberator in particular were greatly indebted to him. MS. Aug. 27, 1837. Theodore D. Weld. ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 161 be in patience to possess our souls. ... I expect, from all CHAP. III. I can learn of the views of the Executive Committee of the ^ ? American Anti-Slavery Society, that it is their intention to take the consciences of their agents into their keeping ; they have disclaimed, as thou wilt see by the Emancipator, all connection with us, 1 and I suppose will do the same by thee. . . . " Dear brother Garrison has been passing the day with us. As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth a man the countenance of his friend, and it has cheered my spirit to find that he unites fully with us on the subject of the rights of woman. I did not see how his enlightened mind could do otherwise, but it has been pleasant to hear the confirmation from his own lips. . . . " Brother Phelps came out here and spent an evening very Lib. 8:9. pleasantly with us. We talked the whole matter over. He said he came to learn, and listened very patiently to all our arguments in favor of women s preaching. He said his views had been of long standing, and he had not yet re-examined the matter. I hope he will do so, but really the abolitionists are in such trouble about the clerical defection that I doubt whether he will have time. However, he has given UD the idea of pub lishing a protest against us." To this, Angelina adds a postscript, asking " What would st thou think of the Liberator abandoning abo litionism as a primary object, and becoming the vehicle of all these grand principles ? 2 Is not the time rapidly coming for such a change ; say after the contract with the Massachusetts Society is closed with the editor, the first of next year 1 ? I trust brother Garrison may be divinely directed." 3 The Grimkes and Henry C. Wright were unquestion ably the cause of the official caution to the public given through the Emancipator as referred to by the 1 This was easy, as the Grimke s were travelling at their own expense, and without fee of any kind. 2 The Grimkes had discussed with Mrs. Chapman the idea of a woman s paper, but were averse to separating the sexes into different organizations more than could be avoided, and at present they were not shut out from a hearing in men s papers (MS. Aug. 27, 1837, S. M. Grimke" to H. C. Wright). 3 These and other similar conferences transpired in a letter dated Nov. 25, 1839, published by John E. Fuller in the Massachusetts Abolitionist, and reprinted in the 2d Annual Report of the Mass. Abolition Society (Free American, 3: 58). VOL. II 11 162 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. [^T. 32. elder sister, though no names were mentioned. Do not, LM. 7 -.141. said the Executive Committee, confound the Society s doctrines " with such as individual members may occa sionally advance." These must speak on their own responsibility; the Society will not permit its funds " to be used for the promotion of any principles or objects whatever except those specified in the Constitution." Differences of opinion, however, among abolitionists on politics or religion were a sign of strength, not of weak ness ; for the cause embraced all sects and parties. This warning uttered, the Emancipator remained dumb on the agitation in Massachusetts. The following correspond ence will show what was going on privately : W. L. Garrison to G. W. Benson. MS. BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1837. As to the kind of reception which the Clerical Appeal is receiving at the hands of our abolition brethren, you will learn very explicitly, and in a manner that will be cheering" to your Lib. 7 : 153, heart, by this week s Liberator. If this sedition in our ranks J 54> J 55 should be speedily and effectually quelled, I thinkour enemies may as well surrender at discretion or at least abandon all expectation of dividing and conquering our forces. The only thing that surprises and grieves me is, the studied silence of the Emancipator respecting this controversy. It has not said a word about it, and, I understand, does not mean to say any thing notwithstanding the charges in the Boston and Andover Appeals are broadly made against our cause and " leading abolitionists" and notwithstanding the religious and political pro-slavery presses are publishing the Appeal, with strong en comiums, all over the land ! Silence like this is shameful, is criminal, and anything but magnanimous. I have received a singular letter from Elizur Wright, Jr., in which he denounces my course in the severest manner. Could you see it, you would hardly believe that he could have penned such a letter. But it only convinces me that all is not as it should be at head quarters, and that our friends in New York would be glad, on the whole, to see me cashiered, or voluntarily leave the ranks. Next week I mean publicly to rebuke the Emancipator. You will perceive by the Liberator, that our State Society is to hold -ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 163 a quarterly meeting at Worcester on the 27th inst. I sincerely CHAP. III. hope you will be able to attend it ; for, doubtless, Woodbury, Z ^T 7 Fitch, Towne, and their party, will endeavor to rally all their forces, and try to force through the meeting some condemna tory resolutions. I think I shall not attend, but let things take their course, uninfluenced by my presence. Lewis Tappan to W. L. Garrison. NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 1837. MS. MY DEAR FRIEND: Since sending my letter in answer to yours of the 13th, I have read over your remarks again and again, and will add to my letter the following, taking up the topics in your letter in course. 1. You think we approve of the Appeal because we do not openly condemn it. We do not approve it. It is very censurable, in many respects. It is unkind towards you ; it is addressed to the public before private remonstrance had been tried ; it cen sures you for acts done by the editor pro tern. ; its spirit is bad j the appellants some, at least had not clean hands, etc., etc. Still, there was cause of complaint. The allusions to Messrs. Rev. Elipha White and Blagden were not right ; the discussion of the Sab- ^ h bath question was injudicious ; the doctrines on national and den. family government are wrong, as most conceive ; and the SPIRIT EXHIBITED BY THE EDITOR PRO TEM., AND SOMETIMES BY YOURSELF, HAS NOT BEEN SUFFICIENTLY KIND AND CHRIST- LIKE. If, then, the Emancipator had come out, it would have censured the authors of the Appeal and the Liberator also. It was not best to do this prematurely, if at all. It may be neces sary to do it. If so, it will be done in a Christian manner, I trust. 2. You say we seem to think the discordance a local affair. It is so, in many respects. Had five clergymen in this State made such an " Appeal," with reference to the Emancipator or Executive Committee, we should not have thought it "sedi tion," nor considered it a duty to expend so much strength in reply. What ! shall a whole army stop its aggressive move ments into the territories of its enemies to charge bayonets on five soldiers, subalterns, company or even staff officers, be cause they stray into a field to pick berries, throw stones, or write an " Appeal"? Does not such a measure induce our opponents to believe that we are weak, discordant, and ineffi cient ? Will it not persuade them that it is in their power to 164 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. III. throw us into confusion, or to divert our attention, at pleasure, ,7" whenever they choose to seduce or coerce any five of our num ber to step out of the ranks or behave unseemly there ! It would seem that principles and feelings are at work in Massachusetts, in the abolition ranks, that are unknown else where, because a breach has been made there that is dispropor- tioned to the cause, so far as we can judge. 3. You ask if it is magnanimous to leave you to manage single-handed a concern that affects the cause. Certainly not if it be indeed such a monstrous subject as you suppose. But we [do] not think it is. In our judgment, the Appeal is not fraught with so much evil as you seem to apprehend. "We do not think it very formidable, nor that it requires all the abolition artillery in the nation to quell it. It has appeared to me that you alone could have given the coup de grdce to this procedure if in a short article you had treated the " Appeal" as a hasty, injudi cious affair one that the signers would soon regret j had expressed your regret that there had been any cause of com plaint, and had solemnly and affectionately appealed to the signers, and all others, to overlook private, personal, and trifling considerations, at such a crisis as this, and devote them selves with new zeal and energy to the accomplishment of the great object for which we have associated. Then, if what has been faulty in the Liberator had been amended, the hearts of the abolitionists in Massachusetts would have been knit together anew, and they would, I fain believe, have been stronger than ever. You think that the Emancipator and Executive Committee are both bound to meet the injurious aspersions in the Appeal officially, and that if we refuse so to do, we shall need to be admonished by abolitionists universally. I confess I am sur prised, dear Garrison, at your earnestness in this matter. Why, if fifty clerical abolitionists should publish an " Appeal," I for one would hesitate long before I gave my vote, as a mem ber of the Executive Committee, for any official notice of it whatever. I would rather vote for a resolution to censure those brethren who magnified the Appeal, and turned aside, at such a crisis, to wage battle with part of our own troops, im properly as they were conducting. Admonition cannot hurt us, and if any of our constituents are even angry with us, we must not swerve from what we deem the line of duty. NO, dear friend, we must and will act according to our deliberate and con- ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 165 scientious sense of duty. But, after you have so nobly said, CHAP. III. " True-hearted abolitionists never will quarrel with each other," X Z_ we have little fear that you will quarrel with the Executive Com mittee. If you do, the war will all be on one side. I trust there is not a man among us who will be so heartless, ungrateful, or different from the great body of abolitionists throughout the country, as to insult, disparage, or attempt to injure one whom we are bound to honor and to love for his early, unremitting, and invaluable devotion to the cause. So fully am I possessed with these feelings toward you, my dear friend, that it is pain ful to differ from you on the subject we are discussing. And I do it in the firm persuasion that shortly you will view the matter differently from what you now do, and approve the course we are determined on taking here. 4. You speak of " sedition," and of " chastising Messrs. Fitch, Towne and Woodbury." I do not like such language. They come up to the average abolitionism of the day. By denounc ing them, then, you denounce probably a majority of the mem bers of the American anti-slavery societies in the United States. Is this wise ? For myself, whenever I have found a man doing anything for the cause of the poor slave, or for the free people of color, I have forborne to censure him severely, believing that he was on our side, partially at least, and would be, by and bye, wholly. We cannot afford to drive away, or " knock in the head," friends who are substantially right. No, no. We must be patient, forbearing, forgiving, especially to those of our own household. You will not think from this that I would relinquish founda tion-principles. By no means. But, holding on to these, I would rebuke those who err, with all long-suffering, profiting by their reproofs, even if unkindly made. 5. Our silence with regard to the Andover Appeal appears to you more extraordinary than silence with reference to the Clerical Appeal. Marvellous ! We know the signers both those who were abolitionists before the measure was concocted, and those who became members of the Anti-Slavery Society "on the spur of the occasion." Would it, then, have been becoming in the Executive Committee to have issued a counter Appeal to that of some 30 or 40 young men, who felt desirous of showing their opinion on the subject of the schism between the abolitionists in and near Boston ? Why, my dear sir, our hands would be full were we to reprimand all we see faulty or 166 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [2ET. 32. CHAP. in. remiss in different branches of our Association. The Execu- j^T tive Committee was not constituted for such work as this. Look at our Constitution. We are to charge the enemy and rout him, and not whip and spur our own comrades. I have seen the remarks in the Philanthropist of Sept. 15, 1 and concur with most of them. The Philanthropist does not censure the brethren who signed the Appeal so much as they deserve to be censured ; because, probably, they were not so much in his eye as those on the other side. Still, the drift and temper of the piece I like ; and I am persuaded it will meet the approbation of a large majority of the abolitionists in the country, including a full proportion of the most zealous and devoted, with the above exception. I do not wonder at your being wounded at many things said of you in the Appeals deeply wounded. But would it not be magnanimous to overlook it all for the sake of the cause THE CAUSE ? By writing so sharply the breach is widened, and the danger is, if such a course is persisted in, that it will never be closed. How lamentable would this be ! Instead of being a united band, gaining strength, and becoming more and more formidable, we should expend most of the strength that should be devoted to the accursed system of slavery upon each other, and thus weaken our efforts and postpone the jubilee over the downfall of oppression. " United we stand ; divided we fall." Receive with candor these remarks 5 make due allowance for anything you deem unkindly or unwisely written ; and believe me to be, my dear friend, Yours with affection and respect, LEWIS TAPPAN. P. S. I cannot learn that either of the signers of the Appeal has had any correspondence with any member of the Executive Committee. I am sure the Committee is unanimous in think ing the Appeal ill-tempered and injudicious. Be not hasty with the Philanthropist because the signers of the Appeal are not censured with more severity. Wait a little. l Copied in Lib. 7 : 161. Mr. Birney reserved his opinion on the merits of the Boston controversy ; saw indiscretion on both sides ; had no sym pathy with the spirit of Mr. Garrison s rejoinder to the Appeal, which manifested an unchristian temper ; was grieved and disappointed by his course, and his former confidence in his judgment and prudence was shaken. -Sfr. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 167 W. L. Garrison to G. W. Benson. BOSTON, Sept. 23, 1837. MS. With regard to our meeting at Worcester on Wednesday Sept. 27, next, I cannot urge upon you to attend it, if it will interfere materially with your business. But the crisis is a momentous one, and perhaps we have never needed a stronger expression of feeling and sentiment from the thorough-going friends of our cause than at the present time. I hope, therefore, that you will contrive, by hook or by crook, to be at Worcester ; for the meeting cannot now avoid a discussion upon the " Appeal," and its decision will be looked for with great anxiety all over the land. The condemnation ought to be explicit it ought to be strong it ought to be decisive; especially in view of the criminal and extraordinary course pursued by the Executive Committee and Emancipator at New York. Be assured, we have too much sectarianism at headquarters. There appears to be " something rotten in the state of Denmark." I am troubled exceedingly in spirit at what I am constrained to consider the blind, temporizing policy which the Board at New York seem determined to pursue. Only look at it ! Five clergymen, professing to be conspicuous abolitionists, make a public appeal, in which they bring severe and vital charges, not merely against the Liberator, but abolitionists and their course. Another appeal, backing this up, but still more grave and general in its charges, is issued at Andover, signed by thirty-nine professed friends. Then follows a letter from J. T. Woodbury, one of the " seventy agents." All these are copied exultingly into various religious and political pro-slavery newspapers, and our enemies are rejoicing in the assertion of Fitch and Towne, that nine-tenths of the abolitionists in New England agree with them in opinion. The Friend of Man, the Herald of Freedom, the Vermont Telegraph, and various anti- slavery societies, have deemed the whole affair as worthy of special notice yet, in view of all these things, our friends in New York have preserved unbroken silence ! Will not our enemies quote the old adage, " Silence gives consent," and claim the Emancipator as privately favoring the Appeal ? Our friends at New York may rely upon it, that the course which they have resolved to pursue, respecting this matter, will very much displease the great body of abolitionists, and alienate them and their money from the Parent Society. 168 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. (&? 32. CHAP. in. In order that you may know something of the feelings at z ^~ headquarters, I make a few extracts from a letter which I have received from Elizur Wright, Jr., a letter the tone and temper of which are so unlike himself, that you will find it difficult to believe that he wrote it. He says " I could have wished, yes, I have wished, from the bottom of my soul, that you could conduct that dear paper, the Libera tor, in the singleness of purpose of its first years, without travelling off from the ground of our true, noble, heart- stirring Declaration of Sentiments without broaching senti ments which are novel and shocking to the community, and which seem to me to have no logical sequence from the prin ciples on which we are associated as abolitionists. I cannot but regard the taking hold of one great moral enterprise while another is in hand and but half achieved, as an outrage upon common sense, somewhat like that of the dog crossing the river with his meat. 1 But you have seen fit to introduce to the public some novel views I refer especially to your sentiments on government and religious perfection and they have produced the effect which was to have been expected. And now, considering what stuff human nature is made of, is it to be wondered at that some honest-hearted, thorough going abolitionists should have lost their equanimity ? As you well know, I am comparatively no bigot to any creed, political or theological ; yet, to tell the plain truth, I look upon your notions of government and religious perfection as downright fanaticism as harmless as they are absurd. I would not care a pin s head if they were preached to all Christendom ; for it is not in the human mind (except in a peculiar and, as I think, diseased state), to believe them. . . . " My heart sickens over your letter to Woodbury. I feel that it does injustice to him. Grant that his publication was ill-natured, coarse, and acrimonious : there was still some reason to his mind, very strong reason for it. You meet Tiim in a way which my whole soul tells me is sinful. You exalt yourself too much. I pray to God that you may be brought to repent of it, as repent you must, unless my moral vision is wofully bleared. I am as confident as of my existence, that a few more such letters would open a bottomless gulf of 1 It was about this time that Mr. Wright first made acquaintance with La Fontaine s Fables, and began the metrical version of them which is to day the best in the language (see the advertisement to the first edition, 1841). ^T. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 169 distrust between you and the abolitionists. . . . Let the CHAP. in. Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood alone for ^ the present, and with my good will you may grind every one of them to powder who brings his popery to sustain the slave holder. Let the government alone, till, such as it is, all are equally protected by it, and after that you may work your will upon it, for all me. But if all this cannot be done, why, come out plainly, and say you have left the old track and are started on a new one or, rather, two or three new ones at once, and save us from the miserable business of making disclaimers. 1 I cannot but regard the Boston controversy as wrong, wrong, wrong, on both sides. If strict military justice were done, I am thinking both parties would be cashiered ! " If our dear bro. E. Wright can scribble in the foregoing strain, what have we to expect from other members of the Executive Committee ? I have a letter from Lewis Tappan, 2 in which he says "I deeply regretted seeing the Clerical Appeal ; but after its publication, my own judgment would have been in favor of a short, well-tempered, dignified, Christ-like reply [thus insinuat ing that neither brother Phelps nor myself have exhibited any of these qualities !] Your reply to Woodbury pained me ex ceedingly. It was beneath you in very many respects. With out enlarging, I consider the whole proceedings most unwise and hurtful. The Executive Committee determined on main taining silence, at least for the present, and they approve the course pursued by the editor of the Emancipator. They will not be deterred from what they deem their duty. They neither approve of the Appeal nor of the replies, but lament the whole. . . . Candor induces me to say, that, in my judgment, ob jectionable things have appeared in the Liberator, and they have been discussed, at times, with an appearance of acrimony. Questions have been mooted that had better not have been discussed, and language has sometimes been used not in ac- 1 Mr. Wright was not quite so frank to Mr. Garrison as to Mr. Phelps, to whom, on Oct. 26, 1837, he wrote : "I have just received a letter from Gar rison which confirms my fears that he has finished his course for the slave. At any rate, his plan of rescuing the slave by the destruction of human laws is fatally conflictive with ours. Only one of them can lead to any good result. Still, if he would run up his perfection flag, so that abolition ists might see what they are driving at, shouting for him, he would not do us much hurt. / have conjured him to do so. Honesty requires it of him " (2d Annual Report Mass. Abolition Society, in Free American, 3 :57). 2 Evidently the one to which that just quoted in full was supplementary. 170 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKRISON. [&? 32. CHAP. III. cordance with the lowly spirit of the gospel. . . . May the j^~ Lord preserve you and bless you, and give you the sweet temper of John united to the intrepidity and ardor of Paul." I might make other extracts, but these must suffice. Have we not reason to feel disquieted at the New York policy "? If persisted in, will it not inevitably divide the anti-slavery ranks ? In the next Liberator I shall feel it to be an imperative duty to rebuke the Executive Committee and the Emancipator before the public. How much, then, is depending upon the meeting of our State Society at Worcester ! Whatever it does, will tell mightily for good or evil. Whether Fitch and Woodbury will try to rally their forces on that occasion, I do not know, but think it highly probable. Should you attend, let your soul speak out as God shall give it utterance and think not of me as your brother- in-law, but only of our glorious cause. You are, happily, too well known to be charged with being swerved or biased by our connexion. Bro. May and Phelps will be there the Grimkes Alvan Stewart, 1 and perhaps Gerrit Smith, and many others. The meeting will probably hold two days, but perhaps only one. . . . The course of reasoning marked out in your letter, to be given at Worcester, is very good and conclusive. I have not time or room to suggest any points. As I shall not go to Worcester myself, perhaps I may find time to send you a few suggestions by bro. Phelps. Mr. Garrison s scruples about attending the Worcester Lib. 7: 163. Convention were overcome by his friends, who naturally desired that he should manage his own cause. He was, however, much engaged on the business committee, 2 and did not hear the debates, and spoke only to the question of Texas. His appearance there was the signal Lib.7-.-L6g. for "some spontaneous rounds of approbation." "This strong burst," said the editorial notice of it in the Lib erator, " was elicited, most evidently, not as an idle compliment, but as an expression of the sentiments of the audience in relation to the recent clerical attack 1 An eminent lawyer of Utica, N. Y., who took a leading part in the for mation of the State Anti-Slavery Society in 1835 (ante, p. 42). He was not present at Worcester, nor was Gerrit Smith. The Rev. Joshua Leavitt, editor of the Emancipator, alone represented the American Society. 2 Towne was placed upon the same committee. ^T. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 171 upon my anti-slavery course. ... It was, indeed, a CHAP. in. death-knell to the hopes of seditions plotters in our ^ ?f ranks, and of open and avowed enemies. It is worthy of remark, moreover, that all the speakers were applauded, except Mr. Fitch." This was on the evening of Septem ber 27. The day had passed without any demonstration from the appellants, who had nevertheless been earnestly laboring with twenty-four orthodox clergymen in several Lib. 7 . 170. private caucuses, from which lay delegates were excluded. Their spokesman at last, on the day following, was Dea con Gulliver, who forced upon the meeting a topic which it would have avoided. He was, at Mr. Garrison s own request, allowed to read a personal attack, to which the Convention listened in silence and then proceeded to pass resolutions of adhesion to the principles of 1833, " and not to the opinions of any man or set of men" The abolitionists of Massachusetts, they said, " know no man, or set of men, as leaders in this enterprise " ; anti-slavery was not the cause of any party or sect, and should not be identified with or made responsible for individual views on other subjects. They approved the action of the Board of Managers as to " certain Appeals." Touch ing the immediate work for the Society, they dwelt upon the impending annexation of Texas, and the urgency of sounding a general alarm, bringing influence to bear on Congressmen, and procuring a protest from the next Legislature, while not ceasing to catechise candidates at State elections on the question of adding new slave States, on the right of petition, the power of Congress over slavery in the District and over the inter-State slave trade, etc. The action of this Convention (to which, by the way, Lib. 7 : 163. female delegates were admitted) determined the ascen dency of Mr. Garrison, not only in Massachusetts, but in New England, which was largely represented at Wor cester. Primarily it was a tribute to his personal char acter in a region where he was intimately known, and where his presence never failed to disarm prejudice and 172 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. CHAP. III. 1837. / / \J opposition. 1 It was also the result and the sign of the liberalizing influence of the Liberator during the seven years of its existence, in all which the editor had uniformly inculcated and exemplified an unsectarian policy towards friends and foes. With such an assur ance of support, he resumed the task of following up the Oct. 6, 1837. clerical appellants. In the next subsequent issue of his paper he carried out his intention of rebuking the Exec utive Committee, in the following terms : Lib. 7 1163. " The Emancipator has maintained a profound and, we are constrained to think, a most injurious silence respecting the Clerical Protests, and the movements of the anti-slavery socie ties in reference to them. All the abolition newspapers have spoken out, except one : the Emancipator alone is dumb ! What does it mean ? " 0^.13,1837. Ante, p. 145. 0^.20,1837; Lib. 7 : 169. In the second issue he for the first time published (without the signature) Noyes s " solemn and powerful letter from Newark," as being " in accordance with our views and feelings," and as clearly defining " what is foolishly styled the l no-government theory : it only means the perfect reign of Christ throughout the earth." In the third issue, at the writer s request, he published in full Deacon Gulliver s " unprofitable gallimaufry n delivered at Worcester, accompanying it with notes in which his enemies could find plenty of fresh accusation against him. Here is one of them : " Be it known that, l with the concurrence of the ministers, or icithout their concurrence, the purposes of the Almighty against slavery shall be accomplished, and the cause of freedom be ultimately triumphant. Indeed, the anti-slavery cause is in danger of being injured chiefly by the clergy, as a body. l Thus, at Dover, N. H., in 1842, "We were amazed above measure," writes N. P. Rogers, "to hear brother Francis Cogswell and Rev. Brother Young eulogizing Garrison. I have been highly pleased with Mr. Gar rison, said Brother Young. . . . If you would send out such men as Garrison, said friend Cogswell, your cause would prosper. How long have you been an admirer of Garrison, brother Cogswell ? said we. Oh, I have not liked his writings, said he. He has not written as he speaks here. Always, said we" ( Acts of the A. S. Apostles, p. 222). JET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 173 Should its management get out of the hands of the people into theirs, its integrity will be constantly perilled." CHAP. III. 1837- Again, the Deacon had asked : " Does he not claim to be a Christian while as yet he has never confessed Christ before men, and is living in the habitual neglect of Christian ordinances ? " To this Mr. Garrison replied : Lib. 7 170. " This sectarian taunt is alike impudent arid malignant. No genuine abolitionist could possibly make it in such a connection and under such circumstances. It is evidently the offspring of cant and hypocrisy. What has the observance or neglect of the ordinances to do with the anti-slavery cause ? " The Spectator had meantime come out openly in favor Lib. 7: 169. of a new anti- slavery organization, to include men who kept aloof from the existing one on sectarian grounds " a great proportion of the Orthodox community," de clared a correspondent of that paper ; adding : " Ortho dox men cannot be active in that society without having their feelings wounded." These tactics did not discon cert Mr. Garrison. He wrote on October 20 to George W. Benson : " Truly, there is but one step from the sublime to the ridicu lous from pathos to bathos from what is true to what is false. Hence I descend to the Clerical Appeal. Was ever treachery so signally punished as in the case of the signers of that unfortunate document ! What an avalanche of condemna tion has fallen upon their heads, grinding them to powder ! What expressions of regard for the liberator and its editor have been extorted by their conduct! But the conspiracy is not wholly quelled, as you will perceive by the attempt of Dea. Gulliver to get up a separate organization. The clergy (mean ing the Colonization and Union portion of them, together with such deserters as Fitch, Towne and Woodbury) are very busily engaged in holding caucuses, corresponding with each other, and laying plots to carry their point against us. There is a tremendous accumulation of power in their hands, and they are able to wield it with great effect j but, happily, the charm of their infallibility is dispelled, and the people are beginning to see that they may refuse to kiss their feet and yet obtain salva- MS. American Union. 174 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^ET. 32. CHAP. III. tion. I do not mean needlessly to protract the controversy j^T that is now going on ; but it is really of great service to our cause to publish the proceedings of anti-slavery societies, con demnatory of the Appeal and in favor of the Liberator. There are a great many encomiums heaped upon me which are alto gether unmerited, but they are useful in refuting the charge that I am growing unpopular with the abolitionists. If my enemies don t wish to see me praised, let them cease attacking me. " It is not my intention, at present, to alter either the general character or course of the Liberator. My work in the anti- slavery cause is not wholly done : as soon as it is, I shall know it, and shall be prepared, I trust, to enter upon a mightier work of reform. 1 The cause must ~be kept in the hands of laymen, or it will not be maintained." In the same sense was the following comment on a com- Lib. 7 169. munication copied from the Spectator : " It is a truth which neither P. 7 nor any other Jesuitical white washer can refute, that the clergy, as a body, whether in New England or out of it, have always been most implacable in their prejudices towards the colored people, and unwill ing to plead their cause except as connected with a scheme of banishment." And again : " More cant ! The clergy will come whenever their flocks take up the line of march, let the prevailing spirit 7 [in the conduct of the Anti- Slavery Society] be what it may rely upon that ! " Such heretical plain-speaking emboldened the Spectator to draw out its adversary still further, by Lib. 7 : 173- means of an article headed " Errors of Influential Men," which indeed the editor of the Liberator found it impos sible to pass by, pronouncing it a most extraordinary attack upon himself and the colored people of Boston, l On the same date as the above, Miss Abby Kelley, secretary of the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, remitting the balance of a pledge * for the support of thy invaluable paper," tells in a private note (MS. Oct. 20, 1837) of her joy in the last number of the Liberator. " I trust the time is now fully come when thou wilt take a decided stand for all truths, under the conviction that the tvJwle are necessary to the permanent establishment of any single one." She speaks the sentiment of the town in saying that the Liberator will be supported in laying the axe to the root of the tree, 11 as expressed by thy Newark correspondent." Mf. 32.] THE CLEEICAL APPEAL. 175 and consigning it to the " Eefuge of Oppression. 7 It CHAP. in. compels me, he said, " to utter sentiments foreign to the ^37. anti-slavery enterprise, for which that enterprise is not responsible, and with which I am confident i nine-tenths of my abolition brethren will hold no fellowship." The Spectator charged that the attendance of colored worship pers at the Free Church had fallen off without being diverted to the church in Belknap Street. Why ? " One who has shown himself the ardent and untiring friend Lib. 7- 173- of the colored man sets lightly by the Sabbath, the house of God, and the divine ambassadors of the Prince of Peace. One day with him is as good as another. He neglects the house of God on that sacred day, and does his own pleasure, by attending to avocations which belong to other days, and not exclusively to the worship of God. Though he pretends to do all to the glory of God, yet he does not set aside the Sabbath for the appropriate duties of religion. He writes and reads and visits as on other days, so far as he can do it and not destroy his reputation for piety. He has no reverence for the ministerial office, but holds that one has as good a right to preach as another : setting apart to the sacred office pertains not to frail man." He thus, continued the Spectator, exerted an alarming influence over the people of color, and incurred a fearful responsibility at the bar of God. He had even warned this people against Pastor Fitch, as an apostate to be drummed out of camp. "Christian friends, is it not time for something to be done, not to destroy this man s influence in favor of the oppressed, but to counteract the influence of his errors which go to ruin souls ? " Mr. Garrison s reply was warm. The Pharisees watched Christ to see if he would heal on the Sabbath day. For three years the editor of the Spectator had professed a Wm. s. friendly attachment towards himself, with full knowl edge of his Sabbath views and practices ; had praised him often. "Why this attack now? "You have be trayed the cause of humanity, and now you naturally take refuge in formal hypocrisy. . . . Your new-born 176 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [.Err. 32. CHAP. in. zeal for the Sabbath is simply personal hostility it has !8j 7 . reference exclusively to my overthrow and the suppres sion of the Liberator. . . . With gospel simplicity and plainness I charge you with being a deceitful and bigoted man." He had dragged in an issue not perti nent to the anti-slavery cause. " No man who has not consecrated all his time to the service of God has ever consecrated a m seventh part of it. ... No man who reverently regards all days as holy unto the Lord will desecrate either the first or the seventh day of the week. . . . * The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. . . . You are nothing but a legalist ! You are endeavoring to obtain righteousness by THE LAW, and therefore are carnally minded. . . . You seem to be ignorant that now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held ; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. 1 " Mr. Garrison denied that he neglected the house of God mere brick and mortar : a legal imposture. " There is no such holy locality, or holy building, on earth." But who spies William Lloyd Garrison and keeps tally of his church-going? He refuses to plead guilty to the charge, which is pharisaical impertinence; or to the charge of reading, writing and visiting on Sunday. "The overthrow of Satan s empire, and the triumphant establishment of the Redeemer s kingdom on earth, constitute the ruling passion of my soul. . . . Few men in the world have less to do with profession Ante, p. 173. than myself; nay, my crime is, that I have not made what is called * a public profession of religion. But of what value are professions where fruits are wanting ? or what need of professions where fruits abound ? " As for his colored brethren, they had been grossly misrepre sented. Very few of them knew his sabbatical views. He had never spoken to them of the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath, or endeavored to lessen their reverence for it as a holy day. With regard to apostates, the MT. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 177 colored people needed no instruction from him : for, more than thirteen years before they heard of him, they resisted the blandishments of the Colonization Society. It was notorious that the Belknap-Street Church was de serted because of dissensions since the death of their late pastor ; to say nothing of the increase in colored churches. The colored people were not slow in answering on their own behalf the Spectator s calumnies, and reaffirming their love for their champion. Meanwhile, after two absurdly small and incoherent gatherings, chiefly de rived from the congregations of Fitch and Towne, these appellants again linked their names together at the head of a list of forty-eight signers of a call to form a New England Anti-Slavery Society auxiliary to the American. They professed not to assume a hostile attitude towards any existing organizations, being bent on uniting such persons as had serious objections to joining these, grow ing out of attacks on the churches, the Sabbath, the min istry, etc. Deacon Gulliver had all ready a constitution with a " Whereas, we believe that the promotion and speedy triumph of the cause of emancipation, and the prosperity of evangelical religion, demand a new organiza tion n ; and with an evangelical test of membership. But these Lilliputian proceedings had now ceased to have much interest for Mr. Garrison. 1 In his first issue for November, he met the disquietude of friends like Whittier, whom the publication of Noyes s " sectarian " letter had caused to write an open expression of regret that the Massachusetts Society was pecuniarily responsible for a paper not under its control. The editor announced that this responsibility would terminate with the current volume, and as he had not suggested or requested it, so he would not consent to its renewal. " We have had no ulterior views to promote under the guise of abolition, nor have we covertly in tended to alter the character and object of the Liberator; and we should deserve to be universally despised if we i See Amos A. Phelps s review of the whole movement in Lib. 8 : 9. VOL. II. 12 CHAP. III. 1837. Thos. Paul. Lib. 7 : 190. Lib. 7:171, 175- Lib. 7 : 186. Lib.7-.-L7S, 195- Lib. 7 : 179. Lib. 7 : 175. 178 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. had taken advantage of any relation with the State 1837. Society to circulate our views on other subjects besides slavery, in any way justly implicating the Society, or making any other person responsible but ourselves." For more than a year prior to the Clerical Appeal he had made no allusion to the Sabbath question, directly or indirectly. Being attacked and misrepresented on this subject, in order to the suppression of the Liberator, " it was due to the cause" as well as to his own character, to repel the attack, and show that his views on the Sab bath were neither novel, nor Jacobinical, nor lacking high evangelical authority. There remained the difference with the Executive Committee in New York, which no amount of public or private interchange of views could adjust witness that between Mr. Garrison and Elizur Wright, of which we Ante, p. 168. have already had a fragment, and have here another: Elizur Wright, Jr., to W. L. Garrison. MS. ANTI- SLAVERY OFFICE, NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 1837. MY DEAR BROTHER : . . . Perhaps your " surprise " at my first letter 1 would be less were you to reflect, that, not believing in the doctrine of " perfect holiness," I am not unprepared to see faults in my best friends, and can reprove them without hating or despising them. Whether such reproof of you be tokens on my part a lack of freedom, generosity and indepen dence of spirit, I leave, after all, to the verdict of your own good sense. Sure enough I am that there is little good in me, but if I ever wrote under the dictation of pure untrammelled conscience, I did to you. My last letter, I hope, has convinced you that I do not wish to gag you on any subject. 2 Still do I beg of you, as a brother, to let other subjects alone till slavery 1 The text of this has been preserved only in Mr. Garrison s citations above (p. 168). A second letter was dated Oct. 10, and desired the use of Mr. Garrison s name for the list of contributors to the enlarged Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine, which Mr. Wright edited with marked ability. On this head the reply (dated Oct. 23, 1837 : see 2d Ann. Report Mass. Aboli tion Society) was favorable, and, for the rest, covered both letters. 2 " In my magazine you shall have full sweep against the clergy and all other dignities which live by making tools of other people " (MS. Oct. 10, 1837). ^ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 179 is finished, because this is the work you have taken in hand, it CHAP. III. is the most pressing, and needs your whole energy. What if z jj~ you do not live to communicate to the world your peculiar views of Peace, Human Government, Theology, etc.; will wisdom die with you ? God is not so poverty-stricken in re gard to the means of accomplishing any of his designs as to be frustrated for the want of any man. You say, " Truth is one, and not conflictive or multitudinous." True ; but the people are connective, and moreover they cannot receive and unitedly act upon more than one great truth at once. Again, abolitionists do not agree on many points not embraced in their Declara tion of Sentiments. Hence it is no more than right that those persons and papers that are " conspicuously identified" with them as a body, and are understood to speak a language com mon to all, should confine themselves to subjects on which all agree, or rather on which they do not seriously differ. Here is no restriction of liberty more than is due to truth and right eousness. God, by the very nature of things, has forbidden us to attempt everything at once. But it does appear to me that your " truth," that human gov ernment has no rightful authority, does conflict with our truths, as expressed in our Declaration of Sentiments, as well as with the most important measures by which we seek to accomplish our object. In the Declaration we maintain that ll the slaves ought instantly to be set free and brought under the protection of law, 1 1 and that " Congress has the right, and is solemnly bound, to suppress the domestic slave trade," &c. What miserable falsehood if human government has no right to exist ! You impeach my Christianity because I " cannot cease looking to man for protection and redress " ; how can it consist with your Christianity to demand for others " the protection of law " ? If you follow out your doctrine, surely you must cease having anything to do with Congress and the State legislatures. Our action upon them in the direction of humanity not only recog nizes, but tends to confirm, their power, for human govern ments are never so strong as when the weakest enjoy their protection. Having this view of the bearing of your Peace doctrines upon the dear cause of the slave, could I do less than beg of you to suppress them till our contest is over ? I have no fear of the prevalence of your opinions, provided they make their home in their own tub and that stands distinctly on its own bottom. What I fear is, that they will suck you into a vortex of spiritual Quixotism, and thus absorb energies which might have shaken down the citadel of oppression. 180 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. C^T. 32. CHAP. ill. As to the doctrine of " perfect holiness," I have not much to j^7 7 say. My observation of men concurs with the little study I have been able to bestow on the Old and New Testaments, in convincing me that men are not completely freed from sin by the grace of God, in this life. The final victory is on the banks of the Jordan. That a marvellous change does take place, by the blessing of God upon Gospel truth, I joyfully believe ; but that a man, while in the body, is placed by it beyond the power of temptation, I must be allowed to doubt. The history of Chris tianity is far from furnishing any proof to this effect, and the passages of Scripture you quote, when taken in their connec tion, and with the allowances, exceptions and reservations to which all general propositions, not founded on strict definitions, are subject, do not seem to me to prove that a man cannot be holy in his general character without being altogether sinless. He cannot of course be holy and sinful in the same act, and how many times and how far he may sin and yet repent and be forgiven, I shall not undertake to decide. There are a great many things that I don t know. But I must believe the testimony of my own senses in preference to anybody s interpretation of Scripture for Scripture itself, after all, rests on the testi mony of sense 5 and according to that testimony I have never yet met with a man who was free from sin. I am obliged to reject your own claim to sinlessness. Your very letter refutes it. Hence I am obliged to reject your theory, or to believe that the gospel has never done its appropriate work within the range of my observation. If your theory could be established from Scripture, it would only make me an infidel, for I cannot receive a revelation which asserts that which my senses pro nounce to be false, nor one which visibly fails to accomplish its object. On your theory, I must either believe that the gospel has been in the world eighteen hundred years for nothing, or I must believe that pride and vanity, flattery and slander, are holy affections and righteous acts ! To be sure, I may be saved from the dilemma by more evidence, but so far as what I have goes, I am transfixed on one horn or the other. Still, there fore, am I obliged to mourn over your theological position as " downright fanaticism," and I pronounce it so with about the same confidence that I pronounce slaveholding a sin, but with far different feelings towards the subject of it. Your theory of perfection, of course, takes away my hopes of salvation, which are not founded, as you intimate, on the law, but on God s free, grace to SINNERS who, believing in Christ, JEff- 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 181 desire to be saved from sin. But I have said more than I CHAP. in. intended more than I shall ever say again. I am sick unto T ^7 7 death of the selfish, luxurious, good-for-nothing sort of religion which is eternally inquiring, What will become of ME ! If there are any men in the world who deserve to be damned, they are your very religious men whose anxiety is, not to do right, but to escape helL They libel their Maker and disgrace his service. Let us do what needs to be done to promote the welfare of all within our reach, and leave our salvation to God. 1 Yours for the slave, E. WRIGHT, JR. An older friendship than that with Elizur Wright be gan to totter after the appearance of the reply to the Spectator s libel on Mr. Garrison s relations to colored church-goers. A whole page of the Friend of Man was devoted to " Mr. Garrison The Liberator Affairs of the East, etc." Hitherto, Mr. Goodell had been one of Lib. 7 . 146, the most effective backers of Mr. Garrison against the bigotry and popery and general false pretences of the Clerical Appeal, and for this he still had his word of censure, while at the same time putting forth a fresh " appeal " to the same intent. He was a more practised theologian than his brother-editor, and as strict a logi cian. If his premises were sound, the latter confessed his conclusions would be irresistible. " But lie has Lib. 7 . 191. totally misconceived our views : we disclaim with holy abhorrence all that he imputes to us; and we are astonished beyond measure that he should deem us so profligate in theory as to believe that what was morally wrong, or morally obligatory, under the law, is no longer so under the gospel and therefore a Christian may take the name of God in vain, or steal, and covet, and commit adultery with impunity, or worship many gods without guilt ! ! Monstrous absurdity ! astonishing mis conception ! What we have written to warrant any such conclusion, even in the most remote sense, we really are l A rough draft of this letter, or else a curiously modified substitute, was published by the writer in the 2d Ann. Report of the Mass. Abolition So ciety (Free American, 3:57). 182 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [&T. 32. CHAP. in. quite ignorant." Goodell, not quoting him in full, yet !8j 7 . as if quoting him, had exclaimed " The Christian be liever not bound to obey the moral law of God ! . . . Alas ! the privilege of being a believer becomes synony mous, then, with the privilege of being (if one pleases) a slaveholder! . . . Can the l orthodox 7 abolitionists of New England continue to go with Mr. Garrison f Not if he must needs point Ms arrows against the great moral law which lies at the foundation of abolitionism." Herein, said Mr. Garrison, his brother Goodell had un wittingly done him immense injustice. " We have no such arrows to point we believe in no such abominable doctrine." Grace through faith has been substituted for the law : " Christ and him crucified is the ONLY stand ard of obedience to which we are to look. l What then ? Do we make void the law ? Nay, we establish the law. 1 n The new covenant has replaced the old, perfecting and far surpassing it. The controversy was cut short on account of a more absorbing topic, which had suddenly taken possession of Lib. 7 : 190. the entire country, and had already put the Liberator columns in mourning. The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, editor of an anti-slavery religious paper called the Ob server, had been murdered by a pro-slavery mob at Alton, Illinois. The Eeign of Terror had continued without abatement during the first half of the year. Anti-slavery lecturers in most of the New England States were mobbed repeatedly, with varying degrees of violence and barbarity; ministers were attacked in the pulpit or Li6.7-.sg. dragged from it the Rev. John Rankin was knocked down on leaving a church in Dayton, Ohio ; elsewhere in Lib. 7 : 34. the same State a private lecture by an abolitionist in his own home was forcibly prevented by riotous invasion; Ante, 1:454. and Marius R. Robinson (one of the Lane Seminary seceders) was, two days after a similar lecture, dragged Lib. 7: in. from his host s house at night, tarred and feathered, and ridden out of town. On Broadway, in New York, one saw Mi. 32.] THE CLEKICAL APPEAL. 183 in shop windows bowie-knives for sale, marked " Death to Abolition." From time to time, through the summer and Lib. 7 . 99. fall, from the extreme border of Northwestern civilization and settlement came news of popular disturbances at Alton directed against Love joy and his press, especially after he had published a call for the formation of a State Anti-Slavery Society. His life was, even to observers at Lib. 7 : 128. a distance, clearly in great peril. Still, his situation could not be fully realized by those who did not know the elements of the community in which he was endeavor ing to maintain himself 5 and, his case excepted, there seemed a lull in violence over the whole field when Mr. Garrison wrote thus, on November 6, to Miss Elizabeth Pease, 1 of Darlington, England : " With regard to the present state of the anti-slavery ques- MS. tion in this country, you will be pleased to learn that the friends of the slave are daily multiplying in all parts of the non-slaveholding States ; that there are now not less than twelve hundred anti-slavery societies in existence; that the spirit of lawless violence is in a great measure subdued, not by the arm of law, but by the power of truth and the victorious endurance of suffering innocence j that, in New England, all organized opposition to our cause has vanished ; that our efforts are unceasing to gain a complete mastery over the public sentiment of the nation ; and that in Massachusetts, where, only two years since, ABOLITION was a mere football among all political parties to show their contempt and dexterity in kicking it, these same parties are now bowing and scrap ing to us, with cap in hand, at every new election, knowing as they do that we hold the balance of power in our hands, and can award victory or defeat according to their espousal of the cause of liberty. " Upon the slaveholding States, we make no perceptible im pression. No opponent of slavery can tread upon their soil, as an abolitionist, without the risk of martyrdom. I have relin- l The daughter of a wealthy and philanthropic Quaker, Joseph Pease ; a lady whom he had never met, and who had just introduced herself by a gift of five guineas sent through Angelina Grimke". An intimate and life long friendship ensued. 184 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. ill. quished the expectation that they will ever, by mere moral j^T suasion, consent to emancipate their victims. I believe that nothing but the exterminating judgments of heaven can shatter the chain of the slave and destroy the power of his oppressor. The wildest animals may be tamed, in the course of time ; but tyrants, as all history shows, must be destroyed. I am clear, moreover, in the conviction that, though astonishing changes have taken place in favor of emancipation among the people of the nominally free States within the last five years, the fate of this nation is nevertheless sealed. Repentance, if it come at all, will come too late. Our sins have gone up over our heads, and our iniquities unto the clouds, and a just God means to dash us in pieces as a potter s vessel is broken." Tanner s Even as these lines were being penned, Loveioy s fourth Martyrdom , . ,_ , ofLovejoy, press was being secretly conveyed into a warehouse, P- 154- u g uar( } e d by volunteer citizens with their guns. 77 On yj. the night following, the tragedy occurred. No personal incident of the anti-slavery struggle the fate of John Brown excepted made so profound an impression on the North as the murder of Love joy. We call it a murder, although the primary object of the riot was not his de struction but that of his press 5 just as we call him a martyr, though we are accustomed to associate more or less of passivity with martyrdom, and he fell while aggressively repelling with arms an armed mob. In both cases the terms are correctly used, as the circumstances conclusively show. Three presses had already been destroyed on the same spot by the same community ; a fourth had been procured, whose destruction meant silence the opposition, grown more desperate, having already almost compassed the editor s assassination. He might have removed the Observer to Quincy or to Springfield, but there was no assurance that the liberty of the press would be vindicated in either place. The violence at Alton was, indeed, actually preceded and begotten by violence at St. Louis, but the mob-spirit was everywhere endemic at the North. With unsurpassable courage Love joy accepted the decision of his friends that the stand should be made then and there, not as for -T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 185 an anti-slavery publication merely or mainly, bnt for CHAP. in. the right under the Constitution and upon American soil ^j. to utter and print freely, subject only to the restraints and penalties of the law. To maintain this right against local public sentiment, the impotence of the city authori ties compelled the friends of law and order to enroll themselves in a military organization (having the mayor s approval), whose first duty it was to prevent an anti- slavery convention from being broken up, and next to guard the newly-arrived press from being thrown into the Mississippi like its predecessors. Among them, not more in defence of himself or of his property than of the principle at stake, Love joy took his place ; formed one of the little band of twenty who held the warehouse on the night of the fatal attack ; volunteered, with a rash and magnanimous heroism, among the first who left the burn ing building to face the infuriated and drunken mob; was ambushed and fell, the only victim of the defence. The greatest feeling produced by this atrocity was in the city the most remote from the scene in Boston, where, by a rich compensation, it overcame the timidity of Channing, revealed the oratory and fixed the destiny of Wendell Phillips, and with him drew Edmund Quincy into the forefront of the ranks of the despised abolition ists. The aldermen, who at first refused the use of Faneuil Hall for an indignation meeting, and Attorney- General Austin, who desecrated the hall afresh by declaring that Love joy had died as the fool dieth, were surprised by the demonstration of a new Boston upon which they had not counted. The Boston which had come near having its Love joy in the person of Mr. Garrison, in October, 1835, had undergone a revolution in two years a revolution perhaps to be defined as the weakening of Southern ascendency. The response of Faneuil Hall to the Alton riot was Northern resentment against a pro-slavery invasion, as it seemed. With more exactness, however, it may be said that Love joy was sacrificed on Southern soil. All the towns 186 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. 32. CHAP. III. 1837- Washburnes Sketch of Edward Coles, p. 190. Tanner s Martyrdom of Lovejoy, p. 125. Ante, /. 77. Nov. 3,1837. along the Mississippi were frequented by Southerners, often largely settled by them. Little more than a dozen years had elapsed since the strenuous exertions of Gov ernor Edward Coles had barely defeated the attempt of the Southern element in Illinois to legalize slavery by amending the constitution. Alton, situated in the south ern half of the State, opposite the slave-cursed shore of Missouri and not far from St. Louis, in intimate commer cial relations with the cotton-growing districts, was, though owing its prosperity, and even a certain reputa tion for philanthropy, to Eastern settlers, predominantly Southern in tone. Southern divines helped to harden public sentiment against the further countenance or toleration of Lovejoy ; Southern doctors took an active part in the mob, and one of them perhaps fired the mur derous shot. So, the year before, Cincinnati, tumbling Birney s press into the Ohio, was truly a Southern city ; so, the year after, Philadelphia, burning Pennsylvania Hall to the ground. In fact, the least Southern and most surprising of all the mobs of that epoch was precisely the Boston mob against the editor of the Liberator. 1 Of this mob every citizen of Boston and its vicinity must have been reminded when the news came not as now by telegraph 2 of Lovejoy s fate. Only a few days before, and in partial reference to the previous destruction of the Observer s presses, Alexander H. Everett, 3 warning his fellow-electors that the right of free discussion " is not only endangered, but, for the present at least, is actually lost," had written : 1 The foregoing summary is substantially reproduced, without quotation marks, from the New York Nation (32 : 264) ; but the present writer can plead, with Moliere, " Je reprends mon bien ou je le trouve." 2 It reached Boston on the forenoon of Sunday, Nov. 19, 1837 (Lib. 7:191). 3 The elder and abler brother of Gov. Edward Everett, already distin guished in the diplomatic service of the country, as an original writer of several works, and more recently as editor of the North American Review. He was at this time a candidate for Congress from the Dorchester (Mass.) district, and was responding to the catechism which the abolitionists had invented for politicians. -ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 187 " The newspapers of every day bring to our view the account Lib. 7: 183. of some new case in which a printing-press has been seized and thrown into the river; a public meeting broken up; a citizen tarred and feathered, scourged, too often, I add with horror, put to a violent death by a lawless mob, for no other cause or crime than the free discussion of the subject of slavery. Nor are these accounts mere rumors, coming to us from a distance, of outrages committed upon the outskirts of civilization. We have seen, within the bosom of our own metropolis, an assembly of ladies who had met for conversation on the subject of slavery, broken up by a mob of persons pretending to the character of gentle men. We have seen, on that occasion, a citizen who had rendered himself obnoxious only by a free discussion of that subject, barely escaping with his life from the fury of this mob, and actually committed to prison by the municipal authorities as the only place of security. Finally, we have seen a public meeting held by our most respected citizens at Faneuil Hall, not for the purpose of condemning such outrages, but for the purpose of condemning the free discussion which had given occasion to them." Mr. Hallett, in his Daily Advocate, flatly declared that the blood of Love joy was on the hands of the promoters of the Faneuil Hall meeting. Seth J. Thomas, a promi nent lawyer of Boston, invited by a committee consisting of Francis Jackson, Edmund Quincy, and Ellis Gray Loring, to speak at the Lovejoy indignation meeting about to be held in the same hall, responded : "The liberty of the press has been wantonly assailed, and MS. ^Nov. the citizens of Alton are not alone guilty of the outrage. The spirit of intolerance and of lawless bigotry has pervaded the land, and Massachusetts has felt and still feels its influence. The attack upon Mr. Lovejoy was no more wanton or unjusti fiable than that made a few years since upon Mr. Garrison. In both cases, the principle involved is the same, and the only difference is in the degree of violence inflicted. The conduct, too, of the Mayor of Alton on the one occasion was but a little more reprehensible than that of the Mayor of Boston on the other. 1 Mr. Krum convicts himself of pusillanimity, and a John M. total unfitness for the office which he held, by his own state- rum l This comparison does injustice to the Mayor of Alton, whose sympathies at least Vere not with the mob. 188 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. ment; and to the conduct of Mayor Lyman I was an eye- l8 ~~ witness. Both permitted the laws to be set at defiance, with a band of policemen and an organized militia within their call. Both had timely notice that the riots would take place, and both neglected to take the proper measures to prevent their occurrence. " It would seem, therefore, that while we reproach the citizens of Alton for their outrage upon the liberty of the press, we should not be unmindful of ourselves. The same spirit of in- Lib. 7 : 199. tolerance characterizes the resolutions passed by our present Mayor and Aldermen upon refusing your petition for the use of Faneuil Hall. 1 It is this, that one class of citizens shall not be permitted to express their opinions on any subject, provided those opinions are not in consonance with the opinions of the majority a principle expressly repudiated by our Constitution, and utterly at war with the spirit of freedom, without which a republican government cannot exist. If this principle were admitted, the rights of the party which happened to be in the minority would be unheeded, and a despotism established. It is evident that, to a certain extent, a sort of despotism exists in Boston at this time, for it will be recollected that when the Ante, 1:495, partisans of slavery petitioned, two years since, for the use of 5I4- the same place, their prayer was immediately granted; but now, when the advocates of the liberty of the press ask the use of their common property, their petition is denied, and our worthy Mayor and Aldermen tell us that resolutions of which they have no right to know anything, will not be in accordance with the sentiments entertained by a majority of our fellow- citizens." The comparison between the events of 1835 and of 1837 did not end here. On the one hand, Richard Fletcher, then the colleague of Sprague and Otis, now Lib. 7: 191. offered to bear one-third of the cost of reestablishing the Alton Observer. On the other hand, the "respectable Lib. 7:198. daily," the Advertiser, true to its traditions and its class, justified the authorities in their refusal of Faneuil Hall. Lib. 7 : 202. So, Attorney-General Austin, excusing the Alton riot by the Boston tea-riot, recalled Peleg Sprague s pointing to l This petition of 100 citizens was headed by Dr. Channing (Lib. 1 : 195). After a spirited appeal from this clergyman to the citizens of Boston, and a public demonstration (Lib. 1 : 198), the city authorities receded, and the meeting was held in Faneuil Hall on the morning of Dec. 8 (Lib. 7: 202). MT. 32.] THE CLEEICAL APPEAL. 189 " that slaveholder/ and drew the hot and crushing retort CHAP. in. from Wendell Phillips, who followed him, j^y. " Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which Lib. 7 202. place the rioters, incendiaries, and murderers of Mt. Benedict 1 and Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the por traits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gain say the principles of these resolutions. 2 Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up ! " Like the images of Brutus and Cassius in the Imperial procession, Mr. Garrison was all the more conspicuous because he did not appear before the public as in any way a mover or participant in what was meant to be a citizens 7 demonstration, in defence of the liberty of dis cussion, without regard to its object. In the private counsels of the managers of the Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society, but for whom there would have been no such demonstration, he shared as usual. As a spectator only he attended the meeting. 3 His speech had already iThe eminence in Charlestown, Mass., on which the Ursuline Convent had been established. 2 Austin declared them the familiar doctrines of our bill of rights in language weakened by expansion," and only objectionable in their " particular application." 3 "Yesterday forenoon," he writes on Dec. 9 to G. W. Benson, " we had a tremendous meeting in Faneuil Hall not less than 5,000 persons pres ent with reference to the Alton tragedy. There was a good deal of feel ing in the audience, and some would have been glad to get up a row ; but, happily, all went off pretty quietly. Dr. Channing made some excellent introductory remarks. Wendell Phillips, George Bond, and Geo. S. Hil- lard also made admirable speeches. The Attorney-General Austin s speech was as vile and inflammatory as possible, and came very [near] producing a mobocratic explosion. He was replied to by Phillips with great effect. Several excellent resolutions, drawn up by Dr. Channing, passed with un expected unanimity. The triumph has been a signal one for our side " (MS. ) In this famous scene the Attorney-General spoke from the gallery, near the great gilded eagle ; Mr. Phillips, from a lectern, in the body of the hall, from which Dr. Channing read his resolutions. See Mrs. Chapman s graphic account in a letter to Harriet Martineau (" The Martyr Age," West minster Iteview, December, 1838). 190 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 32. Lib. 7:191. been delivered in the Liberator, and in the resolutions (evidently from his hand) adopted by the Board of Managers. From his first editorial utterance some ex tracts must here be made. " The amiable, benevolent, intrepid LOVE JOY/ 7 he exclaimed, " is no more ! . . . In his martyrdom 1 he died as the representative of Philosophy, Justice, Liberty, and Christianity; well, therefore, may his fall agitate all heaven and earth ! That his loss will be of incalculable gain to the noble cause which was so precious to his soul, is certain." Lib. T. 191. " We cannot, however, in conscience delay the expression of our regret that our martyred coadjutor and his unfaltering friends in Alton should have allowed any provocation, or per sonal danger, or hope of victory, or distrust of the protection of Heaven, to drive them to take up arms in self-defence. They were not required to do so either as philanthropists or Chris tians, and they have certainly set a dangerous precedent in the maintenance of our cause, though the fact does not in the least palliate the bloodthirsty conduct of their assailants. Far be it from us to reproach our suffering brethren, or weaken the im pression of sympathy which has been made on their behalf in the minds of the people God forbid ! Yet, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, who suffered himself to be unresistingly nailed to the cross, we solemnly protest against any of his pro fessed followers resorting to carnal weapons under any pretext or in any extremity whatever." The fifth and sixth resolutions issued in the name of the Board of Managers show the distinction which Mr. Garrison admitted between his own judgment and that of the public at large, and again of his fellow-abolition ists, upon the defence at Alton : #.7:191. "5. That in resorting to arms, in the last extremity, to put down the implacable, seditious, and desperate enemies of public order, liberty and humanity, and to defend his property and life rather than succumb to their reign of terror, being cruelly deserted, as he was, by the civil and military authorities 1 " Lovejoy was certainly a martyr," said Mr. Garrison later (Lib. 8:3), "but, strictly speaking, he was not at least in our opinion a Christian martyr. He died like Warren, not like Stephen." JEi. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 191 of the place, he was amply justified by the principles set forth CHAP. III. in the Declaration of Independence, by the example of our j^T Revolutionary fathers, and by the applause which mankind have always bestowed upon those who have perished under similar circumstances ; consequently, that for those who sub scribe to that Declaration, and eulogize those patriotic sacri fices, to affect to be shocked at the brave and spirited defence made by Mr. Lovejoy, and on that account to consider his death as not deserving of peculiar sympathy or respect, is noth ing better than base hypocrisy, cold-blooded insensibility, and atrocious malignity. " 6. That while it is not the province of this Board to deter mine for the friends of universal emancipation how far, or under what circumstances, it is right to use arms in self- defence j and while it is certain that no body of men have ever had a better right to do so than had Mr. Lovejoy and his asso ciates, in view of the dreadful provocations and perils with which they were assailed; yet, as abolitionists, we are con strained to believe, that if the doctrine of non-resistance had been practically carried out by our brethren in Alton, as it has been by the friends of the colored race in Boston, New York, and many other places, a similar deliverance and victory would, in the providence of God, have been the result ; or, if not, that the spilling of the blood of defenceless men would have produced a more thrilling and abiding effect." More tersely, but with less satisfaction to many aboli tionists, the New York Executive Committee s resolutions Lib. 7- 195. simply declared Lovejoy to have been slain " whilst en gaged in defending his property and his rights in a manner justified by the laws of this and of all other civilized countries." It remained for Dr. Channing once more to confound moral distinctions and bestow indis criminate censure, in a " Letter to Abolitionists " which, after having submitted it to his intimate friend and Lib. 7 -.2x37. admirer nay, his prompter at every stage of his anti- slavery progress, and never more so than in putting him forward to inaugurate the Faneuil Hall protest Ellis Gray Loring, he offered to the Liberator for publica tion. On reading his confession that Lovejoy s " course was justified by the laws of his country, and by the 192 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. in. established opinions and practices of the civilized world," i8 37 . while yet " a dangerous precedent had been given in the cause of humanity/ 7 one seemed to hear the echo of Mr. Ante, p. 190. Garrison s own language, as cited above. But the mo ment Dr. Channing declared that the fact of Love joy s having fallen armed had kept him silent on the whole subject in his own pulpit, the singular weakness of this moral teacher became painfully apparent. He blamed the abolitionists because they had not with one voice disapproved the resort to arms. In this they had dis appointed his expectations, remembering those non- resistance doctrines which had mitigated his objection to their organization. Not that he shared these doctrines, or that a man might not sometimes defend himself forcibly ; " but it may be laid down as a rule hardly admitting an exception, that an enterprise of Christian philanthropy is not to be carried on by force ; that it is time for phi lanthropy to stop when it can only advance by wading through blood." He concluded that the abolitionists had exchanged their peaceful weapons for the sword, falsely assuming that they had recommended non-resistance to any others than the slaves. He exhorted them (as if it were a novelty) to try the peace principle and not to abandon it. Such a discourse seemed strange from the mouth of a man who had expressly called the citizens of Boston together to make known their sentiment in regard to the Lib. 7 . 198. " murder . . . of a native of New England and citizen of the free State of Illinois, who fell in defence of the freedom of the press "; asking, " Is there no part of our country where a voice of power shall be lifted up in defence of rights incomparably more precious than the temporary interests which have often crowded Faneuil Hall to suffocation ? " and answering, " There are, indeed, in various places, meetings of anti-slavery societies to express their sorrow for a fallen brother ; but in these I take no part? Was it, then, peculiarly incumbent on abolitionists to condemn Lovejoy for an act which only ^T. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 193 by accident related to slavery, and which Dr. Chan- CHAP. in. ning (in his public capacity) insisted on reviewing I sJ 7> abstractly? But this was not the whole of the " clerical appeal" for which the Liberator s hospitality was entreated by Dr. Charming. Having got the floor, on one pretext, he drifted into his now trite general censure of the aboli tionists their harsh language, violation of Christian charity for Christian slaveholders (calling them robbers and excluding them from church privileges), etc. which, as usual, was almost as pointedly directed against Mr. Garrison as if the latter had been named. As the hurricane is better than stagnation, " so," rejoined the editor, " this letter, though it is defective in principle, false in its charity, and inconsistent in its reasoning, will doubtless prove useful to the cause of dying human ity. . . . Its spirit is complacent and amicable ; its purpose unquestionably good." Still, it was an anti climax to his letter to the citizens of Boston. Dr. Chan- ning was not yet qualified to instruct abolitionists in the " peace principle." In effect he had argued that " a cause which is not benevolent will authorize the shedding of blood without guilt ; that which is, will not " a nice distinction, truly. Why were abolitionists " obligated to allow themselves to be torn to pieces by human tigers any more than others," and why might they not fight for liberty like others ? Mr. Garrison concluded his review Lib. 7 : 206. by some fatal "moral cross-readings" from Dr. Chan- ning s incoherent and contradictory utterances on the subject of slavery. In the same number of the Liberator, the editor had the gratification of publishing the accession to the cause of a man whose services to it were destined far to out weigh those of any clerical critic, whether Orthodox or Unitarian. It would be hard to say happily, it is need less to decide whether Wendell Phillips or Edmund Quincy showed the greater self-abnegation, the greater " integrity of mind and moral independence," in quitting VOL. IL 13 194 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. CHAP. in. his fashionable, respectable, Bostonian-aristocratic asso- I ^ 7> ciations, to cast in his lot with the Garrisonian "fan atics." Mr. Quincy was a son of Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard University (of which institution he was him self a graduate 1 ) 7 and a descendant of that Edmund Quincy who was among the earliest and the weightiest settlers of Boston. Like Mr. Phillips, he was a member of the Suffolk bar j unlike him, he belonged to the Uni tarian connection. The following letters speak for themselves : Edmund Quincy to Henry G. Chapman. Lib ^ 7 . 20y BOSTON, November 23, 1837. MY DEAR SIR : I enclose a check for fifteen dollars, being my life subscription to the Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society. I am informed that you are the proper person to be addressed on this subject, and you will oblige me by adding my name to the number of your subscribers. I do not know whether or not a conversation which I had with you, a Sunday or two ago, touching- Mr. Garrison s course about the " Clerical Appeal," dwells in your memory or not ; if it does, I would embrace this opportunity to take back all that I then said on the subject. I was then under a total misapprehension of the nature of the case, and of the motives by which he was actuated. I have since been enlightened on both these points, and believe that I now do full justice to the elevated character of his motives in that instance, as in all the rest of his public conduct ; and his course, as I now understand it, meets with my most cordial approbation. Pray excuse my troubling you on so insignificant an occasion as any change in my opinions on this or any other subject. I make this acknowl edgment solely for my individual satisfaction ; for the next best thing to not having been in an error at all, is to acknowledge it as soon as one finds out one s mistake. I am, dear sir, very faithfully, your friend and servant, EDMUND QUINCY. 1 In 1827, four years before Mr. Phillips. Both, again, were sons of ex- mayors of Boston. See Mr. Garrison s appreciation of Mr. Quincy s self- sacrifice in Lib. 18 : 2. THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 195 Edmund Qnincy to Henry G. Chapman. BOSTON, November 27, 1837. Lib. 7 . 207. MY DEAR SIR : I received your kind letter on Saturday with Nov. 25, the accompanying Certificate, and should have answered it immediately, had not your most unexpected request for the publication of my letter to you demanded time for mature consideration. My first impulse was, after thanking you for the favorable opinion which it implied, absolutely to decline it, as most repugnant to all my tastes and habits. And I confess that, after well weighing the matter, I can hardly conceive that " the early and toil-worn friends of the cause," as you well de scribe them, can derive any support or encouragement from the approbation of their course expressed by one of whose exist ence, from the retired habits of his life, they have probably never heard. Upon this point, however, you are much more competent to judge than I am j and if the publication of my letter, or anything else that I can say or do, can give the least pleasure to those admirable men, or the smallest assistance to the cause, I should hold myself inexcusable should I withhold it. And perhaps, too, upon my entrance on this new scene of duty, the sacrifice of a possibly false delicacy is not too great a one to make as an initiatory offering. My letter is, therefore, at your disposal, to do with it as you see fit. From the first agitation of the slavery question, I have ad mired, and on all suitable occasions vindicated, the spirit and constancy with which the abolitionists defended their own rights, and maintained those of their oppressed countrymen ; for a long time past, I have fully assented to the doctrines of the Anti-Slavery Society the sinfulness of the slave system, and the consequent duty and expediency of its immediate abolition 5 but I confess that I have arrived very slowly, and I am afraid I might say reluctantly, at the conclusion, that the course pursued by Mr. Garrison and the other true friends of the cause was in accordance with the dictates either of human wisdom or Christian charity. A more accurate knowledge, however, of what their course has really been, and of the diffi culties which they have had to encounter j a constantly increas ing sense of the enormous wickedness of degrading the children of God and the brethren of Christ into the condition of beasts of burden ; and, above all, the contemplation of the example set before us by the Great Captain of our Salvation, in the 196 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [^T. 32. CHAP. III. warfare which He waged against the venerable sins and time- x jj~ hallowed iniquities which He found, at His advent, reigning in the high places of the earth these considerations, among others, have satisfied me that I was wrong, and that they were right. I have deferred too long enrolling my name on the list of that noble army which, for seven years past, has maintained the Eight, and gallantly defended the cause of our common Humanity, undismayed by danger and undeterred by obloquy ; but I hope that in whatever fields yet remain to be fought, you will find me in the thickest of the fray, at the side of our vet eran chiefs, whether the warfare is directed against the open hostility of professed foes, or the more dangerous attacks of hollow friends. I am, dear sir, with sentiments of the truest respect and friendship, very truly yours, EDMUND QUINCY. On the national stage the anti-slavery contest was Ante, p. 127. marked by the resistance offered in Congress to the gag upon the right of petition and to the rapid progress of the movement to annex Texas. In both these assaults upon the liberties of the North, John Quincy Adams was the conspicuous hero of the defence, though for the public sentiment even in his own district which backed and cheered him, he was indebted mainly to the unceasing efforts of the abolitionists, between whom and himself there began to be privately as near an approxi mation as his repugnance to some of their objects and methods, his great caution, and the strenuous opposition of his household, permitted. 1 Lundy, in particular, had 1 See his Diary for April 19, July 29, Aug. 23, Sept. 1, 1837. Mr. Garrison writes to G. W. Benson, on June 14: " Whittier has just gone to New York, to relieve Stanton from the drudgery of epistolary correspondence, and enable him to come to Massachusetts for a few weeks, in order to com plete the victory commenced last year revolutionize John Quincy Adams s district drive the Texas question, etc. Stanton is the Napoleon of our cause. Mr. Adams is now at Quincy. He has lately had quite a visita tion from several abolition fanatics, and received them all with respect and cordiality. First, James G. Birney and Francis Jackson had a long interview with him then John G. Whittier and W. L. Garrison then Angelina E. and Sarah M. Grimke" and then Wm. Goodell. I will tell ^ET. 32.] THE CLERICAL APPEAL. 197 been most useful to him in imparting his special knowl- CHAP. in. edge of the condition of Texas. 1 The reader must seek ^ elsewhere an account of the most turbulent and thrilling Lit. 7:27, 30, 31, 33, scene ever witnessed in the House of Representatives, 6 9; May s when the guilty conscience of the South trembled at the *Y a u; shadow of a petition from slaves submitted by Mr. Corse s Life Adams, and drove the Southern members into a three J-Q- Adams, days frenzy impotent at last to expel or even to cen sure the man whose age and past office alone saved him from summary violence. Enough that the House for- Lib. 7 \ 34. mally denied the Constitutional right of slaves to petition that it suffered the Speaker to rule out, under the gag, Lib. 7 . 28, ^petitions protesting against the annexation of Texas because of the existence of slavery there; that both Houses hastened the recognition of Texan independence, Lib. 7 : 43. and that the Government despatched an army to the frontier as a menace to Mexico ; that in December the Lib. 7 . 87. Southern members theatrically left the House of Repre- Lib. 7:211. sentatives in a body when William Slade, of Vermont, presenting a petition for the abolition of slavery in the District, moved (the gag-rule having again lapsed) its reference to the proper committee, with instructions to report a bill ; that, after an excited caucus, a fresh gag 2 Lib. 8 : 15, was hastily imposed for the new session ; and that Cal- houn introduced in the Senate resolutions declaring the Lib. 8 : 3, 7, suppression of the anti-slavery agitation a Government I3t> I3> ^ duty in the interest of "domestic tranquillity," and opposition to the increase of slave territory an attempt to impair the equality of the States under the Constitu tion, as in effect disfranchising the slaveholding States. you something about these visits hereafter." For Mr. Adams s own drafts on the abolitionists for support, see p. 77 of the pamphlet edition of H. B. Stanton s Remarks in the Representatives Hall, Feb. 23, 24, 1837. 1 See Mr. Adams s Diary for July 11, 1836, and Sept. 1, 1837, and his manuscript letters to Lundy of May 12, May 20, and June 2-6, 1836 ; also the Life of Lundy, pp. 188, 295. Lundy s last visit to Texas (his third) had been in 1834-35, July 8 to April 5 ( Life, pp. 112-188). 2 Called Patton s, after the mover, a Virginian. It forbade even the reading of the petitions. It was summarily adopted by the "previous question " on Dec. 21, 1837. 198 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. In these sentiments of his old opponent Ex-President Lib. 7 -. 43, Jackson had fully concurred on withdrawing from public life in a farewell address. His successor had, in his first Lib. 7 -.42, message, pledged himself anew to defeat any measure having in view the freedom of the District. 1 From these summits the policy of repression expanded downwards. Lib. 7:61. The Washington National Intelligencer voluntarily pad locked its own lips, agreeing to exclude all discussion of slavery from its columns except as occurring in the Lib. 7 : 66. Congressional proceedings. The press of the District generally garbled even these. Elsewhere, editors began Lib. 7:19. injuriously to misreport the speeches at anti-slavery meetings. 2 And finally, the churches, not to be behind the politicians in the race of subserviency to the sum of all villanies, each in its own way endeavored to smother the voices raised on behalf of the slave. The mode, for example, adopted by the Presbyterian General Assembly Lib. 7 . 103. at Philadelphia, in June, was to lay all anti-slavery papers of every kind on the table without reading and without debate. And so ends the year of the Pastoral Letter and the Clerical Appeal. 1 On this, Mr. Adams had prophetically commented in one of his impas sioned letters to his constituents (Lib. 1 : 36, 56, 57, 61, 66, 69, and pam phlet), that as a " pledge that the whole influence, official and personal, of the President of the United States shall be applied to sustain and perpetuate the institution of slavery, it is a melancholy prognostic of a new system of administration, of which the dearest interests of New England will be the first victims, and of which the ultimate result can be no other than the dissolution of the Union." " Children of Carver, and Bradford, and Wins- low, and Alden! " concluded the " old man eloquent," " the pen drops from my hand " (Lib. 7 : 69). 2 Hezekiah Niles had already thought it expedient to suppress names as well as utterances. " Such wretches as Garrison and Denison," the Sa vannah Georgian had exclaimed in its article on negro slavery of June 19, 1833, copied into the Register (44 : 295) with blanks and this apology : " The names of the persons here inserted are not worth preserving, and we have daslied them out." CHAPTER IV. PENNSYLVANIA HALL. THE NON-RESISTANCE SOCIETY. 1838. SHALL we say that with his eighth volume the editor CHAP. iv. of the Liberator turned over a new leaf ? Cutting ^^ loose from his embarrassing connection with the treasury of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, he resumed the right to conduct his paper without regard to official or private susceptibilities himself alone the judge of what it was proper to say, or to let others say, in its columns j of what proportion of its space and his atten tion should be given to abolition, or to the other reforms which he had, and had long had, at heart. This was, Ante, 1:103, in fact, rather a return than a new departure, though he had never renounced his editorial independence. Still, the occasion called for a new manifesto, which, in the form of a prospectus, was published with the signa tures of the old partners, Garrison and Knapp, in the Liberator of December 15, 1837. Despite its length, the greater part of this important document must be given here. Thus it began : " The termination of the present year will complete the Lib. 7:203. seventh volume of the Liberator : we have served, therefore, a regular apprenticeship in the cause of LIBERTY, and are now prepared to advocate it upon a more extended scale. " In commencing this publication, we had but a single object in view the total abolition of American slavery, and, as a just consequence, the complete enfranchisement of our colored countrymen. As the first step towards this sublime result, we found the overthrow of the American Colonization Society to be indispensable, containing, as it did, in its organization, all the elements of prejudice, caste, and slavery. 199 200 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. [&f> 33. CHAP. IV. " In entering upon our eighth volume, the abolition of lg ~ 8 slavery will still be the grand object of our labors, though not, perhaps, so exclusively as heretofore. There are other topics which, in our opinion, are intimately connected with the great doctrine of inalienable human rights ; and which, while they conflict with no religious sect, or political party, as such, are pregnant with momentous consequences to the freedom, equal ity, and happiness of mankind. These we shall discuss as time and opportunity may permit. " The motto upon our banner has been, from the commence ment of our moral warfare, OUR COUNTRY is THE WORLD OUR COUNTRYMEN ARE ALL MANKIND. We trust that it will be our only epitaph. Another motto we have chosen is, UNI VERSAL EMANCIPATION. Up to this time we have limited its application to those who are held in this country, by Southern taskmasters, as marketable commodities, goods and chattels, and implements of husbandry. Henceforth we shall use it in its widest latitude : the emancipation of our whole race from the dominion of man, from the thraldom of self, from the gov ernment of brute force, from the bondage of sin and bring ing them under the dominion of God, the control of an inward spirit, the government of the law of love, and into the obedi ence and liberty of Christ, who is the same, yesterday, TO-DAY, and forever. " It has never been our design, in conducting the Liberator, to require of the friends of emancipation any political or sec tarian shibboleth ; though, in consequence of the general cor ruption of all political parties and religious sects, and of the obstacles which they have thrown into the path of emancipa tion, we have been necessitated to reprove them all. Nor have we any intention, at least, not while ours professes to be an anti-slavery publication, distinctively and eminently, to assail or give the preference to any sect or party. "We are bound by no denominational trammels; we are not political partisans; we have taken upon our lips no human creed ; we are guided by no human authority ; we cannot consent to wear the livery of any fallible body. The abolition of American slavery we hold to be COMMON GROUND, upon which men of all creeds, complexions and parties, if they have true humanity in their hearts, may meet on amicable and equal terms to effect a com mon object. But whoever marches on to that ground, loving his creed, or sect, or party, or any worldly interest, or personal reputation or property, or friends, or wife, or children, or life Mv. 33.] PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 201 itself, more than the cause of bleeding humanity, or expect- CHAP. IV. ing to promote his political designs, or to enforce his sectarian jgTg dogmas, or to drive others from the ranks on account of their modes of faith, will assuredly prove himself to be unworthy of his abolition profession, and his real character will be made manifest to all, for severe and unerring tests will be applied frequently : it will not be possible for him to make those sacri fices, or to endure those trials, which unbending integrity to the cause will require. For ourselves, we care not who is found upon this broad platform of our common nature : if he will join hands with us, in good faith, to undo the heavy burdens and break the yokes of our enslaved countrymen, we shall not stop to inquire whether he is a Trinitarian or Unita rian, Baptist or Methodist, Catholic or Covenanter, Presby terian or Quaker, Swedenborgian or Perfectionist. However widely we may differ in our views on other subjects, we shall not refuse to labor with him against slavery, in the same pha lanx, if he refuse not to labor with us. Certainly no man can truly affirm that we have sought to bring any other religious or political tests into this philanthropic enterprise than these : 1 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself l Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them - Remember those in bonds as bound with them. . " Next to the overthrow of slavery, the cause of PEACE will command our attention. The doctrine of non-resistance as commonly received and practised by Friends, and certain mem bers of other religious denominations, we conceive to be utterly indefensible in its application to national wars : not that it 1 goes too far, but that it does not go far enough. If a nation may not redress its wrongs by physical force if it may not repel or punish a foreign enemy who comes to plunder, enslave or murder its inhabitants then it may not resort to arms to quell an insurrection, or send to prison or suspend upon a gib bet any transgressors upon its soil. If the slaves of the South have not an undoubted right to resist their masters in the last resort, then no man, or body of men, may appeal to the law of violence in self-defence for none have ever suffered, or can suffer, more than they. If, when men are robbed of their earn ings, their liberties, their personal ownership, their wives and children, they may not resist, in no case can physical resistance be allowable, either in an individual or collective capacity. " Now the doctrine we shall endeavor to inculcate is, that the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of our 202 WILLIAM LLOYD GAEKISON. [-3ET. 33. CHAP. IV. Lord and of his Christ; consequently, that they are all to be j^Tg supplanted, whether they are called despotic, monarchical, or republican, and he only who is King of kings, and Lord of lords, is to rule in righteousness. The kingdom of God is to be established IN ALL THE EARTH, and it shall never be de stroyed, but it shall BREAK IN PIECES AND CONSUME ALL OTHERS : its elements are righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost : without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whatso ever loveth and maketh a lie. Its government is one of love, not of military coercion or physical restraint : its laws are not written upon parchment, but upon the hearts of its subjects they are not conceived in the wisdom of man, but framed by the Spirit of God: its weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. Its soldiers are clad in the whole armor of God, having their loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness ; their feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace ; with the shield of faith they are able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and they wear the helmet of salvation, and wield the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Hence, when smitten on the one cheek, they turn the other also ; being defamed, they entreat ; being reviled, they bless ; being persecuted, they suft er it; they take joyfully the spoiling of their goods; they rejoice, inasmuch as they are partakers of Christ s sufferings ; they are sheep in the midst of wolves ; in no extremity whatever, even if their enemies are determined to nail them to the cross with Jesus, and if they, like him, could summon legions of angels to their rescue, will they resort to the law of violence. J As to the governments of this world, whatever their titles or~forms, we shall endeavor to prove that, in their essential elements, and as at present administered, they are all Anti- Christ ; that they can never, by human wisdom, be brought into conformity to the will of God , that they cannot be main tained except by naval and mifiFary power; that all their penal enactments, being a dead letter without an army to carry them into effect, are virtually written in human blood ; and that the followers of Jesus should instinctively shun their stations of honor, power, and emolument at the same time submitting to every ordinance of man, for the Lord s sake, 7 and offering no physical resistance to any of their mandates, however unjust or tyrannical. The language of Jesus is, l My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight. ^ET. 33. J PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 203 Calling his disciples to him, he said to them, Ye know that CHAP. IV. they which are accustomed to rule over the Gentiles, exercise j^Tg lordship over them ; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so it SHALL NOT be among YOU but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister ; and whoso ever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. ^ Human governments are to be viewed as judicial punish ment If a people turn the grace of God into lasciviousness, or make their liberty an occasion for anarchy, or if they refuse to belong to the one fold and one Shepherd, they shall be scourged by governments of their own choosing, and burdened with taxation, and subjected to physical control, and torn by factions, and made to eat the fruit of their evil doings, until they are prepared to receive the liberty and the rest which_ remain, on earth as well as in heaven, for THE PEOPLE OF GOD^[ This is in strict accordance with the arrangement of ^Divine Pxovidence. " So long as men contemn the perfect government of the Most High, and will not fill up the measure of Christ s suffer ings in their own persons, just so long will they desire to usurp authority over each other just so long will they pertinaciously cling to human governments, fashioned in the likeness and admin istered in the spirit of their own disobedience. Now, if the prayer of our Lord be not a mockery ; if the Kingdom of God is to come universally, and his will to be done ON EARTH AS IT is IN HEAVEN ; and if, in that kingdom, no carnal weapon can be wielded, and swords are beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and there is none to molest or make afraid, and no statute-book but the Bible, and no judge but Christ } then why are not Christians obligated to come out NOW, and be separate from the kingdoms of this world, which are all based upon THE PRINCIPLE OF VIOLENCE, and which require their officers and servants to govern and be governed by that principle I . . . 11 These are among the views we shall offer in connection with the heaven-originated cause of PEACE, views which any person is at liberty to controvert in our columns, and for which no man or body of men is responsible but ourselves. If any man shall affirm that the anti-slavery cause, as such, or any anti-slavery society, is answerable for our sentiments on this subject, to him may be justly applied the apostolic declaration, 204 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKEISON. 33. CHAP. IV. the truth is not in him. We regret, indeed, that the princi ples of abolitionists seem to be quite unsettled upon a question 1838. Letters, p. 33- of such vast importance, and so vitally connected with the bloodless overthrow of slavery. It is time for all our friends to know where they stand. If those whose yokes they are en deavoring to break by the fire and hammer of God s word, would not, in their opinion, be justified in appealing to physical force, how can they justify others of a different complexion in doing the same thing ? And if they conscientiously believe that the slaves would be guiltless in shedding the blood of their merci less oppressors, let them say so unequivocally for there is no neutral ground in this matter, and the time is near when they will be compelled to take sides. " As our object is uni versal emancipation, to redeem woman as well as man from a servile to an equal condition, we shall go for the RIGHTS OF WokAN to their utmost extent." Such was the first outcome of Mr. Garrison s " Perfec tionism/ whose agreement, be it more or less or not at all with Noyes s, it is needless to discuss here. " Per fectionism" is a dark subject, and attempts to throw light upon it may easily end in leaving it more obscure than ever. Mrs. Child, for example, wrote to her brother, December 22, 1838 : " Something is coming toward us (I know not what), with a glory round its head, and its long luminous rays are even now glancing on the desert and the rock. The Unitarian, busily at work pulling down old structures, suddenly sees it gild some ancient pillar, or shed its soft light on some moss- grown altar ; and he stops with a troubled doubt whether all is to be destroyed ; and if destroyed, wherewith shall he build anew ? He looks upward for the coming dawn, and calls it Transcendentalism. The Calvinist, at work with strong arm and sincere heart at his fiery forge, fashioning the melted metal in time-honored moulds, sees a light before which his fires grow dim, and the moulded forms seem rigid and uncouth. Per plexed, he asks if the martyred fathers did die for a faith that must be thrown aside like a useless stove of last year s patent. His grim iron forms return no answer, for there is not in them that which can answer the earnest questionings of the human soul. He too looks upward, sees the light, and calls it Perfec tionism." -ET. 33. j PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 205 As a definition, this does not help matters much, even CHAP. iv. when illumined by the fact that both Perfectionism and l8 ^ 8 . Transcendentalism, as applied to the conduct of life, led up to socialism the Oneida Community and Brook Farm. The passage just quoted, however, does bear upon the charge of fanaticism already brought by Elizur Wright against Mr. Garrison. No one has accused Dr. Channing of being a fanatic because he gave the initial Atlanta impulse to the Brook Farm experiment. Nobody saw Oct., 1883, fanaticism in that portion of his letter to the abolitionists in which he said : " The liberation of three millions of Lib. ^ \ 206. slaves is indeed a noble object ; but a greater work is the diffusion of principles by which every yoke is to be broken, every government to be regenerated, and a lib erty more precious than civil or political is to be secured to the world." This, coming a week after Mr. Garrison s prospectus, sounds like a plagiarism, or, regarded as (what it was meant to be) an exhortation and a rebuke, like a jest. So does the patronizing repetition of the idea a few periods later : "I am not discouraged by the fact that this great truth Lib. 6:206. ["the unutterable worth of every human being"] has been espoused most earnestly by a party which numbers in its ranks few great names. . . . The less prosperous classes furnish the world with its reformers and martyrs. These, however, from imperfect culture, are apt to narrow themselves to one idea, 1 to fasten their eyes on a single evil, to lose the balance of their minds, to kindle with a feverish enthusiasm. Let such remember that no man should take on himself the office of a reformer whose zeal in a particular cause is not tempered by extensive sympathies and universal love." 2 1 At this very moment (Dec. 21, 1837) the Quaker Charles Marriott was writing from Hudson, N. Y., to Mr. Garrison: "We are sorry to hear of the indisposition of our dear sisters Grimke" at our kind friend Samuel Philbrick s. They have sown much good seed on other subjects besides abolition. The charge that abolitionists are persons of but one idea is pretty well passed off" (MS.) 2 Compare Follen s letter to Channing, Jan. 12, 1837, commending the Grimke*s, who " devote themselves entirely to the great work of universal emancipation. . . . They are free from the prejudices of those aboli tionists who think that the cause can be promoted only in their way ; their 206 WILLIAM LLOYD GAKKISON. [^T. 33. CHAP. iv. Almost in the same words, but after an interval of 1838. seven years (March 3, 1844), Emerson, in a discourse criticising the "New England Reformers," held up an ideal which was like nothing so much as Mr. Garrison s " Perfectionism ": " The criticism and attack on institutions which we have witnessed has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: he has become tediously good in some particular, but negligent or narrow in the rest ; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result. It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration." At a date (December 2, 1841) still nearer the one which now engages us, Mr. Emerson, again in a critical mood, offered this unconscious justification of Mr. Gar rison s course this echo of his prospectus in a " Lec ture on the Times " : " There is," he said, " a perfect chain see it, or see it not of reforms emerging from the surrounding darkness, each cherishing some part of the general idea ; and all must be seen in order to do justice to any one. . . . How trivial seem the con tests of the abolitionist whilst he aims merely at the circumstance of the slave." It remains to observe that Noyes s anti-government notions, though accepted by Mr. Garrison, had a very different origin and development. 1 The latter connected them with his views of Peace (already derived from the New Testament), in a way which Noyes never did or cared to do. The logical extension of the doctrine of non-resistance must have come, in a mind like Mr. Gar rison s, sooner or later. Noyes probably hastened the process, having reached the same goal by Scriptural views of social reform extend far beyond the grossest form of servitude as it exists at the South" ( Life of Chas. Follen, p. 430). iFor the "secret history" of New Haven Perfectionism, see Noyes s Witness (Ithaca, N. Y., May 16, 1838). -T. 33.] PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 207 conclusions as to the second coming of Christ and the CHAP. iv. doctrine of "holiness." But Noyes s scheme of human ^s. regeneration involved a species of church organization, with the Bible as interpreted by himself for authority in other words, had a purely sectarian basis. How dis tinct this was from Mr. Garrison s method, will appear later on. We return to the prospectus, in which the following passage regards the material outlook of the Liberator for the coming year. It was prefaced by a fresh allusion to the disadvantage of competition with the Emancipator , sustained by the Parent Society, and the Friend of Man, sustained by the New York State Society, and conse quently afforded at a lower rate : " Though not yet sufficient to cover all expenses, the circula- Lib. 7: 203. tion of the Liberator is, we believe, as extensive as that of any other anti-slavery journal in this country; and it gives us great satisfaction to state, (and we presume the information will not be less gratifying to our numerous friends), that, not withstanding the multiplication of other abolition papers, and the semi-abolition character which, we rejoice to say, many of the political and some of the religious newspapers are assuming notwithstanding the ungenerous attempt, on the part of cer tain professed abolitionists, to injure if they could not suppress the Liberator, by seeking an unprovoked and acrimonious sec tarian quarrel with it our subscription-list has steadily aug mented during the present year, and particularly for the last six months, with voluntary subscribers. " The pecuniary liabilities of the Liberator, as to the printing department, will hereafter be assumed by the publisher ; and as it is doubtful whether (aside from the editor s stipend) he will be enabled to meet more than his current expenses, the editor will look for a bare support for himself and family to other, though as yet unknown, sources. The same good Provi dence which has thus far sustained him will still supply his necessities, if he fail not in well-doing." * l For example, on New Year s day, 1837, Mr. Garrison received the fol lowing letter from Miss Ann Greene Chapman, sister of the Treasurer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, enclosing one hundred dollars: "MucH ESTEEMED FRIEND : My father has given me the pleasant com mission of offering you in his name the congratulations of the New Year, 208 WILLIAM LLOYD GARKISON. [^T. 33. The typographical appearance of the paper was im proved in the ninth number of the new volume by an enlargement of the pictorial heading. The old concep tion (rather than the old design) of a slave auction at the national capital was retained, but beside it was placed a scene of busy labor and rejoicing as the sun rose upon an emancipated race. This scene was shortly to be realized in the British West Indies. Mr. Garrison s family expenses and responsibilities MS. Jan. were increased in January by the birth of a son, named W L G. to for himself, in Boston, while he was without a home of M Benson ak his OWn - Later > U P n tne deatn f the wife f AmOS A Phelps, 1 he was glad to relieve the latter of his unex- pired lease of the furnished house at No. 2 Nassau Court (known as Seaver Place since 1844), in agreeable proxim ity to the home of his friend Francis Jackson. In the meanwhile, the usual summer retreat to Brooklyn was made in June, at which time the Liberator was again entrusted to the competent hands of Oliver Johnson for the space of three months. Mr. Garrison s bodily con dition was worse than it had been in the two previous years. His whole head was sick, even his eyes being attacked, and at last his right hand, as if to preclude and of requesting your acceptance of the enclosed as a slight proof of the high regard he feels for your noble devotion to the cause of human free dom. Whilst we slept over the woes of the slave and the endangered rights of the freeman, you were awake and active, sounding the note of warning which has at last roused the entire nation. We thank you for the welcome you have given us to be fellow-laborers with you in this holy cause. May this year be one of cheerful self-denial, of energetic action, of successful exertion, to us all. Then, whether sickness or health, joy or sorrow, life or death, be our allotted portion, it will be a Happy New Year." Death was the allotted portion of the lamented writer of these lines, in the short space of three months, and, as she made her will on February 1, must have been foreseen when writing to Mr. Garrison. She made liberal bequests to the American A. S. Society and to the Boston Female A. S. So ciety (Lib. 7: 59). A poetic tribute to her memory, from the pen of Mr. Garrison, dated Boston, Oct. 27, 1837, was published in the Liberty Sell for 1839. l Aug. 31, 1838. Charlotte Phelps was the first president of the Boston Female A. S. Society (Lib. 8 : 143). -ET. 33.] PENNSYLVANIA HALL. 209 him utterly from continuing his editorial work. With MS. Jan. difficulty in January could he complete his annual report jpfjr* G. to to the Massachusetts Anfi- Slavery Society, and it was de- G v ^ n Ben ~ livered piecemeal fresh from composition. 1 In March, by the urgent advice of his brother-in-law, he took several MS. Mar. " courses " of drugs and sweating at a Thomsonian in- 1838, firmary. But his best medicine was change of air and of Q. W. Ben- scene, even when attended with a very considerable amount of mental excitement. He did not miss the anniversary meeting in New York $ nor was he spared the nervous strain of the climax of the Reign of Terror the burning of Pennsylvania Hall. He delivered two elaborate addresses one for the Fourth of July in Lib. 8 : 99, Boston, 2 prepared at a week s notice from the Massa- jfae 28, chusetts Board, which found him lying on the bed with ^ *I?G. to a slow fever; another for the first of August in the F - Jackson - Broadway Tabernacle, New York, on the crowning event of that day, the voluntary abandonment of the #.8:129, apprenticeship system by Jamaica and the other British colonies, and the complete acceptance of emancipation. He did not arrive in New York in season for the opening of the protracted meeting of the American Anti- Slavery Society, nor did he take any conspicuous part in the debates. He was named one of a committee to prepare Lib. 8 : 78. a declaration concerning the common error that the anti- slavery enterprise was of a political, and not of a re