To a colored man belongs the high honor of having been the courier avant of the slavery agitation. This man was David Walker, who lived in Boston, and who published in 1829 a religio-political discussion of the status of the negroes of the United States in four articles. The wretchedness of the blacks in consequence of slavery he depicted in dark and bitter language. Theodore Parker, many years afterward, said that the negro was deficient in vengeance, the lowest form of justice. "Walker's Appeal" evinced no deficiency in this respect in its author. The pamphlet found its way South, and was the cause of no little commotion among the master-class. It was looked upon as an instigation to servile insurrection. The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put upon the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the sanguinary character of the book. For he himself was the very reverse of Walker. Garrison was a full believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance as enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical collisions of every description, as wicked and inhuman. He sang to the slave:

"Not by the sword shall your deliverance be; Not by the shedding of your master's blood, Not by rebellion—or foul treachery, Upspringing suddenly, like swelling flood; Revenge and rapine ne'er did bring forth good. God's time is best!—nor will it long delay; Even now your barren cause begins to bud, And glorious shall the fruit be!—watch and pray, For lo! the kindling dawn that ushers in the day."

He considered "Walker's Appeal" "a most injudicious publication, yet warranted by the creed of an independent people." He saw in our Fourth-of-July demonstrations, in our glorification of force as an instrument for achieving liberty, a constant incentive to the slaves to go and do likewise. If it was right for the men of 1776 to rise in rebellion against their mother-country, it surely could not be wrong were the slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and strike for their freedom. It certainly did not lie in the mouth of a people, who apotheosized force, to condemn them. What was sauce for the white man's goose was sauce for the black man's gander.

The South could not distinguish between this sort of reasoning, and an express and positive appeal to the slaves to cut the throats of their masters. The contents of the Liberator were quite as likely to produce a slave insurrection as was "Walker's Appeal," if the paper was allowed to circulate freely among the slave population. It was, in fact, more dangerous to the lives and interests of slaveholders by virtue of the pictorial representation of the barbarism and abomination of the peculiar institution, introduced as a feature of the Liberator in its seventeenth number, in the shape of a slave auction, where the slaves are chattels, and classed with "horses and other cattle," and where the tortures of the whipping-post are in vigorous operation. Here was a message, which every slave, however ignorant and illiterate could read. His instinct would tell him, wherever he saw the pictured horror, that a friend, not an enemy, had drawn it, but for what purpose? What was the secret meaning, which he was to extract from a portrayal of his woes at once so real and terrible. Was it to be a man, to seize the knife, the torch, to slay and burn his way to the rights and estate of a man? Garrison had put no such bloody import into the cut. It was designed not to appeal to the passions of the slaves, but to the conscience of the North. But the South did not so read it, was incapable, in fact, of so reading it. What it saw was a shockingly realistic representation of the wrongs of the slaves, the immediate and inevitable effect of which upon the slaves would be to incite them to sedition, to acts of revenge. Living as the slaveholders were over mines of powder and dynamite, it is not to be marveled at that the first flash of danger filled them with apprehension and terror. The awful memories of San Domingo flamed red and dreadful against the dark background of every Southern plantation and slave community. In the "belly" of the Liberator's picture were many San Domingos. Extreme fear is the beginning of madness; it is, indeed, a kind of madness. The South was suddenly plunged into a state of extreme fear toward which the Liberator and "Walker's Appeal" were hurrying it, by one of those strange accidents or coincidences of history.

This extraordinary circumstance was the slave insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, in the month of August, 1831. The leader of the uprising was the now famous Nat Turner. Brooding over the wrongs of his race for several years, he conceived that he was the divinely appointed agent to redress them. He was cast in the mould of those rude heroes, who spring out of the sides of oppression as isolated trees will sometimes grow out of clefts in a mountain. With his yearning to deliver his people, there mingled not a little religious frenzy and superstition. Getting his command from Heaven to arise against the masters, he awaited the sign from this same source of the moment for beginning the work of destruction. It came at last and on the night of August 21st; he and his confederates made a beginning by massacring first his own master, Mr. Joseph Travis, and his entire family. Turner's policy was remorseless enough. It was to spare no member of the white race, whether man, woman, or child, the very infant at the mother's breast was doomed to the knife, until he was able to collect such an assured force as would secure the success of the enterprise. This purpose was executed with terrible severity and exactness. All that night the work of extermination went on as the slave leader and his followers passed like fate from house to house, and plantation to plantation, leaving a wide swathe of death in their track. Terror filled the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable, horrible. James McDowell, one of the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke out in the Virginia Legislature, during the winter afterward. One of the legislators, joined to his idol, and who now, that the peril had passed, laughed at the uprising as a "petty affair." McDowell retorted—"Was that a 'petty affair,' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp, which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion, which so banished every sense of security from every man's dwelling, that let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart? The husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his deluded, drunken handful of followers which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir, it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,—a suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family, that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place, that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion."

Sixty one whites and more than a hundred blacks perished in this catastrophe. The news produced a profound sensation in the Union. Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings. Eight months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy:

"Wo, if it come with storm, and blood, and fire, When midnight darkness veils the earth and sky! Wo to the innocent babe—the guilty sire— Mother and daughter—friends of kindred tie! Stranger and citizen alike shall die! Red-handed slaughter his revenge shall feed, And havoc yell his ominous death-cry, And wild despair in vain for mercy plead— While hell itself shall shrink and sicken at the deed!"

After the Southampton insurrection the slavery agitation increased apace, and the Liberator and its editor became instantly objects of dangerous notoriety in it. The eyes of the country were irresistibly drawn to them. They were at the bottom of the uprising, they were instigating the slaves to similar outbreaks. The savage growlings of a storm came thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful mutterings against the agitator and his paper grew thenceforth more distinct and threatening throughout the free States. October 15, 1831, Garrison records in the Liberator that he "is constantly receiving from the slave States letters filled with the most diabolical threats and indecent language." In the same month Georgetown, S.C., in a panic made it unlawful for a free colored person to take the Liberator from the post-office. In the same month the Charleston Mercury announced that "gentlemen of the first respectability" at Columbia had offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction of any white person circulating the Liberator, Walker's pamphlet, "or any other publication of seditious tendency." In Georgia the same symptoms of fright were exhibited. In the same month the grand jury at Raleigh, N.C., indicted William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp for circulating the Liberator in that county. It was even confidently expected that a requisition would be made by the Executive of the State upon the Governor of Massachusetts for their arrest, when they would be tried under a law, which made their action felony. "Whipping and imprisonment for the first offence, and death, without benefit of clergy, for the second." Governor Floyd said in his message to the Virginia Legislature in December that there was good cause to suspect that the plans of the Southampton massacre were "designed and matured by unrestrained fanatics in some of the neighboring States." Governor Hamilton sent to the South Carolina Legislature in the same month an excited message on the situation. He was in entire accord with the Virginia Executive as to the primary and potent agencies which led to the slave uprising in Virginia. They were "incendiary newspapers and other publications put forth in the non-slave-holding States, and freely circulated within the limits of Virginia." As specimens of "incendiary newspapers and other publications, put forth in the non-slave-holding States," the South Carolina official sent along with his message, copies of the Liberator and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of Color," for the enlightenment of the members of the Legislature. But it remained for Georgia to cap the climax of madness when her Legislature resolved:

"That the sum of five thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby appropriated, to be paid to any person or persons who shall arrest, bring to trial and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain paper called the Liberator, published in the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts; or who shall arrest and bring to trial and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of this State, any other person or persons who shall utter, publish, or circulate within the limits of this State said paper called the Liberator, or any other paper, circular, pamphlet, letter, or address of a seditious character."

This extraordinary resolve was signed Dec. 26, 1831, by "Wilson Lumpkin, Governor." The whole South was in a state of terror. In its insane fright it would have made short shrift of the editor of the Liberator, had he by accident, force, or fraud have fallen into the clutches of its laws. The Georgia reward of five thousand dollars was as Mr. Garrison put it, "a bribe to kidnappers." The Southern method of dealing with the agitation within the slave States was violent and effective. There could be no agitation after the agitators were abolished. And the Southern method was to abolish the agitators.

The suppression of Abolitionism within the slave States was no difficult matter, but its suppression at the North was a problem of a wholly different nature, as the South was not long in finding out. It would not understand why its violent treatment of the disease within its jurisdiction could not be prescribed as a remedy by the non-slave-holding half of the Union within its borders. And so the South began to call loudly and fiercely for the suppression of a movement calculated to incite the slaves to insubordination and rebellion. This demand of the South had its influence at the North. Such newspapers as the National Intelligencer, and the Boston Courier suggested amendments to the laws whereby the publication of incendiary writings in the free States might be prohibited. The latter journal allowed that under the criminal code of Massachusetts "every man has a right to advocate Abolition, or conspiracy, or murder; for he may do all these without breaking our laws, although in any Southern State public justice and public safety would require his punishment." "But," the editor goes on to remark, "if we have no laws upon the subject, it is because the exigency was not anticipated.... Penal statutes against treasonable and seditious publications are necessary in all communities. We have them for our own protection; if they should include provisions for the protection of our neighbors it would be no additional encroachment upon the liberty of the press." The Governors of Virginia and Georgia remonstrated with Harrison Gray Otis, who was Mayor of Boston in the memorable year of 1831, "against an incendiary newspaper published in Boston, and, as they alleged, thrown broadcast among their plantations, inciting to insurrection and its horrid results." As a lawyer Mayor Otis, however, "perceived the intrinsic, if not insuperable obstacles to legislative enactments made to prevent crimes from being consummated beyond the local jurisdiction." But the South was not seeking a legal opinion as to what it could or could not do. It demanded, legal or illegal, that Garrison and the Liberator be suppressed. To the Boston mayor the excitement over the editor and his paper seemed like much ado about nothing. The cause appeared to his supercilious mind altogether inadequate to the effect. And so he set to work to reduce the panic by exposing the vulgarity and insignificance of the object, which produced it. That he might give the Southern bugaboo its quietus, he directed one of his deputies to inquire into a publication, of which "no member of the city government, nor any person," of his honor's acquaintance, "had ever heard." The result of this inquiry Mayor Otis reported to the Southern functionaries.

"Some time afterward," he wrote, "it was reported to me by the city officers that they had ferreted out the paper and its editor; that his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors."

With this bare bodkin Harrison Gray Otis thought to puncture the Southern panic. But the slaveholders had correcter notions of the nature and tendency of the Abolition enterprise than had the Boston mayor. They had a strange, an obstinate presentiment of disaster from the first instant that the Liberator loomed upon their horizon. It was a battery whose guns, unless silenced, would play havoc with Southern interests and the slave system; ergo, the paper must be suppressed; ergo, its editor must be silenced or destroyed. And so when Otis, from his serene height, assured them of his "belief that the new fanaticism had not made, nor was likely to make, proselytes among the respectable classes of our people," they continued to listen to their fears, and to cry the louder for the suppression of the "incendiary newspaper published in Boston."

The editor of that paper never flinched before the storm of malignity which was gathering about his head. He pursued the even tenor of his way, laboring at the case more than fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, upon the paper, renewing, week after week, his assaults upon the citadel of the great iniquity, giving no quarter to slave-holding sinners, but carrying aloft the banner of IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL EMANCIPATION. Otis had looked to numbers and respectability as his political barometer and cue; but when, after diligent search with official microscopes, he failed to observe the presence of either in connection with this "new fanaticism," wise man that he was, he turned over and renewed his slumbers on the edge of a volcano whose ominous rumbling the Southern heart had heard and interpreted aright. He was too near to catch the true import of the detonations of those subterranean forces which were sounding, week after week, in the columns of the Liberator. They seemed trivial, harmless, contemptible, like the toy artillery of children bombarding Fort Independence. Garrison's moral earnestness and enthusiasm seemed to the Boston mayor like the impotent rage of a man nursing memories of personal injuries suffered at the South.

If there was panic in the South, there was none in the office of the Liberator. Unterrified by the commotion which his composing-stick was producing near and far, he laughed to scorn the abuse and threats of his enemies. When the news of the reward of the State of Georgia "for the abduction of his person" reached him, he did not quail, great as was his peril, but boldly replied:

"Of one thing we are sure: all Southern threats and rewards will be insufficient to deter us from pursuing the work of emancipation. As citizens of the United States we know our rights and dare maintain them. We have committed no crime, but are expending our health, comfort, and means for the salvation of our country, and for the interests and security of infatuated slaveholders, as well as for the relief of the poor slaves."

Archimedes with his lever had moved the world. Archimedes "in a small chamber, unfurnitured and mean," had set a world of pro-slavery passions and prejudices spinning away into space:

"Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, 'round which systems grow; Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow."



CHAPTER VII.



MASTER STROKES.

"Help came but slowly" to the reformer. With a single instrument he had stirred the nation, as no other man had done, on the slavery question. He had thrown the South into widespread excitement, and thawed the apathy of the North into widespread attention. He had won an almost instant hearing for his cause. But he knew that this was not enough. Effective as he had shown the weapon of the press to be, it alone was unequal to the conduct of prolonged agitation. And prolonged agitation Garrison clearly apprehended was to be the price of abolition. Back of him and the Liberator he needed an organized force, coadjutors like Aaron and Hur to hold up his arms during the mighty conflict on which he had now entered with the slave interests of the country. Those interests were organized, and because they were organized they were powerful. The sentiment of freedom he determined to organize and to render it thereby invincible. To organized wrong he designed to oppose organized right, confident that organized right would prevail in the end. He had knowledge of the utility of temperance societies in advancing the cause of sobriety among the people. He had learned from Lundy how much he had relied upon the union of men as anti-slavery helps. Garrison determined to summon to his side the powerful agency of an anti-slavery society devoted to immediate and unconditional emancipation. He had already made converts; he had already a small following. At Julien Hall, on the occasion of his first lecture on the subject of slavery, he had secured three remarkable men to the movement, viz., Rev. Samuel J. May, then a young Unitarian minister, Samuel E. Sewall, a young member of the Bar, and A. Bronson Alcott, a sage even in his early manhood. They had all promised him aid and comfort in the great task which he had undertaken. A little later two others, quite as remarkable as those first three were drawn to the reformer's side, and abetted him in the treason to iniquity, which he was prosecuting through the columns of the Liberator with unrivaled zeal and devotion. These disciples were Ellis Grey Loring and David Lee Child. They were a goodly company, were these five conspirators, men of intellect and conscience, of high family and social connections, of brilliant attainments and splendid promises for the future. To this number must be added a sixth, Oliver Johnson, who was at the time editing The Christian Soldier, disciple of Garrison then, and ever after his devoted friend. The early promises of this noble half dozen friends of the slave were more than fulfilled in after years. Often to the dingy room "under the eaves" in Merchants' Hall they climbed to carry aid and comfort to "one poor, unlearned young man," and to sit at his feet in this cradle-room of the new movement. It was there in communion with the young master that suggestions looking to the formation of an anti-slavery society, were doubtless first thrown out.

"The place was dark, unfurnitured and mean; Yet there the freedom of a race began."

It was not all clear sailing for the editor of the Liberator even with such choice spirits. They did not always carry aid and comfort to him, but differences of opinions sometimes as well. He did not sugar-coat enough the bitter truth which he was telling to the nation. Some of them would have preferred The Safety Lamp to the Liberator as a title less likely to offend the prejudices of many good people. Some again objected to the pictorial heading of the paper as an altogether unwise proceeding, and positively mischievous. He had the same experience when the formation of an Abolition society was under consideration. He was confronted with this benevolent aversion to giving offence by calling things by their right names. But much as he desired to have his friends and followers organized for associated action, where a principle was at stake he was with them as with slavery itself absolutely inflexible and uncompromising. He was for organizing on the principle of immediate emancipation. A few deemed that ground too radical and revolutionary, and were for ranging themselves under the banner of Gradualism, thinking to draw to their ranks a class of people, who would be repelled by Immediatism. But Garrison was unyielding, refused to budge an inch to conciliate friend or foe—not even such stanch supporters as were Sewall and Loring, who supplied him again and again with money needed to continue the publication of the Liberator. No, he was right and they were wrong, and they, not he, ought accordingly to yield. The contention between the leader and his disciples was not what was expedient, but what was right. It was on the part of the leader the assertion of a vital principle, and on this ground he was pledged against retreat. The mountain could not go to Mahomet, therefore Mahomet must needs go to the mountain. Garrison could not abandon his position, wherefore in due time Loring, Child, and Sewall surrendered theirs. Finely has Lowell expressed this righteous stubbornness, and steadfastness to principle in three stanzas of his poem entitled, "The Day of Small Things," and which have such an obvious lesson for our own times that I shall venture to quote them in this place:

"Who is it will not dare himself to trust? Who is it hath not strength to stand alone? Who is it thwarts and bilks the inward MUST? He and his works, like sand from earth are blown.

"Men of a thousand shifts and wiles look here! See one straightforward conscience put in pawn To win a world! See the obedient sphere By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!

"Shall we not heed the lesson taught of old, And by the Present's lips repeated still, In our own single manhood to be bold, Fortressed in conscience and impregnable will?"

The history of the making of this first society is an interesting story. There were four meetings in all before it was found possible to complete the work of its organization. These meetings extended over a space of nearly three months, so obstinate were a minority against committing the proposed society to the principle of immediate emancipation. The very name which was to be given to the association provoked debate and disagreement. Some were for christening it "Philo-African," while Garrison would no such milk-and-water title, but one which expressed distinctly and graphically the real character of the organization, viz., "New England Anti-Slavery Society." He would sail under no false or neutral colors, but beneath the red flag of open and determined hostility to slavery. It should be a sign which no one could possibly mistake. The first meeting was held at the office of Samuel E. Sewall, November 13, 1831. At the third meeting, convened New Year's evening of 1832, which was the first anniversary of the publication of the Liberator, the work of organization was finished, with a single important exception, viz., the adoption of the preamble to the constitution. The character of the preamble would fix the character of the society. Therefore that which was properly first was made to come last. The fourth meeting took place on the night of January 6th in the African Baptist Church on what was then Belknap but now known as Joy street. The young leader and fourteen of his followers met that evening in the school-room for colored children, situated under the auditorium of the church. They could hardly have fallen upon a more obscure or despised place for the consummation of their enterprise in the city of Boston than was this selfsame negro church and school-room. The weather added an ever memorable night to the opprobrium of the spot. A fierce northeaster accompanied with "snow, rain, and hail in equal proportions" was roaring and careering through the city's streets. To an eye-witness, Oliver Johnson, "it almost seemed as if Nature was frowning upon the new effort to abolish slavery; but," he added, "the spirits of the little company rose superior to all external circumstances."

If there was strife of the elements without, neither was there sweet accord within among brethren. "The spirits of the little company" may have risen superior to the weather, but they did not rise superior to the preamble, with the principle of immediatism incorporated in it. Eleven stood by the leader and made it the chief of the corner of the new society, while three, Messrs. Loring, Sewall, and Child, refused to sign the Constitution and parted sorrowfully from the small band of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. But the separation was only temporary, for each returned to the side of the reformer, and proved his loyalty and valor in the trying years which followed.

The preamble which was the bone of so much contention declared that: "We, the undersigned, hold that every person, of full age and sane mind, has a right to immediate freedom from personal bondage of whatsoever kind, unless imposed by the sentence of the law for the commission of some crime. We hold that man cannot, consistently with reason, religion, and the eternal and immutable principles of justice, be the property of man. We hold that whoever retains his fellow-man in bondage is guilty of a grievous wrong. We hold that a mere difference of complexion is no reason why any man should be deprived of any of his natural rights, or subjected to any political disability. While we advance these opinions as the principles on which we intend to act, we declare that we will not operate on the existing relations of society by other than peaceful and lawful means, and that we will give no countenance to violence or insurrection."

Twelve, the apostolic number, affixed to the preamble and constitution their names, and thus formed the first Garrisonian Society for the abolition of slavery in the United States. The names of these apostolic men it is well to keep in mind. They are William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, Robert B. Hall, Arnold Buffum, William J. Snelling, John E. Fuller, Moses Thatcher, Joshua Coffin, Stillman B. Newcomb, Benjamin C. Bacon, Isaac Knapp, and Henry K. Stockton. The band of reformers, their work done, had risen to pass out of the low, rude room into the dark night. The storm was still raging. They themselves had perchance been sobered by the experiences of the evening. They had gone in fifteen, they were returning twelve. And, after all, what had they accomplished? What could they a mere handful do to abolish slavery entrenched as it was in Church and State? It is possible that some such dim discouragement, some such vague misgiving of the futility of the evening's labor, was in the hearts of those wearied men, and that their leader divined as much, for the spirit of prophecy fell upon Garrison just as they "were stepping out into the storm and darkness." "We have met to-night," he said, "in this obscure school-house; our numbers are few and our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall shall erelong echo with the principles we have set forth. We shall shake the nation by their mighty power." Then the little band dispersed "into the storm and darkness," carrying with them these words charged with hope and courage.

The fruitful seed of organized agitation Garrison had securely planted in soil fertile and ready for its reception. Its growth constitutes one of the marvels of reforms. Within a few brief years it multiplied into hundreds and thousands of societies throughout the free States. But its beginnings were small and humble enough. "The objects of the society" were according to the second article of the constitution, "to endeavor by all means sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion, to effect the abolition of slavery in the United States, to improve the character and condition of the free people of color, to inform and correct public opinion in relation to their situation and rights, and to obtain for them equal civil and political rights and privileges with the whites." The means which were immediately adopted by the society for the accomplishment of these objects were mainly three, than which none others could have been more effective. These were petitioning Congress on the subject of slavery. The publication and circulation of anti-slavery addresses and tracts, and the employment of anti-slavery agents, "in obtaining or communicating intelligence, in the publication and distribution of tracts, books, or papers, or in the execution of any measure which may be adopted to promote the objects of the society." Such was the simple but unequaled machinery which the New England Anti-Slavery Society relied upon for success in the war, which it had declared against American slavery. The executive power of the body, and the operation of its machinery were lodged in a board of managers of which Garrison's was the leading, originating mind. The society started out bravely in the use of its means by memorializing Congress for the abolition of slavery, "in the District of Columbia and in the Territories of the United States under their jurisdiction," and by preparing and distributing an address in maintenance of the doctrine of immediate emancipation. The board of managers set the machinery in motion as far and as fast as the extremely limited pecuniary ability of the society would permit. The membership was not from the rich classes. It was Oliver Johnson who wittily remarked that not more than one or two of the original twelve, "could have put a hundred dollars into the treasury without bankrupting themselves." The remark was true, and was quite as applicable to any dozen of the new-comers as to the original twelve. The society was never deficient in zeal, but it was certainly sadly wanting in money. And money was even to such men and to such a movement an important factor in revolutionizing public opinion.

The Liberator was made the official organ of the society, and in this way was added to its other weapons that of the press. This was a capital arrangement, for by it both the paper and the society were placed under the direction of the same masterly guidance. There was still one arrow left in the moral quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of the people, and that was the appointment of an agent to spread the doctrines of the new propaganda of freedom. In August the board of managers, metaphorically speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison the agent of the society to lecture on the subject of slavery "for a period not exceeding three months." This was the first drop from a cloud then no bigger than a hand, but which was to grow and spread until, covering the North, was, at the end of a few short years, to flood the land with anti-slavery agents and lecturers.

Our anti-slavery agent visited portions of Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island, preaching the Abolition gospel in divers places, and to many people—notably at such centers of population as Worcester, Providence, Bangor, and Portland, making at the latter city a signal conversion to his cause in the person of General Samuel Fessenden, distinguished then as a lawyer, and later as the father of William Pitt Fessenden. The anti-slavery schoolmaster was abroad, and was beginning to turn New England and the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where he sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the forms.

So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the society during the first year of its existence that it was no empty declaration or boast of the Abolitionist, the new monthly periodical of the society, that "probably, through its instrumentality, more public addresses on the subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people of color, have been made in New England, during the past year (1832) than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization."

The introduction of the principle of association into the slavery agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an achievement of the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any man, or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense initiative. He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged the method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling of the anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a common cause, was a master stroke of moral generalship. This master stroke the leader followed up promptly with a second stroke not less masterly. That second stroke was his "Thoughts on African Colonization," published in the summer succeeding the formation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

Garrison's championship of the cause of the slave had started with strong faith in the efficacy and disinterestedness of the colonization scheme as an instrument of emancipation. It commanded, therefore, his early support. In his Park Street Church address he evinced himself in earnest sympathy with the friends of colonization. But after his arrival in Baltimore a change began to exhibit itself in this regard. He began to qualify his confidence in its utility; began to discern in it influences calculated to retard general emancipation. As these doubts and misgivings arose within him he expressed them frankly in the Genius. Lundy had been suspicious of the pro-slavery purposes or interests of the enterprise for many years. He could not reconcile himself to the significant or, at least, singular fact of so many slaveholders being in the membership and the offices of the association. Then, in addition to this lack of confidence on the part of Lundy in the scheme, Garrison became acquainted, for the first time, with the objects of the society's philanthropy—the class of free people of color. He found that these people were not at all well affected to the society; that they had no appreciation of its benevolent intentions in respect to themselves. He found, on the contrary, that they were positively embittered toward it and toward its designs for their removal from the country as toward their worst enemy. This circumstance was undoubtedly a poser to their young friend. How could he reconcile this deep-seated and widespread disbelief in the purity of the motives of the Colonization Society, with the simple integrity and humanity of the enterprise itself? Later, his acquaintance with such representatives of the free people of color in Philadelphia as James Forten and his son-in-law, Robert Purvis, served but to confirm those first impressions which he received in Baltimore from the Watkinses and the Greeners. It was the same experience in New York and New Haven, in Boston and Providence. He learned that from the very beginning, in the year 1817, that the free people of color in Richmond and Philadelphia had, by an instinctive knowledge of threatened wrong and danger, met and resolved against the society and its sinister designs upon themselves. These people did not wish to leave the country; they did not wish to be sent to Liberia; but the society, bent on doing them good against their will, did want them to leave the country, did want to send them to Liberia.

And why did the society desire to remove the free people of color out of the country? Was it from motives of real philanthropy? The colored people were the first to detect its spurious humanity, the first to see through the artful disguises employed to impose upon the conscience of the republic. Their removal, they intuitively divined, was proposed not to do their race a benefit, but rather to do a service to the owners of slaves. These objects of the society's pseudo-philanthropy had the sagacity to perceive that, practically, their expatriation tended to strengthen the chains of their brethren then in slavery; for if the South could get rid of its free colored population, its slave property would thereby acquire additional security, and, of consequence, increased market value. Like cause, like effect. If the operation of the colonization scheme was decidedly in the interest of the masters, it was the part of wisdom to conclude as the free colored people did actually conclude that the underlying motive, the hidden purpose of the society was also in the interest of the masters.

Garrison did not reach his conclusions as to the pro-slavery character and tendency of the society abruptly. The scales fell away gradually from his eyes. He was not completely undeceived until he had examined the reports of the society and found in them the most redundant evidence of its insincerity and guilt. It was out of its own mouth that he condemned it. When he saw the society in its true character, he saw what he must do. It was a wolf in sheep's skin running at large among the good shepherd's flock, and inflicting infinite hurt upon his poor sheep. He no longer wondered at the horror which the colonization scheme inspired among the free people of color. They were right. The society was their dangerous and determined enemy; it was the bulwark of the slave-holding classes. With the instinct of a great purpose he resolved to carry this powerful bulwark of slavery by assault. To the attack he returned week after week in the Liberator, during a year and a half. Then he hurled himself upon it with all his guns, facts, arguments, denunciations, blowing away and burning up every shred of false covering from the doctrines, principles, and purposes of the society, revealing it to mankind in its base and monstrous character.

The society's one motive "to get rid of the free people of color," was outrageous enough, but this was not its only sin. There was another phase to the mischief it was working, which lifted it to the rank of a great sinner. It was not only harmful in its principles and purposes. "It imperatively and effectually seals up the lips," so Garrison accused it, "of a vast number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they associate, and thereby leading to a dissolution of the compact, dare not expose the flagrant enormities of the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of holding human beings in bondage. They dare not lead to the onset against the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall the victory be won? I do not mean to aver that in their sermons, or addresses, or private conversations, they never allude to the subject of slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July. But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing slavery as an evil—a misfortune—a calamity which has been entailed upon us by former generations,—and not as an individual CRIME, embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. They do not identify the criminal; they make no direct, pungent, earnest appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable.

Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright described the baleful influence of the society upon the humanity and philanthropy of the nation. "The humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could not otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced into an African Colonization Society, whereby all slaves who had grown seditious and troublesome to their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous African coast. That this wretched and seemingly transparent humbug could have deluded anybody, must now seem past belief; but I must with shame confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it. And that fact would put me in doubt of my own sanity at the time if I did not know that high statesmen, presidents of colleges, able editors, and that most undoubted of firm philanthropists, Gerritt Smith, shared the same delusion. Bible and missionary societies fellowshipped that mean and scurvy device of the kidnapper, in their holy work. It was spoken of as the most glorious of Christian enterprises, had a monthly magazine devoted to itself, and taxed about every pulpit in the land for an annual sermon in its favor."

Such was the Colonization Society, and its entrenched strength in the piety and philanthropy of the country at the moment when Garrison published his "Thoughts." It did not seem possible that a single arm however powerful, was able to start its roots; but, directly upon the launching of this bolt, the roots of the Bohun Upas, as Garrison graphically designated the society, were seen to have started, and the enterprise appeared blasted as by fire. The deluded intellect and conscience of the free States saw in the fierce light, which the pamphlet of the reformer threw upon the colonization scheme how shamefully imposed upon they had been. They had believed the society "the most glorious of Christian enterprises," and, lo! it stood revealed to them a "scurvy device of the kidnapper." The effect was extraordinary. The book was seized and its contents devoured by some of the finest minds of the North. Here is an example of the interest which it excited and the converts which it made: "Last Monday evening was our Law Club meeting, and I had the great satisfaction of hearing Judge Mellen, our Chief-Justice, say he had read your 'Thoughts,' was a thorough convert to your views, and was ready to do all in his power to promote them. Mr. Longfellow [father of Henry W. Longfellow] was present also, and with equal warmth and clearness expressed himself also in favor of your views. This is getting the two first men in the State for talents and influence in benevolent effort. I have no doubt they will head the list of those who will subscribe to form here an anti-slavery society. Mr. Greenleaf [Simon] also, will cordially come in, and I need not say he is one of the first [men] in the State, for his character is known." This quotation is made from a letter of General Samuel Fessenden, of Portland, Me., to Mr. Garrison, dated December 14, 1832. Among the remarkable minds which the "Thoughts" disillusioned in respect of the character and tendency of the Colonization Society were Theodore D. Weld, Elizur Wright, and Beriah Green, N.P. Rogers, William Goodell, Joshua Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Lewis Tappan, and James Miller McKim.

Garrison's assertion that "the overthrow of the Colonization Society was the overthrow of slavery itself," was, from the standpoint of a student of history, an exaggerated one. We know now that the claim was not founded on fact, that while they did stand together they did not fall together. But the position was, nevertheless, the strongest possible one for the anti-slavery movement to occupy at the time. In the disposition of the pro-slavery forces on the field of the opening conflict in 1832, the colonization scheme commanded the important approaches to the citadel of the peculiar institution. It cut off the passes to public opinion, and to the religious and benevolent influences of the land. To reach these it was necessary in the first place to dislodge the society from its coign of vantage, its strategical point in the agitation. And this is precisely what "The Thoughts on African Colonization" did. It dislodged the society from its powerful place in the moral sentiment of the North. The capture of this position was like the capture of a drawbridge, and the precipitation of the assaulting column directly upon the walls of a besieged castle. Within the pamphlet was contained the whole tremendous enginery of demolition. The anti-slavery agent and lecturer thenceforth set it up wherever he spoke.

To him it was not only the catapult; it furnished the missile-like facts and arguments for breaching the walls of this pro-slavery stronghold as well.

The effect of the publication of "The Thoughts" in this country was extraordinary, but the result of their circulation in England was hardly less so. It produced there as here a revolution in public sentiment upon the subject. The philanthropy and piety of Great Britain had generally prior to the unmasking of the society, looked upon it as an instrument of Emancipation, and had accordingly given it their powerful countenance, and not a little material support. But from the moment that the pamphlet reached England a decided change in this regard became manifest. The society made fruitless attempts to break the force of the blow dealt it by Garrison in the United States. But wherever its emissaries traveled "The Thoughts" confronted and confounded them. So that Mr. Garrison was warranted in saying that "all that sophistry or misrepresentation could effect to overthrow its integrity has been attempted in vain. The work, as a whole, stands irrefutable." The attempts made to maintain its hold upon the British public were characterized by duplicity and misrepresentation beyond anything practiced in America. The work of deceiving the philanthropy of Great Britain was conducted by the emissary of the society, Elliott Cresson, a man perfectly fitted to perform his part with remarkable thoroughness and industry. Three thousand miles away from America, and practically secure from contradiction, he went about making outrageous statements as to the anti-slavery character and purpose of the colonization enterprise. As there was no one in England sufficiently acquainted with the operations and designs of the society, he was enabled to falsify facts, to conceal the real principles of the scheme with astonishing audacity and activity. He approached Wilberforce, and duped Clarkson into a belief in the anti-slavery aim of the society.

Unmasked in America, the time had come when the interests of the Abolition movement on this side of the Atlantic required that it should be stripped of its disguises on the other side also. No better instrument could be selected for this purpose than the man who had torn the mask from its features in the United States. And so in March, 1833, the Board of Managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society notified the public of the appointment of "William Lloyd Garrison as their agent, and that he would proceed to England as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made, for the purpose of procuring funds to aid in the establishment of the proposed MANUAL LABOR SCHOOL FOR COLORED YOUTH, and of disseminating in that country the truth in relation to American slavery, and to its ally, the American Colonization Society." The managers offered in justification of their step the fact that "Elliott Cresson is now in England as an agent for the Colonization Society, and that he has procured funds to a considerable amount by representing that the object of the society is 'to assist in the emancipation of all the slaves now in the United States.' It is important that the philanthropists of that country should be undeceived, and that the real principles and designs of the Colonization Society should be there made known."

In pursuance of this mission Garrison sailed from New York, May 2, 1833. Twenty days later he landed in Liverpool. His arrival was opportune, for all England was watching the closing scene in the drama of West India Emancipation. He was an eye-witness of the crowning triumph of the English Abolitionists, viz., the breaking by Act of Parliament of the fetters of eight hundred thousand slaves. He was in time to greet his great spiritual kinsman, William Wilberforce, and to undeceive him in respect of the Colonization Society, before death claimed his body, and to follow him to his last resting-place by the side of Pitt and Fox, in Westminster Abbey.

A highly interesting incident of this visit is best told in Mr. Garrison's own words. He said:

"On arriving in London I received a polite invitation by letter from Mr. Buxton to take breakfast with him. Presenting myself at the appointed time, when my name was announced, instead of coming forward promptly to take me by the hand, he scrutinized me from head to foot, and then inquired, 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Garrison, of Boston, in the United States?' 'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I am he; and I am here in accordance with your invitation.' Lifting up his hands he exclaimed, 'Why, my dear sir, I thought you were a black man! And I have consequently invited this company of ladies and gentlemen to be present to welcome Mr. Garrison, the black advocate of emancipation, from the United States of America.' I have often said that that is the only compliment I have ever had paid to me that I care to remember or to tell of! For Mr. Buxton had somehow or other supposed that no white American could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and therefore I must be black!"

Garrison promptly threw down his challenge to Elliott Cresson, offering to prove him an impostor and the Colonization Society "corrupt in its principles, proscriptive in its measures, and the worst enemy of the free colored and slave population of the United States." From the first it was apparent that Cresson did not mean to encounter the author of the "Thoughts" in public debate. Even a mouse when cornered will show fight, but there was no manly fight in Cresson. Garrison sent him a letter containing seven grave charges against his society, and dared him to a refutation of them in a joint discussion. This challenge was presented four times before the agent of colonization could be persuaded to accept it. Garrison was bent on a joint public discussion between himself and Mr. Cresson. But Mr. Cresson was bent on avoiding his opponent. He skulked under one pretext or another from vindicating the colonization scheme from the seven-headed indictment preferred against it by the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. As Cresson could not be driven into a joint discussion with him there was nothing left to Garrison but to go on without him. His arraignment and exposure of the society in public and private was thorough and overwhelming. He was indefatigable in the prosecution of this part of his mission. And his labor was not in vain. For in less than three months after his reaching England he had rendered the Colonization Society as odious there as his "Thoughts" had made it in America. The great body of the anti-slavery sentiment in Great Britain promptly condemned the spirit and object of the American Colonization Society. Such leaders as Buxton and Cropper "termed its objects diabolical;" while Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian, did not doubt that "the unchristian prejudice of color (which alone has given birth to the Colonization Society, though varnished over with other more plausible pretences, and veiled under a profession of a Christian regard for the temporal and spiritual interests of the negro which is belied by the whole course of its reasonings and the spirit of its measures) is so detestable in itself that I think it ought not to be tolerated, but, on the contrary, ought to be denounced and opposed by all humane, and especially by all pious persons in this country."

The protest against the Colonization Society "signed by Wilberforce and eleven of the most distinguished Abolitionists in Great Britain," including Buxton, Macaulay, Cropper, and Daniel O'Connell, showed how thoroughly Garrison had accomplished his mission. The protest declares, thanks to the teachings of the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, that the colonization scheme "takes its roots from a cruel prejudice and alienation in the whites of America against the colored people, slave or free. This being its source the effects are what might be expected; that it fosters and increases the spirit of caste, already so unhappily predominant; that it widens the breach between the two races—exposes the colored people to great practical persecution, in order to force them to emigrate; and, finally, is calculated to swallow up and divert that feeling which America, as a Christian and free country, cannot but entertain, that slavery is alike incompatible with the law of God and with the well-being of man, whether the enslaver or the enslaved." The solemn conclusion of the illustrious signers of this mighty protest was that: "That society is, in our estimation, not deserving of the countenance of the British public." This powerful instrument fell, as Garrison wrote at the time, "like a thunderbolt upon the society." The damage inflicted upon it was immense, irreparable. The name of Thomas Clarkson was conspicuous by its absence from the protest. He could not be induced to take positive ground against the society. Garrison had visited him for this purpose. But the venerable philanthropist, who was then blind, had taken position on neutral ground, and could not, after an interview of four hours, be induced to abandon it. But, fortunately, potent as the name of Clarkson would have been in opposition to the society, it was not indispensable to its overthrow in Great Britain. Garrison had won to his side "all the staunch anti-slavery spirits," while Cresson was able to retain only "a few titled, wealthy, high-pretending individuals."

The success of the mission was signal, its service to the movement against slavery in America manifold. Garrison writing from London to the board of managers, summarized the results produced by it as follows: "1st, awakening a general interest among the friends of emancipation in this country, and securing their efficient cooeperation with us in the abolition of slavery in the United States; 2d, dispelling the mists with which the agent of the American Colonization Society has blinded the eyes of benevolent men in relation to the design and tendency of the society; 3d, enlisting able and eloquent advocates to plead our cause; 4th, inducing editors of periodicals and able writers to give us the weight of their influence; 5th, exciting a spirit of emulation in the redemption of our slave population among the numerous female anti-slavery societies; 6th, procuring a large collection of anti-slavery documents, tracts, pamphlets, and volumes, which will furnish us with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition." These were indeed some of the grand results of laborious weeks. His mission was ended. He was profoundly grateful to the good God for its success. The great movement which he had started against oppression in his own country was awaiting his aggressive leadership. He did not tarry abroad, therefore, but set sail from London August 18, 1833, for New York, where he landed six weeks later.



CHAPTER VIII



COLORPHOBIA

Garrison's Abolitionism was of the most radical character. It went the whole length of the humanity of the colored race, and all that that implied. They were, the meanest members, whether bond or free, his brothers and his sisters. From the first he regarded them as bone of his bone and blood of his blood, as children with him of a common father. Poor and enslaved and despised to be sure, wronged by all men, and contemned by all men, but for that very reason they were deserving of his most devoted love and labor. He never looked down upon them as wanting in any essential respect the manhood which was his. They were men and as such entitled to immediate emancipation. They were besides entitled to equality of civil and political rights in the republic, entitled to equality and fraternity in the church, equality and fraternity at the North, equality and fraternity always and everywhere. This is what he preached, this is what he practiced. In not a single particular was he ever found separating himself from his brother in black, saying to him "thus far but no farther." He never drew the line in public or private between him and the people whose cause was his cause—not even socially. He went into their homes and was in all things one with them. He forgot that he was white, forgot that they were black, forgot the pride of race, forgot the stigma of race too in the tie of human kinship which bound him to them. If he had what they did not possess, the rights of a man, the civil and political position of a man in the State, the equality of a brother in the church, it could not make him feel better than they, it filled him instead with a righteous sense of wrong, a passionate sympathy, a supreme desire and determination to make his own rights the measure of theirs.

"I lose sight of your present situation," he said in his address before Free People of Color, "and look at it only in futurity. I imagine myself surrounded by educated men of color, the Websters, and Clays, and Hamiltons, and Dwights, and Edwardses of the day. I listen to their voice as judges and representatives, and rulers of the people—the whole people." This glowing vision was not the handiwork of a rhetorician writing with an eye to its effect upon his hearers. The ardent hope of the reformer was rather the father of the golden dream.

This practical recognition of the negro as a man and a brother was the exact opposite of the treatment which was his terrible lot in the country. Never in all history was there a race more shamefully oppressed by a dominant race than were the blacks by the whites of America. Held as slaves in the South, they were stamped as social outcasts at the North. There was no one, however mean or vicious, who if he possessed a white skin, was not treated more humanely than were they. In the most enlightened of the free States they were discriminated against by public laws and proscribed by public opinion. They were in a word pariahs of the republic. They were shut out from all the common rights, and privileges and opportunities enjoyed by the lowest of the favored race. They were denied equality in the public school. The principle of popular education had no application to a class which was not of the people, a class which the common sentiment of a Christian nation had placed at the zero point of political values, and meant to keep forever at that point. Entrance to the trades were barred to the blacks. What did they want with such things where there was no white trash so forgetful of his superiority as to consent to work by their side. Nowhere were they allowed the same traveling accommodations as white men, and they were everywhere excluded from public inns. Neither wealth nor refinement was able to procure them admission into other than "Jim Crow cars." If heart-sick at the outrages by every one heaped upon them they turned for consolation to the house of God, even there the spirit of proscription and caste prejudice met them, and pointed to the "negro pew" where they sat corraled from the congregation as if they had no equal share in the salvation which the pulpit preached. Everywhere the white man had the right of way, even on the highway to heaven! And in no place was the negro made to feel the prejudice against his color more gallingly than in churches arrogating the name of Christian. He had no rights on earth, he had none in trying to get into the bosom of the founder of Christianity, which the white sinners or saints were bound to respect. Even the liberty-loving Quakers of Philadelphia were not above the use of the "negro seat" in their meetings. Somehow they discerned that there was a great gulf separating in this life at least the white from the black believer. That God had made of one blood all nations of men, St. Paul had taught, but the American church had with one accord in practice drawn the line at the poor despised colored man. He was excluded from ecclesiastical equality, for he was different from other men for whom Christ died. The Bible declared that man was made but a little lower than the angels; the American people in their State and Church supplemented this sentiment by acts which plainly said that the negro was made but a little above the brute creation.

Here are instances of the length to which the prejudice against color carried the churches in those early years of the anti-slavery movement:

In 1830, a colored man, through a business transaction with a lessee of one of the pews in Park Street Church, came into possession of it. Thinking to make the best use of his opportunity to obtain religious instruction for himself and family from this fountain of orthodoxy, the black pew-holder betook him, one Sunday, to "Brimstone Corner." But he was never permitted to repeat the visit. "Brimstone Corner" could not stand him another Lord's day, and thereupon promptly expelled him and his family out of its midst. The good deacons displayed their capacity for shielding their flock from consorting with "niggers," by availing themselves of a technicality to relet the pew to a member who was not cursed with a dark skin. On another Lord's day, in another stronghold of Boston Christianity, Oliver Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns of a large number of the congregation" for daring to take a fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his own into his pew, to listen to Dr. Beecher. The good people of the old Baptist meeting-house, at Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing the heavenly calm of their religious devotions by so much as a thought of believers with black faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they secured themselves from a sight of the obnoxious creatures, while Jehovah, who is no respecter of persons, was in His holy place. Incredible as it may seem, a church in the town of Stoughton, Mass., to rid itself of even a semblance of Christian fellowship and equality with a colored member, did actually cut the floor from under the colored member's pew!

These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the churches affected Garrison in the most painful manner. He says:

"I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation, and sorrow."

He had such an intimate acquaintance with members of this despised caste in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:

"I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to see what I saw, to hear what I heard, and to experience what I felt in associating with many colored families. There are colored men and women, young men and young ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration and praise."

Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits and advancement, the free people of color received nothing but disparagement and contempt from eminent divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries of the Colonization Society. They were "the most abandoned wretches on the face of the earth"; they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous"; they were "more degraded and miserable than the slaves," and ad infinitum through the whole gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was human for the American people to hate a class whom they had so deeply wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said class. That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.

Garrison's vindication of the free people of color in Exeter Hall, London, on July 13, 1833, from this sort of detraction and villification is of historic value:

"Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people. Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their number are in the most affluent circumstances, and distinguished for their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flourishing churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of the land, embracing a large body of the truly excellent of the earth. They have public and private libraries. They have their temperance societies, their debating societies, their moral societies, their literary societies, their benevolent societies, their saving societies, and a multitude of kindred associations. They have their infant schools, their primary and high schools, their sabbath schools, and their Bible classes. They contribute to the support of foreign and domestic missions to Bible and tract societies, etc. In the city of Philadelphia alone they have more than fifty associations for moral and intellectual improvement. In fact, they are rising up, even with mountains of prejudice piled upon them, with more than Titanic strength, and trampling beneath their feet the slanders of their enemies. A spirit of virtuous emulation is pervading their ranks, from the young child to the gray head. Among them is taken a large number of daily and weekly newspapers, and of literary and scientific periodicals, from the popular monthlies up to the grave and erudite North American and American Quarterly Reviews. I have at this moment, to my own paper, the Liberator, one thousand subscribers among this people; and, from an occupancy of the editorial chair for more than seven years, I can testify that they are more punctual in their payments than any five hundred white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately in my subscription book."

There was an earnest desire on the part of the free people of color to raise the level of their class in the Union. At a convention held by them in Philadelphia, in 1831, they resolved upon a measure calculated to make up, to some extent, the deprivations which their children were suffering by being excluded from the higher schools of learning in the land. So they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor system for the education of colored youth. They appealed for aid to their benevolent friends, and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build their institution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence, "purchased several acres of land, in the southerly part of the city, and made arrangements for the erection of a suitable building, and furnishing it with needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city and country."

The school, however, was never established owing to the violent hostility of the citizens, who with the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council resolved in public meeting to "resist the establishment of the proposed college in this place by every lawful means."

The free people of color were derided because of their ignorance by their persecutors, but when they and their friends proposed a plan to reduce that ignorance, their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution. New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied in the Colonization Society, were not bent on the education of this class but on its emigration to the coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions and cruelties did American prejudice against color involve American Christianity and humanity.

This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years afterward Connecticut enacted altogether the most shameful crime in her history. There lived in the year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State, an accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence Crandall. Besides a superior education, she possessed the highest character. And this was well; for she was the principal of the Female Boarding School located in that town. The institution was, in 1833, at the beginning of its third year, and in a flourishing condition. While pursuing her vocation of a teacher, Miss Crandall made the acquaintance of the Liberator through a "nice colored girl," who was at service in the school. Abhorring slavery from childhood, it is no wonder that the earnestness of the Liberator exerted an immediate and lasting influence upon the sympathies of the young principal. The more she read and the more she thought upon the subject the more aroused she became to the wrongs of which her race was guilty to the colored people. She, too, would lend them a helping hand in their need. Presently there came to her a colored girl who was thirsting for an education such as the Canterbury Boarding School for young ladies was dispensing to white girls. This was Miss Crandall's opportunity to do something for the colored people, and she admitted the girl to her classes. But she had no sooner done so than there were angry objections to the girl's remaining.

"The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village," Miss Crandall records, "told me that if I continued that colored girl in my school it would not be sustained."

She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out of the school, and thereby caused a most extraordinary exhibition of Connecticut chivalry and Christianity.

Seeing how matters stood with her in these circumstances, Prudence Crandall conceived the remarkable purpose of devoting her school to the education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to the editor of the Liberator. She went to Boston for this purpose, and there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Washington street, on the evening of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New York to assure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of personal violence."

As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good Canterbury folk procured the passage of a hasty act through the Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no use, persecution could not cow the noble prisoner into submission to the infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part, peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils. Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the detestable building devoted to the higher education of "niggers." Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.

The circumstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's indignation to the highest pitch. Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony of soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leadership he wrote George W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, "we may as well, first as last, meet this proscriptive spirit, and conquer it. We—i.e., all the friends of the cause—must make this a common concern. The New Haven excitement has furnished a bad precedent—a second must not be given or I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner which their intellectual and moral necessities demand. In Boston we are all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in from his Liberator outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for championship, and to the Liberator as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace. Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were beginning "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of a nation's soul.



CHAPTER IX.



AGITATION AND REPRESSION.

William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English mission was signalized by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of anti-slavery mobs in the North. The news of his British successes had preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his pro-slavery countrymen. For had he not with malice prepense put down the "most glorious of Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country in the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And when O'Connell in Exeter Hall pointed the finger of scorn at America and made her a by-word and a hissing in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting got up to further the designs of this "misguided young gentlemen who has just returned from England whither he has recently been for the sole purpose as it would seem [to the Commercial Advertiser] of traducing the people and institutions of his own country." Had he not caught up and echoed back the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:—"Shame on the American Slaveholders! Base wretches should we shout in chorus—base wretches, how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"

The noise of these treasons on a foreign shore, "deafening the sound of the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder goes," to borrow O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had reached the country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The national sensitiveness was naturally enough stung to the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is not content with disturbing the peace of the Union with his new fanaticism, but must needs presume to make the dear Union odious before the world as well. And his return, what is it to be but the signal for increased agitation on the slavery question. The conquering hero comes and his fanatical followers salute him forthwith with a new anti-slavery society, which means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife between the North and the South. "Are we tamely to look on, and see this most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society?" shrieked on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York Harbor, the malignant editor of the Courier and Enquirer.

The pro-slavery and lawless elements of the city were not slow to take the cue given by metropolitan papers, and to do the duty of patriots upon their country's enemies. Arthur Tappen and his anti-slavery associates outwitted these patriotic gentlemen, who attended in a body at Clinton Hall on the evening of October 2, 1833, to perform the aforesaid duty of patriots, while the objects of their attention were convened at Chatham Street Chapel and organizing their new fanaticism. The mob flew wide of its mark a second time, for when later in the evening it began a serenade more expressive than musical before the entrance to the little chapel on Chatham street the members of the society "folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away." The Abolitionists accomplished their design and eluded their enemies at the same time. But the significance of the riotous demonstration went not unobserved by them and their newly arrived leader. It was plain from that night that if the spirit of Abolitionism had risen, the spirit of persecution had risen also.

A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer in Boston. An inflammatory handbill announced to his townsmen his arrival. "The true American has returned, alias William Lloyd Garrison, the 'Negro Champion,' from his disgraceful mission to the British metropolis," etc., etc., and wound up its artful list of lies with the malignant suggestion that "He is now in your power—do not let him escape you, but go this evening, armed with plenty of tar and feathers and administer to him justice at his abode at No. 9 Merchant's Hall, Congress street." In obedience to this summons, a reception committee in the shape of "a dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded a storm," did pay their respects to the "true American" in front of his abode at the Liberator office. Fortunately the storm passed over without breaking that evening on the devoted head of the "Negro Champion." But the meaning of the riotous demonstration it was impossible to miss. Like the mob in New York it clearly indicated that the country was on the outer edge of an area of violent disturbances on the subject of slavery.

The peril which Garrison had twice escaped was indeed grave, but neither it nor the certainty of future persecution could flutter or depress his spirits. "For myself," he wrote subsequently in the Liberator, "I am ready to brave any danger even unto death. I feel no uneasiness either in regard to my fate or to the success of the cause of Abolition. Slavery must speedily be abolished; the blow that shall sever the chains of the slaves may shake the nation to its center—may momentarily disturb the pillars of the Union—but it shall redeem the character, extend the influence, establish the security, and increase the prosperity of our great republic." It was not the rage and malice of his enemies which the brave soul minded, but the ever-present knowledge of human beings in chains and slavery whom he must help. Nothing could separate him from his duty to them, neither dangers present nor persecutions to come. The uncertainty of life made him only the more zealous in their behalf. The necessity of doing, doing, and yet ever doing for the slave was plainly pressing deep like thorns into his thoughts. "I am more and more impressed;" he wrote a friend a few weeks later, "I am more and more impressed with the importance of 'working whilst the day lasts.' If 'we all do fade as a leaf,' if we are 'as the sparks that fly upward,' if the billows of time are swiftly removing the sandy foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the captive, and for our country, and for the subjugation of a hostile world, must be done quickly. Happily 'our light afflictions are but for a moment.'"

This yearning of the leader for increased activity in the cause of immediate emancipation was shared by friends and disciples in different portions of the country. Few and scattered as were the Abolitionists, they so much the more needed to band together for the great conflict with a powerful and organized evil. This evil was organized on a national scale, the forces of righteousness which were rising against it, if they were ever to overcome it and rid the land of it, had needs to be organized on a national scale also. Garrison with the instinct of a great reformer early perceived the immense utility of a national anti-slavery organization for mobilizing the whole available Abolition sentiment of the free States in a moral agitation of national and tremendous proportions.

He had not long to wait after his return from England before this desire of his soul was satisfied. It was in fact just a month afterward that a call for a convention for the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society went out from New York to the friends of immediate emancipation throughout the North. As an evidence of the dangerously excited state of the popular mind on the subject of slavery there stands in the summons the significant request to delegates to regard the call as confidential. The place fixed upon for holding the convention was Philadelphia, and the time December 4, 1833.

Garrison bestirred himself to obtain for the convention a full representation of the friends of freedom. He sent the call to George W. Benson, at Providence, urging him to spread the news among the Abolitionists of his neighborhood and to secure the election of a goodly number of delegates by the society in Rhode Island. He forthwith bethought him of Whittier on his farm in Haverhill, and enjoined his old friend to fail not to appear in Philadelphia. But while the young poet longed to go to urge upon his Quaker brethren of that city "to make their solemn testimony against slavery visible over the whole land—to urge them, by the holy memories of Woolman and Benezet and Tyson to come up as of old to the standard of Divine Truth, though even the fires of another persecution should blaze around them," he feared that he would not be able to do so. The spirit was surely willing but the purse was empty, "as thee know," he quaintly adds, "our farming business does not put much cash in our pockets." The cash he needed was generously supplied by Samuel E. Sewall, and Whittier went as a delegate to the convention after all. The disposition on the part of some of the poorer delegates was so strong to be present at the convention that not even the lack of money was sufficient to deter them from setting out on the expedition. Two of them, David T. Kimball and Daniel E. Jewett, from Andover, Mass., did actually supplement the deficiencies of their pocket-books by walking to New Haven, the aforesaid pocket-books being equal to the rest of the journey from that point.