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William Lloyd Garrison (1891)
William Lloyd Garrison (1891)
Wm. Lloyd Garrison Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Grimké, Archibald Henry, 1849-1930. William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. Reprint of the 1891 ed. published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York. 1. Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879. Reprinted from the edition of 1891, New York First AMS edition published in 1974 To Mrs. Anna M. Day, who has been a mother to my little girl, and a sister to me, this book is gratefully and affectionately dedicated, by The Author ....
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
The author of this volume desires by way of preface to say just two things:—firstly, that it is his earnest hope that this record of a hero may be an aid to brave and true living in the Republic, so that the problems knocking at its door for solution may find the heads, the hands, and the hearts equal to the performance of the duties imposed by them upon the men and women of this generation. William Lloyd Garrison was brave and true. Bravery and truth were the secret of his marvelous career and
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WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. CHAPTER I. THE FATHER OF THE MAN.
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. CHAPTER I. THE FATHER OF THE MAN.
William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, December 10, 1805. Forty years before, Daniel Palmer, his great-grandfather, emigrated from Massachusetts and settled with three sons and a daughter on the St. John River, in Nova Scotia. The daughter's name was Mary, and it was she who was to be the future grandmother of our hero. One of the neighbors of Daniel Palmer was Joseph Garrison, who was probably an Englishman. He was certainly a bachelor. The Acadian solitude of five hundr
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CHAPTER II. THE MAN HEARS A VOICE: SAMUEL, SAMUEL!
CHAPTER II. THE MAN HEARS A VOICE: SAMUEL, SAMUEL!
There is a moment in the life of every serious soul, when things, which were before unseen and unheard in the world around him become visible and audible. This startling moment comes to some sooner, to others later, but to all, who are not totally given up to the service of self, at sometime surely. From that moment a change passes over such an one, for more and more he hears mysterious voices, and clearer and more clear he sees apparitional forms floating up from the depths above which he kneel
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CHAPTER III. THE MAN BEGINS HIS MINISTRY.
CHAPTER III. THE MAN BEGINS HIS MINISTRY.
Some time in August, 1829, Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began with Lundy the editorship of The Genius of Universal Emancipation . Radical as the Park Street Church address was, it had, nevertheless, ceased to represent in one essential matter his anti-slavery convictions and principles. The moral impetus and ground-swell of the address had carried him beyond the position where its first flood of feeling had for the moment left him. During the composition of the address he was transported wi
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CHAPTER IV. THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
CHAPTER IV. THE HOUR AND THE MAN.
The providential man was not yet twenty-five. In personal appearance he was quite the reverse of his friend Lundy. Garrison was gifted with a body that matched his mind, strong, straight, sound in every part, and proportioned in every member. As he stood he was much above the medium height. His dark hair had already partially left the crown of the high dome-shaped head. His forehead combined height with breadth, which, taken in connection with the brown eyes covered with the now habitual glasses
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CHAPTER V. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
CHAPTER V. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.
After leaving Baltimore, Garrison clung pathetically to the belief that, if he told what he had seen of the barbarism of slavery to the North, he would be certain to enlist the sympathy and aid of its leaders, political and ecclesiastical, in the cause of emancipation. The sequel to his efforts in this regard proved that he was never more mistaken in his life. He addressed letters to men like Webster, Jeremiah Mason, Lyman Beecher, and Dr. Channing, "holding up to their view the tremendous iniqu
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CHAPTER VI. THE HEAVY WORLD IS MOVED.
CHAPTER VI. THE HEAVY WORLD IS MOVED.
Archimedes with his lever desired a place to stand that he might move the world of matter. Garrison with his paper, having found a place for his feet, demonstrated speedily his ability to push from its solid base the world of mind. His plan was very simple, viz., to reveal slavery as it then existed in its naked enormity, to the conscience of the North, to be "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." And so, week after week, he packed in the columns of the Liberator facts, the most d
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CHAPTER VII. MASTER STROKES.
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 cle
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CHAPTER VIII COLORPHOBIA
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 devot
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CHAPTER IX. AGITATION AND REPRESSION.
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
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CHAPTER X. BETWEEN THE ACTS.
CHAPTER X. BETWEEN THE ACTS.
Mr. Garrison, in a private letter to a friend under date of September 12, 1834, summarises the doings of the preceding twelve months of his life, and makes mention of a fact which lends peculiar interest to that time: "It has been the most eventful year," he remarks, "in my history. I have been the occasion of many uproars, and a continual disturber of the public peace. As soon as I landed I turned the city of New York upside down. Five thousand people turned out to see me tarred and feathered,
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CHAPTER XI. MISCHIEF LET LOOSE.
CHAPTER XI. MISCHIEF LET LOOSE.
A wild-cat-like creature was abroad. To it the Abolitionists were to be thrown. It was to destroy Garrison, make an end of Thompson, and suppress between its enormous jaws the grandest moral movement of the century. Besides doing up this modest little programme, the beast, O wonderful to say, was also to crown its performances by "saving" the Union. Rejoicing in the possession of such a conservative institution, the politicians, the press, and public opinion uncaged the monster, while from secur
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CHAPTER XII. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
CHAPTER XII. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.
The results of the storm became immediately manifest in several ways. Such a commotion did not leave things in precisely the state in which they were on the morning of the memorable day on which it struck the city. The moral landscape and geography of the community had sensibly changed at its close. The full extent of the alteration wrought could not at once be seen, nor was it at once felt. But that there were deep and abiding changes made by it in the court of public opinion in Boston and Mass
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CHAPTER XIII. THE BAROMETER CONTINUES TO FALL.
CHAPTER XIII. THE BAROMETER CONTINUES TO FALL.
Having made trial of the strong arm of the mob as an instrument for putting down the Abolitionists, and been quite confounded by its unexpected energy and unmanageableness, Boston was well disposed to lay the weapon aside as much too dangerous for use. For the wild-cat-like creature might take it into its head, when once it had got a taste of blood, to suppress some other isms in the community besides Abolitionism. No, no, the gentlemen of property and standing in the community had too much at s
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CHAPTER XIV. BROTHERLY LOVE FAILS, AND IDEAS ABOUND.
CHAPTER XIV. BROTHERLY LOVE FAILS, AND IDEAS ABOUND.
During those strenuous, unresting years, included between 1829 and 1836, Garrison had leaned on his health as upon a strong staff. It sustained him without a break through that period, great as was the strain to which it was subjected. But early in the latter year the prop gave way, and the pioneer was prostrated by a severe fit of sickness. It lasted off and on for quite two years. His activity the first year was seriously crippled, though at no time, owing to his indomitable will, could he be
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CHAPTER XV. RANDOM SHOTS.
CHAPTER XV. RANDOM SHOTS.
The division of the anti-slavery organization into two distinct societies did not immediately terminate the war between them. From New York and the American society the contest over the woman's question was almost directly shifted after the triumph of the Garrisonians in the convention, to London and the World's Convention, which was held in the month of June of the year 1840. To this anti-slavery congress both of the rival anti-slavery organizations in America elected delegates. These delegates
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CHAPTER XVI. THE PIONEER MAKES A NEW AND STARTLING DEPARTURE.
CHAPTER XVI. THE PIONEER MAKES A NEW AND STARTLING DEPARTURE.
When Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate emancipation he was over-confident of success through the instrumentality of the church. It did not enter his heart to conceive that after he had delivered his message touching the barbarism of slavery that a church calling itself Christian, or that a ministry arrogating to itself the character of the Christ, could possibly say him nay. But he learned sadly enough the utter folly of such expectations. For from pew and pulpit the first stones were hur
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CHAPTER XVII. AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.
CHAPTER XVII. AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.
Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the most earnest of men. It was almost next to impossible for him to understand that his way was not the only way to attain a given end. A position reached by him, he was curiously apt to look upon as a sort of ultima thule of human endeavor in that direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung around his personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer. His w
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CHAPTER XVIII. THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE TURNING OF A LONG LANE.
Garrison's forecast of the future, directly after the annexation of Texas, proved singularly correct. Never, as at that moment, had the slave-power seemed so secure in its ascendency, yet never, at any previous period, was it so near its downfall. Freedom had reached that darkest hour just before dawn; and this, events were speedily to make clear. If the South could have trammeled up the consequences of annexation, secure, indeed, for a season, would it have held its political supremacy in Ameri
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CHAPTER XIX. FACE TO FACE.
CHAPTER XIX. FACE TO FACE.
Face to face at last were freedom and slavery. The final struggle between them for mastery had come. Narrow, indeed, was the issue that divided the combatants, slavery extension on the one side, and slavery restriction on the other, not total and immediate emancipation, but it was none the less vital and supreme to the two enemies. Back of the Southern demand for "More slave soil" stood a solid South, back of the Northern position, "No more slave soil" was rallying a fast uniting North. The poli
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CHAPTER XX. THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
CHAPTER XX. THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
The triumph of the Republican party at the polls was the signal for the work of dissolution to begin. Webster's terrific vision of "a land rent with civil feuds" became reality in the short space of six weeks after Lincoln's election, by the secession of South Carolina from the Union. Quickly other Southern States followed, until a United States South was organized, the chief stone in the corner of the new political edifice being Negro slavery. It was not six weeks after the inauguration of Abra
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CHAPTER XXI THE LAST.
CHAPTER XXI THE LAST.
"Garrison," said George Thompson on the steamer which was conveying the Government party out of Charleston Harbor on their return trip; "Garrison you began your warfare at the North in the face of rotten eggs and brickbats. Behold you end it at Charleston on a bed of roses!" The period of persecution had indeed ended, the reign of missiles had ceased, but with the roses there came to the pioneer not a few thorns. Bitter was the sorrow which visited him in the winter of 1863. Without warning his
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