Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict

by Samuel J. May

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

William Lloyd Garrison commenced his literary and philanthropic labors when a young journeyman printer, in his native place, Newburyport, Mass. In 1825 he removed to Boston, and labored for a while in the office of the Recorder. In 1827 he united with Rev. William Collier in editing and publishing the National Philanthropist, the only paper then devoted to the Temperance cause. And soon after he engaged in conducting The Journal of the Times, at Bennington, Vt. In each of these papers, especially the last, he took strong ground against slavery. Believing the plan of the Colonization Society to be intended to remove the great evil from our country, he espoused it with ardor, and advocated it with such signal ability, that he was recalled to Boston to deliver, in Park Street church, the annual address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, on the 4th of July, 1828.

Mr. Garrison’s writings attracted the attention of that devoted, self-sacrificing friend of the enslaved, Benjamin Lundy, of whom I have just now given some account. He urged him in 1828, and persuaded him in the autumn of 1829, to remove to Baltimore, and assist in editing The Genius of Universal Emancipation. There Mr. G. soon saw, with his own eyes, the atrocities of slavery and the inter-state slave-trade; there he discovered the real design and spirit of the Colonization scheme; there the radical doctrine of immediate, unconditional emancipation was revealed to him. He soon made himself obnoxious to slaveholders by his faithful exposure of their cruelties; and his unsparing condemnation of their atrocious system of oppression.

After he had been in Baltimore a few months, a Northern captain came there in a ship owned and freighted by a gentleman of Newburyport, Mr. Garrison’s birthplace. Failing to obtain another cargo, said captain, with the consent of his owner, took on board a load of slaves to be transported to New Orleans. Such an outrage on humanity, perpetrated by Massachusetts men, enkindled Mr. G.’s hottest indignation, and drew from his pen a scathing rebuke. He was forthwith arrested as both a civil and criminal offender. He was prosecuted for a libel upon the captain and owner of the ship “Francis,” and for disturbing the peace by attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection.

It would be needless to spend time in proving that, in the presence of a slaveholding judge, before a slaveholding jury, surrounded by a community of incensed slaveholders, the young reformer did not have a fair trial. He was found guilty under both indictments. He was fined and sentenced to imprisonment a certain time, as the punishment for his alleged crime, and afterward, until the fine imposed for “the libel” should be paid. It was then and there that his free, undaunted spirit inscribed upon the walls of his cell that joyous, jubilant sonnet, which could have been written only by one conscious of innocence in the sight of the Holy God, of a great purpose and a sacred mission yet to be accomplished.

“High walls and huge the body may confine,
And iron grates obstruct the prisoner’s gaze,
And massive bolts may baffle his design,
And watchful keepers eye his devious ways;
Yet scorns the immortal mind this base control!
No chain can bind it, and no cell enclose.
Swifter than light it flies from pole to pole,
And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes.
It leaps from mount to mount. From vale to vale
It wanders, plucking honeyed fruits and flowers.
It visits home to hoar the fireside tale,
Or in sweet converse pass the joyous hours.
’Tis up before the sun, roaming afar,
And in its watches, wearies every star.”

After seven weeks of close confinement Mr. Garrison was liberated by the noble, discriminating generosity of the late Arthur Tappan, then in the height of his affluence, who, so long as he had wealth, felt that he was an almoner of God’s bounty, and gave his money gladly, in many ways, to the relief of suffering humanity. The spirit of freedom,—the true American eagle,—thus uncaged, flew back to his native New England, and thence sent forth that cry which disturbed the repose of every slaveholder in the land, and has resounded throughout the world.

It so happened, in the good Providence “which shapes our ends,” that I was on a visit in Boston at that time,—October, 1830. An advertisement appeared in the newspapers, that during the following week W. Lloyd Garrison would deliver to the public three lectures, in which he would exhibit the awful sinfulness of slaveholding; expose the duplicity of the Colonization Society, revealing its true character; and, in opposition to it, would announce and maintain the doctrine, that immediate, unconditional emancipation is the right of every slave and the duty of every master. The advertisement announced that his lectures would be delivered on the Common, unless some church or commodious hall should be proffered to him gratuitously. If I remember correctly, it was intimated in the newspapers, or currently reported at the time, that Mr. G. had applied for several of the Boston churches, and been refused, because it was known that he had become an opponent of the Colonization Society. A day or two after the first I saw a second advertisement, informing the public that the free use of “Julien Hall,” occupied by Rev. Abner Kneeland’s church, having been generously tendered to Mr. Garrison, he would deliver his lectures there instead of the Common. I had not then seen this resolute young man. I had been much impressed by some of his writings, knew of his connection with Mr. Lundy, and had heard of his imprisonment. Of course I was eager to see and hear him, and went to Julien Hall in due season on the appointed evening. My brother-in-law, A. Bronson Alcott, and my cousin, Samuel E. Sewall, accompanied me. Truer men could not easily have been found.

The hall was pretty well filled. Among some persons whom I did, and many whom I did not know, I saw there Rev. Dr. Beecher, Rev. Mr. (now Dr.) Gannett, Deacon Moses Grant, and John Tappan, Esq.

Presently the young man arose, modestly, but with an air of calm determination, and delivered such a lecture as he only, I believe, at that time, could have written; for he only had had his eyes so anointed that he could see that outrages perpetrated upon Africans were wrongs done to our common humanity; he only, I believe, had had his ears so completely unstopped of “prejudice against color” that the cries of enslaved black men and black women sounded to him as if they came from brothers and sisters.

He began with expressing deep regret and shame for the zeal he had lately manifested in the Colonization cause. It was, he confessed, a zeal without knowledge. He had been deceived by the misrepresentations so diligently given, throughout the free States by Southern agents, of the design and tendency of the Colonization scheme. During his few months’ residence in Maryland he had been completely undeceived. He had there found out that the design of those who originated, and the especial intentions of those in the Southern States that engaged in the plan, were to remove from the country, as “a disturbing element” in slaveholding communities, all the free colored people, so that the bondmen might the more easily be held in subjection. He exhibited in graphic sketches and glowing colors the suffering of the enslaved, and denounced the plan of Colonization as devised and adapted to perpetuate the system, and intensify the wrongs of American slavery, and therefore utterly undeserving of the patronage of lovers of liberty and friends of humanity.

Never before was I so affected by the speech of man. When he had ceased speaking I said to those around me: “That is a providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake our nation to its centre, but he will shake slavery out of it. We ought to know him, we ought to help him. Come, let us go and give him our hands.” Mr. Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up with me, and we introduced each other. I said to him: “Mr. Garrison, I am not sure that I can indorse all you have said this evening. Much of it requires careful consideration. But I am prepared to embrace you. I am sure you are called to a great work, and I mean to help you.” Mr. Sewall cordially assured him of his readiness also to co-operate with him. Mr. Alcott invited him to his home. He went, and we sat with him until twelve that night, listening to his discourse, in which he showed plainly that immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation, was the right of every slave, and could not be withheld by his master an hour without sin. That night my soul was baptized in his spirit, and ever since I have been a disciple and fellow-laborer of William Lloyd Garrison.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, I went to his boarding-house and stayed until two P. M. I learned that he was poor, dependent upon his daily labor for his daily bread, and intending to return to the printing business. But, before he could devote himself to his own support, he felt that he must deliver his message, must communicate to persons of prominent influence what he had learned of the sad condition of the enslaved, and the institutions and spirit of the slaveholders; trusting that all true and good men would discharge the obligation pressing upon them to espouse the cause of the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden. He read to me letters he had addressed to Dr. Channing, Dr. Beecher, Dr. Edwards, the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, and Hon. Daniel Webster, holding up to their view the tremendous iniquity of the land, and begging them, ere it should be too late, to interpose their great power in the Church and State to save our country from the terrible calamities which the sin of slavery was bringing upon us. Those letters were eloquent, solemn, impressive. I wonder they did not produce a greater effect. It was because none to whom he appealed, in public or private, would espouse the cause, that Mr. Garrison found himself left and impelled to become the leader of the great antislavery reform, which must be thoroughly accomplished before our Republic can stand upon a sure foundation.

The hearing of Mr. Garrison’s lectures was a great epoch in my own life. The impression which they made upon my soul has never been effaced; indeed, they moulded it anew. They gave a new direction to my thoughts, a new purpose to my ministry. I had become a convert to the doctrine of “immediate, unconditional emancipation,—liberation from slavery without expatriation.”

I was engaged to preach on the following Sunday for Brother Young, in Summer Street Church. Of course I could not again speak to a congregation, as a Christian minister, and be silent respecting the great iniquity of our nation. The only sermon I had brought from my home in Connecticut, that could be made to bear on the subject, was one on Prejudice,—the sermon about to be published as one of the Tracts of the American Unitarian Association. So I touched it up as well as I could, interlining here and there words and sentences which pointed in the new direction to which my thoughts and feelings so strongly tended, and writing at its close what used to be called an improvement. Thus: “The subject of my discourse bears most pertinently upon a matter of the greatest national as well as personal importance. There are more than two millions of our fellow-beings, children of the Heavenly Father, who are held in our country in the most abject slavery,—regarded and treated like domesticated animals, their rights as men trampled under foot, their conjugal, parental, fraternal relations and affections utterly set at naught. It is our prejudice against the color of these poor people that makes us consent to the tremendous wrongs they are suffering. If they were white,—ay, if only two thousand or two hundred white men, women, and children in the Southern States were treated as these millions of colored ones are, we of the North should make such a stir of indignation, we should so agitate the country, with our appeals and remonstrances, that the oppressors would be compelled to set their bondmen free. But will our prejudice be accepted by the Almighty, the impartial Judge of all, as a valid excuse for our indifference to the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon these millions of our countrymen? O no! O no! He will say, “Inasmuch as ye did not what ye could for the relief of these, the least of the brethren, ye did it not to me.” Tell me not that we are forbidden by the Constitution of our country to interfere in behalf of the enslaved. No compact our fathers may have made for us, no agreement we could ourselves make, would annul our obligations to suffering fellow-men. “Yes, yes,” I said, with an emphasis that seemed to startle everybody in the house, “if need be, the very foundations of our Republic must be broken up; and if this stone of stumbling, this rock of offence, cannot be removed from under it, the proud superstructure must fall. It cannot stand, it ought not to stand, it will not stand, on the necks of millions of men.” For “God is just, and his justice will not sleep forever.” I then offered such a prayer as my kindled spirit moved me to, and gave out the hymn commencing,

“Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve;
And press with vigor on.”

When I rose to pronounce the benediction I said: “Every one present must be conscious that the closing remarks of my sermon have caused an unusual emotion throughout the church. I am glad. Would to God that a deeper emotion could be sent throughout our land, until all the people thereof shall be roused from their wicked insensibility to the most tremendous sin of which any nation was ever guilty, and be impelled to do that righteousness which alone can avert the just displeasure of God. I have been prompted to speak thus by the words I have heard during the past week from a young man hitherto unknown, but who is, I believe, called of God to do a greater work for the good of our country than has been done by any one since the Revolution. I mean William Lloyd Garrison. He is going to repeat his lectures the coming week. I advise, I exhort, I entreat—would that I could compel!—you to go and hear him.”

On turning to Brother Young after the benediction I found that he was very much displeased. He sharply reproved me, and gave me to understand that I should never have an opportunity so to violate the propriety of his pulpit again. And never since then have I lifted up my voice within that beautiful church, which has lately been taken down.

The excited audience gathered in clusters, evidently talking about what had happened. I found the porch full of persons conversing in very earnest tones. Presently a lady of fine person, her countenance suffused with emotion, tears coursing down her cheeks, pressed through the crowd, seized my hand, and said audibly, with deep feeling: “Mr. May, I thank you. What a shame it is that I, who have been a constant attendant from my childhood in this or some other Christian church, am obliged to confess that to-day, for the first time, I have heard from the pulpit a plea for the oppressed, the enslaved millions in our land!” All within hearing of her voice were evidently moved in sympathy with her, or were awed by her emotion. For myself I could only acknowledge in a word my gratitude for her generous testimony.

The next day I perceived, on his return from his place of business in State Street, that my revered father was much disturbed by the reports he had heard of my preaching. Some of the “gentlemen of property and standing” who had been my auditors said it was fanatical, others that it was incendiary, others that it was treasonable, and begged him to “arrest me in my mad career.” The only one, as he soon afterwards informed me, who had spoken in any other than terms of censure was the great and good Dr. Bowditch, who said, “Depend upon it, the young man is more than half right.” My father tried to dissuade me from engaging in the attempt to overthrow the system of slavery which Mr. Garrison proposed. He had come, with most others, to regard it as an unavoidable evil, one that the fathers of our Republic had not ventured to suppress, but had rather given to its protection something like a guaranty. He thought, with most others at that day, that slavery must be left to be gradually removed by the progress of civilization, the growth of higher ideas of human nature, and the manifest superiority and hotter economy of free labor. He admonished me that, in assailing the institution of American slavery, I should only be “kicking against the pricks,” that I should lose my standing in the ministry and my usefulness in the church. I need not add that he failed to convince me that “the foolishness of preaching” would not yet be “mighty to the pulling down of the stronghold of Satan.” In less than ten years he was reconciled to my course.

A few days afterwards I gave my sermon on Prejudice to my most excellent friend, Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., who was then the purveyor of tracts for the American Unitarian Association. He accepted the discourse as originally written, but insisted that the interlineations and the additions respecting slavery should be omitted. He would not have done this, nor should I have consented to it, a few years later. But we were all in bondage then. Unconsciously to ourselves, the hand of the slaveholding power lay heavily upon the mind and heart of the people in our Northern as well as Southern States.

What a pity that my words in that sermon, respecting slavery, were not published in the tract! They might have helped a little to commit our Unitarian denomination much earlier to the cause of impartial liberty, in earnest protest against the great oppression, the unparalleled iniquity of our land. Of whom should opposition to slavery of every kind have been expected so soon as from Unitarian Christians?

The insensibility of the people of our country to the wrongs, the outrages, we were directly and indirectly inflicting upon our colored brethren, when Mr. Garrison commenced the antislavery reform,—the insensibility of the Northern people, scarcely less than that of the Southern,—of New England as well as of the Carolinas and Georgia, of the professing Christians, almost as much as of the political partisans,—that insensibility, not yet wholly overpast, even in Massachusetts, is a moral phenomenon. A more glaring inconsistency does not appear in the whole history of mankind.

The love of liberty was an American passion. We gloried in our Revolution. We thought our fathers were to be honored above all men for throwing off the British yoke. Taxation without representation was not to be submitted to. “Resistance to tyrants was obedience to God.” We regarded the “Declaration of Independence” as the most momentous document ever penned by mortal man, the herald note of deliverance to the race. The first sentence of the second paragraph of it was as familiar to everybody as the Lord’s Prayer; and almost as sacred as that prayer did we hold the words “All men were created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And yet few had given a thought to the fact that there were millions of men, women, and children in our land who were held under a heavier bondage than that to which the Israelites were subjected in the land of Egypt, were denied all the rights of humanity, were herded together like brutes,—bought, sold, worked, whipped like cattle.

All in our country who were descendants from the Puritans, especially those of us who claimed descent from the fathers of New England, were imbued with the spirit of religious liberty, had much to say about the rights of conscience; but we gave no heed to the awful fact that there were millions in the land who were not allowed to exercise any of those rights, were not permitted to read the Bible or any other book, and were taught little else about God, but that He was an invisible, ever-present, almighty overseer of the plantations upon which they were worked like cattle, standing ready at all times, everywhere, to inflict upon them, if they neglected their unrequited tasks, a thousand-fold more dreadful punishment than their earthly tormentors were able even to conceive.

We Americans, especially we New-Englanders, were, or thought we were, all alive to the cause of human freedom. We were quick to hear the cry of the oppressed, that came to us from distant lands. We stopped not to ask the language, character, or complexion of the sufferers. It was enough for us to know that they were human beings, and that they were deprived of liberty. We hesitated not to denounce their tyrants.

The call for succor which came to us from Greece was quickly heard and promptly answered in almost all parts of our country. And why? Not because the Greeks were a more virtuous or more intelligent people than their enemies. No; we had little reason to think them better than the Turks. But they were the injured party, and therefore we roused ourselves to aid them. How much soever our orators and poets gathered up the hallowed associations which cluster around that classic land, they all were but the decorations, not the point, of their appeals. It was the story of the wrongs of the Grecians which found the way to our hearts, and stirred us up to encourage and succor them in their conflict for liberty. Dr. Howe will tell you that it was not their admiration of Greece in her ancient glory, but their sympathy for Greece in her modern degradation, that impelled him and his chivalrous companions to fly thither, and peril their lives in her cause.

Coming to us from any other land, the cry for freedom sent through American bosoms a thrilling emotion. We stopped not to inquire who they were that would be free. If they were men, we knew they had a right to liberty. No matter how the yoke had been fastened on them,—whether by inheritance, or conquest, or political compromise,—we felt that it ought to be broken. And although to break it the whole social fabric of their oppressors must be overturned, still we said, Let the yoke be broken!

Thus we quickly felt, thus we reasoned and acted, in all cases of oppression excepting one,—the one at home, the one in which we were implicated with the oppressors. We were blind, we were deaf, we were dumb, to the wrongs and outrages inflicted upon one sixth part of the population of our own country. In the Southern States the colored people were held as property, chattels personal, liable to all the incidents of the estates of their owners, could be seized to pay their debts, or mortgaged, or given away, or bequeathed by them. To all intents and purposes, they were regarded by the laws of those States, and might be legally disposed of, and otherwise treated, just like domesticated brute animals. In most of the Northern States they were not admitted to the prerogatives of citizens. In none of them were they allowed to enjoy equal social, educational, or religious privileges; nor were they permitted to engage in any of the lucrative professions, trades, or handicrafts. They were condemned to all the menial offices. It was impossible not to respect and value many of them as servants and nurses, but they were not suffered to come nearer to white people in any domestic or social relations. Intermarriages with them were illegal, and punishable by heavy penalties. They were not allowed to travel (unless as servants) in any public conveyances. Their children were excluded from the schools which white children attended, and they were set apart in one corner of the places of public worship called the houses of God,—the impartial Father of all men. A certain shade of complexion, though much lighter than some brunettes, consigned any one guilty of it to the grade of the blacks, which was de-gradation. We were educated to regard negroes as an inferior race of beings, not entitled to the distinctive rights and privileges of white men. Ignorance, poverty, and servitude came to be considered the birthright, the inheritance, of all Africans and their descendants; and therefore we did not feel the pressure of their bonds, nor the smart of the wounds that were continually given them.

Prejudice against color had become universal. The most elevated were not superior to it; the humblest white men were not below it. Colorphobia was a disease that infected all white Americans. Let me give my readers one instance of its virulence.

In 1834, being on a visit to my father in Boston, I was requested to call upon one of his old friends, that he might dissuade me from co-operating any further with “that wrong-headed, fanatical Garrison.” The honorable gentleman was very prominent in the fashionable, professional, and political society of that city. He had always expressed a kind regard for me, and had shown his confidence by committing to my care the education of two of his sons.

I did not doubt that he had been moved to send for me by his sincere concern for what he deemed my welfare. He received me with elegant courtesy, as he was wont to do, but entered at once upon the subject of “Mr. Garrison’s misdirected, mischievous enterprise.” He insisted that, while the negroes ought to be treated humanely, the thought of their ever being elevated to an equality with white men was preposterous, and he wondered that a man of common sense should entertain the thought an hour. He said: “Why, they are evidently an inferior race of beings, intended to be the servants of those on whom the Creator has conferred a higher nature,” and adduced the arguments which were then becoming, and have since been, so common with those who would maintain this position. At length I said to him: “Sir, we Abolitionists are not so foolish as to require or wish that ignorant negroes should be considered wise men, or that vicious negroes should be considered virtuous men, or poor negroes be considered rich men. All we demand for them is that negroes shall be permitted, encouraged, assisted to become as wise, as virtuous, and as rich as they can, and be acknowledged to be just what they have become, and be treated accordingly.” He replied, with great emphasis: “Mr. M., if you should bring me negroes who had become the wisest of the wise, the best of the good, the richest of the rich, I would not acknowledge them to be my equals.” “Then,” said I, “you might be laughed at; for, if there be any meaning in your words, such men would be your superiors. Think, sir, a moment of your presuming to contemn the wisest of the wise, the best of the good, the richest of the rich, because of their complexion. This would be the insanity of prejudice. Why, sir,” I continued, “Rammohun Roy is soon coming to this country; and he is of a darker hue than many American persons who are prescribed and degraded because of their color.” “Well, sir,” he angrily replied, “I am not one who will show him any respect.” “What,” I cried, “not take pains to know and treat with respect Rammohun Roy?” “No,” he rejoined,—“no, not even Rammohun Roy!” “Then,” I retorted, “you will lose the honor of taking by the hand the most remarkable man of our age.” He was much offended, and, as I afterwards learnt, chose that our acquaintance should end with that interview.

Such was the prejudice that Mr. Garrison found confronting him everywhere, and it still is the greatest obstacle in our country to the progress of liberty and the establishment of peace.

“Truths would you teach to save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.”

Never, since the days of our Saviour, have these lines of Pope been more fully verified than in the experience of Mr. Garrison. So soon as it was known that he opposed the Colonization plan, and demanded for the enslaved immediate emancipation, without expatriation, he was at once generally denounced as a very dangerous person. Very few of those who were convinced by his facts and his appeals that something should be done forthwith for the relief of our oppressed millions ventured, during the first twelve months of his labors, to help him. Even the excellent Deacon Grant would not trust him for paper on which to print his Liberator a month. And most of those who assisted him to get audiences wherever he went, and who subscribed for the Liberator, and who expressed their best wishes, were intimidated by his boldness, frequently half acknowledged that he demanded too much for our bondmen, and could not be made to understand his fundamental doctrine of “immediate unconditional emancipation,” often and clearly as he expounded it.

In November, 1831, I happened again to be in Boston on a visit, when it was proposed to attempt the formation of an antislavery society. A meeting was called at the office of Samuel E. Sewall, Esq. Fifteen gentlemen assembled there. We agreed in the outset that, if the apostolic number of twelve should be found ready to unite upon the principles that should be thought vital, and in a plan of operations deemed wise and expedient, we would then and there organize an association. Mr. Garrison announced the doctrine of “immediate emancipation” as being essential to the great reform that was needed in our land, the extirpation of slavery, and the establishment of the human rights of the millions who were groaning under a worse than Egyptian bondage. We discussed the point two hours. But though we were the earliest and most earnest friends of the young reformer, only nine of us were brought to see, eye to eye with him, as to the right of the slave and the duty of the master. Only nine of us were brought to see that a man was a man, let his complexion be what it might be; and that no other man, not the most exalted in the land, could regard and hold him a moment as his property, his chattel, without sin. Only nine of us were brought to understand that the first thing to be done for those men held in the condition of domesticated brutes, was to recognize, acknowledge their humanity, and secure to them their God-given rights,—those rights of all men set forth as inalienable in the immortal Declaration of American Independence. Only nine of us were brought to see that the first thing to be done for the improvement of the condition of the slave is to break his yoke, to set him free, and that what needs to be done first ought to be done without delay, immediately. The rest of the company partook of the fear, common at that day, that it would be very dangerous to set millions of slaves free at once. Although liberty was announced to the world, in our American Declaration, as the birthright of all the children of men, yet were the people of our country so blinded and besotted by the influence of our slave system, that it was almost universally pronounced unsafe to give liberty to adult men, who were slaves, until they should be prepared for freedom, and deemed qualified to exercise it aright. Mr. Garrison had had to meet and combat this senseless fear everywhere, from the commencement of his enterprise. He had shown to all who could see that slavery was not a school in which men could be educated for liberty; that they could no more be trained to feel and act as freemen should, so long as they were kept in bondage, than children could be taught to walk so long as they were held in the arms of nurses. Moreover, he argued, that if those only should be intrusted with liberty who knew how to use it, slaveholders were of all men the last that should be left free, seeing that they habitually outraged liberty,—indeed, had been educated to trample upon human rights. Still, his doctrine was generally misunderstood, egregiously misrepresented, and violently opposed. And, as I have stated, only nine out of fifteen of his elect followers, after he had been preaching and publishing the doctrine a year, fully believed or dared to unite with him in announcing it to the world as their faith. We therefore separated in November, 1831, without having organized. I returned disappointed to my home in Connecticut, eighty miles from Boston; too far at that day, ere railroads were lain, to come, in the depth of winter, to assist in the formation of the New England Antislavery Society, which took place in January, 1832. So I lost the honor of being one of the actual founders of the first society based upon the true principle,—immediate emancipation.

That there was point, vitality, power, in this doctrine was proved by the commotion which was everywhere caused by the promulgation of it. From one end of the country to the other the cry went forth against the editor of the Liberator, Fanatic! Incendiary! Madman! The slaveholders raved, and their Northern apologists confessed that they had too much cause to be offended. Grave statesmen and solemn divines pronounced the doctrines of the New England Abolitionists unwise, dangerous, false, unconstitutional, revolutionary. Encouraged by these responses, the slaveholding aristocrats grew so bold as to demand that “this fanatical assault upon one of their domestic institutions should be quelled at once,” that the publications of the Abolitionists should be suppressed, our meetings dispersed, our lecturers and agents arrested. And scarcely had the Liberator entered upon its second year before a reward was offered by a Southern Legislature for the abduction of the person, or for the life of its editor. And no Northern Legislature expressed its alarm or surprise. No Northern paper, secular or religious, reproved these assaults upon the liberty of the press and the freedom of speech. Thus was the viper cherished that has since stung so deeply the bosom of our Republic, has inflicted a wound that is still open and festering.

The grossest abuse was heaped upon Mr. Garrison; the vilest aspersions cast upon his character by those who knew nothing of his private life; the worst designs imputed to his great enterprise by those who were interested directly or indirectly in upholding the system of iniquity which he had resolved to overthrow.

One of the charges brought against him, the one which probably hindered his success more than any other, was that he was an enemy of religion, an infidel, and that his covert but real purpose was to subvert the institutions of Christianity.

Now Mr. Garrison is, and ever has been since I knew him, a profoundly religious man, one of the most so I have ever known. No one really acquainted with him will say the contrary, unless it be under the impulse of a sectarian prejudice, personal resentment, or a sinister purpose. True, his doctrinal opinions and his regard for rites and forms have come to differ from those of the popular religionists of our day, as much as did the opinions of Jesus Christ differ from those of the temple and synagogue worshippers of his day. It would have been politic in him not to have incurred, as he did, the opposition and hatred of so many of the ministers and churches of our country. But Mr. Garrison knew not how to counsel with the wisdom of this world. He surely had as much cause and as frequent occasions to expose the inhumanity and hypocrisy of our country as Jesus had to denounce the scribes, Pharisees, and priests of Judea. He soon discovered, to his astonishment, that the American Church was the bulwark of American slaveholders. The truth of this accusation was afterwards elaborately proved by the Hon. J. G. Birney. It was emphatically acknowledged by the Rev. Dr. Albert Barnes, and has since been repeatedly declared by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. Dr. Cheever, all honorable, orthodox men. Now, pray, how ought a great captain, though his army be a small one,—how ought he to treat the bulwark of the enemy he means to subdue? how but to assail and demolish it if he can? God be praised, Christianity and the American Church were not then, and are not now, identical. The religion of Jesus Christ is dearer to Mr. Garrison than his own life. It was only the hollow-hearted pretenders to piety whom he exposed, censured, ridiculed. He never uttered from his pen or his lips a word that I have read or heard, or that has been reported to me,—not a word but in reverence and love of the truth and the spirit, the doctrines and the precepts, of Jesus Christ.

Many of those who were interested in Mr. Garrison’s holy purpose, and wished him success, thought him too severe; many more thought him indiscreet. He was remonstrated with often earnestly. But he could not be persuaded that it was not right and wise to blame those persons most for our national sin who had the most influence on the government, the policy, the prevailing sentiments, the customs, and, above all, the religion of the nation. Mr. Garrison would sometimes argue, and argue powerfully, convincingly, with those who found fault with his words of fiery indignation, and show that tamer language would be inapt, unfelt. At other times he would say, “Do the poor, hunted, hounded, down-trodden slaves think my language too severe or misapplied? Do that wretched husband and wife who have just now been separated from each other forever by that respectable gentleman in Virginia,—the one sold to be taken to New Orleans, the other kept at home to pine in the hovel made desolate,—do that husband and wife think my denunciation of their master too severe, because he is a judge, or a governor, or a minister, or because he is a member of a Christian church, or even because he has been hitherto, and in other respects, a kind master to them? Until I hear such ones complain of my severity, I shall not doubt its propriety.” “If those who deserve the lash feel it and wince at it, I shall be assured I am striking the right persons in the right place.” “I will be,” are his memorable words that rung through the land,—“I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On the subject of slavery I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat an inch; and I will be heard.”

Mr. Garrison will perhaps remember that, a few months after he commenced the Liberator, when almost everybody was finding fault with him, or wishing that he would be more temperate, I was one of the friends that came to remonstrate and entreat. He and his faithful partner, Isaac Knapp, were at work in the little upper chamber, No. 6 Merchants’ Hall, where they lived, as well as they could, with their printing-press and types, all within an enclosure sixteen or eighteen feet square. I requested him to walk out with me, that we might confer on an important matter. He at once laid aside his pen, and we descended to the street. I informed him how much troubled I had become for fear he was damaging the cause he had so much at heart by the undue severity of his style. He listened to me patiently, tenderly. I told him what many of the wise and prudent, who professed an interest in his object, said about his manner of pursuing it. He replied somewhat in the way I have described above. “But,” said I, “some of the epithets you use, though not perhaps too severe, are not precisely applicable to the sin you denounce, and so may seem abusive.” “Ah!” he rejoined, “until the term ‘slaveholder’ sends as deep a feeling of horror to the hearts of those who hear it applied to any one as the terms ‘robber,’ ‘pirate,’ ‘murderer’ do, we must use and multiply epithets when condemning the sin of him who is guilty of the ‘sum of all villanies.’” “O,” cried I, “my friend, do try to moderate your indignation, and keep more cool; why, you are all on fire.” He stopped, laid his hand upon my shoulder with a kind but emphatic pressure, that I have felt ever since, and said slowly, with deep emotion, “Brother May, I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.” From that hour to this I have never said a word to Mr. Garrison, in complaint of his style. I am more than half satisfied now that he was right then, and we who objected were mistaken.

A year or two afterwards I was in the study of Dr. Channing, who, from the rise of the antislavery movement, watched it with deep and increasing emotion, and often sent for me, and oftener for the heroic Dr. Follen, to converse with us about it. I was in the Doctor’s study, and had been endeavoring to explain and reconcile him to some measures of the Abolitionists which I found had troubled him, when he said, with great gravity and earnestness, “But, Mr. May, your friend Garrison’s style is excessively severe. The epithets he uses are harsh, abusive, exasperating.” I replied, “Dr. Channing, I thought so once myself. But you have furnished me with a sufficient apology, if not justification, of Mr. Garrison’s severity.” And taking from his bookcase the octavo volume of the Doctor’s Discourses, Reviews, and Miscellanies, published in 1830, I read parts of the passage commencing on the twenty-second and closing on the twenty-fourth page, in which he replies to the charge, brought against the great Milton’s prose writings, of “party-spirit, coarse invective, and controversial asperity.” I wish there were room here for me to quote the whole of it, it is all so applicable to Mr. Garrison; but I will give only the close: “Men of natural softness and timidity, of a sincere but effeminate virtue, will be apt to look on these bolder, hardier spirits as violent, perturbed, uncharitable; and the charge will not be wholly groundless. But that deep feeling of evils, which is necessary to effectual conflict with them, and which marks God’s most powerful messengers to mankind, cannot breathe itself in soft and tender accents. The deeply moved soul will speak strongly, and ought to speak so as to move and shake nations. We must not mistake Christian benevolence as if it had but one voice,—that of soft entreaty. It can speak in piercing and awful tones. There is constantly going on in our world a conflict between good and evil. The cause of human nature has always to wrestle with foes. All improvement is a victory won by struggles. It is especially true of those great periods which have been distinguished by revolutions in government and religion, and from which we date the most rapid movements of the human mind, that they have been signalized by conflict. At such periods men gifted with great power of thought and loftiness of sentiment are especially summoned to the conflict with evil. They hear, as it were, in their own magnanimity and generous aspirations the voice of a divinity; and thus commissioned, and burning with a passionate devotion to truth and freedom, they must and will speak with an indignant energy, and they ought not to be measured by the standard of ordinary minds in ordinary times.

“Milton reverenced and loved human nature, and attached himself to its great interests with a fervor of which only such a mind was capable. He lived in one of those solemn periods which determine the character of ages to come. His spirit was stirred to its very centre by the presence of danger. He lived in the midst of battle. That the ardor of his spirit sometimes passed the bounds of wisdom and charity, and poured forth unwarrantable invective, we see and lament. But the purity and loftiness of his mind break forth amidst his bitterest invectives. We see a noble nature still. We see that no feigned love of truth and freedom was a covering for selfishness and malignity. He did indeed love and adore uncorrupted religion and intellectual liberty, and let his name be enrolled among their truest champions.”

The Doctor bowed and smiled blandly, saying, “I confess the quotation is not inapt nor unfairly made.”