William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

"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.