William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

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.

About sixty delegates found their way to Philadelphia and organized on the morning of December 4th, in Adelphi Hall, the now famous convention. It was a notable gathering of apostolic spirits—"mainly composed of comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that period." They had come together from ten of the twelve free States, which fact goes to show the rapid, the almost epidemic-like spread of Garrisonian Abolitionism through the North. The Liberator was then scarcely three years old, and its editor had not until the second day of the convention attained the great age of twenty-eight! The convention of 1787 did not comprise more genuine patriotism and wisdom than did this memorable assembly of American Abolitionists. It was from beginning to end an example of love to God and love to men, of fearless scorn of injustice and fearless devotion to liberty. Not one of those three score souls who made up the convention, who did not take his life in his hand by reason of the act. It was not the love of fame surely which brought them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so many of them endure real physical privation, which drew all by a common, an irresistible impulse to congregate for an unpopular purpose within reach of the teeth and the claws of an enraged public opinion.

The convention, as one man might have said with the single-minded Lundy, "My heart was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress; and the iron entered my soul." The iron of slavery had indeed entered the soul of every member of the convention. It was the divine pang and pity of it which collected from the East and from the West this remarkable body of reformers.

The story of how they had to find a president illustrates the contemporary distrust and antagonism, which the anti-slavery movement aroused among the men of standing and influence. Knowing in what bad odor they were held by the community, and anxious only to serve their cause in the most effective manner, the members of the convention hit upon the plan of asking some individual eminent for his respectability to preside over their deliberations, and thereby disarm the public suspicions and quiet the general apprehensions felt in respect of the incendiary character of their intention. So in pursuance of this plan six of their number were dispatched on the evening of December 3d to seek such a man. But the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes proved a failure. After two attempts and two repulses the committee were not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation by Beriah Green, who was one of the six. "If there is not timber amongst ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get along without one, or go home and stay there until we have grown up to be men." The next day Green was chosen, and established in a manner never to be forgotten by his associates that the convention did possess "timber big enough to make a president of."

Narrow as were the circumstances of many of the members, the convention was by no means destitute of men of wealth and business prominence. Such were the Winslows, Isaac and Nathan, of Maine, Arnold Buffum, of Massachusetts, and John Rankin and Lewis Tappan, of New York. Scholarship, talents, and eloquence abounded among the delegates. Here there was no lack, no poverty, but extraordinary sufficiency, almost to redundancy. The presence of the gentler sex was not wanting to lend grace and picturesqueness to the occasion. The beautiful and benignant countenance of Lucretia Mott shed over the proceedings the soft radiance of a pure and regnant womanhood; while the handful of colored delegates with the elegant figure of Robert Purvis at their head, added pathos and picturesqueness to the personnel of the convention. Neither was the element of danger wanting to complete the historic scene. Its presence was grimly manifest in the official intimation that evening meetings of the convention could not be protected, by the demonstrations of popular ill-will which the delegates encountered on the streets, by the detachment of constabulary guarding the entrance to Adelphi Hall, and by the thrillingly significant precaution observed by the delegates of sitting with locked doors. Over the assembly it impended cruel and menacing like fate. Once securely locked within the hall, the Abolitionists discreetly abstained from leaving it at noon for dinner, well knowing how small a spark it takes to kindle a great fire. It was foolhardy to show themselves unnecessarily to the excited crowds in the streets, and so mindful that true courage consisteth not in recklessness, they despatched one of their number for crackers and cheese, which they washed down with copious draughts of cold water. But they had that to eat and drink besides, whereof the spirits of mischief without could not conceive.

The grand achievement of the convention was, of course, the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but the crown of the whole was unquestionably the Declaration of Sentiments. The composition of this instrument has an interesting history. It seems that the delegates considered that the remarkable character of the movement which they were launching upon the wide sea of national attention demanded of them an expression altogether worthy of so momentous an undertaking. The adoption of a constitution for this purpose was felt to be inadequate. A constitution was indispensable, but some other expression was necessary to give to their work its proper proportion and importance. Such a manifestation it was deemed meet to make in the form of a declaration of sentiments. A committee was accordingly appointed to draft the declaration. This committee named three of its number, consisting of Garrison, Whittier, and Samuel J. May to draw up the document. The sub-committee in turn deputed Garrison to do the business.

Mr. May has told in his Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, how he and Whittier left their friend at ten o'clock in the evening, agreeing to call at eight the following morning and how on their return at the appointed hour they found Garrison with shutters closed and lamps burning, penning the last paragraph of the admirable document. He has told how they three read it over together two or three times, making some slight alterations in it, and how at nine o'clock the draft was laid by them before the whole committee. The author of the recollections has left a graphic account of its effect upon the convention. "Never in my life," he says, "have I seen a deeper impression made by words than was made by that admirable document upon all who were present. After the voice of the reader had ceased there was silence for several minutes. Our hearts were in perfect unison. There was but one thought with us all. Either of the members could have told what the whole convention felt. We felt that the word had just been uttered which would be mighty, through God, to the pulling down of the strongholds of slavery." Such was the scene at the first reading of the Declaration of Sentiments, Dr. Atlee, the reader. The effect at its final reading was, if possible, even more dramatic and eloquent. Whittier has depicted this closing and thrilling scene. He has described how Samuel J. May read the declaration for the last time. "His sweet, persuasive voice faltered with the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of the concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston of Maine, rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries and affixed his name to the document. One after another passed up to the platform, signed, and retired in silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the occasion—the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon every countenance."