William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

The effects, so electrical and impressive, which followed the reading of the declaration were not disproportioned to its merits, for it was an instrument of singular power, wisdom, and eloquence. Indeed, to this day, more than half a century after it was written it still has virtue to quicken the breath and stir the pulses of a sympathetic reader out of their normal time. A great passion for freedom and righteousness irradiates like a central light the whole memorable document. It begins by a happy reference to an earlier convention, held some fifty-seven years before in the same place, and which adopted a declaration holding "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness;" and how at the trumpet-call of its authors three millions of people rushed to arms "deeming it more glorious to die instantly as free men, than desirable to live one hour as slaves"; and how, though few in number and poor in resources those same people were rendered invincible by the conviction that truth, justice, and right were on their side. But the freedom won by the men of 1776 was incomplete without the freedom for which the men of 1833 were striving. The authors of the new declaration would not be inferior to the authors of the old "in purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of purpose, intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity of spirit." Unlike the older actors, the younger had eschewed the sword, the spilling of human blood in defence of their principles. Theirs was a moral warfare, the grappling of truth with error, of the power of love with the inhumanities of the nation. Then it glances at the wrongs which the fathers suffered, and at the enormities which the slaves were enduring. The "fathers were never slaves, never bought and sold like cattle, never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion, never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters," but all these woes and more, an unimaginable mountain of agony and misery, was the appalling lot of the slaves in the Southern States. The guilt of this nation, which partners such a crime against human nature, "is unequaled by any other on earth," and therefore it is bound to instant repentance, and to the immediate restitution of justice to the oppressed.

The Declaration of Sentiments denies the right of man to hold property in a brother man, affirms the identity in principle between the African slave trade and American slavery, the imprescriptibility of the rights of the slaves to liberty, the nullity of all laws which run counter to human rights, and the grand doctrine of civil and political equality in the Republic, regardless of race and complexional differences. It boldly rejects the principle of compensated emancipation, because it involves a surrender of the position that man cannot hold property in man; because slavery is a crime, and the master is not wronged by emancipation but the slaves righted, restored to themselves; because immediate and general emancipation would only destroy nominal, not real, property, the labor of the slaves would still remain to the masters and doubled by the new motives which freedom infuses into the breasts of her children; and, finally because, if compensation is to be given at all it ought to be given to those who have been plundered of their rights. It spurns in one compact paragraph the pretensions of the colonization humbug as "delusive, cruel, and dangerous."

But lofty and uncompromising as were the moral principles and positions of the declaration, it nevertheless recognized with perspicuity of vision the Constitutional limitations of the Federal Government in relation to slavery. It frankly conceded that Congress had no right to meddle with the evil in any of the States. But wherever the national jurisdiction reached the general government was bound to interfere and suppress the traffic in human flesh. It was the duty of Congress, inasmuch as it possessed the power, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast and between the States. The free States are the particeps criminis of the slave States. They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the Constitution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves. This relationship is criminal, "is full of danger, IT MUST BE BROKEN UP."

So much for the views and principles of the declaration, now for the designs and measures as enumerated therein: "We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city, town and village in our land.

"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty, and of rebuke.

"We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively, anti-slavery tracts and periodicals.

"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering and the dumb.

"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery.

"We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by giving a preference to their productions; and

"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to speedy repentance."