William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

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, but were disappointed. There was also a small hubbub in Boston on my arrival. The excitement passed away, but invective and calumny still followed me. By dint of some industry and much persuasion, I succeeded in inducing the Abolitionists in New York to join our little band in Boston, in calling a national convention at Philadelphia. We met, and such a body of men, for zeal, firmness, integrity, benevolence, and moral greatness, the world has rarely seen in a single assembly. Inscribed upon a declaration which it was my exalted privilege to write, their names can perish only with the knowledge of the history of our times. A National Anti-Slavery Society was formed, which astonished the country by its novelty, and awed it by its boldness. In five months its first annual meeting was held in the identical city in which, only seven antecedent months, Abolitionists were in peril of their lives. In ability, interest, and solemnity it took precedence of all the great religious celebrations which took place at the same time. During the same month, a New England anti-slavery convention was held in Boston, and so judicious were its measures, so eloquent its appeals, so unequivocal its resolutions, that it at once gave shape and character to the anti-slavery cause in this section of the Union. In the midst of all these mighty movements, I have wooed "a fair ladye," and won her, have thrown aside celibacy, and jumped body and soul into matrimony, have sunk the character of bachelor in that of husband, have settled down into domestic quietude, and repudiated all my roving desires, and have found that which I have long been yearning to find, a home, a wife, and a beautiful retreat from a turbulent city."

Garrison does not exaggerate the importance of the initiatives and achievements of the year, or the part played by him in its history. His activity was indeed phenomenal, and the service rendered by him to the reform, was unrivaled. He was in incessant motion, originating, directing, inspiring the agitation in all portions of the North. What strikes one strongly in studying the pioneer is his sleeplessness, his indefatigableness, his persistency in pursuit of his object. Others may rest after a labor, may have done one, two, or three distinct tasks, but between Garrison's acts there is no hiatus, each follows each, and is joined to all like links in a chain. He never closed his eyes, nor folded his arms, but went forward from work to work with the consecutiveness of a law of nature.

But amid labors so strenuous and uninterrupted the leader found opportunity to woo and win "a fair ladye." She was a daughter of a veteran Abolitionist, George Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn., who with his sons George W. and Henry E. Benson, were among the stanchest of the reformer's followers and supporters. The young wife, before her marriage, was not less devoted to the cause than they. She was in closest sympathy with her husband's anti-slavery interests and purposes. Never had husband found wife better fitted to his needs, and the needs of his life work. So that it might be truly said that Garrison even when he went a-wooing forgot not his cause and that when he took a wife, he made at the same time a grand contribution to its ultimate triumph.

How did Helen Eliza Garrison serve the great cause? One who knew shall tell. He has told it in his own unequaled way. "That home," he says, "was a great help. Her husband's word and pen scattered his purpose far and wide; but the comrades that his ideas brought to his side her welcome melted into friends. No matter how various and discordant they were in many things—no matter how much there was to bear and overlook—her patience and her thanks for their sympathy in the great idea were always sufficient for the work also.... In that group of remarkable men and women which the anti-slavery movement drew together, she had her own niche—which no one else could have filled so perfectly or unconsciously as she did.... She forgot, omitted nothing. How much we all owe her!" These were words spoken by a friend, whose name will appear later on in this story; words spoken by him at the close of her beautiful life, as she lay dead in her coffin.

And here is another account of her written by the husband on the first anniversary of their marriage: "I did not marry her," he confides to her brother George, "expecting that she would assume a prominent station in the anti-slavery cause, but for domestic quietude and happiness. So completely absorbed am I in that cause, that it was undoubtedly wise in me to select as a partner one who, while her benevolent feelings were in union with mine, was less immediately and entirely connected with it. I knew she was naturally diffident, and distrustful of her own ability to do all that her heart might prompt. She is one of those who prefer to toil unseen—to give by stealth—and to sacrifice in seclusion. By her unwearied attention to my wants, her sympathetic regards, her perfect equanimity of mind, and her sweet and endearing manners; she is no trifling support to Abolitionism, inasmuch as she lightens my labors, and enables me to find exquisite delight in the family circle, as an offset to public adversity."

And here is a lovely bit of self-revelation made to her betrothed several months before they were wedded. "I am aware of the responsibility that will devolve upon me," she writes, "and how much my example will be copied among that class you have so long labored to elevate and enlighten. I have been considering how the colored people think of dress, and how much of their profits are expended for useless ornaments that foolishly tend to make a show and parade. As much stress will, of course, be laid on Garrison's wife by that class, it behooves me to be very circumspect in all things, when called upon to fill so important a station."

The marriage occurred September 4, 1834, and the next day the pair set up housekeeping in "Freedom's Cottage," on Bower street, Roxbury. The young housekeepers were rich in every good thing except money; and of that commodity there was precious little that found its way into the family till. And money was indispensable even to a philanthropist, who cared as little for it as did Garrison. He had never in his twenty-eight years experienced the sensation which a bank account, however small, gives its possessor. He had been toiling during the last three years in a state of chronic self-forgetfulness, and of consequence in a state of chronic inpecuniosity. He had never been careful of what he got—was careful only of what he gave. For himself he was ready to subsist on bread and water and to labor more than fourteen hours at the case to make the issue of the Liberator possible. But surely he could not put "a fair ladye" on such limited commons even for the sake of his cause. The laborer is worthy of his hire, and an unworldly minded reformer ought to be supplied with the wherewithal needful to feed, clothe, and house himself and those dependent upon him. Some such thought shaped itself in Garrison's mind as his circumstances grew more and more straitened, and his future as the head of a family looked more and more ominous. Anxiety for the morrow pressed heavily upon him as his responsibilities as a breadwinner hugged closer and closer his everyday life. Poverty ceased to be the ordinary enemy of former years, whom he from the lookouts of the unconquerable mind used to laugh to scorn; it had become instead a cruel foe who worried as by fire the peace of his soul.

There was the Liberator? The Liberator as a moral engine was a marvelous success; but the Liberator as a money-maker was a most dismal failure. If its owners had possessed only common aptitude for business the failure need not have been so complete, indeed the enterprise might have been crowned with a moderate degree of success. But never were two men more entirely lacking in the methods, which should enter into ventures of that character, than were Garrison and Knapp. Garrison was unfortunate in this respect but it seems that Knapp was more so. Neither took to book-keeping, and neither overcame his serious deficiency in this regard. The consequence was that the books kept themselves, and confusion grew upon confusion until the partners were quite confounded. Garrison naïvely confesses this fault of the firm to his brother-in-law thus: "Brother Knapp, you know, resembles me very closely in his habits of procrastination. Indeed I think he is rather worse than I am in this respect!"

The paper was issued originally without a single subscriber. At the end of the first volume the subscription list numbered five hundred names. In the course of the next two volumes this number was more than doubled, almost tripled, in fact. The subscription price was two dollars. The property would have begun from this point to make returns to its owners had they possessed the business training and instinct requisite to its successful management. But they were reformers, not money-getters, and instead of enjoying the profits they proceeded to use them up incontinently in their first enlargement of the paper. But while they had added to the cost of publication, they took no thought to augment the cost of subscription. The publishers gave more and the subscribers received more for the sum of two dollars. The pecuniary embarrassments of the Liberator increased, and so the partners' "bondage to penury" increased also. This growing pressure was finally relieved by "several generous donations," made for the support of the paper. At the beginning of the fourth volume, the publishers wisely or other-wisely, again enlarged their darling, and again neglected to raise the subscription rates at the same time.