William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

Misfortunes never come without company, but alight in flocks, and a whole flock of misfortunes it was to the Liberator when Joshua Coffin, "that huge personification of good humor," was appointed canvassing agent for the paper. He was as wanting in business methods as his employers were. Confusion now gathered upon confusion around the devoted heads of the partners, was accelerated and became daily more and more portentous and inextricable. The delinquencies of subscribers grew more and more grave. On the three first volumes they were two thousand dollars in arrears to the paper. This was a large, a disastrous loss, but traceable, to no inconsiderable extent, doubtless, to the loose business methods of the reformer and his partner. The Liberator at the beginning of its fourth year was struggling in a deep hole of financial helplessness and chaos. Would it ever get out alive, or "SHALL THE LIBERATOR DIE?" burst in a cry of anguish, almost despair, from its editor, so weak in thought of self, so supreme in thought of others.

This carelessness of what appertained to the things which concerned self, and devotion to the things which concerned his cause, finds apt and pathetic illustration in this letter to Samuel J. May in the summer of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and burdens were never harder to carry:

"In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my partner joins with me in consenting to print an edition of Miss Crandall's [defence] as large as the one proposed by you, at our own risk. As to the profits that may arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do not expect to make any; on the contrary, we shall probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the difficulty of disposing of any publication, however interesting or valuable in itself. But a trial so important as Miss C.'s, involving such momentous consequences to a large portion of our countrymen, implicating so deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to go unpublished, and shall not while we have the necessary materials for printing it."

It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation of the Liberator, in the spring of 1834, was twenty-three hundred copies, and that this number was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred; in New York, three hundred: in Boston, two hundred; in other parts of the free States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies for gratuitous distribution. The colored subscribers to the paper were to the whites as three to one.

There were several suggestions by sundry friends looking to the release of the Liberator from its embarrassments, and, to the relief of its unselfish publishers, from the grinding poverty which its issue imposed upon them. The most hopeful and feasible of them was the scheme of which Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834: "I am happy to say," he pours into her ears, "that it is probable the managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society will determine, to-morrow afternoon, to take all the pecuniary liabilities of the Liberator hereafter, and give me a regular salary for editing it, and friend Knapp a fair price for printing it. My salary will not be less than $800 per annum, and perhaps it will be fixed at a $1,000.... The new arrangement will go into effect on the 1st of July." But alas; the managers took no such action on the morrow, nor went the "new arrangement" into effect at the time anticipated. The editor was married in September, and two months later the eagerly expected relief was still delayed. This hope deferred must have caused the young husband meanwhile no little anxiety and heart sickness.

Love in a cottage is very pretty and romantic in novels, but love in a cottage actually thriving on "bread and water," was a sweet reality in the home of the young couple in Roxbury. "All the world loves a lover," says Emerson, but alas! there are exceptions to all rules, and all the world loved not Garrison in his newly found felicity as shall presently appear.

The pledge made by the reformer in the initial number of the Liberator to be "as harsh as truth," had been kept to the letter. To some minds there is nothing more difficult to understand and tolerate than is the use of harsh language toward individual wrongdoers. They appear to be much more solicitous to turn away the wrath of the wicked than to do away with their wickedness. Multitudes of such minds were offended at the tremendous severities of Garrison's speech. They were for peace at any cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These pro-slavery critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause. But the feelings and the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation of such people exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked no indignation, provoked instead unbounded charity for the willing victims of ancestral transgressions. Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of circumstances, these people expended all their sympathy while upon the Southern slave, who were to their view the circumstances, they looked with increasing disapprobation. Garrison's harsh language greatly shocked this class—excited their unbounded indignation against the reformer.

Besides this class there was another, composed of friends, whom Garrison's denunciatory style offended. To Charles Pollen and Charles Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the great agitator was a sore trial. To them and to others, too, his language seemed grossly intemperate and vituperative, and was deemed productive of harm to the movement. But Garrison defended his harsh language by pointing to the state of the country on the subject of slavery before he began to use it, and to the state of the country afterward. How utterly and morally dead the nation was before, how keenly and marvelously alive it became afterward. The blast which he had blown had jarred upon the senses of his slumbering countrymen he admitted, but he should not be blamed for that. What to his critics sounded harsh and abusive, was to him the trump of God. For, at the thunder-peal which the Almighty blew from the mouth of his servant, how, as by a miracle, the dead soul of the nation awoke to righteousness. He does not arrogate to himself infallibility, indeed he is sure that his language is not always happily chosen. Such errors, however, appear to him trivial, in view of indisputable and extraordinary results produced by the Liberator. He believes in marrying masculine truths to masculine words. He protests against his condemnation by comparison. "Every writer's style is his own—it may be smooth or rough, plain or obscure, simple or grand, feeble or strong," he contends, "but principles are immutable." By his principles, therefore he would, be judged. "Whittier, for instance," he continues, "is highly poetical, exuberant, and beautiful. Stuart is solemn, pungent, and severe. Wright is a thorough logician, dextrous, transparent, straightforward. Beriah Green is manly, eloquent, vigorous, devotional. May is persuasive, zealous, overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Cox is diffusive, sanguine, magnificent, grand. Bourne thunders and lightens. Phelps is one great, clear, infallible argument—demonstration itself. Jocelyn is full of heavenly-mindedness, and feels and speaks and acts with a zeal according to knowledge. Follen is chaste, profound, and elaborately polished. Goodell is perceptive, analytical, expert, and solid. Child (David L.) is generously indignant, courageous, and demonstrative; his lady combines strength with beauty, argumentation with persuasiveness, greatness with humility. Birney is collected, courteous, dispassionate—his fearlessness excites admiration, his conscientiousness commands respect." Of these writers, which is acceptable to slaveholders or their apologists? Some have been cruelly treated and all been calumniated as "fanatics, disorganizers, and madmen." And why? "Certainly not for the phraseology which they use, but for the principles which they adopt."

From another quarter came presently notes of discord, aroused by Garrison's hard language. Sundry of the Unitarian clergy, under the lead of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., took it into their heads that the editor of the Liberator and some others were outrageously abusing the Abolition cause, "mismanaging it by their unreasonable violence" of language. Wherefore those gentlemen interposed to rescue the great cause from harm by a brilliant scheme designed to secure moderation in this regard. This brilliant scheme was nothing less absurd than the establishment of a censorship over the Liberator. But as these solicitous souls had reckoned without their host, their amiable plan came to naught; but not, however, before adding a new element to the universal discord then fast swelling to a roar. To the storm of censure gathering about his head the reformer bowed not—neither swerved he to the right hand nor to the left—all the while deeming it, "with the apostle, a small thing to be judged by man's judgment." "I solicit no man's praise," he sternly replies to his critics, "I fear no men's censure."

There was still another cause of offence given by Garrison to his countrymen. It was not his hard language, but a circumstance less tolerable, if that was possible, than even that rock of offence. It seems that when the editor of the Liberator was in England, and dining with Thomas Powell Buxton, he was asked by the latter in what way the English Abolitionists could best assist the anti-slavery movement in America, and he had replied, "By giving us George Thompson." This unexpected answer of the American appeared without doubt to the Englishman at the time somewhat extraordinary. He had his misgivings as to the wisdom, to say nothing of the propriety, of an international act of such importance and delicacy as the sending of George Thompson to America. He questioned whether the national self-love of the American people would not resent the arrival of an Englishman on such a mission among them and refuse him a fair hearing in consequence. But Garrison was confident that while Thompson's advent would stir up the pro-slavery bile of the North and all that, he would not be put to much if any greater disadvantage as a foreigner in speaking in New England on the subject of slavery, than were those Abolitionists who were to the manner born. As to his friend's personal safety in the East, Garrison was extremely optimistic, had not apparently the slightest apprehensions for him in this regard.