William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

This controversy over the Sabbath proved the thin edge of differences and dissensions, which, as they went deeper and deeper, were finally to rend asunder the erstwhile united Abolition movement. The period was remarkable for the variety and force of new ideas, which were coming into being, or passing into general circulation. And to all of them it seems that Garrison was peculiarly receptive. He took them all in and planted them in soil of extraordinary fertility. It was immediately observed that it was not only one unpopular notion which he had adopted, but a whole headful of them. And every one of these new ideas was a sort of rebel-reformer, a genuine man of war. They had come as a protest against the then existing beliefs and order of things, come as their enemies and destroyers. Each one of them was in a sense a stirrer-up of sedition against old and regnant relations and facts, political, moral, and religious. Whoever espoused them as his own, espoused as his own also the antagonisms, political, moral, and religious which they would excite in the public mind. All of which was directly illustrated in the experience of the editor of the Liberator. Each of these new notions presently appeared in the paper along with Abolitionism. What was his intention timid people began to inquire? Did he design to carry them along with the Abolition movement? Suspicious minds fancied they saw "in Mr. Garrison, a decided wish, nay, a firm resolve, in laboring to overthrow slavery, to overthrow the Christian Sabbath and the Christian ministry. His doctrine is that every day is a Sabbath, and every man his own minister. There are no Christian ordinances, there is no visible church." His no-government and non-resistant ideas excited yet further the apprehensions of some of his associates for the safety of that portion of the present order to which they clung. As developed by Garrison they seemed to deny the right of the people "to frame a government of laws to protect themselves against those who would injure them, and that man can apply physical force to man rightfully under no circumstances, and not even the parent can apply the rod to the child, and not be, in the sight of God, a trespasser and a tyrant."

Garrison embraced besides Perfectionism, a sort of political, moral, and religious Come-outerism, and faith in "universal emancipation from sin." His description of himself about this time as "an Ishmaelitish editor" is not bad, nor his quotation of "Woe is me my mother! for I was born a man of strife" as applicable to the growing belligerency of his relations with the anti-slavery brethren in consequence of the new ideas and isms, which were taking possession of his mind and occupying the columns of the Liberator.

Among the strife-producers during this period of the anti-slavery agitation, the woman's question played a principal part. Upon this as upon the Sabbath question, Garrison's early position was one of extreme conservatism. As late as 1830, he shared the common opinions in regard to woman's sphere, and was strongly opposed to her stepping outside of it into that occupied by man. A petition of seven hundred women of Pittsburgh, Pa., to Congress in behalf of the Indians gave his masculine prejudices a great shock. "This is, in our opinion," he declared, "an uncalled for interference, though made with holiest intentions. We should be sorry to have this practice become general. There would then be no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and contrariant opinions of the softer sex." This top-lofty sentiment accorded well with the customary assumption and swagger of one of the lords of creation. For the young reformer was evidently a firm believer in the divine right of his sex to rule in the world of politics. But as he grew taller and broader the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere embraced every duty, responsibility, and right for which her gifts and education fitted her. The hard and fast lines of sex disappeared from his geography of the soul. He perceived for a truth that in humanity there was neither male nor female, but that man and woman were one in work and destiny—equals in bearing the world's burden, equals in building the world's glory. He heard in his heart the injunction of the eternal wisdom saying: "Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder;" and straightway disposed his opinions and prejudices, his thoughts and purposes in cordial obedience therewith. He saw at once the immense value of woman's influence in the temperance movement, he saw no less quickly her importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she had justified his appeal and proven herself the most devoted of coadjutors.

In the beginning of the movement against slavery the line of demarcation between the sexes was strictly observed in the formation of societies. The men had theirs, the women theirs. Each, sexually considered, were very exclusive affairs. It did not seem to have occurred to the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, or of the national organization to admit women to membership in them, nor did it seem to enter the mind of any woman to prefer a request to be admitted into them. Anti-slavery women organized themselves into female anti-slavery societies, did their work apart from the men, who plainly regarded themselves as the principals in the contest, and women as their moral seconds. The first shock, which this arrangement, so accordant with the oak-and-ivy notion of the masculine half of mankind, received, came when representatives of the gentler sex dropped the secondary role assigned women in the conflict, and began to enact that of a star. The advent of the sisters Grimké upon the anti-slavery stage as public speakers, marked the advent of the idea of women's rights, of their equality with men in the struggle with slavery.

At the start these ladies delivered their message to women only, but by-and-bye as the fame of their eloquence spread men began to appear among their auditories. Soon they were thrilling packed halls and meeting-houses in different parts of the country, comprised of men and women. The lesson which their triumph enforced of women's fitness to enact the rôle of principals in the conflict with slavery was not lost upon the sex. Women went, saw, and conquered their prejudices against the idea of equality; likewise, many men. The good seed of universal liberty and equality fell into fruitful soil and germinated in due time within the heart of the moral movement against slavery.

The more that Sarah and Angelina Grimké reflected upon the sorry position to which men had assigned women in Church and State the more keenly did they feel its injustice and degradation. They beat with their revolutionary idea of equality against the iron bars of the cage-like sphere in which they were born, and within which they were doomed to live and die by the law of masculine might. At heart they were rebels against the foundation principle of masculine supremacy on which society and government rested. While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters rose up before them and revealed itself in bitter questionings. "Are we aliens," asked Angelina, "because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country—no interests staked on the public weal—no partnership in a nation's guilt or shame?" This discontent with the existing social establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic responses from many friends to whom the sisters communicated the contagion of their unrest and dissatisfaction. Angelina records that, "At friend Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken. L.M. Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed very many seem to think a new order of things is very desirable in this respect."

This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women's rights, which Angelina observed in Mrs. Chapman's parlors possessed no general significence. For true to the character of new ideas, this particular new idea did not bring peace but a sword. It set Abolition brethren against Abolition brethren, and blew into a flame the differences of leaders among themselves. But the first irruption of strife which it caused proceeded from without, came from the church or rather from the clergy of the Orthodox Congregational churches of Massachusetts. This clerical opposition to the idea of women's rights found expression in the celebrated "Pastoral Letter," issued by the General Association of Ministers of that denomination to the churches of the same in the summer of 1837. This ecclesiastical bull had two distinct purposes to accomplish; first, to discourage the agitation of the slavery question by excluding anti-slavery agents from lecturing upon that subject in the churches; and, second, to suppress the agitation of the woman's question by setting the seal of the disapproval of the clergy to the appearance of women in their new and revolutionary rôle of public speakers and teachers on the burning subjects of the times. The reverend authors threw up their hands and eyes in holy horror at the "widespread and permanent injury" which seemed to them to threaten "the female character." They scorned the new-fangled notion of woman's independence, and asked for nothing better than the Pauline definition of her "appropriate duties and influence." "The power of women," quoth they, "is in her dependence.... When she assumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we put ourselves in self-defence against her, she yields the power which God has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural!"

These Congregational ministers were not the only representatives of the lordly sex to whom the idea of women's equality was repellent. Anti-slavery brethren, too, were flinging themselves into all postures of self-defence against the dangerous innovation, which the sisters Grimké were letting into the social establishment, by itinerating "in the character of public lecturers and teachers." Amos A. Phelps was quite as strongly opposed to women preachers, to women assuming the "place and tone of man as a public reformer," as Nehemiah Adams himself. He remonstrated, with them against their continued assumption of the character of public lecturers and teachers, but to no purpose. Sarah and Angelina were uncompromising, refused to yield one iota of their rights as "moral and responsible beings." They firmly declined to make their Quakerism and not their womenhood their warrant for "exercising the rights and performing the duties" of rational and responsible beings, for the sake of quieting tender consciences, like that of Phelps, among the anti-slavery brethren. They were in earnest and demanded to know "whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and female duties." Angelina writes: "My opinion is that there is no difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin over the whole field of morality. My idea is that whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.... I am persuaded that woman is not to be, as she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this glorious work."

The debate on the subject threatened for a short season to push the woman's question to the level of the slavery question. The contention became acrimonious, and the alienation of friendships was widespread. John G. Whittier and Theodore D. Weld, who were both avowed believers in the idea of women's rights, nevertheless, felt that the agitation of the subject, under the circumstances, was a grave blunder. "No moral enterprise, when prosecuted with ability and any sort of energy, ever failed under heaven," wrote Weld to Sarah and Angelina, "so long as its conductors pushed the main principle, and did not strike off until they reached the summit level. On the other hand, every reform that ever foundered in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty side-winds." Both Weld and Whittier endeavored to dissuade the sisters from mooting the question of women's rights at all, and to urge them to devote their voice and pen to the "main principle" exclusively. But Angelina confesses that "our judgment is not convinced, and we hardly know what to do about it, for we have just as high an opinion of Brother Garrison's views, and he says 'go on.'" The influence of Weld and Whittier finally prevailed with "Carolina's high-souled daughters," and they refrained from further agitation of the subject of Women's rights lest they should thereby injure the cause of the slave.

But the leaven of equality was not so effectually disposed of. It had secured permanent lodgment in the anti-slavery body, and the fermentation started by it, went briskly on. Such progress did the principle of women's rights make among the Eastern Abolitionists, especially among those of Massachusetts, that in the spring of 1838 the New England Anti-Slavery Society voted to admit women to equal membership with men. This radical action was followed by a clerical secession from the society, which made a stir at the time. For among the seceding members was no less a personage than Amos A. Phelps, who was the general agent of the Massachusetts Society, and therefore one of Garrison's stanchest supporters. The reform instituted by the New England Society, in respect of the character of its membership, was quickly adopted by the Massachusetts Society and by several local organizations, all of which set the ball of discord spinning among the brethren at a great rate. But by this time all the new ideas, Sabbatical, no-government, perfectionist, non-resistance, as well as women's rights, were within the anti-slavery arena, and fencing and fighting for a chance to live, with the old ideas and the old order.