William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an unwonted defiance of consequences, a fierce contempt of ancient political bugaboos marked the utterances of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions relating to slavery. In the anti-Texas convention held in Faneuil Hall January 29, 1845, all this timidity disappeared in the presence of the new peril. It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison was a member, but of politicians, mostly of the Whig party. "The anti-slavery spirit of the convention," wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D. Webb, "was surprising. The address and the speeches of the gentlemen, not Abolitionists, were such as caused Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago, and such as we thought thorough three or four years ago. There were no qualifications, or excuses, or twaddle."

Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement with all his customary force and fire. Elected a delegate to the Faneuil Hall Convention by the influence of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part in its proceedings, "created the most stir in the whole matter," Wendell Phillips thought. Charles Sumner, who heard him speak for the first time, was struck with his "natural eloquence," and described his words as falling "in fiery rain." Again at a mass meeting for Middlesex County, held at Concord, to consider the aggressions of the slave-power, did the words of the pioneer fall "in fiery rain." Apprehensive that the performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency arose, would fall far short of her protestations, he exclaimed, "I have nothing to say, sir, nothing. I am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things said, where there is no heart to carry them out. When we are prepared to state the whole truth, and die for it, if necessary—when, like our fathers, we are prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it, counting not our lives dear unto us—when we are prepared to let all earthly hopes go back to the board—then let us say so; till then, the less we say the better, in such an emergency as this. 'But who are we, will men ask.' that talk of such things? 'Are we enough to make a revolution?' No, sir; but we are enough to begin one, and, once begun, it never can be turned back. I am for revolution were I utterly alone. I am there because I must be there. I must cleave to the right. I cannot choose but obey the voice of God.

" ... Do not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have been one. We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on the floor of Congress! The moment we say no to this, the Union ceases—the Government falls."

The Texan struggle terminated in the usual way, in the triumph of the slave-power. Texas was annexed and admitted into the sisterhood of States, giving to the Southern section increased slave representation in both branches of Congress, and thereby aiding to fasten, what at the moment appeared to be its permanent domination in national affairs. As Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the North fell far short of its protestations when the crisis came. It swallowed all its brave words, and collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to its jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The whole North except the small and irrepressible band of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down by the revulsive wave of this disastrous event. Writing to his friend Webb, Garrison discourses thus upon the great defeat: "Apparently the slave-holding power has never been so strong, has never seemed to be so invincible, has never held such complete mastery over the whole, has never so successfully hurled defiance at the Eternal and Just One, as at the present time; and yet never has it in reality been so weak, never has it had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it been so filled with doubt and consternation, never has it been so near its downfall, as at this moment. Upon the face of it, this statement looks absurdly paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are groping in thick darkness; but it is that darkest hour which is said to precede the dawn of day."

CHAPTER XVII.
AS IN A LOOKING GLASS.

Garrison was the most dogmatic, as he was the most earnest of men. It was almost next to impossible for him to understand that his way was not the only way to attain a given end. A position reached by him, he was curiously apt to look upon as a sort of ultima thule of human endeavor in that direction of the moral universe. And, notwithstanding instances of honest self-depreciation, there, nevertheless, hung around his personality an air and assumption of moral infallibility, as a reformer. His was not a tolerant mind. Differences with him he was prone to treat as gross departures from principle, as evidences of faithlessness to freedom. He fell upon the men who did not see eye to eye with him with tomahawk and scalping knife. He was strangely deficient in a sense of proportion in such matters. His terrible severities of speech, he visited upon the slave-power and the Liberty party alike. And although a non-resistent, in that he eschewed the use of physical force, yet there never was born among the sons of men a more militant soul in the use of moral force, in the quickness with which he would whip out the rapiers, or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother tongue at opponents. The pioneer must have been an unconscious believer in the annihilation of the wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer in the wickedness of all opposition to his idea of right and duty. This, of course, must be taken only as a broad description of the reformer's character. He was a man, one of the grandest America has given to the world, but still a man with his tendon of Achilles, like the rest of his kind.

His narrow intolerance of the idea of anti-slavery political action, and his fierce and unjust censure of the champions of that idea, well illustrate the trait in point. Birney and Whittier, and Wright and Gerritt Smith, and Joshua Leavitt, he apparently quite forgot, were actuated by motives singularly noble, were in their way as true to their convictions as he was to his. No, there was but one right way, and in that way stood the feet of the pioneer. His way led directly, unerringly, to the land of freedom. All other ways, and especially the Liberty party way, twisted, doubled upon themselves, branched into labyrinths of folly and self-seeking. "Ho! all ye that desire the freedom of the slave, who would labor for liberty, follow me and I will show you the only true way," was the tone which the editor of the Liberator held to men, who were battering with might and main to breach the walls of the Southern Bastile. They were plainly not against the slave, although opposed to Mr. Garrison, narrowly, unjustly opposed to him, without doubt, but working strenuously according to their lights for the destruction of a common enemy and tyrant. This was the test, which Garrison should have taken as conclusive. The leaders of the Liberty party, though personally opposed to him and to his line of action, were, nevertheless, friends of the slaves, and ought to have been so accounted and treated by the man who more than any other was devoted to the abolition of slavery.

But the whole mental and moral frame of the man precluded such liberality of treatment of opponents. They had rejected his way, which was the only true way, and were, therefore, anathema maranatha. When a moral idea which has been the subject of widespread agitation, and has thereby gained a numerous following, reaches out, as reach out it must, sooner or later, for incorporation into law, it will, in a republic like ours, do so naturally and necessarily through political action—along the lines of an organized party movement. The Liberty party formation was the product of this strong tendency in America. Premature it possibly was, but none the less perfectly natural. Now every political party, that is worthy of the name, is a compound rather than a simple fact, consisteth of a bundle of ideas rather than a single idea. Parties depend upon the people for success, upon the people not of one interest but of many interests and of diversities of views upon public questions. One plank is not broad enough to accommodate their differences and multiplicity of desires. There must be a platform built of many planks to support the number of votes requisite to victory at the polls. There will always be one idea or interest of the many ideas or interests, that will dominate the organization, be erected into a paramount issue upon which the party throws itself upon the country, but the secondary ideas or interests must be there all the same to give strength and support to the main idea and interest.

Besides this peculiarity in the composition of the great political parties in America, there is another not less distinct and marked, and that is the Constitutional limitations of the Federal political power. Every party which looks for ultimate success at the polls must observe strictly these limitations in its aims and issues. Accordingly when the moral movement against slavery sought a political expression of the idea of Abolition it was constrained within the metes and bounds set up by the National Constitution. Slavery within the States lay outside of the political boundaries of the general Government. Slavery within the States, therefore, the more sagacious of the Liberty party leaders placed not among its bundle of ideas, into its platform of national issues. But it was otherwise with slavery in the District of Columbia, in the national territories, under the national flag on the high seas, for it lay within the constitutional reach of the federal political power, and its abolition was demanded in the Third party platform. These leaders were confident that the existence of slavery depended upon its connection with the National Government. Their aim was to destroy the evil by cutting this connection through which it drew its blood and nerve supplies. They planted themselves upon the anti-slavery character of the Constitution, believing that it "does not sanction nor nationalize slavery but condemns and localizes it."

This last position of the Liberty party leaders struck Garrison as a kind of mental and moral enormity. At it and its authors, the anti-slavery Jupiter, launched his bolts, fast and furious. Here is a specimen of his chain lightning: "We have a very poor opinion of the intelligence of any man, and very great distrust of his candor or honesty, who tries to make it appear that no pro-slavery compromise was made between the North and the South, at the adoption of the Constitution. We cherish feelings of profound contempt for the quibbling spirit of criticism which is endeavoring to explain away the meaning of language, the design of which as a matter of practice, and the adoption of which as a matter of bargain, were intelligently and clearly understood by the contracting parties. The truth is the misnamed 'Liberty party' is under the control of as ambitious, unprincipled, and crafty leaders as is either the Whig or Democratic party; and no other proof of this assertion is needed than their unblushing denial of the great object of the national compact, namely, union at the sacrifice of the colored population of the United States. Their new interpretations of the Constitution are a bold rejection of the facts of history, and a gross insult to the intelligence of the age, and certainly never can be carried into effect without dissolving the Union by provoking a civil war." All the same, the pioneer to the contrary notwithstanding, many of these very Liberty party leaders were men of the most undoubted candor and honesty and of extraordinary intelligence.