William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

Garrison was never able to see the Liberty party, and for that matter Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, and others of the old organization leaders could not either, except through the darkened glass of personal antagonisms growing out of the schism of 1840. It was always, under all circumstances, to borrow a phrase of Phillips, "Our old enemy, Liberty party." And, as Quincy naïvely confesses in an article in the Liberator pointing out the reasons why Abolitionists should give to the Free-soil party incidental aid and comfort, which were forbidden to their "old enemy, Liberty party," the significant and amusing fact that the latter was "officered by deserters." Ay, there was indeed the rub! The military principle of the great leader forbade him to recognize deserters as allies. Discipline must be maintained, and so he proceeded to maintain the anti-slavery discipline of his army by keeping up a constant fusillade into the ranks of the deserter band, who, in turn, were every whit as blinded by the old quarrel and separation, and who slyly cherished the modest conviction that, when they seceded, the salt of old organization lost its savor, and was thenceforth fit only to be trampled under the Liberty party's feet. Without doubt, those old Abolitionists and Liberty party people belonged to the category of "humans."

The scales of the old grudge dropped from Garrison's eyes directly the Free-Soil party loomed upon the political horizon. He recognized at once that, if it was not against the slave, it was for the slave; apprehended clearly that, in so far as the new party, which, by the way, was only the second stage in the development of the central idea of his old enemy, Liberty party, as the then future Republican party was to be its third and final expression, apprehended clearly I say that, in so far as the new party resisted the aggressions and pretensions of the slave-power, it was fighting for Abolition—was an ally of Abolitionism.

In the summer of 1848, from Northampton, whither he had gone to take the water cure, Garrison counseled Quincy, who was filling the editorial chair, in the interim, at the Liberator office, in this sage fashion: "As for the Free-Soil movement, I feel that great care is demanded of us disunionists, both in the Standard and the Liberator, in giving credit to whom credit is due, and yet in no case even seeming to be satisfied with it." In the winter of 1848 in a letter to Samuel May, Jr., he is more explicit on this head. "As for the Free-Soil movement," he observes, "I am for hailing it as a cheering sign of the times, and an unmistakable proof of the progress we have made, under God, in changing public sentiment. Those who have left the Whig and Democratic parties for conscience's sake, and joined the movement, deserve our commendation and sympathy; at the same time, it is our duty to show them, and all others, that there is a higher position to be attained by them or they will have the blood of the slave staining their garments. This can be done charitably yet faithfully. On the two old parties, especially the Whig-Taylor party, I would expend—pro tempore, at least—our heaviest ammunition." This is as it should be, the tone of wise and vigilant leadership, the application of the true test to the circumstances, viz., for freedom if against slavery; not to be satisfied, to be sure, with any thing less than the whole but disposed to give credit to whom it was due, whether much or little. Pity that the pioneer could not have placed himself in this just and discriminating point of view in respect of his old enemy, Liberty party, praising in it what he found praiseworthy, while blaming it for what he felt was blameworthy. But perfection weak human nature doth not attain to in this terrestrial garden of the passions, and so very likely the magnanimity which we have desired of Garrison is not for that garden to grow but another and a heavenly.

Garrison ill brooked opposition, came it from friends or foes. He was so confident in his own positions that he could not but distrust their opposites. Of course, if his were right, and of that doubt in his mind there was apparently none, then the positions of all others had to be wrong. This masterful quality of the man was constantly betrayed in the acts of his life and felt by his closest friends and associates in the anti-slavery movement. Quincy, writing to Richard Webb, narrates how, at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1843, Garrison was for removing it to Boston, but that he and Wendell Phillips were for keeping it where it then was in New York, giving at the same time sundry good and sufficient reasons for the faith that was in them, and how, thereupon, "Garrison dilated his nostrils like a war-horse, and snuffed indignation at us." "If the Boston friends were unwilling to take the trouble and responsibility," were the petulant, accusative words put by Quincy into his chief's mouth on the occasion, "then there was nothing more to be said; we must try to get along as well as we could in the old way." And how they disclaimed "any unwillingness to take trouble and responsibility," while affirming "the necessity of their acting on their own idea."

Another characteristic of the pioneer is touched upon by the same writer in a relation which he was making to Webb of Garrison's election to the presidency of the parent society. Says Quincy: "Garrison makes an excellent president at a public meeting where the order of speakers is in some measure arranged, as he has great felicity in introducing and interlocuting remarks; but at a meeting for debate he does not answer so well, as he is rather too apt, with all the innocence and simplicity in the world, to do all the talking himself."

The same friendly critic has left his judgment of other traits of the leader, traits not so much of the man as of the editor. It is delivered in a private letter of Quincy to Garrison on resigning the temporary editorship of the Liberator to "its legitimate possessor." who had been for several months health-hunting at Northampton in the beautiful Connecticut Valley. Quincy made bold to beard the Abolition lion in his lair, and twist his tail in an extremely lively manner. "Now, my dear friend," wrote the disciple to the master, "you must know that to the microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic eyes of its enemies, theLiberatorhas faults, these they keep to themselves as much as they honestly may, but they are not the less sensible of them, and are all the more desirous to see them immediately abolished. Luckily, they are not faults of principle—neither moral nor intellectual deficiencies—but faults the cure of which rests solely with yourself.

"I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are that we find with it, lest you should think them none at all, or else unavoidable. But no matter, of that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen to our opinion. We think the paper often bears the mark of haste and carelessness in its getting up; that the matter seems to be hastily selected and put in higgledy-piggledy, without any very apparent reason why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the place where it is. I suppose this is often caused by your selecting articles with a view to connect remarks of your own with them, which afterward in your haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper is not so nearly a complete work in itself as it might be made, but that things are often left at loose ends, and important matters broken off in the middle. I assure you, that Brother Harriman is not the only one of the friends of the Liberator who grieves over your 'more anon' and 'more next week'—which 'anon' and 'next week' never arrive.

"Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important moments like the present neglected....

"We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the Liberator a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the Liberator and Emancipator with regard to the manner of getting it up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them—and we knowing all the time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a good newspaper that Leavitt has, with as much more, intellectual ability as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me) industry, application, and method."

Garrison, to his honor, did not allow the exceeding candor of his mentor to disturb their friendship. The pioneer was not wholly without defence to the impeachment. He might have pleaded ill health, of which he had had quantum suf. since 1836 for himself and family. He might have pleaded also the dissipation of too much of his energies in consequence of more or less pecuniary embarrassments from which he was never wholly freed; but, above all, he might have pleaded his increasing activity as an anti-slavery lecturer. His contributions to the movement against slavery were of a notable character in this direction, both in respect of quantity and quality. He was not alone the editor of the Liberator, he was unquestionably besides one of the most effective and interesting of the anti-slavery speakers—indeed in the judgment of so competent an authority as James Russell Lowell, he was regarded as the most effective of the anti-slavery speakers. Still, after all is placed to his credit that can possibly be, Quincy's complaints would be supported by an altogether too solid basis of fact. The pioneer was much given to procrastination. What was not urgent he was strongly tempted to put off for a more convenient time. His work accumulated. He labored hard and he accomplished much, but because of this habit of postponing for to-morrow what need not be done to-day, he was necessarily forced to leave undone many things which he ought to have done and which he might have accomplished had he been given to putting off for to-morrow nothing which might be finished to-day.