William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

California and New Mexico became the strategic points of the slavery struggle at the close of the war. To open both to the immigration of slave-labor was thenceforth the grand design of the South. Over Oregon occurred a fierce preliminary trial of strength between the sections. The South was thrown in the contest, and the anti-slavery principle of the Ordinance of 1787 applied to the Territory. Calhoun, who was apparently of the mind that as Oregon went so would go California and New Mexico, was violently agitated by this reverse. "The great strife between the North and the South is ended," he passionately declared. Immediately the charge was made and widely circulated through the slave States that the stronger was oppressing the weaker section, wresting from it its just share in the common fruits of common victories. For had not California and New Mexico been won by the bravery and blood of the South as of the North, and how then was the North to deprive the South of its joint ownership of them without destroying the federal equality of the two halves of the Union? What was it but to subvert the Union existing among the States?

Disunion sentiment was thenceforth ladled out to the slave States in increasing quantities. The turning of the long lane in the domination of the slave-power was visibly near. With Garrison at one end and Calhoun at the other the work of dissolution advanced apace. The latter announced, in 1848, that the separation of the two sections was complete. Ten years before, Garrison had made proclamation that the Union, though not in form, was, nevertheless, in fact dissolved. And possibly they were right. The line of cleavage had at the date of Calhoun's announcement passed entirely through the grand strata of national life, industrial, moral, political, and religious. There remained indeed but a single bond of connection between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding States, viz., fealty to party. But in 1848 not even this slender link was intact.

The anti-slavery uprising was a fast growing factor in the politics of the free States. This was evinced by the aggressiveness of anti-slavery legislation, the repeal of slave sojournment laws, the enactment of personal liberty laws, the increasing preference manifested by Whig and by Democratic electors for anti-slavery Whig, and anti-slavery Democratic leaders. Seward and Chase, and Hale and Hamlin, Thaddeus Stevens and Joshua R. Giddings, were all in Congress in 1849. A revolution was working in the North; a revolution was working in the South. New and bolder spirits were rising to leadership in both sections. On the Southern stage were Jefferson Davis, Barnwell Rhett, David Atchison, Howell Cobb, Robert Toombs, and James M. Mason. The outlook was portentous, tempestuous.

The tide of excitement culminated in the crisis of 1850. The extraordinary activity of the under-ground railroad system, and its failure to open the national Territories to slave immigration had transported the South to the verge of disunion. California, fought over by the two foes, was in the act of withdrawing herself from the field of contention to a position of independent Statehood. It was her rap for admission into the Union as a free State which precipitated upon the country the last of the compromises between freedom and slavery. It sounded the opening of the final act of Southern domination in the republic.

The compromise of 1850, a series of five acts, three of which it took to conciliate the South, while two were considered sufficient to satisfy the North, was, after prolonged and stormy debate, adopted to save Webster's glorious Union. These five acts were, in the agonized accents of Clay, to heal "the five fire gaping wounds" of the country. But the wounds were immedicable, as events were soon to prove. Besides, two at least of the remedies failed to operate as emollients. They irritated and inflamed the national ulcers and provoked fresh paroxysms of the disease. The admission of California as a free State was a sort of perpetual memento mori to the slave-power. It hung forever over the South the Damoclean blade of Northern political ascendency in the Union. The fugitive slave law on the other hand produced results undreamt of by its authors. Who would have ventured to predict the spontaneous, irresistible insurrection of the humane forces and passions of the North which broke out on the passage of the infamous bill? Who could have foretold the moral and political consequences of its execution, for instance, in Boston, which fifteen years before had mobbed anti-slavery women and dragged Garrison through its streets? The moral indignation aroused by the law in Massachusetts swept Webster and the Whigs from power, carried Sumner to the Senate and crowned Liberty on Beacon Hill. It worked a revolution in Massachusetts, it wrought changes of the greatest magnitude in the free States.

From this time the reign of discord became universal. The conflict between the sections increased in virulence. At the door of every man sat the fierce figure of strife. It fulmined from the pulpit and frowned from the pews. The platforms of the free States resounded with the thunder of tongues. The press exploded with the hot passions of the hour. Parties warred against each other. Factions arose within parties and fought among themselves with no less bitterness. Wrath is infectious and the wrathful temper of the nation became epidemic. The Ishmaelitish impulse to strike something or someone, was irresistible. The bonds which had bound men to one another seemed everywhere loosening, and people in masses were slipping away from old to enter into new combinations of political activity. It was a period of tumultuous transition and confusion. The times were topsy-turvy and old Night and Chaos were the angels who sat by the bubbling abysses of the revolution.

In the midst of this universal and violent agitation of the public mind the old dread of disunion returned to torment the American bourgeoisie, who through their presses, especially those of the metropolis of the Union, turned fiercely upon the Abolitionists. While the compromise measures were the subject of excited debate before Congress, the anniversary meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society fell due. But the New York journals, the Herald in particular, had no mind to allow the meeting to take place without renewing the reign of terror of fifteen years before. Garrison was depicted as worse than Robespierre, with an insatiable appetite for the destruction of established institutions, both human and divine. The dissolution of the Union, the "overthrow of the churches, the Sabbath, and the Bible," all were required to glut his malevolent passion. "Will the men of sense allow meetings to be held in this city which are calculated to make our country the arena of blood and murder," roared the Herald, "and render our city an object of horror to the whole South?... Public opinion should be regulated. These Abolitionists should not be allowed to misrepresent New York." In order to suppress the Abolitionists that paper did not blink at any means, however extreme or revolutionary, but declared boldly in favor of throttling free discussion. "When free discussion does not promote the public good," argued the editor, "it has no more right to exist than a bad government that is dangerous and oppressive to the common weal. It should be overthrown." The mob thus invoked came forward on the opening of the convention to overthrow free discussion.

The storm which the New York press was at so much labor to brew, Garrison did not doubt would break over the convention. He went to it in a truly apostolic spirit of self-sacrifice. "Not knowing the things that shall befall me there, saving that bonds and afflictions abide with me in every city," he wrote his wife an hour before the commencement of the convention. His prevision of violence was quickly fulfilled. He had called Francis Jackson to the chair during the delivery of the opening speech which fell to the pioneer to make as the president of the society. His subject was the Religion of the Country, to which he was paying his respects in genuine Garrisonian fashion. Belief in Jesus in the United States had no vital influence on conduct or character. The chief religious denominations were in practice pro-slavery, they had uttered no protest against the national sin. There was the Roman Catholic Church whose "priests and members held slaves without incurring the rebuke of the Church." At this point the orator was interrupted by one of those monstrous products of the slums of the American metropolis, compounded of the bully, the blackleg, and the demagogue in about equal proportions. It was the notorious Captain Isaiah Rynders, perched with his band of blackguards in the organ loft of the tabernacle and ready to do the will of the metropolitan journals by over-throwing the right of free discussion. He was not disposed to permit Mr. Garrison's censure of the Roman Catholic Church to pass unchallenged, so he begged to ask "whether there are no other churches as well as the Catholic Church, whose clergy and lay members hold slaves?" To which the anti-slavery leader replied with the utmost composure, not inclined to let even Captain Rynders interrupt the even and orderly progression of his discourse: "Will the friend wait for a moment, and I will answer him in reference to other churches?" "The friend" thereupon resumed his seat in the organ loft, and Garrison proceeded with his indictment of the churches. There was the Episcopal Church, whose clergy and laity dealt with impunity in human flesh, and the Presbyterians, whose ministers and members did likewise without apparently any compunctious visitings of conscience, ditto the Baptist, ditto the Methodist. In fact "all the sects are combined," the orator sternly continued, "to prevent that jubilee which it is the will of God should come."

But the bully in the organ loft, who was not content for long to play the part of Patience on a monument, interrupted the speaker with a second question which he looked upon, doubtless, as a hard nut to crack. "Are you aware," inquired the blackleg "that the slaves in the South have their prayer-meetings in honor of Christ?" The nut was quickly crushed between the sharp teeth of the orator's scathing retort. Mr. Garrison—"Not a slave-holding or a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.) The slaves believe in a Jesus that strikes off chains. In this country Jesus has become obsolete. A profession in him is no longer a test. Who objects to his course in Judæa? The old Pharisees are extinct, and may safely be denounced. Jesus is the most respectable person in the United States. (Great sensation and murmurs of disapprobation.) Jesus sits in the President's chair of the United States. (A thrill of horror here seemed to run through the assembly.) Zachary Taylor sits there, which is the same thing, for he believes in Jesus. He believes in war, and the Jesus that 'gave the Mexicans hell.'" (Sensation, uproar, and confusion.)

This rather sulphurous allusion to the President of the glorious Union, albeit in language used by himself in a famous order during the Mexican War, acted as a red rag upon the human bull in the organ loft, who, now beside himself with passion, plunged madly down to the platform with his howling mob at his heels. "I will not allow you to assail the President of the United States. You shan't do it!" bellowed the blackguard, shaking his fist at Mr. Garrison. But Mr. Garrison, with that extraordinary serenity of manner which was all his own, parleyed with the ruffian, as if he was no ruffian and had no mob at his back. "You ought not to interrupt us," he remonstrated with gentle dignity. "We go upon the principle of hearing everybody. If you wish to speak, I will keep order, and you shall be heard." Rynders was finally quieted by the offer of Francis Jackson to give him a hearing as soon as Mr. Garrison had brought his address to an end.