William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist

by Archibald Henry Grimké

Amid this general access of the fighting propensity, Garrison preserved the integrity of his non-resistant principles, his aversion to the use of physical force as an anti-slavery weapon. Men like Charles Stearns talked of shouldering their Sharp's rifles against the Border ruffians as they would against wild beasts. For himself, he could not class any of his fellow-creatures, however vicious and wicked, on the same level with wild beasts. Those wretches were, he granted, as bad and brutal as they were represented by the free State men of Kansas, but to him they were less blameworthy than were their employers and indorsers, the pro-slavery President and his Cabinet, pro-slavery Congressmen, and judges, and doctors of divinity, and editors. Incomparably guilty as these "colossal conspirators against the liberty, peace, happiness, and safety of the republic" were; and, though his moral indignation "against their treasonable course" burned like fire, he, nevertheless, wished them no harm. He shrank from the idea of the physical collision of man with a brother man, and with him all mankind were brothers. No one is able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member of the human family, "in a Christian state of mind." He held to Jesus, who condemned violence, forbade the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory feelings and the use of retaliatory weapons. When Jesus said "Love your enemies," he did not mean, "Kill them if they go too far."

Garrison's moral radicalism and political sagacity were never exhibited to better advantage than during these tremendous years of the crisis. He saw the sudden rise of a great political organization opposed to the farther extension of slavery to national territory. It was by no means a party after his heart, and for total and immediate emancipation, and the dissolution of the Union, yet he perceived that while this was true, it was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose, battling against the slave-power, fighting the slave system, and to this extent was worthy of the commendation of Abolitionists. "It helps to disseminate no small amount of light and knowledge," the reformer acutely observed, "in regard to the nature and workings of the slave system, being necessitated to do this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right direction, though with no purpose to aid us in the specific work we are striving to accomplish, namely, the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of slavery throughout the land." While bating no jot of his anti-slavery principles, he all the same put in practice the apostolic injunction to give credit to whom credit is due, by cordially commending what he found worthy of commendation in the purpose and policy of the Republican party, and by urging a like conduct upon his followers. In the Presidential canvass of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with Frémont as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although his Abolition principles precluded him from voting for the Republican candidate or from urging his disciples to vote for him. But, barring this moral barrier, had he "a million votes to bestow" he "would cast them all for Frémont ... not because he is an Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is for the non-extension of slavery, in common with the great body of the people of the North, whose attachment to the Union amounts to idolatry."

When the election was over the motto of the Liberator was still "No union with slaveholders," and would have remained the same though Frémont instead of Buchanan had triumphed at the polls, until indeed the domination of the slave-power had ended, and the North and the National Constitution had been divorced from all criminal connection with slavery. The anti-slavery agitation for the dissolution of the Union went on with increased zeal. A State convention, called by T.W. Higginson and others, "to consider the practicability, probability, and expediency of a separation between the free and slave States, and to take such other measures as the condition of the times may require," met at Worcester, Mass., January 15, 1857, with Frank W. Bird in the chair, and William Lloyd Garrison among the vice-presidents. The pioneer's speech on the occasion was a characteristic and noteworthy utterance. Its tone throughout was grave and argumentative. Here is a specimen of it, and of the way in which he met the most serious objection to the Abolition movement for disunion: "The air is filled with objections to a movement of this kind. I am neither surprised nor disquieted at this. One of these is of a very singular nature, and it is gravely urged that it is conclusive against disunion. It is to this effect: We must remain in the Union because it would be inhuman in us to turn our backs upon millions of slaves in the Southern States, and to leave them to their fate! Men who have never been heard of in the anti-slavery ranks, or who are ever submitting to a compromise of principle, have their bowels wonderfully moved all at once with sympathy for the suffering slave! Even our esteemed friend, Theodore Parker (who deals in no cant) says, in his letter, that he cannot consent to cut himself off from the slave population. Now, we who are engaged in this movement claim to be equally concerned for the liberation of the slave. If we have not yet proved our willingness to suffer the loss of all things, rather than turn and flee, God knows that we are prepared to bear any new cross that He, in His Providence, may be disposed to lay upon us. For one, I make no parade of my anxiety for the deliverance of those in bondage; but I do say that it strikes me as remarkable that those who, for a quarter of a century, have borne the heat and burden of the day, should have the imputation cast upon them of intending to leave four millions of slaves in their chains, by seeking the overthrow of this Union!...

" ... I declare that this talk of leaving the slave to his fate is not a true representation of the case; and it indicates a strange dullness of comprehension with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is it to forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his master? What! When the North is pressing down upon four millions of slaves like an avalanche, and we say to her, 'Take off that pressure—stand aside—give the slave a chance to regain his feet and assert his freedom!' is that turning our backs upon him? Here, for example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, and another man is acting as an accessory, without whose aid the robber cannot succeed. In saying to the accomplice. 'Hands off! Don't aid the villain!' shall I be told that this is enabling the highwayman to rob with impunity? What an absurdity! Are we not trying to save the pockets of all travelers from being picked in seeking to break up all connection with highway robbery?"

The convention projected a general convention of the free States to consider the subject, and "Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place, the more peaceful it will be; but that peace or war is a secondary consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." The projected general convention, owing to the monetary crisis of 1857, did not take place; but the extraordinary public excitement on the slavery question increased rather than diminished during the year. The increasing menace to the domination of the slave-power from this source had become so great that it was deemed prudent on the part of the upholders of that power to allay it by means of an authoritative utterance upon the vexed question of slavery in the national Territories from the highest judicial tribunal in the Land. The Northern respect for the opinion of the Supreme Court, the South and her allies in the free States counted upon as the vehicle of the quieting medicament. For, if the Missouri Compromise were pronounced by that Court unconstitutional and, therefore, ab initio, null and void, no wrong was done the North through its formal repeal by Congress. The act of abrogation, in this view, added nothing to the South which did not belong to it as well before as after its passage, detracted nothing from the North which was justly its due in the premises. In pursuance of this cunningly devised scheme the Supreme Court delivered itself of an opinion in the famous "Dred Scott Case." So abhorrent it was to the intelligence and moral sense of the free States, that it produced results altogether opposed to those designed by the men who invoked it. Instead of checking, the execrated judgment augmented enormously the existing excitement. Garrison's bitter taunt that "the Union is but another name for the iron reign of the slave-power," was driven home to the North, by the Dred Scott decision, with the logic of another unanswerable fact. Confidence in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court was seriously shaken, and widespread suspicion struck root at the North touching the subserviency of that tribunal to the interests and designs of the slave-power.

The popular agitation at this fresh and alarming evidence of the purpose and power of the South upset the machinations of the schemers, swelled the numerical strength of the new Northern party opposed to the Territorial aggressions and pretensions of the slave section. So rapid was the growth of the Republican party that the slave leaders anticipated its accession to power at the then next Presidential election. So certain were they in their forebodings of defeat that they set about in dead earnest to put their side of the divided house in order for the impending struggle for Southern independence. Military preparations went forward with a vengeance, arms and munitions of war which were the property of the General Government began to move southward, to Southern military depots and posts for the defence of the United States South, when at last the word "DISUNION" should be pronounced over the Republic. The Lincoln-Douglass debate augmented everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty numbers of the new party. More and more the public consciousness and conviction were squaring with Mr. Lincoln's oracular words in respect that the Union could not "endure permanently half slave and half free."

The darkness and tumult of the rising tempest were advancing apace, when suddenly there burst from the national firmament the first warning peal of thunder, and over Virginia there sped the first bolt of the storm. John Brown with his brave little band, at Harper's Ferry, had struck for the freedom of the slave. Tired of words, the believer in blood and iron as a deliverer, had crossed from Pennsylvania into Virginia on the evening of October 16, 1859, and seized the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry. Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and hanged for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had builded better than he knew. For the blow struck by him then and there ended almost abruptly the period of argument and ushered in the period of arms. The jar from that battle-ax at the roots of the slave system hurled together in a death struggle right and wrong, freedom and slavery, in the republic.

This attempt on the part of John Brown to liberate the slaves seemed to Garrison "misguided, wild, and apparently insane, though disinterested and well-intended." On non-resistant grounds he deplored this use of the sword to effect emancipation, and condemned the leader. But, judging him according to the standard of Bunker Hill and the men of 1776, he did not doubt that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable remembrance to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the deeds of a Wallace or Tell, a Washington or Warren."

The raid of Brown and his subsequent execution, and their reception at the North revealed how vast was the revolution in public sentiment on the slavery question which had taken place there, since the murder of Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy died defending the right of free speech and the liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of Massachusetts declared that "he died as the fool dieth." Brown died in an invasion of a slave State, and in an effort to emancipate the slaves with a band of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one end of the free States to the other, hero and martyr. Mr. Garrison commenting on this immensely significant fact, acutely and justly observed that: "The sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him, prove how marvelous has been the change affected in public opinion during the thirty years of moral agitation—a change so great indeed, that whereas, ten years since, there were thousands who could not endure my lightest word of rebuke of the South, they can now easily swallow John Brown whole and his rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has merely told us what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God!"

But there is another circumstance hardly less significant of another change at the North even more momentous than the one just noted.