One Sunday in Baltimore, Garrison was visited by a slave who had just been whipped with a cowhide, and whose back was bleeding from twenty-seven gashes, while his head was terribly bruised. He had not loaded a wagon to his master’s liking, and this was his punishment. Garrison could hear as he passed down the street the sound of whips and cries of agony. There seemed no mercy or justice anywhere, and his country’s barbarity made Garrison’s cheeks burn with shame.
How did such a state of things arise, one may ask; how did these black men and women come to be living in such numbers on American soil? It happened in this way: the English in the past, having conquered lands in different parts of the world, needed men to work and develop these lands. They were mostly wild and uncultivated. The British, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese were chiefly responsible for the slave trade. Prince Henry the Navigator, a Portuguese, had been the first to bring negroes into Europe in the fifteenth century, capturing them on his exploring expeditions round the coast of Africa. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman to engage in the traffic, and in the seventeenth century the slave trade was mostly in English hands. England made a very good business of supplying slaves to the Spanish settlements, and imported also a huge cargo of negroes to Virginia for tobacco planting, and this was the beginning of slavery in America.
This hunting of human beings to make them slaves was more barbarous than anything the negroes themselves could have imagined. These wretched black men, having been captured, their huts destroyed and whole villages burnt, were placed on ships which brought them to our colonies, to the West Indies and Jamaica; so packed and overloaded were these ships and the poor negroes were so ill-treated that many died on the way; out of a hundred only fifty would be any good for work. This was one of the prices paid for what is called expansion and having colonies. When the English came to know the real nature of this dreadful business, all the best opinion was against it; but the Quakers were the first to take any practical action against the slave trade, which they did as early as the seventeenth century, both in America and England, by turning out of their society all who should be engaged in it. Gradually the British did away with slavery in their colonies, and it was finally abolished in 1833, when Lord Grey was Prime Minister; but the honor of being the first to abolish it lies not with England but with Denmark, who forbade it in its possessions at the end of the eighteenth century. Several countries followed the example of England after she had put down slavery so far as it concerned herself, but the United States was the last to fall in.
Garrison in his campaign against slavery was not going to tolerate any half-measures; if a thing was a sin, then it should not exist another day: it was real anguish to have to think of the sufferings of these poor people, and he could not rest or be happy for a moment so long as injustice and such a barbarous state of things existed. Therefore, the immediate freedom of the negro was the only thing to strive and live for. Here he and Lundy disagreed—not as to the evil of slavery, but on the question of the best way to put an end to it. Lundy was not so extreme as Garrison. His view was that the negro should gradually be set free and sent to colonize in another country. Garrison asked for his immediate freedom on American soil. His attitude made the slave-owners very angry, and also filled them with alarm: they had heard a good deal of talk about freeing the negro in the future, but never had the demand been made for his immediate release. So Garrison now broke his partnership with Lundy and started on his campaign alone. For a so-called libel on a slave trader he was sent to prison, and being unable to pay the fine, he was forty-nine days in jail, until he was released by Arthur Tappan, of New York, a famous Quaker philanthropist and abolitionist, who paid his fine for him. Garrison was no martyr, but his anger was aroused against the slave-owners and he felt more desperately keen about his cause than ever. Once more he looked to the churches to support him, and again they failed him. In Boston they closed their doors against him, and it was a society of free-thinkers who finally gave Garrison a hall to lecture in, and some who heard him there were moved to join him and assist in his campaign.
Never did a man have more uphill work in trying to move these people out of their sloth and indifference. He visited all the principal people in Boston and urged them to think; he implored the clergy to turn to Christianity and bring it into practice. Coldheartedness and utter contempt of the negro he met with everywhere. He was disheartened but undefeated; his hatred of injustice, his loathing of cruelty, his pity, all these feelings carried him on.
In order to further his views he set up a paper of his own in Boston. He had no money nor a single subscriber, but he found a sympathetic partner, and these two printed their own paper, their only helper being a negro boy. It was called The Liberator, and its motto was “My country is the world; my countrymen are all mankind.” By this he meant that he worked for the good of the whole world, not only for that portion of it to which he himself belonged, for only by treating men of other countries as your friends and brothers will you have progress, peace, and true prosperity at home.
In the first number of The Liberator, Garrison had a manifesto, or address, to the public, the words of which became the whole spirit of his life. He declared that he would work for and think of nothing else but the freedom of the slave, and ended up with the words, “I am in earnest: I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” This address was signed by twelve men, all poor, but after they had met together one evening for the purpose of signing the address they stepped out into the starry night with glad hearts and an object to live for. This address of Garrison’s lost him many subscribers, because it went too far and was thought too extreme, but gradually it gained him influence and power. It was the seed of many anti-slavery societies, and it started other newspapers working with the same objects. The Liberator was destined to contain President Lincoln’s declaration of emancipation.
An anti-slavery society had been started in England, supported by the great and courageous clergyman Wilberforce, who had been for years working against slavery and had helped to bring it to an end in the British possessions. Garrison was asked to go over and speak to the English society, which he did, and was received with great enthusiasm. The English were very much impressed by Garrison’s sincerity and the burning enthusiasm that lay under his quiet and modest manner. He was not the sort of man they imagined an American agitator to be. He was, of course, very greatly encouraged, but on his return to America hard times awaited him, because he had stated in England that the United States was a sham so long as it allowed the present state of things to exist. A meeting in New York to start an anti-slavery league was broken up and the hall emptied by a furious mob. Another mob also besieged and tried to destroy the offices of The Liberator at Boston. There was great excitement everywhere: Garrison’s work had begun to tell. Disagreeable though violent opposition is, it is often the first step toward being heard. Now, Garrison undoubtedly criticized his country; he found fault with it, and used very strong language about the slave-owners. The commonly held view is that any criticism of one’s country is treacherous, mischievous, and unpatriotic, but Garrison said:
I speak the truth, painful, humiliating, and terrible as it is, and because I am bold and faithful to do so, am I to be branded as the calumniator and enemy of my country? If to suffer sin upon my brother be to hate him in my heart, then to suffer sin upon my country would be an evidence not of my love but hatred of her; it is because my affection for her is intense and paramount to all selfish considerations that I do not parley with her crime. I know that she can neither be truly happy nor prosperous while she continues to manacle every sixth child born on her soil.
Who, then, one may ask, is the true patriot? He who has before his eyes a high ideal for his country, who wishes it to be the best, the most civilized and the most prosperous, its people educated, far-seeing, and humane; who does not shut his eyes to his country’s faults and to the mistakes of its governments, but who strives to help as he would help a friend to remedy his faults—to show people how things might be better and how to set about improving them? Or is the patriot the man who in the face of monstrous evils cries “It is God’s will,” or “My country, right or wrong”? Where should we be now were it not for the men who obeyed their own consciences rather than the commands of the State? When we think that burning people at the stake for their religious beliefs, hanging them for sheep-stealing, putting women to death for petty thefts, or working small children in mines were considered right, when we remember that these inhuman laws were regarded by the patriot of the time as the will of God, and the people who wished to see them altered as disloyal to their rulers, we may be a little less bitter against the reformer of the present day: the man who sees that there are still many unjust laws and conditions even in his own country, and who has the courage to say so.