Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

Garrison, however, found now enough support to start what was known as “The American Anti-slavery Society.” He called together a meeting for the purpose at Philadelphia, when he made a striking declaration of his beliefs. He spoke the most moving and inspiring words about the state of the slaves and the rights of liberty. He announced what their work would be: to organize anti-slavery societies everywhere, to hold meetings unceasingly, to circulate literature, to spare no efforts whatever to bring the nation, as he expressed it, “to a speedy repentance.”

Now began what has been called “the martyr age” in America, and the most active period of Garrison’s life. He and his followers held meetings night and day, and mobs of rough and brutal men were sent by their opponents to break them up. Anti-slavery people were in danger of their lives; they were mobbed wherever they were known, and their houses burnt or ruined. Halls where meetings were to be held were destroyed. A young divinity student was flogged publicly for having anti-slavery literature in his bag. Another lost his life defending a friend against the ruffians who attacked him. In the South, men even suspected of favoring the abolition of slaves were lynched, and judges were all in favor of slavery, and treated the anti-slavery people as vagabonds. Garrison on one occasion had his clothes torn off him and was dragged through the streets with a rope round his body. He was rescued from a raging crowd by the mayor of the town, who saw no way of protecting him but by putting him in prison. On the wall of his cell Garrison wrote: “William L. Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a respectable and influential mob who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that all men are created equal and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God.” A merchant on one occasion spoke in public to the abolitionists. “It is not a matter of principle with us,” he said; “it is a business necessity; we cannot afford to let you succeed; we do not mean to allow you to succeed; we mean to put you down by fair means if we can, by foul means if we must.” Garrison said that Government and the heads of commerce were the forces that really kept slavery going; it could not, he felt, be the will of the people when they began to think and to understand what the real nature of slavery was. It was the business of his life to show them, and he devoted all his energies, all his power of eloquence and persuasion, to move the people, to appeal to their reason and sense of justice and compassion. He sought to abolish slavery by moral means alone; he did not attempt political means, such as asking Congress to use its power. He worked only in the Northern States, for the South was practically united in its convictions. He found strong opposition in the North, too, for there were many Northern people who looked upon the Constitution as sacred, and because the principle of slavery was incorporated in it, regarded all opposition to slavery as disloyalty to the State.

Garrison was undoubtedly helped by the Fugitive Slave Law. It is often the case that things get worse before they get better. This cruel law was a case in point. It was this: that those slaves who had escaped from the Southern States and were living in Canada or the North, some of them well off, useful, and happy, were to be hunted down and brought back to slavery; those who housed them and helped them in any way to escape would also be fined or imprisoned. The result of this new law was to rouse the people’s feeling for liberty and to touch their hearts. When they saw the wretched fugitives driven along the streets in chains great feeling was shown. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was inspired by incidents resulting from the Fugitive Slave Law. Though written in an old-fashioned way, with a good deal of religious talk, it is a moving and sincere book, by a writer whose heart was full of pity and indignation. It touched many hearts, including those of the clergy, and stirred people to action. It had perhaps more influence than any book with a purpose that has ever been written.

The people of the North suffered great humiliation at this period, for nothing could save them from lending their troops and using all their forces to help in slave catching, for it was the law of their Constitution. John Brown also, in connection with this law, appeared rather violently upon the scene. Most people have heard of him; many have heard of him who do not know anything about W. L. Garrison. He became a hero and a martyr by being hanged as a rebel, and the song written about him, “John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on,” became a sort of “Marseillaise” of the North, and has undoubtedly helped to keep his memory alive. John Brown had been for some time a keen anti-slavery agitator, and when the Fugitive Slave Law was passed he carried out a scheme of his own for helping to hide and establish fugitives in a stronghold he had built in the mountains of Virginia. For an armed raid which he made into that State with slaves, in which he captured an arsenal, he was brought up on the charge of high treason and hanged.

Garrison thought John Brown courageous and disinterested, but he also thought the raid wild and useless; but then Garrison’s views of war and bloodshed were very different from John Brown’s. One thing he did see was the wonderful change that thirty years of fighting against slavery had brought about in the tremendous outburst of sympathy for Brown, for great indignation was shown and felt at his fate.

Up to this time it would have been almost impossible for a President to be chosen who was not loyal to slavery. But times had changed, and Garrison, if he had not been entirely responsible, had been the principal cause of the change in people’s views; the sympathies of Lincoln, who was a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, were known—he was against slavery, and he was elected by the North, for the hearts of the people had been moved.

Garrison for the first time saw the results of his life’s work, and it is more than some reformers have done. In the election of Lincoln as President he could see, though still a long way off, an end to his labors, to the long and weary battle he had fought. But much suffering and anguish was to be gone through before anything could be accomplished. Lincoln was elected by the Northern States, and the South, furious, declared themselves independent of the Government and the Union, and forming a Government of their own, called themselves “The Confederate States of America.” Civil war started, and never was a war more passionately felt on both sides. It was not a war of Governments, or a war merely to decide whether the South should be united to the North, but it involved a living question of right or wrong between those who believed in slavery and those who did not. The people knew what they were fighting about, which is more often the case in civil war than in wars between nations planned by their Governments. Garrison had been a man of peace. He hated war and preached against it, yet he saw that the conflict could not be stopped. It had been taken out of his hands. Slavery must be overthrown, and, hateful though it was to him, blood, it seemed, must be spilt.

Every American knows the story of that struggle. The war began in 1861 and lasted four years, ending in a victory for the North, though the South fought desperately and gained much sympathy by their bravery. As the struggle went on the hatred of slavery grew, and before it ended many slaves were set free. Various States were asked to free their slaves, and those who did not were held to be in rebellion against the State. The total abolition of slavery by an amendment of the Constitution did not come about till the close of the war in 1865.

Garrison tells of visiting a camp of twelve hundred slaves just liberated. He called upon them to give cheers for freedom, and to his astonishment they were silent: the poor things did not know how to cheer.

It may be asked how Garrison set the slaves free, for he had not the power to do so. He had done so by preparing the ground, by educating the people, rousing them from their selfishness and awakening in them a moral sense. His efforts were rewarded by the election of Lincoln, who as President had the power to complete and to crown the work that Garrison had done.