On the 4th of July, 1829, he delivered an address in Park Street church, Boston, on the subject of slavery. At that time the subject had taken a deep and absorbing hold upon his mind. He then regarded the American Colonization Society's as the most practical and feasible issue in the case—an opinion which he afterwards most fully retracted. At this time he visited the leading orthodox ministers and editors in and about Boston. Being himself a child of the church, he desired to stir up in behalf of the slave that efficiency of church activity that was effecting so much in the cause of temperance. Burning with zeal, he sought the then active leader of the orthodox party, and begged him to become leader in the movement, and command the forces in a general anti-slavery crusade.
Dr. Beecher received him favorably, listened to him courteously, wished him success, but said in regard to himself he had so "many irons in the fire" that he could not think of putting in another. "Then," said Garrison, "you had better let all others go, and attend to this one alone." The results of time have shown that the young printer saw further than the sages of his day.
It is worth remembering by those who criticized Garrison's generalship in leading the anti-slavery cause, that in the outset he was not in the least ambitious of being a general, and would willingly have become aide-de-camp to the ruling forces of the religious world. That the campaign was carried on out of the church of New England, and not in and by it, was because the church and the religious world at that hour were absorbed in old issues—old activities and schemes of benevolence—and had not grace given them to see that the great critical national question of the day had thus been passed out of their hands.
The articles in Garrison's paper, however, attracted the attention of a little obscure old man, a Quaker, who was laboring in the city of Baltimore, for the cause of the suffering slaves, with a devotion and self-sacrifice worthy of the primitive Christians.
Benjamin Lundy, a quiet, persistent, drab-clothed, meek old man, one of those valiant little mice who nibble undismayed on the nets which enchain the strongest lions, was keeping up, in the city of Baltimore, an anti-slavery paper which was read only by a few people who thought just as he did, and which was tolerated in southern society only because everybody was good-naturedly sure that it was no sort of matter what it said.
Benjamin, however, took his staff in hand, and journeyed on foot up to Bennington, Vt., to see the man who wrote as if he cared for the slave. The strict Baptist and the meek Quaker met on the common ground of the cross of Christ. Both were agreed in one thing; that here was Jesus Christ, in the person of a persecuted race, hungry, thirsty, sick and in prison, with none to visit and relieve; and the only question was, would they arise and go to His help?
So Mr. Garrison went down to the city of Baltimore, to join his forces with Benjamin Lundy. "But," as he humorously observed, "I wasn't much help to him, for he had been all for gradual emancipation, and as soon as I began to look into the matter, I became convinced that immediate abolition was the doctrine to be preached, and I scattered his subscribers like pigeons."
Good little Benjamin took the ruinous zeal of his new partner with the tolerance which his sect extends to every brother who "follows his light;" but a final assault of Garrison on one of the most villainous aspects of slavery, quite upset the enterprise, and landed him in prison. The story is in this wise: A certain ship, the Francis Todd, from Newburyport, came to Baltimore and took in a load of slaves for the New Orleans market. All the harrowing cruelties and separations which attend the rending asunder of families, and the sale of slaves, were enacted under the eyes of the youthful philanthropist, and in a burning article he denounced the inter-state slave trade as piracy, and piracy of an aggravated and cruel kind, inasmuch as those born and educated in civilized and Christianized society, have more sensibility to feel the evils thus inflicted, than imbruted savages. He denounced the owners of the ship, and all the parties in no measured terms, and expressed his determination to "cover with thick infamy all who were engaged in the transaction." Then, to be sure, the sleeping tiger was roused, for there was a vigor and power in the young editor's eloquence that quite dissipated the good-natured contempt which had hitherto hung round the paper. He was indicted for libel, found guilty, of course, condemned, imprisoned in the cell of a man who had been hanged for murder. His mother at this time was not living, but her heroic, undaunted spirit still survived in her son, who took the baptism of persecution and obloquy not merely with patience, but with the joy which strong spirits feel in endurance. He wrote sonnets on the walls of his prison, and by his cheerful and engaging manners made friends of his jailor and family, who did everything to render his situation as comfortable as possible. Some considerable effort was made for his release, and much interest was excited in various quarters for him.
He was finally liberated by Arthur Tappan, who paid the exorbitant fine for want of which he was imprisoned. He went out of jail, as people generally do who are imprisoned for conscience's sake, more devoted than ever to the cause for which he suffered. The river of his life, which hitherto had had many branches, all flowing in the direction of general benevolence, now narrowed and concentrated itself into one intense volume, to beat day and night against the prison walls of slavery, till its foundations should be washed away, and it should tumble to dust.
He issued a prospectus of an anti-slavery journal at Washington, and lectured through the northern cities, and was surprised to find the many and vital cords by which the Northern States were held from the expression of the natural feelings of humanity on a subject whose claims were so obvious. In Boston he in vain tried to get the use of a hall to lecture in; but a mob was threatened, and of all the public edifices in the city, not one could be found whose owner would risk it until a club of professed infidels came forward, and offered their hall as a tribute to free speech.