Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict

by Samuel J. May

But there was another of the early antislavery reformers, of whom I may write much more fully in accordance with my plan, which is to give, for the most part, only my personal recollections of the prominent actors, and the most significant incidents, in our conflict with the giant wrong of our nation and age.

BENJAMIN LUNDY.

In the month of June, 1828, there came to the town of Brooklyn, Connecticut, where I then resided, and to the house of my friend, the venerable philanthropist, George Benson, a man of small stature, of feeble health, partially deaf, asking for a public hearing upon the subject of American slavery. It was Benjamin Lundy. We gathered for him a large congregation, and his address made a deep impression on many of his hearers. He exhibited the wrong of slavery and the sufferings of its victims in a graphic, affecting manner. But the relief which he proposed was to be found in removing them to some of the unoccupied territory of Texas or Mexico, rather than in recognizing their rights as men here, in the country where so many of them had been born; and in making all the amends possible for the injuries so long inflicted upon them by giving them here the blessings of education, and every opportunity and assistance to become all that God has made them capable of being. Nevertheless, Mr. Lundy had done then, and he continued afterwards, until his death in 1839, to do excellent service in the cause of the enslaved. Indeed, his labors were so abundant, his sacrifices so many, and his trials so severe, that no one will stand before the God of the oppressed with a better record than he.

Benjamin Lundy was born in New Jersey, of Quaker parents, in 1789, and was educated in the sentiments and under the influence of the society of Friends. He was, therefore, from his earliest days, taught to regard slaveholding as a great iniquity. At the age of nineteen he went to reside in Wheeling, Virginia, and there learnt the saddler’s trade. This he afterwards carried on, with great success for a number of years, in the village of St. Clairville, Ohio, about ten miles from Wheeling. But he could not banish from his memory the sights he had seen at Wheeling, which was the great thoroughfare of the slave-trade between Virginia and the Southern and Southwestern States; nor efface from his heart the impression that he ought “to attempt to do something for the relief of that most injured portion of the human race.”

As early as 1815, when twenty-six years of age, he formed an antislavery society, which at first consisted of only six members, but in a few months increased to nearly five hundred, among whom were many of the influential ministers, lawyers, and other prominent citizens of several of the counties in that part of Ohio. Although unused to composition, he wrote an appeal to the philanthropists of the United States, which was published and extensively circulated, and led to the formation, in different parts of the State, of societies similar in spirit and purpose to the one he had instituted. He then engaged in the publication of an antislavery paper; and to promote its circulation, and to gather materials for its columns, he commenced his travels in the slave States. These were performed for the most part on foot. Thus he journeyed thousands of miles, through Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina. In most places where he lectured publicly, or privately, he obtained subscribers to his paper. In some places he succeeded in forming associations similar to his own. Not unfrequently he met with angry rebuffs and violent threats of personal injury. But he was a man of the most quiet courage, as well as indomitable perseverance. He disconcerted his assailants by letting them see that they could not frighten him; that the threat of assassination would not deter him from prosecuting his object. Several slaveholders were so much affected by his exposition of their iniquity that they manumitted their bondmen, on condition that he would take them to a place where they would be free. Twice or thrice he went to Hayti, conducting such freed ones thither, and finding homes for others whom he hoped to send there. Afterwards he explored large portions of Mexico and Texas; and made strenuous endeavors to obtain by grant or purchase sections of lands, upon which he might found colonies of emancipated people from this country. In this attempt he was unsuccessful; but while prosecuting it he gathered much valuable information respecting the state of that country, of which afterwards important use was made by the Hon. J. Q. Adams, in his strenuous opposition in 1836 to the audacious plot by which Texas was annexed to our Republic.

Mr. Lundy was indefatigable in laboring for whatever he undertook to accomplish. He learnt the printer’s art, that he might communicate to the public whatever he discovered by his diligent inquiries of the condition of the enslaved, and enkindle in others that sympathy for them which glowed in his own bosom. He was not stationary for a long while in any one place. His paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, was published successively in Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, and in Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore. For a considerable time his lecturing excursions were so frequent, diverse, and distant, that it was most convenient to him to get his paper printed, wherever he happened to be, from month to month. So he earned along with him the type, “heading,” the “column-rules,” and his “direction-book,” and issued “the Genius,” &c., from any office that was accessible to him. He often had to pay for the publication of it by working as a journeyman printer, and at other times had to support himself by working at his saddler’s trade. Nothing discouraged, nothing daunted Benjamin Lundy. He possessed, in an eminent degree, the faith, patience, self-denial, courage, and endurance necessary to a pioneer. He was frequently threatened, repeatedly assaulted, and once brutally beaten. But he could not be deterred from prosecuting the work to which he was called. He was a rare specimen of perfect fidelity to duty, a conscientious, meek, but fearless, determined man, a soldier of the cross, a moral hero.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

William Lloyd Garrison commenced his literary and philanthropic labors when a young journeyman printer, in his native place, Newburyport, Mass. In 1825 he removed to Boston, and labored for a while in the office of the Recorder. In 1827 he united with Rev. William Collier in editing and publishing the National Philanthropist, the only paper then devoted to the Temperance cause. And soon after he engaged in conducting The Journal of the Times, at Bennington, Vt. In each of these papers, especially the last, he took strong ground against slavery. Believing the plan of the Colonization Society to be intended to remove the great evil from our country, he espoused it with ardor, and advocated it with such signal ability, that he was recalled to Boston to deliver, in Park Street church, the annual address to the Massachusetts Colonization Society, on the 4th of July, 1828.

Mr. Garrison’s writings attracted the attention of that devoted, self-sacrificing friend of the enslaved, Benjamin Lundy, of whom I have just now given some account. He urged him in 1828, and persuaded him in the autumn of 1829, to remove to Baltimore, and assist in editing The Genius of Universal Emancipation. There Mr. G. soon saw, with his own eyes, the atrocities of slavery and the inter-state slave-trade; there he discovered the real design and spirit of the Colonization scheme; there the radical doctrine of immediate, unconditional emancipation was revealed to him. He soon made himself obnoxious to slaveholders by his faithful exposure of their cruelties; and his unsparing condemnation of their atrocious system of oppression.

After he had been in Baltimore a few months, a Northern captain came there in a ship owned and freighted by a gentleman of Newburyport, Mr. Garrison’s birthplace. Failing to obtain another cargo, said captain, with the consent of his owner, took on board a load of slaves to be transported to New Orleans. Such an outrage on humanity, perpetrated by Massachusetts men, enkindled Mr. G.’s hottest indignation, and drew from his pen a scathing rebuke. He was forthwith arrested as both a civil and criminal offender. He was prosecuted for a libel upon the captain and owner of the ship “Francis,” and for disturbing the peace by attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection.