Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

‘ [150] extent, cannot be found among the free blacks; but we do assert that they are as moral, peaceable and industrious as that class of the whites who are, like them, in indigent circumstances—and far less intemperate than the great body of foreign emigrants who infest and corrupt our shores.’

Although slavery in the cities was considered to be of a milder type than on the plantations, Lundy and Garrison were frequent witnesses of some of its iniquities and horrors. Slave auctions were of course of common occurrence in Baltimore, and the shipment of slaves to the New Orleans market was constantly going on. During the first month of their partnership, they received a call, one Sunday, from a slave who had just been severely whipped with a cowskin, and on whose bleeding¹ back, from his neck to his hips, they could count thirtyseven terrible gashes. His head also was much bruised. And this man, whose offence was that he had not loaded a wagon to suit his overseer, had lately been emancipated by the will of his master, and was to receive his freedom a few weeks afterwards. The partners sheltered and nursed him for two days, and sought the heirs of the estate to expostulate against this cruelty, but they were received with abuse and contempt for their pains. A few days later, while passing along the street on which their office was situated, Garrison heard, from the upper story of a house, ‘the distinct application of a whip, and the² shrieks of anguish’ from the victim which succeeded every blow. ‘This is nothing uncommon,’ he added, in recording the circumstance.

But though in the midst of the Philistines, the courage of the two editors was undaunted. The brutal slavetrader, Woolfolk, who had assaulted and nearly killed³ Lundy, in the street, three years before, still had his den in Baltimore; and when Garrison commented on the ⁴ inconsistency of the American and Gazette, which refused his advertisements (because his cruelty was so notorious) while inserting those of slave auctions generally, Woolfolk ascribed the authorship of the paragraph to Lundy, and