Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[204] host, their amiable plan came to naught; but not, however, before adding a new element to the universal discord then fast swelling to a roar. To the storm of censure gathering about his head the reformer bowed not-neither swerved he to the right hand nor to the left-all the while deeming it, “with the apostle, a small thing to be judged by man's judgment.” “I solicit no man's praise,” he sternly replies to his critics, “I fear no men's censure.”

There was still another cause of offence given by Garrison to his countrymen. It was not his hard language, but a circumstance less tolerable, if that was possible, than even that rock of offence. It seems that when the editor of the Liberator was in England, and dining with Thomas Fowell Buxton, he was asked by the latter in what way the English Abolitionists could best assist the anti-slavery movement in America, and he had replied, “By giving us George Thompson.” This unexpected answer of the American appeared without doubt to the Englishman at the time somewhat extraordinary. He had his misgivings as to the wisdom, to say nothing of the propriety, of an international act of such importance and delicacy as the sending of George Thompson to America. He questioned whether the national self-love of the American people would not resent the arrival of an Englishman on such a mission among them and refuse him a fair hearing in consequence. But Garrison was confident that while Thompson's advent would stir up the pro-slavery bile of the North and all that, he would not be put to much if any greater disadvantage as a foreigner in speaking in New England on the subject of slavery, than wern those Abolitionists