Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[140] abounded in exhortations to pulpit and minister, and in denunciations of clerical apology for slaveholding; had denied that the language of abolitionists was excessively harsh. As he and his colleague Towne did not wish to be longer identified with the holders of views like these, Mr. Garrison proceeded to read them out of the anti-slavery ranks.

Coming to the main question (for the other matters were mere fetches), he asserted that ministers of the gospel were not necessarily ‘excellent Christians.’ ‘Christianity indignantly rejects the sanctimonious pretensions of the great mass of the clergy in our land. It is becoming more and more apparent that they are nothing better than hirelings, in the bad sense of that term—that they are blind leaders of the blind, dumb dogs that cannot bark, spiritual popes—that they love the fleece better than the flock—that they are mighty hindrances to the march of human freedom, and to the enfranchisement of the souls of men.’ To this there were, of course, many splendid exceptions, and he had never denounced any man or minister merely because he was not connected with the anti-slavery cause, but solely as a defender of slavery—on republican and Biblical grounds. ‘Clerical abolitionists’ were unknown to abolitionism, which was a terrible leveller of distinctions.

The movement to crush out Garrisonism, as Orson S. Murray correctly defined it in his Vermont Telegraph—¹ adding that to this end much greater strength was being put forth than to crush slavery—met with the anticipated encouragement in sectarian quarters. The Christian Mirror said: ‘We know not how Mr. Garrison will stand this rebuke. Heretofore, the moment any one, even a real friend, has put a foot out of the traces, he has turned the butt of his whip and laid on his blows most unmercifully.’ But the spell was now broken. The Vermont Chronicle, the New York Evangelist and² Observer, all hailed with rejoicing the ‘revolution’ in the anti-slavery ranks, and looked to the sloughing off