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

[390] of the American Colonization Society; if I had extolled that kind of philanthropy which calls for the banishment of every man, woman and child whose skin is “not colored like my own” ; if I had asserted that the stealers of human beings in the Southern States were kind, liberal and paternal in their treatment of their victims, and anxious to abolish slavery; in short, if I had sacrificed conscience, honesty and truth upon the altar of falsehood and prejudice—why, then the reputation of the United States would have been pure and spotless in the eyes of the English nation, and I should have received the applause, instead of the malediction, of a senseless mob! But I was neither knave nor fool enough to do any such thing. I spoke the truth, in the love of the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I freely acknowledged the guilt, the awful guilt, of this boasted land of liberty, in holding one sixth part of its immense population in servile chains; and besought the sympathy of the friends of bleeding humanity in England, in behalf of our afflicted slaves. Nor did I fail to tear the mask from the brow of the American Colonization Society, so that it might be feared and loathed as a monster of cruelty, violence and blood. For this cause, “the wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation. Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.”

Undeterred by the riotous demonstrations which had attended his return, and in forgetfulness or defiance of his Canterbury enemies who had sought to prevent his departure for England, Mr. Garrison, in the fourth week in October, paid a visit to Miss Crandall, and saw her¹ school ‘in the full tide of successful experiment.’ He saw also ‘the stone which was thrown into the window by some unknown republican of Canterbury—the shattered pane of glass—the window-curtain stained by a volley of rotten eggs—and last, not least, a moral nondescript, though physically a human being, named A——² T——J—–.’ Thence repairing to Brooklyn, the real Mecca of his journey, he was most hospitably received by the venerable George Benson, under whose roof, on the 27th of October, occurred an incident thus reported in the next issue of the Liberator: