Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier

[72] his own. There was certainly a phase of detached relations, when Whittier freely endorsed the prevalent criticism of Garrison as dictatorial; and when Garrison's foremost counsellor among antislavery women Mrs. Chapman, used the phrases she employed about Whittier. But it is needless to explore these little divergences of the saints, and it is certain that Garrison, at the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the American Antislavery Society, spoke of Whittier as “known and honoured throughout the civilised world.” He added: “I have no words to express my sense of the value of his services. There are few living who have done so much to operate upon the public mind and conscience and heart of our country for the abolition of slavery as John Greenleaf Whittier.”

Whittier, in his letter, made this companion tribute to Garrison:--

I must not close this letter without confessing that I cannot be sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence which, in a great measure through thy instrumentality, turned me so early away from what Roger Williams calls “ the world's great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honour,” to take side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible to literary reputation; I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good will of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the Antislavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book. Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings, I rejoice that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature.

The lesson thus conveyed is so fine that I linger further upon it, to give some extracts from Whittier's own review of the matter in his introduction to Oliver Johnson's “William Lloyd Garrison and his Times.”