Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[1]

Chapter 1: re-formation and Reanimation.—1841.

Actively accused of infidelity, on both sides of the Atlantic, Garrison restates his religious belief, but attends the closing sessions of the Chardon-Street Convention. He labors diligently in the field to revive the anti-slavery organization with Frederick Douglass at Nantucket, with N. P. Rogers in New Hampshire. He begins to entertain disunion views. Alienation and hostility of Isaac Knapp.

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If a man's reputation were his life, the scene of this biography would now properly shift once more to England. Collins's mission to raise funds for the support¹ of the Standard encountered the obstacles for which Mr. Garrison had prepared him “in consequence of the introduction of the new-organization spirit . . . in England,” Ante, 2.417. in connection with and as a sequel to the World's² Convention. The defence of the old organization was imposed upon him from the start, and this, of course, involved a special vindication of its leader—a task made doubly difficult after Colver's slanders had been³ industriously put in circulation under the official cover of the⁴ Executive Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. ‘The Sabbath [Chardon-Street] Convention,’ wrote Collins to Mr. Garrison, from Ipswich, the home of Clarkson, on January 1, 1841, “has completely changed the issue. Woman's rights and non-governmentism are quite respectable when compared to your religious views.” Ms. In a recent interview, procured with much difficulty, and only in an unofficial capacity, with [2] Clarkson, his family were unwilling to have Collins touch on the subject of the division among the American abolitionists. Allusion to this or to Mr. Garrison led the venerable philanthropist to speak of the evils resulting from destroying the Sabbath or religion, and of the dangerous influence of Owenism. ‘It required no sagacity,’ adds Collins, ‘to see his design in referring to Owen,⁵ etc. . . Owenism, in Great Britain, is considered⁶ double-distilled infidelity. Your views are being considered of the Owen school.⁷ You are the Great Lion which stands in my way.’ Likewise, on February 3, Collins writes to Francis Jackson: “Garrison is a hated and persecuted man in England. Calumny and reproach are heaped upon him in the greatest possible degree.” Ms. And, in a letter to Mr. Garrison himself, Richard D. Webb,⁸ on May 30, reported that Joseph Sturge, the weightiest member of the London Committee, regarded the mere defence of Garrison and Collins by Elizabeth Pease and William Smeal ‘as a species of persecution directed against himself, and as a gratuitous giving up of the slave's cause.’ When Miss Pease had obtained from⁹ America a truthful statement of Mr. Garrison's part in the Chardon-Street Convention, at the hands of the Quaker James Cannings Fuller, the London Committee¹⁰ refused her request to give it the same currency which¹¹ they had given to Colver's libel.

W. L. Garrison to Elizabeth Pease, Darlington, England.

Boston, March 1, 1841.

¹² I am very much obliged to you for your letter by the Britannia, and do not regret, on the whole, that bro. Collins has concluded to remain until the sailing of the steamer of the 4th inst., though I trust he will not miss coming at that time, for his presence here now is indispensable. In whatever he has been called to encounter, on your side of the Atlantic, by the evil spirit that reigns there, as well as here, in the anti-slavery ranks, I deeply sympathize with him. The [3] attempt of Nathaniel Colver to injure his character is exciting among all the true-hearted friends of our cause among us an intense feeling of indignation and abhorrence; and in the sequel it will be sure to recoil upon the head of that unhappy man.

Equally abortive will be the effort of N. C. to affect my¹³ religious character by his absurd and monstrous statement to Joseph Sturge, that I have headed an infidel convention. Even supposing the charge were true, I should like to know by what authority British abolitionists, as such, undertake to judge me, for this cause, on the anti-slavery platform. I need not say to you, that the charge is both groundless and malicious; that my religious views are of the most elevated, the most spiritual character; that I esteem the holy scriptures above all other books in the universe, and always appeal to ‘the law and the testimony’ to prove all my peculiar doctrines; that, in regard to my religious sentiments, they are almost identical with those of Barclay, Penn, and Fox; that, respecting the Sabbath, the church, and the ministry, Joseph Sturge and I (if he be a genuine Friend) harmonize in opinion; that I believe in an indwelling Christ, and in his righteousness alone; that I glory in nothing here below, save in Christ and him crucified; that I believe all the works of the devil are to be destroyed, and our Lord is to reign from sea to sea, even to the ends of the earth; and that I profess to have passed from death unto life, and know by happy experience that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

The truth is, N. Colver has a mortal antipathy to all the distinctive views of Friends, and he regards them all as infidel; yet he writes to Joseph Sturge as though he fully agreed with him as to the nature of the Sabbath, and as though I held purely infidel views on this subject!! Why does not Joseph Sturge, as an honest man and a sincere friend to the anti-slavery cause (I will not refer to his former professions of personal friendship for me), inform me by letter of what he has received from N. Colver and others, touching my religious character? Why does he not express a wish to hear what I can say in self-defence? I confess, I am grieved and astonished at his conduct, and am forced to regard him much less highly than I once did. By the next packet, I hope to be able to address a letter to him on this subject.

I am sorry, very sorry (and very much surprised, too), that¹⁴ bro. Collins should have applied to the London Committee for [4] aid or approbation. It was an error of judgment, simply; but,¹⁵ after what we, who sent him out, have said of that Committee, it looks upon the face of it like an imposition.¹⁶ We supposed he would make his appeal to the abolitionists at large and take¹⁷ his chance accordingly. I fear, also, that he may not have been so guarded at all times in his language as could have been desirable, respecting the transfer of the Emancipator—a¹⁸ transfer that was certainly very dishonorable, and wholly unworthy of the character of those who participated in it.¹⁹ Yet I doubt not that the mission of J. A. C. will do much for our persecuted²⁰ enterprise.

For what you have done to aid him, we all feel under the deepest obligations. May Heaven reward you a hundred-fold! Fear not that truth shall not triumph over falsehood, right over wrong, and freedom over slavery.²¹

[5]

Colver was efficiently seconded by Torrey, temporarily²² conducting the Massachusetts Abolitionist, who brought the most cruel accusations against Collins's integrity and manhood; and by Phelps, who dressed up Mrs. Chapman's report of his own remarks at the Chardon-Street Convention, and gave his personal coloring to what was said by others—all to prove the Convention's infidel character and Mr. Garrison's complicity. This he first ventilated in the New England Christian Advocate,²³ and²⁴ then despatched abroad through the sectarian channels controlled by the London Committee. Mr. Garrison's reply was prompt, and warmed with a natural²⁵ indignation, for to the charge of infidelity were added fresh insinuations of ‘no marriage’ doctrines, calculated to²⁶ horrify still more the English mind. In fact, Phelps's²⁷ ‘priestly candor and magnanimity’ proved more injurious than Colver's and Torrey's combined defamation, and caused great temporary damage abroad.

Colver's effrontery was equal to a reaffirmation of his falsehoods on the platform of the Massachusetts ²⁸ Anti-Slavery Society at its ninth annual meeting, where they had come up for emphatic condemnation.

Edmund Quincy to J. A. Collins, in England.

Dedham, Jan. 30, 1841.

²⁹ The annual meeting is just over, and went off in the best³⁰ possible manner. . . .

The morning of the first day (Wednesday, 27th) was taken up by Garrison's report,³¹ which, for a marvel, was finished and printed (!) before the meeting. . . .

In the afternoon (Thursday) we passed a severe resolution on Colver's letters to the London Committee-he being present. Bradburn was down upon him in his usual tomahawk and³² scalping-knife style. Colver then made a most demoniacal speech, saying but little on the subject-matter, but wandering over the [6] whole universe of abuse which the New Organization have created for their delectation. I never saw a man who seemed to be more possessed with a devil. One of the Westons well said, that the Society might now be thought to have done something to justify his denunciation of it as a Non-Resistance Society, as an ordinary assembly of men of the world would have thrown him out of the window on less provocation. Bradburn and Garrison replied briefly, and the matter ended by the passage of the resolution.

We cannot nowadays understand the superstition formerly attached to the stigma of infidelity, both on the part of those who sought to fasten and of those who sought to avoid it. In the popular imagination it belonged in the category of self-operative curses, and was conclusive of all argument. Hence it availed little for Mr. Garrison³³ to reason that if the Chardon-Street Convention was infidel because some infidel addressed it, it was Orthodox because Phelps, Baptist because Colver, and Methodist³⁴ because Father Taylor, did likewise. Nor could he hope to escape the imputation of being a double and treble dyed infidel for his attendance at the adjourned second and third sessions of that Convention, which fell in the year now under consideration. Convicted, too, of having ‘headed’ this ungodly gathering in the beginning, the head and front of its offending he must remain to the bitter end. True, Edmund Quincy, who actually headed it, declared that the first suggestion of such a convention³⁵ was made at Groton, where Garrison was not; that when³⁶ he heard of it at a private dinner-table, he did not encourage it, and refused to be one of the committee to call it,³⁷ and even urged Mr. Quincy (in vain) to strike out a strong passage in the call. But, continues the latter—

But, then, these new ideas were first started by you, and therefore you are accountable for this development of them! My dear friend, they who say this, do you honor overmuch. You have but obeyed, you have not created, the spirit of the age, which is busy with old ideas, and will in due time change them, and with them the institutions which are their outward manifestations. Lib. 11.47.

[7]

However, it could not be denied that the Convention which assembled for the second time at the Chardon-Street Chapel on Tuesday, March 30, 1841, had met in³⁸ pursuance of Mr. Garrison's motion, at the previous session, to discuss the origin and authority of the Ministry. The participants and combatants were much the same as before, and a preliminary skirmish again took place over a clerical attempt to restrict discussion within the lines and sanction of the Bible. The defeat of this movement was the only positive action of the Convention, which then freely took sides individually for or against the proposition, ‘That the order of the ministry, as at present existing, is anti-scriptural and of human origin.’ In this discussion Mr. Garrison appears to have said nothing, being unable to attend except for a few hours during the³⁹ three days; but he forestalled fresh clerical misrepresentation of the Convention by moving a committee to prepare resolutions explanatory of its nature and doings, and these resolutions were from his pen. He also prevented any notice being taken, by way of reply, of a Sabbatarian letter from Clarkson, which Nathaniel Colver had craftily procured, and introduced at the earliest moment. The snare was too obviously meant—on the one hand for Mr. Garrison himself, on the other for the⁴⁰ Convention, whose members sought, as Emerson well said, ‘something better and more satisfying than a vote or a definition.’

This peculiar body met once more and finally on the⁴¹ 26th, 27th, and 28th of October, 1841, taking for its last topic the Church. Various causes kept away its main clerical antagonists, but they were represented by Phelps, who found it as infidel as ever. Mr. Garrison's resolutions are all of the proceedings that can be noticed here:

Resolved, That the true church is independent of all human⁴² organizations, creeds, or compacts.

Resolved, That it is not in the province of any man, or any body of men, to admit to or to exclude from that church any one who is created in the divine image. [8]

Resolved, That it is nowhere enjoined as a religious duty, by Christ or his apostles, upon any man, that he should connect himself with any association, by whatever name called; but all are left free to act singly, or in conjunction with others, according to their own free choice.

While the glow of this truly spiritual occasion was still on him, Mr. Garrison produced four sonnets, which contain the pith of his contributions to the theological interchange of the Chardon-Street Convention. They appeared in successive numbers of the Liberator, under⁴³ the titles, ‘The Bible,’ ‘Holy Time,’ ‘Worship,’ ‘The True Church.’ As poesy, none deserves to be quoted entire. As landmarks, they may yield a line or two. From the first, ‘The Bible’:

O Book of Books! though skepticism flout⁴⁴
     Thy sacred origin, thy worth decry;
Though transcendental⁴⁵ folly give the lie
     To what thou teachest; though the critic doubt
This fact, that miracle, and raise a shout
     Of triumph o'er each incongruity
He in thy pages may perchance espy, . . .
     Thy oracles are holy and divine. . . .

[9] We may perhaps detect in this sonnet a squint at a movement made, during a pause in the last session at Chardon Street, to hold a convention “to consider the authority of the Scriptures, and the extent of their obligation on men,” Lib. 11.178; 12.3, 51. in which the Transcendentalists Emerson and Alcott were united as a committee with Edmund Quincy and Mrs. Chapman. That