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

An inquiry.¹

I would inquire of Mr. Austin Woolfolk if it was decent or manly in him, last week, to multiply his curses and his threats to the senior editor of this paper, for the insertion of a paragraph which was written by another—by me? Has he forgotten his alphabet? The letters ‘L.’ and ‘G.’ attached to the bottom of our separate articles no more resemble each other than the persons of Lundy and Garrison—and certainly the antithesis between them is remarkable. If he wishes to discuss the subject of slavery, or to complain of any slander of his character, I shall be happy to see him at my boarding-house, No. 135 Market Street, where I will endeavor to convince him that he is pursuing a wicked traffic; or if I fail in the argument, I will make a public apology for my strictures upon his conduct. Let me assure him, however, that I am not to be intimidated by the utterance of any threats, or the perpetration of any acts of violence. Dieu defend le droit.—

W. L. G.

Garrison early declared against paying any money compensation to slaveholders for emancipating their slaves; and in reply to the inquiry of a colonizationist,— ‘Who can doubt that it might be the soundest policy to extinguish the master's claim throughout our territory at the price of six hundred millions of dollars?’ he said:

‘We unhesitatingly doubt it, in a moral point of view. It² would be paying a thief for giving up stolen property, and acknowledging that his crime was not a crime. Once hold out the prospect of payment by the General Government, and there will soon be an end to all voluntary emancipation. Moreover, to rely upon private charities and public donations for the extinction of slavery is madness. If the moral sense of the people will not induce them to let the oppressed go free without money and without price, depend upon it their benevolent sympathies will be most unproductive. No; let us not talk of buying the slaves—justice demands their liberation.’

To the same writer, who had spoken of the ‘delicate subject’ of slavery, he replied: ‘In correcting public vices and aggravated crimes, delicacy is not to be consulted. ’