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

‘ [239] hope unintentionally) calumniated my character and put my life in jeopardy.’ There were several reasons why the editors of the Intelligencer should refuse to print a letter from ‘this madman,’ telling them that their remarks on the Tarboroa extract ‘breathe the spirit of murder and exhibit the incoherency of madness.’ Yet, as he reminded them, they had ‘unhesitatingly published’ his prospectus, in which his peace doctrine was set forth. Moreover, he had not a single subscriber, black or white, south of the Potomac.

They could, nevertheless, be hospitable to a Virginian¹ who suggested that the Liberator might be ‘treated as a seditious libel, published in the District, or any other place to which it may be sent by its author: that the fact of publication being procured by the author, he is a principal offender in the place where the publication is made, although he may never have been personally present there in his life.’ After citing cases, the writer proceeded:

‘Let the offender, then, in this case, be demanded by the President or the Governor of Virginia, and prosecuted in the place where he has procured his incendiary paper to be distributed; and I think law may be found to punish him. I will answer for the event if we lay hands upon him in Virginia. If the Governor of Massachusetts should refuse, then let the People of the South offer an adequate reward to any person who will deliver him, dead or alive, into the hands of the authorities of any State south of the Potomac.’

This temper seemed to the Intelligencer ‘very natural under the circumstances,’ if inexpedient to act upon; the legal view it would not dispute. The ‘desperate proposal,’ exclaims Mr. Garrison, ‘caps the climax of Southern mendacity and folly. My contempt of it is unutterable. Nothing but my own death, or a want of patronage, shall stop the Liberator.’ When the Southern papers call him hostis humani generis, a ‘fiendish editor,’ the ‘apologist of the blacks in the recent Virginia insurrection,’ he replies: ‘Although I preach submission to² ’