Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

The pledge made by the reformer in the initial number of the Iberator to be “as harsh as truth,” had been kept to the letter. To some minds there is nothing more difficult to understand and tolerate than is the use of harsh language toward individual wrongdoers. They appear to be much more solicitous to turn away the wrath of the wicked than to do away with their wickedness. Multitudes of such minds were offended at the tremendous severities of Garrison's speech. They were for peace at any cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost. These proslavery critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause. But the feelings and the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that terrible reality, the American slave. The indignation of such people exceeded all bounds when contemplating wrongs in the abstract, iniquity in the abstract, while the genuine article in flesh and blood and habited in broadcloth and respectability provoked no indignation, provoked instead unbounded charity for the willing victims of ancestral transgressions. Upon the Southern slaveholder, as a creature of circumstances, these people expended all their sympathy while upon the Southern slave, who were to their view the circumstances, they looked with increasing disapprobation. Garrison's harsh language greatly shocked this class-excited their unbounded indignation against the reformer.

Besides this class there was another, composed of friends, whom Garrison's denunciatory style offended. To Charles Follen and Charles Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the