Chapter 7: Baltimore jail, and After.—1830.
Ransomed by Arthur Tappan, Garrison abandons Baltimore, and journeys to Boston, lecturing on abolition by the way. He issues a prospectus for an anti-slavery journal to be published in Washington, but perceives that the North first needs conversion. A lecture in Julien Hall secures him the necessary friends, and he forms a partnership with Isaac Knapp to publish the Liberator in Boston.No man ever went to prison with a lighter heart or cleaner conscience than Garrison; and his slumbers, the first night, were as sweet and peaceful as if he had been in his old home by the Merrimac. His seven weeks in jail were neither idle nor unhappy weeks to him. He was courteously and kindly treated by the Warden (David W. Hudson), at whose family table he often took his meals. He was allowed considerable freedom within the walls, and made use of it to acquaint himself with some of his fellow-prisoners, visiting them in their cells, and being locked in with them, often, while he questioned them and showed a sympathetic interest in their cases. Sometimes they were permitted to come to his cell, and for certain men whom he thought especially deserving of consideration he drew up petitions and letters to the Governor, in their name, with the result of getting the sentences of several commuted.1 The high round window of Garrison's cell commanded a view of the street below, which he could see by standing on his bed; and on a certain Sunday afternoon, when a sudden shower fell and drenched the people just coming from church, he congratulated himself that he was in [175] such dry and snug quarters,—a similar sensation, he used to say with a laugh, to that of the criminal on the scaffold, with rope about his neck, who forgot his impending doom in a temporary sense of delight over his secure and elevated position, while a mad bull was causing the spectators below to flee for their lives. Lundy, who had returned to Baltimore, and was again issuing the Genius in a monthly pamphlet of sixteen octavo pages, came frequently to the jail to see him, as did his old comrade Isaac Knapp, who had come to Baltimore a few weeks before, to work in the Genius office. Many slave-traders also visited the jail to buy slaves, the poor creatures being constantly brought in, bound and gagged in a frightful manner, for attempting to escape,2 and Garrison did not hesitate to rebuke these dealers in human flesh for their sinful occupation. His encounter with a master who came to reclaim his fugitive was thus related by him:
During my late incarceration in Baltimore prison, four men3 came to obtain a runaway slave. He was brought out of his cell to confront his master, but pretended not to know him— did not know that he had ever seen him before—could not recollect his name. Of course the master was exceedingly irritated. “Don't you remember,” said he, “when I gave you, not long since, thirty-nine lashes under the apple-tree? Another time, when I gave you a sound flogging in the barn? Another time, when you were scourged for giving me the lie, by saying that the horse was in a good condition?” “Yes,” replied the slave, whose memory was thus quickened, “I do recollect. You have beaten me cruelly without a cause; you have not given me enough to eat and drink; and I don't want to go back again. I wish you to sell me to another master—I had rather even go to Georgia than to return home.” “I'll let you know, you villain,” said the master, “that my wishes, and not yours, are to be consulted. I'll learn you how to run away again.” The other men advised him to take the black home, and cut him up in inch pieces for his impudence, obstinacy, and desertion—swearing [176] tremendously all the while. The slave was ordered back to his cell. I had stood speechless during this singular dialogue, my blood boiling in my veins, and my limbs trembling with emotion. I now walked up to the gang, and, addressing the master as calmly as possible, said— “Sir, what right have you to that poor creature?” He looked up in my face very innocently, and replied— “My father left him to me.” “Suppose,” said I, “your father had broken into a bank and stolen ten thousand dollars, and safely bequeathed the sum as a legacy: could you conscientiously keep the money? For myself, I had rather rob any bank to an indefinite amount than kidnap a fellow-being, or hold him in bondage: the crime would be less injurious to society, and less sinful in the sight of God.” The man and his crew were confounded. What! to hear such sentiments in Maryland,—and in jail, too! Looking them full in the face, and getting no reply, I walked a few steps to the door. After a brief consultation, the master came up to me and said— “Perhaps you would like to buy the slave, and give him his liberty?” “Sir, I am a poor man; and were I ever so opulent, it would be necessary, on your part, to make out a clear title to the services of the slave before I could conscientiously make a bargain.” After a pause, he said— “Well, sir, I can prove from the Bible that slavery is right.” “Ah!” replied I, “that is a precious book—the rule of conduct. I have always supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape of fraud and oppression. However, sir, I should be glad to hear your text.” He somewhat hesitatingly muttered out— “Ham—Noah's curse, you know.” “O, sir, you build on a very slender foundation. Granting, even—what remains to be proved—that the Africans are the descendants of Ham, Noah's curse was a prediction of future servitude, and not an injunction to oppress. Pray, sir, is it a careful desire to fulfil the Scriptures, or to make money, that induces you to hold your fellow-men in bondage?” “Why, sir,” exclaimed the slavite, with unmingled astonishment, “do you really think that the slaves are beings like ourselves?—that [177] is, I mean do you believe that they possess the same faculties and capacities as the whites?” “Certainly, sir,” I responded; “I do not know that there is any moral or intellectual quality in the curl of the hair or the color of the skin. I cannot conceive why a black man may not as reasonably object to my color, as I to his. Sir, it is not a black face that I detest, but a black heart—and I find it very often under a white skin.” “Well, sir,” said my querist, “how should you like to see a black man President of the United States?” “As to that, sir, I am a true republican, and bow to the will of the majority. If the people prefer a black President, I shall cheerfully submit; and if he be qualified for the station, may peradventure give him my vote.” “How should you like to have a black man marry your daughter?” “I am not married—I have no daughter. Sir, I am not familiar with your practices; but allow me to say, that slaveholders generally should be the last persons to affect fastidiousness on that point; for they seem to be enamoured with amalgamation.” Thus ended the dialogue. . . .Austin Woolfolk had usually visited the jail almost daily, to pick up bargains for his Southern shipments; but during Garrison's incarceration he absented himself. The first task to which the imprisoned editor addressed himself was to prepare and have printed, in a pamphlet of eight pages, ‘A Brief Sketch of the Trial of William Lloyd Garrison, for an alleged libel on Francis Todd, of Massachusetts.’ To this he invited ‘the attention of the public, and of editors generally, as containing much instruction and interest, as highly illustrative of Maryland justice (as administered by Nicholas Brice), and as showing to what extent the liberty of the press is enjoyed in this State,’ and these were his concluding comments:
The following sonnet, which he had written on the wall of his cell, also appeared in the pamphlet, and is [179] unquestionably the most perfect specimen he ever produced of his favorite style of versification:
Mr. Garrison next addressed brief and caustic ‘Cards’6 to Judge Brice, Richard W. Gill, the prosecuting attorney for the State, and Henry Thompson, Todd's agent, which would have appeared in the May number of the Genius but for the timidity of the printers. Two months later,7 Lundy had his own office and printed them, with his usual fearlessness. Still another ‘Card,’ to Francis Todd, he sent to Mr. Buckingham, who promptly published it in the Boston Courier, and again spoke in complimentary terms of the young editor, whose career he had carefully watched from the outset. ‘We take the liberty,’ he added, ‘of prefixing two paragraphs from his private letter, which show, even more happily than the other, the complacency and serenity of his mind, and will teach his opponents a good lesson in the art of enduring misfortune’:
While editing the Genius Garrison found no time to indulge his fondness for writing verses, and some lines [182] of his on the Slave Trade, in the first number, were his only poetical contribution to the paper; but during his imprisonment his muse seems to have been especially active, and besides the sonnets already given he wrote a third, entitled—
[For the Courier.]
He furthermore wrote a series of twenty stanzas in fair9 Byronic metre, chiefly addressed to a young lady whom he had met but once, some three years before, but whose personal attractions had touched his susceptibilities. His incidental description of a Boston ‘election week’ or ‘June training’ has been quoted in a previous 10 chapter. Noticeable, also, is another poem of half a dozen stanzas, inspired by a speech of Senator Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, in the United States Senate, in denunciation of the plots in Georgia to dispossess the Cherokee Indians of their lands. ‘If the dominant party in the Senate,’ wrote Mr. Garrison, in sending his poem11 to12 the Genius, ‘had not been more insensate than marble statues, or their hearts more impenetrable than polar ice, his speech would have effectually checked the rapacity of Georgia, and rescued the American name from eternal infamy. Their positive refusal to observe the faith of [183] treaties caps the climax of party depravity, which, in this instance, is one degree below total depravity.’ The pamphlet account of the libel suit and trial soon evoked wide comment and criticism from the newspapers on this transparent attempt to stifle a free press. ‘More13 than an hundred voices have been raised,’ said Lundy, in the Genius, ‘more than an hundred periodical works have denounced (many of them in no very measured terms) this attack upon what we have ever considered our proper editorial privileges.’14
‘Up to that period,’ wrote Garrison subsequently, ‘no15 single incident connected with the subject of slavery had ever excited so much attention, or elicited such a spontaneous burst of general indignation. As the news of my imprisonment became extensively known, and the merits of the case understood, not a mail rolled into the city but it brought me consolatory letters from individuals hitherto unknown to me, and periodicals of all kinds, from every section of the Union, (not even excepting the South,) all uniting to give me a triumphant acquittal—all severely reprehending the conduct of Mr. Todd —and all regarding my trial as a mockery of justice. Indeed, I was in danger of being lifted up beyond measure, even in prison, by excessive panegyric and extraordinary sympathy.’16[184] The comments of no other paper were awaited with such eager interest by Mr. Garrison as those of the Newburyport Herald, as he naturally wished to know how his old master and his townsmen regarded his course, and felt anxious that they should understand and appreciate the motives which had led him to assail one of their prominent citizens. Mr. Allen could not ignore the appeal made in the pamphlet of his late apprentice, and at length broke the silence which he had hitherto kept about the matter. After briefly mentioning Garrison's trial and imprisonment, he paid a generous tribute to his protege, defending him against the charges of vanity, love of display, and eagerness for notoriety, which had been brought against him, and crediting him with only lofty aspirations and motives; and he bore this testimony:
‘We are the friends of Mr. Garrison. We have known him17 from his childhood; he has been in our family and eaten at our board. We have watched his progress in life with deep interest. Without early advantages of education, but with a mind exceedingly susceptible to improvement, he seized on every opportunity afforded by intervals from labor to create and add to his stock of information; in a word, he was a diligent student. His peculiar characteristics are an ardent temperament and warm imagination; his undeniable merits, pure purposes and unshaken courage. Resolute in his convictions on subjects of higher importance, he may seem (and no doubt sometimes is) hasty, stubborn, and dogmatic, rash and unyielding, where patience and docility would have varied his views and softened his temper.’[185] But while condemning the domestic slave trade, and applauding Garrison's reprobation of it, Mr. Allen thought that in assailing Todd he had stepped aside to wound those who were not and never would be guilty of joining in the traffic; and that his charge had been based on ‘vague rumor, hasty conversation, and scattered facts,’ and not fully sustained. That Todd considered such a charge a libel on his reputation, was a circumstance highly in his favor, and showed that he himself thought, with the just and benevolent, that the traffic ought not to be supported,—a very amusing theory, in view of the facts proved at the trial. To this article Mr. Garrison promptly replied in a letter which filled nearly three columns of the Herald:
Among the friends to whom Garrison had written, from his prison cell, a bright and cheerful letter, similar to that printed in the Boston Courier, was the poet Whittier, who felt deeply troubled about his confinement [190] and tried to devise some means of effecting his release. He could think of nothing better than to write to Henry Clay, asking him to use his influence with his personal21 and political friends in Baltimore to that end, and he took pains to remind the Kentucky statesman that the imprisoned editor had nominated him for the Presidency two years before, and was his warm admirer. Clay soon afterwards replied that he had communicated with a friend (Hezekiah Niles) in Baltimore, in compliance with Whittier's request, and had just learned from his correspondent that he had been anticipated, and that the liberation had been effected without the aid he would otherwise have given. Clay was probably disposed to unite with his friend Niles in paying the fine, if the latter considered the case a worthy one, and to testify thus his appreciation of the support which both Garrison and Whittier had given him in the Journal of the Times and the Boston Manufacturer.22 Garrison had nearly completed his seventh week in jail when Lundy received the following letter from a New York merchant, well known for his philanthropy and generosity:
The Warden's receipt for $5.34 in payment of jail fees shows that Mr. Garrison was released on the 5th of June, 1830, after an imprisonment of forty-nine days. Two days later he started for Massachusetts, to obtain certain evidence which his counsel deemed important for the trial yet pending on Todd's suit. He took with him a written circular, ‘To the Friends of the Anti-Slavery25 Cause,’ signed by Lundy and dated Baltimore, June 7, which proposed the renewal of the weekly Genius and continuation of the monthly issue, provided a sufficient patronage could be obtained. ‘My friend W. L. G. will show the foregoing to such persons as he may think [192] proper,’ added Lundy in a postscript, ‘and give any further explanations of our intentions that he may think necessary.’ On his arrival in New York, he at once called on his benefactor, Arthur Tappan, to express his gratitude for the unexpected service rendered him. ‘His appearance26 and deportment at that time,’ wrote Lewis Tappan, ‘were not likely to be forgotten. His manly form, buoyant spirit, and countenance beaming with conscious rectitude, attracted the attention of all who witnessed his introduction to Mr. Tappan.’ He proceeded without delay to Newburyport, passing through Boston on the 10th of June, and paying his respects to friendly Mr.27 Buckingham of the Courier.
Mr. Garrison lingered in Baltimore for several weeks after the above letter was written, but, finding that his second trial, on Todd's personal suit, would not occur till the fall, unable to wait there so long, and satisfied that he could expect no justice from a Maryland jury or court, he determined to make no contest, and to let the case go by default. When it came to trial, therefore, the evidence was entirely one-sided and substantially the same as that given in the previous trial, though Captain Brown now appeared by deposition, testifying that the slaves were kindly treated on the voyage, and claiming credit for having ‘actually relieved their 31 condition in some degree,’ since he had carried them to ‘a climate much more congenial to their nature.’ He also expressed his belief that this was the only case in which Mr. Todd had allowed slaves to be carried in any of his [196] vessels, and his certain knowledge that Todd had never owned a slave in his life. The defendant failing to appear,32 the case was submitted to the jury, who returned a verdict for Todd, with damages of one thousand dollars; but payment of this was never enforced, the defendant being safely beyond the reach of Maryland law. The proceedings of this trial were printed in the first number of the Liberator by Mr. Garrison, who subsequently published a candid commentary on them, disclaiming any personal hostility to Mr. Todd and Captain Brown, and asserting that in the publication of his strictures he was governed by the following very practical motives:
1. A sense of duty, as an advocate of freedom, and a hater33 of tyranny and of all its abettors. 2. A desire to evince to the Southern people, that, in opposing slavery, I disregarded all sectional feelings, and that a New-England assistant was as liable to reprehension as a Maryland slaveholder. 3. A belief that the publication would ever afterward deter Mr. Todd from venturing into the domestic slave trade; and that it would be a rod over the backs of New-England merchants generally. Having proved, on my first trial, my main charges—viz., that the Francis carried away the slaves, and even thirteen more than I had stated—that the ship was owned by Mr. Todd—and that he was privy to the transaction—I determined to incur no expense, and to give myself no trouble, in relation to the second suit. I knew that my judges must be men tainted with the leprosy of oppression, with whom it would be useless to contend—men morally incapable of giving an impartial verdict, from the very nature of their pursuit. And here let me observe, en passant, that, though I do not say that a packed jury has convicted me, yet, knowing as I do how juries are selected in Baltimore, and recognizing also some of my condemners, I consider my trial as having had all the formality, but none of the substance, of justice. . . . Mr. Todd, as a high-minded man, should have been satisfied with the result of the former trial. The second suit betrays the meanness of avarice and the littleness of revenge. It was [197] not so much a desire to clear his reputation, as to gain a few dollars or gratify a vindictive spirit, that induced the prosecution. It is averred, that, “after his [Garrison's] conviction in the City Court, he was distinctly informed through his Counsel, that as Mr. Todd had no vindictive feelings to gratify, the suit would be withdrawn, if a proper apology and recantation of the calumny were put upon record.” This is true; and it is also true that I refused to comply with the demand, because I never will apologize for telling the truth. With regard to the truth of my allegation, that chains were used on board the Francis, it could not be substantiated except by summoning the crew. Generally speaking, irons are inseparable from the slave trade; nor is this usage a grievance in the eye of the law, but a preservative right on the part of owners and masters of vessels engaged in the perilous traffic. Whether the slaves, in this instance, were confined or not, was immaterial to the formation of a verdict. I am now disposed to believe, however, that no chains were used on board of the Francis. It is certainly true, as stated in my ‘libellous’ article, that Mr. Todd has been remarkably successful in his commercial speculations; but I do not know that he has ever been guilty of carrying slaves in his vessels, excepting in this particular instance. He says that this was his first cargo of souls, and Capt. Brown corroborates his assertion; and I am almost as sure that it will be his last. Leaving Mr. Todd, (to his relief and my own,) my business is next with Capt. Brown and his fanciful affidavit. He says “he received on board of the Francis eighty-eight black passengers”—a very delicate substitute for slaves. These passengers, he concedes, belonged to a “new master, named Milligan, who was present at the time of their embarkation, and assured them that they were not to be sold again at New Orleans—but that he intended them all for his own estate.” No doubt this trader in souls was fruitful in promises; but what security had the slaves for their fulfilment? Nothing but the mere say-so of their unprincipled buyer; or, to borrow the courtly language of Capt. Brown, nothing but “the honor and integrity of Mr. Milligan.” I do not care whether the slaves were bought expressly for the New Orleans market, or for Milligan's own use; it does not, in my estimation, alter the aspect of the affair. If they [198] were to be sold, they might get a better—they might get a worse—master than Milligan. They are disposable property; and he who bought them to make money, would assuredly sell them for the same reason, whenever an opportunity presented itself. To say that they were not intended for public sale, is a contemptible quibble. Of this I was aware: that they were slaves—the creatures of an absolute despotism; that they were human beings, entitled to all the privileges and enjoyments of liberty; and that no man could assist in their oppression without participating in the guilt of the purchase. I must ever regret that New England men were engaged in the inhuman traffic, but not that I promptly exposed them to public censure. . . . The decision of the Court upon my trial forms the paradox of paradoxes. The law says that the domestic slave trade is a legal business, and no more criminal than the most innocent mechanical or commercial pursuit; and, therefore, that any man may honestly engage in it. Yet, if I charge an individual with following it, either occasionally or regularly, I am guilty of “a gross and malicious libel” —of “defaming his good name, fame and reputation” —of “foul calumny and base innuendo” —with sundry other law phrases, as set forth in an indictment! So much for the consistency of the law! So much for the equity of the Court! The trial, in fact, was not to ascertain whether my charges were true, but whether they contained anything disreputable to the character of the accused; and the verdict does not implicate or condemn me, but the law. The hat-making business, for instance, is an authorized trade. Suppose I were to accuse a man of making hats, and should believe, and publicly declare as my opinion, that every hat-maker ought be imprisoned for life: would this be libellous? It is my belief, that every distiller or vender of ardent spirits is a poisoner of the health and morals of community; but have I not a right to express this belief without subjection to fine and imprisonment? I believe, moreover, that every man who kills another, either in a duel or battle, is, in the eye of God, guilty of his blood; but is it criminal or punishable to cherish or avow such an opinion? What is freedom of thought, or freedom of expression? It is my right—and no body of men can legally deprive me of it—to interrogate the moral aspect and public utility of every pursuit or traffic. True, my views may be ridiculous or fanatical; but they may also be just and benevolent. Free inquiry is the essence, the life-blood of liberty; [199] and they who deny men the right to use it, are the enemies of the republic. In conclusion, I would remark that, on my first trial, his honor Judge Brice informed my counsel that if the case had been submitted to the Court, instead of the jury, it would have been thrown out as containing nothing actionable. The facts are now before the public. It is for them to judge whether imprisonment and a fine of one thousand dollars (giving the worst construction to my motives and language) are not excessive punishment; and whether, in the publication of my strictures, I exceeded the freedom of the press, or the legitimate province of an independent editor.34As his trip to Massachusetts had failed to afford any encouragement for the renewal of his partnership with Lundy, and the revival of the weekly Genius, Mr. Garrison resolved to establish a journal of his own; and in August, 1830, he issued the following prospectus, of which the original draft, in his clear handwriting, is probably the only complete copy now in existence:
A copy of this prospectus was evidently sent to Arthur Tappan, who replied with characteristic promptness and generosity:
During his imprisonment, Mr. Garrison had prepared three addresses on slavery and colonization, for delivery at the North; and, after trying in vain to obtain a hall or meeting-house in Baltimore in which to give them, he [203] left that city in the fourth week of August, and did not revisit it for thirty-four years. Philadelphia was the first city in which he paused, on his northward journey, and he was there a week before he could obtain the free use of a hall in which to hold his meetings. He was about giving up in despair and leaving the city, when the hall of the Franklin Institute was offered to him, and on Tuesday evening, August 31, 1830, he gave his first lecture there to an audience composed almost exclusively of members of the Society of Friends and of colored people. They listened to this and to the lectures of the two succeeding evenings with marked attention and interest, though his ‘hard language’ troubled some. The Inquirer, while professing friendship and sympathy for Mr. Garrison, reproved him for his excess of zeal and intemperance in advocating his views; yet it spoke warmly of his first lecture, which it declared to be ‘elevated and impassioned, bespeaking the thorough37 acquaintance of the author with his subject, and evincing the deep and philanthropic interest which animated him in behalf of the poor Africans. The declamation of Mr. Garrison,’ it furthermore said, ‘is in some respects uninviting and defective; but it is impossible for an intelligent auditor to be unimpressed with the strength and beauty of his composition. Indeed, we thought the former quality too predominant, though its attractiveness is a sufficient excuse for its display.’ The friends who welcomed him to Philadelphia were those who had long been actively interested in the antislavery cause, and who, as personal friends of Lundy and subscribers to the Genius, were not unfamiliar with Garrison. Among them were Thomas Shipley, Dr. Edwin P. Atlee, and James and Lucretia Mott, all of whom proffered the hospitality of their homes and gave him words of encouragement.38 [204] In New York he repeated his lectures in Broadway Hall to small but respectable audiences, Arthur and Lewis Tappan honoring him with their presence. Thence he went to New Haven, and was welcomed by his friend Simeon S. Jocelyn to the pulpit of the colored church in that city, of which, although a white man, he was the pastor. ‘I spoke to mixed audiences,’ records Mr.39 Garrison, ‘and naturally to the hearty approval of my colored hearers. I had a prolonged interview with Rev. Leonard Bacon, D. D., and an earnest discussion respecting the merits of the American Colonization Society, he being its special champion. I was greatly impressed with his ability, and equally so with the jesuitism of his reasoning. At Hartford I lectured in a colored church, and roused up a good deal of interest in the breasts of the colored inhabitants. In all these places converts and friends were made among the whites.’ From Hartford he addressed this letter to Rev. George Shepard, of Hallowell, Maine, of whose church his recent benefactor, Ebenezer Dole, was a member, and who had consulted him with reference to an offer which Mr. Dole proposed to make, anonymously, of $50 premium for the best tract on slavery:
Mr. Garrison now proceeded to Newburyport, resolved that his native town should be the first place in Massachusetts to hear his lectures on slavery. Dr. Daniel Dana, pastor of the Presbyterian church on Harris Street, [208] readily agreed to give him the meeting-house for that purpose, but when the audience gathered for the first lecture, the doors of the sanctuary were closed, and it appeared that the Trustees had held a meeting and overruled their pastor, who could only express his regret and chagrin that they had refused to sustain him. The Todd influence was still all-powerful, and endeavored to crush the offending editor, who left Newburyport in disgust for Amesbury. As he was driving up the hill beyond the Chain Bridge, he met his friend Dr. Luther F. Dimmick, pastor of the Second Congregational church. ‘William,’ said the Doctor, ‘I thought you were going to lecture last night’; and on William's explaining why he had not done so, the Doctor declared that he should have his church for as many lectures as he wanted. It was agreed that he should return to Newburyport as soon as he had delivered his lectures in Amesbury, and these he gave, probably on three consecutive evenings, before the42 Amesbury and Salisbury Lyceum. The Lyceum room was so crowded during the first lecture that Rev. Mr. Damon's meeting-house was secured for the second and third addresses, and filled.
‘The first lecture,’ wrote a correspondent of the 43 Newburyport Herald, ‘endeavored to refute the strongest and most popular objections to the immediate abolition of slavery, and to show that expediency, as well as justice, urged the necessity of the measure. The second pointed out slavery as it exists in law, and in fact, in our country, the speaker illustrating his remarks by several anecdotes of the extreme cruelty exercised towards the slaves of our Southern States, some of which instances he told us he himself had witnessed. These cruelties he described with so much feeling, and in language so forcible, that one might almost fancy he heard the groans, and viewed the lacerated bodies, of the poor sufferers. While in this part of his discourse, all his feelings and power of soul appeared to be brought into action, and so vividly did he describe the sufferings of the slaves that the audience seemed to be completely carried along with him, and to partake, in some degree at least, of the enthusiasm of the speaker. . . . In the third and last discourse we were told that the crime, the infamy, and the [209] curse of slavery are national, and that we New Englanders are equally culpable with the slave-dealers and slave-owners. He also spoke of the Colonization Society. It is, he says, lulling the American people to sleep.’These meetings in Amesbury sowed good seed, and ripened public sentiment for the early formation of two anti-slavery societies there, one of men and the other of women. Returning without delay to Newburyport, Mr. Garrison delivered his first lecture in Dr. Dimmick's church, on the evening of September 28, to a large audience; but the next evening the doors were closed against him, and Dr. Dimmick found himself as helpless in the hands of his Trustees as Dr. Dana had been. Indignant at this insulting treatment, Mr. Garrison addressed the following communication to the editor of the Herald, and, shaking the dust of the town from his feet, went back to Boston:
[210] Two days later, a brief editorial appeared in the columns of the Boston Evening Transcript, announcing45 Mr. Garrison's arrival in Boston, and describing the shabby treatment to which he had been subjected in Newburyport. The article46concluded with some complimentary words about the young reformer in a cause ‘which he could never hope to see perfected, but of which he would long be remembered as an early and laborious pioneer.’ Encouraged by this kindly reception, Mr. Garrison sent three short communications to the Transcript during the ensuing month. In one of these he called attention to the47 recent rendition of two fugitive slaves (man and wife) who had escaped by secreting themselves on a brig from New Orleans to Boston, but who, being discovered before the vessel reached port, were arrested and carried before a magistrate on its arrival, and sent back into slavery without producing the least ripple of excitement in the community. In another article he commented on the 48 inconsistency and hypocrisy of the whites of Charleston. Richmond and Baltimore, in noisily celebrating the overthrow of Charles the Tenth, of France, while holding their fellow-beings in a state of servitude which, for cruelty and debasement, found no parallel in European despotism. This stirred the wrath of the Charleston (S. C.) City Gazette, which declared it ‘impertinence’ in a man who had ‘lately been punished for similar impertinences,’ to meddle with the concerns of other people, and expressed the wish that he might be furnished with some ‘decent, honest employment,’ to keep him out of mischief. The Transcript copied this paragraph as ‘a49 fair offset’ to the article which had elicited it; whereupon Mr. Garrison replied in a letter of such vigor that the timid editor printed it with confessed reluctance, and a preliminary sermon to his correspondent on the rashness [211] and unwisdom of using harsh or intemperate language in discussing so delicate a subject as slavery. It was evident that the latter's communications would no longer be welcomed to the Transcript's columns, and this letter—in which, as ‘a New-England mechanic who is not ashamed of his trade,’ he asked the Charleston ‘scribbler’ whether it was a ‘decent, honest employment’ to ‘reduce the creatures of God to a level with brutes, to lacerate and brand their bodies with more than savage cruelty, and to keep their souls in thick, impenetrable darkness’—was his last word. ‘When,’ he fervently declared,—
‘When I shall become so mean and dastardly, so lost to every50 feeling of humanity, every principle of justice, every conviction of conscience, as to fetter and sell my own countrymen or others, may I receive (as I ought to receive, if capital punishment be lawful,) a just reward for my conduct at the gallows, like any other pirate; may my memory be accursed to the end of time; and may the lightnings of heaven consume my body to ashes. I join with the eloquent and indignant Brougham— “Tell me not of rights—talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right—I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. While men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man.” ’During the first fortnight after his arrival in Boston, Mr. Garrison vainly endeavored to procure, without cost, a place in which to deliver his lectures; and he finally sent this advertisement to the Courier:51
This appeal was quickly answered, but not by any of the Christian ministers or churches of Boston. It was left for a society of avowed ‘infidels’52 to save the city from the shame of sealing all its doors against the slave's advocate, and to offer him their hall for his three lectures, although, as a body and individually, they had no personal acquaintance or sympathy with him, and no especial interest in his cause. Two days later, the papers announced that Mr. Garrison would deliver his first lecture on Friday evening, October 15, in Julien Hall, at the northwest corner of Milk and Congress Streets.53 It was not without reluctance that the young Baptist accepted this courteous offer from a sect whom he had so recently denounced and held up for reprobation, and who now taught him, and the Christian brotherhood to whom he had vainly appealed, a lesson of charity and toleration that might well cause them to blush. Accordingly, in acknowledging, at the beginning of his first lecture, his indebtedness to them and his shame that the churches had allowed themselves to be thus surpassed, he felt it incumbent upon him to explain that he was very far from sympathizing with their views on religious questions, and that he believed slavery could be abolished only through the power of the Gospel and of the Christian religion. The hall was pretty well filled when he began his address, and the audience included Dr. Lyman Beecher, Rev. Ezra S. Gannett, Deacon Moses Grant, and John Tappan (a brother of Arthur）—the last two, well-known and respected merchants; Rev. Samuel J. May, then [213] settled as a Unitarian minister at Brooklyn, Connecticut, and the only one of the denomination in that State; his cousin, Samuel E. Sewall, a young Boston lawyer; and his brother-in-law, A. Bronson Alcott.54Mr. May has thus described the occasion:
Presently the young man arose, modestly, but with an air55 of calm determination, and delivered such a lecture as he only, I believe, at that time, could have written; for he only had had his eyes so anointed that he could see that outrages perpetrated upon Africans were wrongs done to our common humanity; he only, I believe, had had his cars so completely unstopped of “prejudice against color” that the cries of enslaved black men and black women sounded to him as if they came from brothers and sisters. He began with expressing deep regret and shame for the zeal he had lately manifested in the Colonization cause. It was, he confessed, a zeal without knowledge. He had been deceived by the misrepresentations so diligently given throughout the free States, by Southern agents, of the design and tendency of the Colonization scheme. During his few months' residence in Maryland he had been completely undeceived. He had there found out that the design of those who originated, and the especial intentions of those in the Southern States that engaged in the plan, were to remove from the country, as a [214] disturbing element in slaveholding communities, all the free colored people, so that the bondmen might the more easily be held in subjection. He exhibited in graphic sketches and glowing colors the suffering of the enslaved, and denounced the plan of Colonization as devised and adapted to perpetuate the system, and intensify the wrongs of American slavery, and therefore utterly undeserving of the patronage of lovers of liberty and friends of humanity. Never before was I so affected by the speech of man. When he had ceased speaking I said to those around me: “That is a providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake our nation to its centre, but he will shake slavery out of it. We ought to know him, we ought to help him. Come, let us go and give him our hands.” Mr. Sewall and Mr. Alcott went up with me, and we introduced each other. I said to him: “Mr. Garrison, I am not sure that I can indorse all you have said this evening. Much of it requires careful consideration. But I am prepared to embrace you. I am sure you are called to a great work, and I mean to help you.” Mr. Sewall cordially assured him of his readiness also to cooperate with him. Mr. Alcott invited him to his home. He went, and we sat with him until twelve that night, listening to his discourse, in which he showed plainly that immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation, was the right of every slave, and could not be withheld by his master an hour without sin. That night my soul was baptized in his spirit, and ever since I have been a disciple and fellow-laborer of William Lloyd Garrison. The next morning, immediately after breakfast, I went to his boarding-house and stayed until two P. M. I learned that he was poor, dependent upon his daily labor for his daily bread, and intending to return to the printing business. But, before he could devote himself to his own support, he felt that he must deliver his message, must communicate to persons of prominent influence what he had learned of the sad condition of the enslaved, and the institutions and spirit of the slaveholders; trusting that all true and good men would discharge the obligation pressing upon them to espouse the cause of the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden. He read to me letters he had addressed to Dr. Channing, Dr. Beecher, Dr. Edwards,56 the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, and Hon. Daniel Webster, holding up to their view the tremendous iniquity of the land, and begging them, ere it should be too late, to interpose their great power in the Church and State to save our country from the [215] terrible calamities which the sin of slavery was bringing upon us. These letters were eloquent, solemn, impressive. I wonder they did not produce a greater effect. It was because none to whom he appealed, in public or private, would espouse the cause, that Mr. Garrison found himself left and impelled to become the leader of the great anti-slavery reform . . . . The hearing of Mr. Garrison's lectures was a great epoch in my own life. The impression which they made upon my soul has never been effaced; indeed, they moulded it anew. They gave a new direction to my thoughts, a new purpose to my ministry.The second and third lectures were delivered on Saturday and Monday evenings, October 16 and 18, 1830, and on the 28th Mr. Garrison repeated the first lecture in Athenaeum Hall, on Pearl Street, which Mr. Sewall and Mr. May had engaged for him, doubtless at their own expense. A few colored persons who attended it sat apart in one corner, in accordance with their habit in those days, feeling that even at such a meeting their presence might be unwelcome and distasteful to the white auditors. Dr. Beecher, as has been mentioned, was present at the first lecture, but no word of sympathy or approval came from him. He was the man to whom Mr. Garrison had first turned with confidence for help in this new crusade against sin and iniquity, but the Doctor was indifferent to his appeal, and excused himself on the ground that he had too many irons in the fire already. ‘Then,’57 said Garrison, solemnly, ‘you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your duty to the slave.’ The demand for immediate and unconditional emancipation was alarming to the Doctor, however. ‘Your zeal,’ he said to Garrison, ‘is commendable, but you are misguided. If you will give up your fanatical notions and be guided by us (the clergy), we will make you the Wilberforce of America.’ Of a very different mould from Dr. Beecher was the young Unitarian minister who now allied himself with Mr. Garrison. One of the sweetest and gentlest of men, [216] disliking controversy with all his soul, he did not for a moment shrink from the path of trial which now opened before him. On the Sunday following the delivery of Mr. Garrison's lectures, Mr. May occupied the pulpit of Rev. Mr. Young at Church Green, in Summer Street. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I could not again speak to a 58 congregation, as a Christian minister, and be silent respecting the great iniquity of our nation. The only sermon I had brought from my home in Connecticut that could be made to bear on the subject, was one on Prejudice—the sermon about to be published as one of the Tracts of the American Unitarian Association. So I touched it up as well as I could, interlining here and there words and sentences which pointed in the new direction to which my thoughts and feelings so strongly tended, and writing at its close what used to be called an improvement.’ This was a fervid appeal in behalf of the two millions of his fellow-beings in bondage. His concluding declaration, that the iniquity must be put an end to, even if the very foundations of the Republic itself were thereby broken up, created much excitement in the congregation. When he rose to pronounce the benediction, Mr. May said:
‘Every one present must be conscious that the closing 59 remarks of my sermon have caused an unusual emotion throughout the church. I am glad. Would to God that a deeper emotion could be sent throughout our land, until all the people thereof shall be roused from their wicked insensibility to the most tremendous sin of which any nation was ever guilty, and be impelled to do that righteousness which alone can avert the just displeasure of God. I have been prompted to speak thus by the words I have heard during the past week from a young man hitherto unknown, but who is, I believe, called of God to do a greater work for the good of our country than has been done by any one since the Revolution. I mean William Lloyd Garrison. He is going to repeat his lectures the coming week. I advise, I exhort, I entreat—would that I could compel!— you to go and hear him.’This fearless profession brought the immediate reproof and condemnation of Mr. Young, and the reprobation [217] of most of his auditors, upon Mr. May; and his father was beset next day by friends and business acquaintances who begged him to stop his son in this ‘mad career.’ The young man was immovable, however, and neither halted nor retreated in his course save on one point. When he handed his sermon to Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., then purveyor of the American Unitarian Association, for publication, the latter insisted that the interlineations and additions respecting slavery should be omitted, and Mr. May consented, to his lasting regret. ‘Unconsciously to ourselves,’ he said, ‘the hand of the60 slaveholding power lay heavily upon the mind and heart of the people in our Northern as well as Southern States.’ This fact was becoming more and more impressed on Mr. Garrison, and when he learned, during this month of October, that Lundy had removed the Genius to Washington, he abandoned his intention of publishing the Liberator at the national capital, and resolved to establish it in Boston. It is difficult to overrate the value of Mr. May's and Mr. Sewall's friendship to him at that period. The former's hearty and enthusiastic response to his appeal at Julien Hall had been as unexpected and delightful as his own self-consecration to the cause had been to Lundy, two years previous; while Mr. Sewall's excellent judgment and advice were of frequent service to him when launching his paper and movement in Boston. In one respect Mr. Garrison declined to follow his suggestions. Desirous of conciliating and winning as large a number of the community as possible, and fearful that the name Liberator would alarm and repel them, Mr. Sewall suggested several of a milder type, of which one was the Safety Lamp. On this point, however, the editor was tenacious and adhered to his self-explanatory title. But, as through all their subsequent long association with one another, difference of judgment on subordinate questions failed to weaken or impair in the slightest degree the friendship begun at Julien Hall. [218] And now it remained for Mr. Garrison to establish, at the beginning of the new year, the paper which he had publicly announced. He had neither types, press, nor office, nor had he any money, and he had secured no subscribers beyond the few personal friends whom he could count on his fingers. It was clearly impossible for him to edit, print and publish the paper alone and unaided, and he could not afford to hire an assistant. At this juncture his friend Isaac Knapp, as poor and destitute as himself, but like him a practical printer, agreed to go into partnership with him and share the toils and privations of his seemingly desperate enterprise; and they proceeded to devise ways and means by which the paper could be issued. Even if they should succeed in publishing the first number, it was a problem how they could afford to bring out a second. If a desire for glory or reputation had been their controlling motive, any other method of obtaining it would have seemed more promising than the course they had chosen; but Mr. Garrison, in a sonnet which appeared in the same number of the Courier in61 which he advertised for a hall had already avowed his indifference to
