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.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.[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,