Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[254] this editor, ‘without expressing frankly what we think of Garrison—for the whole act is his, and not that of Jackson, Wendell Phillips, or Dr. Bowditch—from this¹ act. We don't believe he cares the value of a copper cent² for the cause of Freedom or Temperance, except so far as it will build up his own fame.’ More curiously (if not more lamentably) still, George Bradburn, in his Pioneer,³ could ‘conceive of many reasons, any one of which would have justified, not only, but demanded’ Father Mathew's declining ‘to show himself among the Disunionists at Worcester.’ Yet Bradburn had done what he could to⁴ utilize the Irish Address, saying, when it was unrolled, on January 28, 1842, in Faneuil Hall, that he wished Father⁵ Mathew or Daniel O'Connell were there to give fit utterance to the fact that ‘Slavery strikes at the interest of every laboring man’; and recalling, for the benefit of his Irish auditors, O'Connells scornful refusal to visit a slavepolluted America or to shake hands with American slaveholders, and entreaty of the Irish in this country to join the abolitionists.

Mr. Garrison, with the best generalship, concentrating all his editorial batteries on one point, speedily demolished Father Mathew's pretence of maintaining that neutrality towards slavery which, in the Address, had been pronounced impossible. Page after page of the Liberator⁶ was given up to the discussion excited by the incidents above described, as well as to copious extracts from⁷ O'Connell's withering speeches on the blood-guiltiness of America. With unwonted persistency and regularity the editor addressed five open letters to Father Mathew,⁸ reviewing their relations, and confirming the great moral lesson of the Apostle's fall. Such education of public sentiment was the exclusive privilege of abolition journalism. No party sheet could have dreamt of it, for it had no relation to votes or ‘tickets.’

In his first letter, written a month after the interview, Mr. Garrison vindicated his report of it and the action of the Massachusetts Society: