previous next
[127]

Chapter 5: the Jubilee.—1865.

Missouri follows the example of Maryland, and Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery forever. Garrison opens the jubilee meeting held in Boston, and proclaims the Declaration of Independence Constitutionalized; is pressingly summoned to Newburyport for a like occasion, and warmly greeted; and gives notice of his intention to discontinue the Liberator at the end of the year. He is invited, together with George Thompson, by Secretary Stanton, to attend the ceremony of replacing the national flag at Sumter; sails on the Arago with Henry Ward Beecher and other invited guests; rejoins his son in Charleston; addresses the freedmen in multitudes, and receives the most touching tokens of their gratitude; visits the grave of Calhoun, and is recalled to the North by the news of Lincoln's assassination.


Swiftly following the example of Maryland, Missouri joined the ranks of the free States at the beginning of the new year, and abolished slavery within1 her borders without a day of grace or a cent of compensation to the slave-masters.2 As if shamed to decency by this signal repentance of her neighbor, Illinois tardily3 repealed her infamous ‘Black Laws’; and on the last day of January the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forever abolishing slavery in the United States, triumphantly passed the House of Representatives at Washington by the requisite two-thirds majority. “With devout thanksgiving to God, and emotions of joy which no language can express,” Lib. 35.18. Mr. Garrison announced the event to his readers, and when the salute of one hundred guns in its honor was fired by Gov. Andrew's order, he went up to the Common to enjoy the sight and listen to the reverberations. At the Governor's suggestion and request, the church bells were rung throughout the State; and it was while sitting in the quiet Friends' Meeting at Amesbury that Mr. Whittier heard these, and, divining the cause, framed in thought his inspired lines of praise and thanksgiving (‘Laus Deo!’), which Mr. Garrison never wearied of repeating. A Jubilee Meeting was4 speedily convened in Music Hall, which was crowded with an enthusiastic audience, and when the chairman (Josiah

1 Jan. 11.

2 The new Constitution was adopted in State Convention without submission to popular vote. The clause abolishing slavery passed by a vote of 60 to 4 (Lib. 35: 11).

3 Lib. 35.28.

4 Feb. 4.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Lib (3)
W. L. Garrison (3)
John G. Whittier (1)
George Thompson (1)
Edwin M. Stanton (1)
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Jan (1)
Feb (1)
Laus Deo (1)
John C. Calhoun (1)
Henry Ward Beecher (1)
Arago (1)
John A. Andrew (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1865 AD (1)
January 13th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: