[Illustration: Wm. Lloyd Garrison]

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON

_THE ABOLITIONIST_

BY ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKE, M. A. 

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Grimké, Archibald Henry, 1849-1930. 

William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. 

Reprint of the 1891 ed. Published by Funk & Wagnalls, New York. 

1. Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879. 

Reprinted from the edition of 1891, New York First AMS edition publishedin 1974

_To Mrs. Anna M. Day, who has been a mother to my little girl, and asister to me, this book is gratefully and affectionately dedicated, by_

_The Author_. 

PREFACE. 

The author of this volume desires by way of preface to say just twothings:--firstly, that it is his earnest hope that this record of a heromay be an aid to brave and true living in the Republic, so that theproblems knocking at its door for solution may find the heads, thehands, and the hearts equal to the performance of the duties imposed bythem upon the men and women of this generation. William Lloyd Garrisonwas brave and true. Bravery and truth were the secret of his marvelouscareer and achievements. May his countrymen and countrywomen imitate hisexample and be brave and true, not alone in emergent moments, but ineveryday things as well. 

So much for the author's firstly, now for his secondly, which is toacknowledge his large indebtedness in the preparation of this book tothat storehouse of anti-slavery material, the story of the life ofWilliam Lloyd Garrison by his children. Out of its garnered riches hehas filled his sack. 

HYDE PARK, MASS. , May 10, 1891. 

CONTENTS. 

Dedication III

Preface V

CHAPTER I. 

The Father of the Man 11

CHAPTER II. 

The Man Hears a Voice: Samuel, Samuel! 38

CHAPTER III. 

The Man Begins his Ministry 69

CHAPTER IV. 

The Hour and the Man 92

CHAPTER V. 

The Day of Small Things 110

CHAPTER VI. 

The Heavy World is Moved 118

CHAPTER VII. 

Master Strokes 133

CHAPTER VIII. 

Colorphobia 157

CHAPTER IX. 

Agitation and Repression 170

CHAPTER X. 

Between the Acts 192

CHAPTER XI. 

Mischief Let Loose 208

CHAPTER XII. 

Flotsam and Jetsam 233

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Barometer Continues to Fall 242

CHAPTER XIV. 

Brotherly Love Fails, and Ideas Abound 263

CHAPTER XV. 

Random Shots 292

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Pioneer Makes a New and Startling Departure 306

CHAPTER XVII. 

As in a Looking Glass 319

CHAPTER XVIII. 

The Turning of a Long Lane 335

CHAPTER XIX. 

Face to Face 356

CHAPTER XX. 

The Death-Grapple 370

CHAPTER XXI. 

The Last 385

Index 397

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE FATHER OF THE MAN. 

William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, December10, 1805. Forty years before, Daniel Palmer, his great-grandfather, emigrated from Massachusetts and settled with three sons and a daughteron the St. John River, in Nova Scotia. The daughter's name was Mary, andit was she who was to be the future grandmother of our hero. One of theneighbors of Daniel Palmer was Joseph Garrison, who was probably anEnglishman. He was certainly a bachelor. The Acadian solitude of fivehundred acres and Mary Palmer's charms proved too much for thesusceptible heart of Joseph Garrison. He wooed and won her, and on histhirtieth birthday she became his wife. The bride herself was buttwenty-three, a woman of resources and of presence of mind, as sheneeded to be in that primitive settlement. Children and cares came apaceto the young wife, and we may be sure confined her more and more closelyto her house. But in the midst of a fast-increasing family and ofmultiplying cares a day's outing did occasionally come to the busyhousewife, when she would go down the river to spend it at her father'sfarm. Once, ten years after her marriage, she had a narrow escape on oneof those rare days. She had started in a boat with her youngest child, Abijah, and a lad who worked in her household. It was spring and the St. John was not yet clear of ice. Higher up the river the ice broke thatmorning and came floating down with the current. The boat in which MaryGarrison and her baby rode was overtaken by the fragments and wrecked. The mother with her child sought refuge on a piece of ice and was drivenshoreward. Wrapping Abijah in all the clothes she could spare she threwhim ashore. She and the lad followed by the aid of an overhanging willowbough. The baby was unharmed, for she had thrown him into a snow-bank. But the perils of the river gave place to the perils of the woods. Inthem Mary Garrison wandered with her infant, who was no less a personagethan the father of William Lloyd Garrison, until at length she found thehut of a friendly Indian, who took her in and "entertained her with hisbest words and deeds, and the next morning conducted her safely to herfather's. "

The Palmers were a hardy, liberty-loving race of farmers, and JosephGarrison was a man of unusual force and independence of character. Thelife which these early settlers lived was a life lived partly on theland and partly on the river. They were equally at home with scythe oroar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that thechildren should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of themtook to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. Theamphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, rovingcharacter. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. Hewas a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain ofromance and adventure in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life heprobably craved strong excitement. This craving was in part appeased nodoubt by travel and drink. He took to the sea and he took to the cup. But he was more than a creature of appetites, he was a man of sentiment. Being a man of sentiment what should he do but fall in love. The womanwho inspired his love was no ordinary woman, but a genuine Acadianbeauty. She was a splendid specimen of womankind. Tall she was, gracefuland admirably proportioned. Never before had Abijah in all hiswanderings seen a creature of such charms of person. Her face matchedthe attractions of her form and her mind matched the beauty of her face. She possessed a nature almost Puritanic in its abhorrence of sin, and inthe strength of its moral convictions. She feared to do wrong more thanshe feared any man. With this supremacy of the moral sense there wentalong singular firmness of purpose and independence of character. When amere slip of a girl she was called upon to choose between regard for herreligious convictions and regard for her family. It happened in thiswise. Fanny Lloyd's parents were Episcopalians, who were inclined toview with contempt fellow-Christians of the Baptist persuasion. To havea child of theirs identify herself with this despised sect was one ofthose crosses which they could not and would not bear. But Fanny had ina fit of girlish frolic entered one of the meetings of these low-casteChristians. What she heard changed the current of her life. She knewthenceforth that God was no respecter of persons, and that the crucifiedNazarene looked not upon the splendor of ceremonies but upon thethoughts of the heart of His disciples. Here in a barn, amid vulgarfolk, and uncouth, dim surroundings, He had appeared, He, her Lord andMaster. He had touched her with that white unspeakable appeal. Thelaughter died upon the fair girlish face and prayer issued from thebeautiful lips. If vulgar folk, the despised Baptists, were good enoughfor the Christ, were they not good enough for her? Among them she hadfelt His consecrating touch and among them she determined to devoteherself to Him. Her parents commanded and threatened but Fanny Lloyd wasbent on obeying the heavenly voice of duty rather than father andmother. They had threatened that if she allowed herself to be baptisedthey would turn her out of doors. Fanny was baptised and her parentsmade good the threat. Their home was no longer her home. She had thecourage of her conviction--ability to suffer for a belief. 

Such was the woman who subsequently became the wife of Abijah Garrison, and the mother of one of the greatest moral heroes of the century. Abijah followed the sea, and she for several years with an increasingfamily followed Abijah. First from one place and then another she glidedafter him in her early married life. He loved her and his little onesbut the love of travel and change was strong within him. He was everrestless and changeful. During one of his roving fits he emigrated withhis family from Nova Scotia to the United States. It was in the springof 1805 that he and they landed in Newburyport. The following Decemberhis wife presented him with a boy, whom they called William LloydGarrison. Three years afterward Abijah deserted his wife and children. Of the causes which led to this act nothing is now known. Soon after hisarrival in Newburyport he had found employment. He made several voyagesas sailing-master in 1805-8 from that port. He was apparently duringthese years successful after the manner of his craft. But he was not aman to remain long in one place. What was the immediate occasion of hisstrange behavior we can only conjecture. Possibly an increasing love forliquor had led to domestic differences, which his pleasure-loving naturewould not brook. Certain it was that he was not like his wife. He wasnot a man in whom the moral sense was uppermost. He was governed byimpulse and she by fixed moral and religious principles. He drank andshe abhorred the habit. She tried first moral suasion to induce him toabandon the habit, and once, in a moment of wifely and motherlyindignation, she broke up one of his drinking parties in her house bytrying the efficacy of a little physical suasion. She turned the companyout of doors and smashed the bottles of liquor. This was not the kind ofwoman whom Abijah cared to live with as a wife. He was not the sort ofman whom the most romantic love could attach to the apron-strings of anywoman. And in the matter of his cup he probably saw that this was whathe would be obliged to do as the condition of domestic peace. Thecondition he rejected and, rejecting it, rejected and cast-off his wifeand family and the legal and moral responsibilities of husband andfather. 

Bitter days now followed and Fanny Garrison became acquainted with griefand want. She had the mouths of three children to fill--the youngest aninfant at her breast. The battle of this broken-hearted woman for theirdaily bread was as heroic as it was pathetic. She still lived in thelittle house on School street where Lloyd was born. The owner, MarthaFarnham, proved herself a friend indeed to the poor harassed soul. Nowshe kept the wolf from the door by going out as a monthly nurse--"AuntFarnham" looking after the little ones in her absence. She was put toall her possibles during those anxious years of struggle and want. EvenLloyd, wee bit of a boy, was pressed into the service. She would makemolasses candies and send him upon the streets to sell them. But withall her industry and resource what could she do with three childrenweighing her down in the fierce struggle for existence, rendered tenfoldfiercer after the industrial crisis preceding and following the War of1812. Then it was that she was forced to supplement her scant earningswith refuse food from the table of "a certain mansion on State street. "It was Lloyd who went for this food, and it was he who had to run thegauntlet of mischievous and inquisitive children whom he met and wholonged for a peep into his tin pail. But the future apostle ofnon-resistance was intensely resistant, we may be sure, on suchoccasions. For, as his children have said in the story of his life:"Lloyd was a thorough boy, fond of games and of all boyish sport. Barefooted, he trundled his hoop all over Newburyport; he swam in theMerrimac in summer, and skated on it in winter; he was good at scullinga boat; he played at bat and ball and snowball, and sometimes led the'Southend boys' against the Northenders in the numerous conflictsbetween the youngsters of the two sections; he was expert with marbles. Once, with a playmate, he swam across the river to 'Great Rock, ' adistance of three-fourths of a mile and effected his return against thetide; and once, in winter, he nearly lost his life by breaking throughthe ice on the river and reached the shore only after a desperatestruggle, the ice yielding as often as he attempted to climb upon itssurface. It was favorite pastime of the boys of that day to swim fromone wharf to another adjacent, where vessels from the West Indiesdischarged their freight of molasses, and there to indulge in stolensweetness, extracted by a smooth stick inserted through the bung-hole. When detected and chased, they would plunge into the water and escape tothe wharf on which they had left their clothes. " Such was the little manwith a boy's irrepressible passion for frolic and fun. His passion formusic was hardly less pronounced, and this he inherited from his mother, and exercised to his heart's content in the choir of the Baptist Church. These were the bright lines and spots in his strenuous young life. Heplayed and sang the gathering brood of cares out of his own and hismother's heart. He needed to play and he needed to sing to charm awayfrom his spirit the vulture of poverty. That evil bird hovered ever overhis childhood. It was able to do many hard things to him, break up hishome, sunder him from his mother, force him at a tender age to earn hisbread, still there was another bird in the boy's heart, which sang outof it the shadow and into it the sunshine. Whatever was his lot theresang the bird within his breast, and there shone the sun over his headand into his soul. The boy had unconsciously drawn around him a circleof sunbeams, and how could the vulture of poverty strike him with itswings or stab him with its beak. When he was about eight he was partedfrom his mother, she going to Lynn, and he, wee mite of a man, remainingin Newburyport. It was during the War of 1812, and pinching times, whenFanny Garrison was at her wit's end to keep the wolf from devouring herthree little ones and herself into the bargain. With what tearing of theheart-strings she left Lloyd and his little sister Elizabeth behind wecan now only imagine. She had no choice, poor soul, for unless shetoiled they would starve. So with James, her eldest son, she went forthinto the world to better theirs and her own condition. Lloyd went tolive in Deacon Ezekiel Bartlett's family. They were good to the littlefellow, but they, too, were poor. The Deacon, among other things, sawedwood for a living, and Lloyd hardly turned eight years, followed him inhis peregrinations from house to house doing with his tiny hands what hecould to help the kind old man. Soon Fanny Lloyd's health, which hadsupported her as a magic staff in all those bitter years since Abijah'sdesertion of wife and children, began in the battle for bread in Lynn, to fail her. And so, in her weakness, and with a great fear in her heartfor her babies, when she was gone from them into the dark unknownforever, she bethought her of making them as fast as possibleself-supporting. And what better way was there than to have the boyslearn some trade. James she had already apprenticed to learn the mysteryof shoemaking. And for Lloyd she now sent and apprenticed him, too, tothe same trade. Oh! but it was hard for the little man, the heavylapstone and all this thumping and pounding to make a shoe. Oh! how thestiff waxen threads cut into his soft fingers, how all his body achedwith the constrained position and the rough work of shoemaking. But oneday the little nine-year-old, who was "not much bigger than a last, " wasable to produce a real shoe. Then it was probably that a dawningconsciousness of power awoke within the child's mind. He himself bypatience and industry had created a something where before was nothing. The eye of the boy got for the first time a glimpse of the man, who wasstill afar off, shadowy in the dim approaches of the hereafter. But thework proved altogether beyond the strength of the boy. The shoemaker'sbench was not his place, and the making of shoes for his kind was notthe mission for which he was sent into the world. And now again poverty, the great scene-shifter, steps upon the stage, and Fanny Lloyd and hertwo boys are in Baltimore on that never-ending quest for bread. She hadgone to work in a shoe factory established by an enterprising Yankee inthat city. The work lasted but a few months, when the proprietor failedand the factory was closed. In a strange city mother and children wereleft without employment. In her anxiety and distress a new trouble, thegreatest and most poignant since Abijah's desertion, wrung her with asupreme grief. James, the light and pride of her life, had run away fromhis master and gone to sea. Lloyd, poor little homesick Lloyd, was theonly consolation left the broken heart. And he did not want to live inBaltimore, and longed to return to Newburyport. So, mindful of herchild's happiness, and all unmindful of her own, she sent him from herto Newburyport, which he loved inexpressibly. He was now in his eleventhyear. Very happy he was to see once more the streets and landmarks ofthe old town--the river, and the old house where he was born, and thechurch next door and the school-house across the way and the dearfriends whom he loved and who loved him. He went again to live with theBartletts, doing with his might all that he could to earn his dailybread, and to repay the kindness of the dear old deacon and his family. It was at this time that he received his last scrap of schooling. Hewas, as we have seen, but eleven, but precious little of that brief andtender time had he been able to spend in a school-house. He had gone tothe primary school, where, as his children tell us, he did not showhimself "an apt scholar, being slow in mastering the alphabet, andsurpassed even by his little sister Elizabeth. " During his stay withDeacon Bartlett the first time, he was sent three months to thegrammar-school, and now on his return to this good friend, a few moreweeks were added to his scant school term. They proved the last of hisschool-days, and the boy went forth from the little brick building onthe Mall to finish his education in the great workaday world, underthose stern old masters, poverty and experience. By and by Lloyd was asecond time apprenticed to learn a trade. It was to a cabinetmaker inHaverhill, Mass. He made good progress in the craft, but his young heartstill turned to Newburyport and yearned for the friends left there. Hebore up against the homesickness as best he could, and when he couldbear it no longer, resolved to run away from the making of toy bureaus, to be once more with the Bartletts. He had partly executed thisresolution, being several miles on the road to his old home, when hismaster, the cabinetmaker, caught up to him and returned him toHaverhill. But when he heard the little fellow's story of homesicknessand yearning for loved places and faces, he was not angry with him, butdid presently release him from his apprenticeship. And so the boy to hisgreat joy found himself again in Newburyport and with the good oldwood-sawyer. Poverty and experience were teaching the child what henever could have learned in a grammar-school, a certain acquaintancewith himself and the world around him. There was growing within hisbreast a self-care and a self-reliance. It was the autumn of 1818, when, so to speak, the boy's primary education in the school of experienceterminated, and he entered on the second stage of his training under thesame rough tutelage. At the age of thirteen he entered the office of theNewburyport _Herald_ to learn to set types. At last his boy's hands hadfound work which his boy's heart did joy to have done. He soon masteredthe compositor's art, became a remarkably rapid composer. As he set upthe thoughts of others, he was not slow in discovering thoughts of hisown demanding utterance. The printer's apprentice felt the stirrings ofa new life. A passion for self-improvement took possession of him. Hebegan to read the English classics, study American history, follow thecurrents of party politics. No longer could it be said of him that hewas not an apt pupil. He was indeed singularly apt. His intelligencequickened marvelously. The maturing process was sudden and swift. Almostbefore one knows it the boy in years has become a man in judgment andcharacter. This precipitate development of the intellectual life in him, produced naturally enough an appreciable enlargement of the _ego_. Theyoung eagle had abruptly awakened to the knowledge that he possessedwings; and wings were for use--to soar with. Ambition, the desire tomount aloft, touched and fired the boy's mind. As he read, studied, andobserved, while his hands were busy with his work, there was a constantfluttering going on in the eyrie of his thoughts. By an instinctanalogous to that which sends a duck to the water, the boy took to thediscussion of public questions. It was as if an innate force wasdirecting him toward his mission--the reformation of great publicwrongs. At sixteen he made his first contribution to the press. It was adiscussion of a quasi-social subject, the relation of the sexes insociety. He was at the impressionable age, when the rosy god of love isat his tricks. He was also at a stage of development, when boys areleast attractive, when they are disagreeably virile, full of their ownimportance and the superiority of their sex. In the "Breach of theMarriage Promise, " by "An Old Bachelor, " these signs of adolescence areby no means wanting, they are, on the contrary, distinctly present andpalpable. But there were other signs besides these, signs that the youthhad had his eyes wide open to certain difficulties which beset thematrimonial state and to the conventional steps which lead to it, andthat he had thought quite soberly, if not altogether wisely upon them. The writer was verdant, to be sure, and self-conscious, and partial inhis view of the relations of the sexes, but there was withal a seriouspurpose in the writing. He meant to expose and correct what he conceivedto be reprehensible conduct on the part of the gentler sex, bad femininemanners. Just now he sees the man's side of the shield, a few yearslater he will see the woman's side also. He ungallantly concludes "tolead the '_single life_, ' and not, " as he puts it, "trouble myself aboutthe ladies. " A most sapient conclusion, considering that this veteranmisogynist was but sixteen years old. During the year following thepublication of this article, he plied his pen with no littleindustry--producing in all fifteen articles on a variety of topics, suchas "South American Affairs, " "State Politics, " "A Glance at Europe, "etc. , all of which are interesting now chiefly as showing the range ofhis growing intelligence, and as the earliest steps by which he acquiredhis later mastery of the pen and powerful style of composition. In aletter addressed to his mother about this time, the boy is full ofLloyd, undisguisedly proud of Lloyd, believes in Lloyd. "When I perusethem over" (_i. E. _ those fifteen communications to the press), "I feelabsolutely astonished, " he naïvely confesses, "at the different subjectswhich I have discussed, and the style in which they are written. Indeedit is altogether a matter of surprise that I have met with such signalsuccess, seeing I do not understand _one single rule of grammar_, andhaving a very inferior education. " The printer's lad was plainly notlacking in the bump of approbativeness, or the quality ofself-assertiveness. The quick mother instinct of Fanny Garrison tookalarm at the tone of her boy's letter. Possibly there was something inLloyd's florid sentences, in his facility of expression, which remindedher of Abijah. He, too, poor fellow, had had gifts in the use of thepen, and what had he done, what had he come to? Had he not forsaken wifeand children by first forsaking the path of holiness? So she pricks theboy's bubble, and points him to the one thing needful--God in the soul. But in her closing words she betrays what we all along suspected, herown secret pleasure in her son's success, when she asks, "Will you be sokind as to bring on your pieces that you have written for me to see?"Ah! was she not every inch a mother, and how Lloyd did love her. But shewas no longer what she had been. And no wonder, for few women have beencalled to endure such heavy burdens, fight so hopelessly the battle forbread, all the while her heart was breaking with grief. Disease had madeterrible inroads upon her once strong and beautiful person. Not theshadow of the strength and beauty of her young womanhood remained. Shewas far away from her early home and friends, far away from her darlingboy, in Baltimore. James, her pride, was at sea, Elizabeth, a sweetlittle maiden of twelve, had left her to take that last voyage beyondanother sea, and Abijah, without one word of farewell, with the silenceof long years unbroken, he, too, also! had hoisted sail and was goneforever. And now in her loneliness and sorrow, knowing that she, too, must shortly follow, a great yearning rose up in her poor wounded heartto see once more her child, the comfort and stay of her bitter life. Andas she had written to him her wish and longing, the boy went to her, sawthe striking change, saw that the broken spirit of the saintly woman wasday by day nearing the margin of the dark hereafter, into whose healingwaters it would bathe and be whole again. The unspeakable experience ofmother and son, during this last meeting is not for you and me, reader, to look into. Soon after Lloyd's return to Newburyport a cancerous tumordeveloped on her shoulder, from the effects of which she died September3, 1823, at the age of forty-five. More than a decade after her deathher son wrote: "She has been dead almost eleven years; but my grief ather loss is as fresh and poignant now as it was at that period;" and hebreaks out in praise of her personal charms in the following originallines:

 "She was the masterpiece of womankind-- In shape and height majestically fine; Her cheeks the lily and the rose combined; Her lips--more opulently red than wine; Her raven locks hung tastefully entwined; Her aspect fair as Nature could design; And then her eyes! so eloquently bright! An eagle would recoil before her light. "

The influence of this superb woman was a lasting power for truth andrighteousness in the son's stormy life. For a whole year after herdeath, the grief of the printer's lad over his loss, seemed to havechecked the activity of his pen. For during that period nothing of hisappeared in the _Herald_. But after the sharp edge of his sorrow hadworn off, his pen became active again in the discussion of public menand public questions. It was a period of bitter personal and politicalfeuds and animosities. The ancient Federal party was _in articulomortis_. The death-bed of a great political organization provesoftentimes the graveyard of lifelong friendships. For it is a scene ofcrimination and recrimination. And so it happened that the partisans ofJohn Adams, and the partisans of John Adams's old Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, were in 1824 doing a thriving business in thisparticular line. Into this funereal performance our printer's apprenticeentered with pick and spade. He had thus early a _penchant_ forcontroversy, a soldier's scent for battle. If there was any fightinggoing on he proceeded directly to have a hand in it. And it cannot bedenied that that hand was beginning to deal some manly and sturdy blows, whose resound was heard quite distinctly beyond the limits of hisbirthplace. His communications appeared now, not only in the _Herald_, but in the Salem _Gazette_ as well. Now it was the Adams-Pickeringcontroversy, now the discussion of General Jackson as a presidentialcandidate, now the state of the country in respect of parties, now themerits of "American Writers, " which afforded his 'prentice hand therequisite practice in the use of the pen. He had already acquired aperfect knowledge of typesetting and the mechanical makeup of anewspaper. During his apprenticeship he took his first lesson in the artof thinking on his feet in the presence of an audience. The audience tobe sure were the members of a debating club, which he had organized. Hewas very ambitious and was doubtless looking forward to a politicalcareer. He saw the value of extempore speech to the man with a future, and he wisely determined to possess himself of its advantage. He littledreamt, however, to what great use he was to devote it in later years. There were other points worth noting at this time, and which seemed toprophecy for him a future of distinction. He possessed a most attractivepersonality. His energy and geniality, his keen sense of humor, hissocial and bouyant disposition, even his positive and opinionatedtemper, were sources of popular strength to him. People were stronglydrawn to him. His friends were devoted to him. He had that quality, which we vaguely term magnetic, the quality of attaching others to us, and maintaining over them the ascendency of our character and ideas. 

In the midst of all this progress along so many lines, the days of hisapprenticeship in the _Herald_ office came to an end. He was justtwenty. With true Yankee enterprise and pluck, he proceeded to do forhimself what for seven years he had helped to do for another--publish anewspaper. And with a brave heart the boy makes his launch on theuncertain sea of local journalism and becomes editor and publisher of areal, wide-awake sheet, which he calls the _Free Press. _ The paper wasindependent in politics and proved worthy of its name during the sixmonths that Garrison sat in the managerial chair. Here is the tone whichthe initial number of the paper holds to the public: "As to thepolitical course of the _Free Press_, it shall be, in the widest senseof the term, _independent_. The publisher does not mean by this, to rankamongst those who are of everybody's and of nobody's opinion; . .. Norone of whom the old French proverb says: _Il ne soit sur quel pieddanser_. [He knows not on which leg to dance. ] Its principles shall beopen, magnanimous and free. It shall be subservient to no party or bodyof men; and neither the craven fear of loss, nor the threats of thedisappointed, nor the influence of power, shall ever awe one singleopinion into silence. Honest and fair discussion it will court; and itscolumns will be open to all temperate and intelligent communicationsemanating from whatever political source. In fine we will say withCicero: 'Reason shall prevail with him more than popular opinion. ' Theywho like this avowal may extend their encouragement; and if any feeldissatisfied with it, they must act accordingly. The publisher cannotcondescend to solicit their support. " This was admirable enough in itsway, but it was poor journalism some will say. And without doubt whenjudged by the common commercial standard it _was_ poor journalism. Inthis view it is a remarkable production, but in another aspect it isstill more remarkable in that it took with absolute accuracy the measureof the man. As a mental likeness it is simply perfect. At no time duringhis later life did the picture cease to be an exact moral representationof his character. It seems quite unnecessary, therefore, to record thathe proceeded immediately to demonstrate that it was no high sounding andinsincere declaration. For in the second number, he mentions with thatsingular serenity, which ever distinguished him on such occasions, thediscontinuance of the paper on account of matter contained in the firstissue, by ten indignant subscribers. "Nevertheless, " he adds, "ourhappiness at the loss of such subscribers is not a whit abated. We _beg_no man's patronage, and shall ever erase with the same cheerfulness thatwe insert the name of any individual. .. . Personal or political offencewe shall studiously avoid--truth _never_. " Here was plainly a wholly newspecies of the _genus homo_ in the editorial seat. What, expect to makea newspaper pay and not beg for patronage? Why the very idea was enoughto make newspaperdom go to pieces with laughter. Begging for patronage, howling for subscribers, cringing, crawling, changing color like thechameleon, howling for Barabbas or bellowing against Jesus, all thesethings must your newspaper do to prosper. On them verily hang the wholelaw and all the profits of modern journalism. This is what the devil ofcompetition was doing in that world when William Lloyd Garrison enteredit. It took him up into an exceedingly high mountain, we may be certain, and offered him wealth, position, and power, if he would do what allothers were doing. And he would not. He went on editing and publishinghis paper for six months regardful only of what his reasonapproved--regardless always of the disapproval of others. Not once didhe palter with his convictions or juggle with his self-respect for thesake of pelf or applause. His human horizon was contracted, to be sure. It could hardly be otherwise in one so young. His world was his country, and patriotism imposed limits upon his affections. "Our country, ourwhole country, and nothing but our country, " was the ardent motto of the_Free Press_. The love of family comes, in the order of growth, beforethe love of country; and the love of country precedes the love of allmankind. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear, "is the great law of love in the soul as of corn in the soil. Besidesthis contraction of the affections, there was also manifest in his firstjournalistic venture a deficiency in the organ of vision, a failure tosee into things and their relations. What he saw he reported faithfully, suppressing nothing, adding nothing. But the objects which passed acrossthe disk of his editoral intelligence were confined almost entirely tothe surface of things, to the superficies of national life. He had notthe ken at twenty to penetrate beneath the happenings of currentpolitics. Of the existence of slavery as a supreme reality, we do notthink that he then had the faintest suspicion. No shadow of itstremendous influence as a political power seemed to have arrested for abrief instant his attention. He could copy into his paper this atrocioussentiment which Edward Everett delivered in Congress, without theslightest comment or allusion. "Sir, I am no soldier. My habits andeducation are very unmilitary, but there is no cause in which I wouldsooner buckle a knapsack on my back, and put a musket on my shoulderthan that of putting down a servile insurrection at the South. " Thereason is plain enough. Slavery was a _terra incognito_ to him then, abook of which he had not learned the ABC. Mr. Everett's language made noimpression on him, because he had not the key to interpret itssignificance. What he saw, that he set down for his readers, withoutfear or favor. He had not seen slavery, knew nothing of the evil. Acquaintance with the deeper things of life, individual or national, comes only with increasing years, they are hardly for him who has notyet reached his majority. Slavery was the very deepest thing in the lifeof the nation sixty-four years ago. And if Garrison did not then sounderstand it, neither did his contemporaries, the wisest and greatestof them so understand it. The subject of all others which attracted hisattention, and kept his editorial pen busy, was the claim ofMassachusetts for indemnity from the general government, for certaindisbursements made by her for the defence of her sea-coast during thewar of 1812. This matter, which forms but a mere dust point in theperspective of history, his ardent young mind mistook for a principalobject, erected into a permanent question in the politics of the times. But the expenditure of enormous energies upon things of secondary and ofeven tertiary importance, to the neglect of others of prime and lastinginterest, is supremely human. He was errant where all men go astray. Butthe schoolmaster of the nation was abroad, and was training this youngman for the work he was born to do. These six months were, therefore, not wasted, for in the university of experience he did ever provehimself an apt scholar. One lesson he had learned, which he never neededto relearn. Just what that lesson was, he tells in his valedictory tothe subscribers of the _Free Press_, as follows: "This is a time-servingage; and he who attempts to walk uprightly or speak honestly, cannotrationally calculate upon speedy wealth or preferment. " A sad lesson, tobe sure, for one so young to learn so thoroughly. Perhaps some readerwill say that this was cynical, the result of disappointment. But it wasnot cynical, neither was it the result of disappointment. It wasunvarnished truth, and more's the pity, but truth it was none the less. It was one of those hard facts, which he of all men, needed to know atthe threshold of his experience with the world. Such a revelation provesdisastrous to the many who go down to do business in that world. Ordinary and weak and neutral moral constitutions are wrecked on thisreef set in the human sea. Like a true mariner he had written it boldlyon his chart. There at such and such a point in the voyage for thegolden fleece, were the rocks and the soul-devouring dragons of the way. Therefore, oh! my soul, beware. What, indeed, would this argonaut of thepress take in exchange for his soul? Certainly not speedy wealth norpreferment. Ah! he could not praise where he ought to reprobate; couldnot reprobate where praise should be the meed. He had no money andlittle learning, but he had a conscience and he knew that he must betrue to that conscience, come to him either weal or woe. Want rendersmost men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age, absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotentinquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision uponany principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forseethat the young recusant could never be starved into silence orconformity to popular standards. And with this stern, sad lessontreasured up in his heart, Garrison graduated from another room in theschool-house of experience. All the discoveries of the young journalistwere not of this grim character. He made another discovery altogetherdifferent, a real gem of its kind. The drag-net of a newspaper catchesall sorts of poets and poetry, good, bad, and indifferent--oftener thebad and indifferent, rarely the good. The drag-net of the _Free Press_was no exception to this rule; but, one day, it fetched up from thedepths of the hard commonplaces of our New England town life a genuinepearl. We will let Mr. Garrison tell the story in his own way:

 "Going up-stairs to my office, one day, I observed a letter lying near the door, to my address; which, on opening, I found to contain an original piece of poetry for my paper, the _Free Press_. The ink was very pale, the handwriting very small; and, having at that time a horror of newspaper original poetry--which has rather increased than diminished with the lapse of time--my first impulse was to tear it in pieces, without reading it; the chances of rejection, after its perusal, being as ninety-nine to one; . .. But summoning resolution to read it, I was equally surprised and gratified to find it above mediocrity, and so gave it a place in my journal. .. . As I was anxious to find out the writer, my post-rider, one day, divulged the secret, stating that he had dropped the letter in the manner described, and that it was written by a Quaker lad, named Whittier, who was daily at work on the shoemaker's bench, with hammer and lapstone, at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time in driving to see the youthful rustic bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like a maiden. Giving him some words of encouragement, I addressed myself more particularly to his parents, and urged them with great earnestness to grant him every possible facility for the development of his remarkable genius. "

Garrison had not only found a true poet, but a true friend as well, inthe Quaker lad, John Greenleaf Whittier. The friendship which sprang upbetween the two was to last during the lifetime of the former. Neitherof them in those days of small things could have possibly by any flightof the imagination foreseen how their two lives, moving in parallellines, would run deep their shining furrows through one of the greatestchapters of human history. But I am anticipating, and that is a vice ofwhich no good storyteller ought to be guilty. So, then, let meincontinently return from this excursion and pursue the even tenor of mytale. 

Garrison had stepped down from his elevated position as the publisherand editor of the _Free Press_. He was without work, and, beingpenniless, it behooved him to find some means of support. With theinstinct of the bright New England boy, he determined to seek hisfortunes in Boston. If his honesty and independence put him at adisadvantage, as publisher and editor, in the struggle for existence, hehad still his trade as a compositor to fall back upon As a journeymanprinter he would earn his bread, and preserve the integrity of anupright spirit. And so without a murmur, and with cheerfulness andpersistency, he hunted for weeks on the streets of Boston for a chanceto set types. This hunting for a job in a strange city was discouragingenough. Twice before had he visited the place, which was to be hisfuture home. Once when on his way to Baltimore to see his mother, andonce afterward when on a sort of pleasure tramp with three companions. But the slight knowledge which he was able to obtain of the town and itsinhabitants under these circumstances did not now help him, when fromoffice to office he went in quest of something to do. After manyfailures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, anopportunity to practice his trade. Business was dull, which kept ourjourneyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at anotherprinting office we find him setting types for a living during the year1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was not ashamed towork, neither was he afraid of hard work. During this year, he foundtime to take a hand in a little practical politics. There was in July, 1827, a caucus of the Federal party to nominate a successor to DanielWebster in the House of Representatives. Young Garrison attended thiscaucus, and made havoc of its cut and dried programme, by moving thenomination of Harrison Gray Otis, instead of the candidate, a Mr. Benjamin Gorham, agreed upon by the leaders. Harrison Gray Otis was oneof Garrison's early and particular idols. He was, perhaps, the oneMassachusetts politician whom the young Federalist had placed on apedestal. And so on this occasion he went into the caucus with a writtenspeech in his hat, eulogistic of his favorite. He had meant to have thespeech at his tongue's end, and to get it off as if on the spur of themoment. But the speech stayed where it was put, in the speaker's hat, and failed to materialize where and when it was wanted on the speaker'stongue. As the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet like a sensibleprophet went to the mountain. Our orator in imitation of thisillustrious example, bowed to the inevitable and went to his mountain. Pulling his extempore remarks out of his hat, he delivered himself ofthem to such effect as to create quite an Otis sentiment in the meeting. This performance was, of course, a shocking offence in the eyes ofthose, whose plans it had disturbed. With one particular old fogy he gotinto something of a newspaper controversy in consequence. The"consummate assurance" of one so young fairly knocked the breath out ofthis Mr. Eminent Respectability; it was absolutely revolting to all his"ideas of propriety, to see a stranger, a man who never paid a tax inour city, and perhaps no where else, to possess the impudence to takethe lead and nominate a candidate for the electors of Boston!" The"young gentleman of six months standing, " was not a whit abashed or awedby the commotion which he had produced. That was simply a case of causeand effect. But he seemed in turn astonished at his opponent's evidentignorance of William Lloyd Garrison. "It is true, " he replied, with theproud dignity of conscious power, "it is true that my acquaintance inthis city is limited. I have sought none. Let me assure him, however, that if my life be spared, my name shall one day be known to theworld--at least to such extent that common inquiry shall be unnecessary. This, I know will be deemed excessive vanity--but time shall prove itprophetic. " To the charge of youth he makes this stinging rejoinder, which evinces the progress he was making in the tournament of language:"The little, paltry sneers at my youth by your correspondent have longsince become pointless. It is the privileged abuse of old age--thehackneyed allegation of a thousand centuries--the damning _crime_ towhich all men have been subjected. I leave it to metaphysicians todetermine the precise moment when wisdom and experience leap intoexistence, when, for the first time, the mind distinguishes truth fromerror, selfishness from patriotism, and passion from reason. It issufficient for me that I am understood. " This was Garrison's firstexperience with "gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston. It wasnot his last, as future chapters will abundantly show. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE MAN HEARS A VOICE: SAMUEL, SAMUEL!

There is a moment in the life of every serious soul, when things, whichwere before unseen and unheard in the world around him become visibleand audible. This startling moment comes to some sooner, to otherslater, but to all, who are not totally given up to the service of self, at sometime surely. From that moment a change passes over such an one, for more and more he hears mysterious voices, and clearer and more clearhe sees apparitional forms floating up from the depths above which hekneels. Whence come they, what mean they? He leans over the abyss, andlo! the sounds to which he hearkens are the voices of human weeping andthe forms at which he gazes are the apparitions of human woe; theybeckon to him, and the voices beseech him in multitudinous accent andheart-break: "Come over, come down, oh! friend and brother, and helpus. " Then he straightway puts away the things and the thoughts of thepast and girding himself with the things, and the thoughts of the divineOUGHT and the almighty MUST, he goes over and down to the rescue. 

Such an epochal first moment came to William Lloyd Garrison in thestreets of Boston. Amid the hard struggle for bread he heard the abysmalvoices, saw the gaunt forms of misery. He was a constant witness of theravages of the demon of drink--saw how strong men succumbed, and weakones turned to brutes in its clutch. And were they not his brothers, thestrong men and the weak ones alike? And how could he, their keeper, seethem desperately beset and not fly to their help? Ah! he could not anddid not walk by on the other side, but, stripling though he was, rushedto do battle with the giant vice, which was slaying the souls and thebodies of his fellow citizens. Rum during the three first decades of thepresent century was, like death, no respecter of persons, entering withequal freedom the homes of the rich, and the hovels of the poor. It wasin universal demand by all classes and conditions of men. No occasionwas esteemed too sacred for its presence and use. It was an honoredguest at a wedding, a christening, or a funeral. The minister whosehands were laid in baptismal blessing on babes, or raised in the holysacrament of love over brides, lifted also the glass; and the selfsamelips which had spoken the last words over the dead, drank and made merrypresently afterward among the decanters on the side-board. It matterednot for what the building was intended--whether for church, school, orparsonage, rum was the grand master of ceremonies, the indispensablecelebrant at the various stages of its completion. The party who dug theparson out after a snow-storm, verily got their reward, a sort ofprelibation of the visionary sweets of that land, flowing not, accordingto the Jewish notion, with milk and _honey_, but according to therevised version of Yankeedom, with milk and _rum_. Rum was, forsooth, avery decent devil, if judged by the exalted character of the company itkept. It stood high on the rungs of the social ladder and pulled andpushed men from it by thousands to wretchedness and ruin. So flagrantand universal was the drinking customs of Boston then that dealersoffered on the commons during holidays, without let or hindrance, thedrunkard's glass to the crowds thronging by extemporized booths andbars. Shocking as was the excesses of this period "nothing comparativelywas heard on the subject of intemperance--it was seldom a theme for theessayist--the newspapers scarcely acknowledged its existence, exceptingoccasionally in connection with some catastrophes or crimes--theChristian and patriot, while they perceived its ravages, formed no plansfor its overthrow--and it did not occur to any that a paper devotedmainly to its suppression, might be made a direct and successful enginein the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individualconfessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts wereadopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments ofthe people. " Such was the state of public morals and the state of publicsentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This changewas brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist citymissionary, the Rev. William Collier. His labors among the poor ofBoston had doubtless revealed to him the bestial character ofintemperance, and the necessity of doing something to check and put anend to the havoc it was working. With this design he established the_National Philanthropist_ in Boston, March 4, 1826. The editor was oneof Garrison's earliest acquaintances in the city. Garrison went afterawhile to board with him, and still later entered the office of the_Philanthropist_ as a type-setter. The printer of the paper, NathanielH. White and young Garrison, occupied the same room at Mr. Collier's. And so almost before our hero was aware, he had launched his bark uponthe sea of the temperance reform. Presently, when the founder of thepaper retired, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, that theyoung journeyman printer, with his editorial experience and ability, should succeed him as editor. His room-mate, White, bought the_Philanthropist_, and in April 1828, formally installed Garrison intoits editorship. Into this new work he carried all his moral earnestnessand enthusiasm of purpose. The paper grew under his hand in size, typographical appearance, and in editorial force and capacity. It was awide-awake sentinel on the wall of society; and week after week itscolumns bristled and flashed with apposite facts, telling arguments, shrewd suggestions, cogent appeals to the community to destroy theaccursed thing. No better education could he have had as the preparationfor his life work. He began to understand then the strength ofdeep-seated public evils, to acquaint himself with the methods andinstruments with which to attack them. The _Philanthropist_ was a sortof forerunner, so far as the training in intelligent and effectiveagitation was concerned, of the _Genius of Universal Emancipation_ andof the _Liberator_. One cannot read his sketch of the progress made bythe temperance reform, from which I have already quoted, and publishedby him in the _Philanthropist_ in April, 1828, without being struck bythe strong similitude of the temperance to the anti-slavery movement intheir beginnings. "When this paper was first proposed, " the youngtemperance editor records, "it met with a repulsion which would haveutterly discouraged a less zealous and persevering man than ourpredecessor. The moralist looked on doubtfully--the whole communityesteemed the enterprise desperate. Mountains of prejudice, overtoppingthe Alps, were to be beaten down to a level--strong interest, connectedby a thousand links, severed--new habits formed; Every house, and almostevery individual, in a greater or less degree, reclaimed. Derision andcontumely were busy in crushing this sublime project in itsbirth--coldness and apathy encompassed it on every side--but ourpredecessor, nevertheless, went boldly forward with a giant's strengthand more than a giant's heart--conscious of difficulties and perils, though not disheartened, armed with the weapons of truth--full ofmeekness, yet certain of a splendid victory--and relying on the promisesof God for the issue. " What an inestimable object-lesson to Garrison wasthe example of this good man going forth singlehanded to do battle withone of the greatest evils of the age! It was not numerical strength, butthe faith of one earnest soul that is able in the world of ideas andhuman passions to remove mountains out of the way of the onward march ofmankind. This truth, we may be sure, sunk many fathoms deep into themind of the young moralist. And no wonder. For the results of two yearsagitation and seed sowing were of the most astonishing character. "Thechange which has taken place in public sentiment, " he continues, "isindeed remarkable . .. Incorporated as intemperance _was_, and still_is_, into our very existence as a people. .. . A regenerating spirit iseverywhere seen; a strong impulse to action has been given, which, beginning in the breasts of a few individuals, and then affectingvillages, and cities, and finally whole States, has rolled onwardtriumphantly through the remotest sections of the republic. As union andexample are the levers adopted to remove this gigantic vice, temperancesocieties have been rapidly multiplied, many on the principle of entireabstinence, and others making it a duty to abstain from encouraging thedistillation and consumption of spirituous liquors. Expressions of thedeep abhorrence and sympathy which are felt in regard to the awfulprevalence of drunkenness are constantly emanating from legislativebodies down to various religious conventions, medical associations, grand juries, etc. , etc. But nothing has more clearly evinced thestrength of this excitement than the general interest taken in thissubject by the conductors of the press. From Maine to the Mississippi, and as far as printing has penetrated--even among the CherokeeIndians--but one sentiment seems to pervade the public papers, viz. , thenecessity of strenuous exertion for the suppression of intemperance. "Such a demonstration of the tremendous power of a single righteous soulfor good, we may be sure, exerted upon Garrison lasting influences. Whata revelation it was also of the transcendent part which the press wascapable of playing in the revolution of popular sentiment upon moralquestions; and of the supreme service of organization as a factor inreformatory movements. The seeds sowed were faith in the convictions ofone man against the opinions, the prejudices, and the practices of themultitude; and knowledge of and skill in the use of the instruments bywhich the individual conscience may be made to correct and renovate themoral sense of a nation. But there was another seed corn dropped at thistime in his mind, and that is the immense utility of woman in the workof regenerating society. She it is who feels even more than man theeffects of social vices and sins, and to her the moral reformer shouldstrenuously appeal for aid. And this, with the instinct of genius, Garrison did in the temperance reform, nearly seventy years ago. Hiseditorials in the _Philanthropist_ in the year 1828 on "FemaleInfluence" may be said to be the _courier avant_ of the Woman'sChristian Temperance Union of to-day, as they were certainly theprecursors of the female anti-slavery societies of a few years later. 

But now, without his knowing it, a stranger from a distant city enteredBoston with a message, which was to change the whole purpose of theyoung editor's life. It was Benjamin Lundy, the indefatigable friend ofthe Southern slave, the man who carried within his breast the wholemenagerie of Southern slavery. He was fresh from the city which held thedust of Fanny Garrison, who had once written to her boy in Newburyport, how the good God had cared for her in the person of a colored woman. Yes, she had written: "The ladies are all kind to me, and I have acolored woman that waits on me, that is so kind no one can tell how kindshe is; and although a slave to man, yet a free-born soul, by the graceof God. Her name is Henny, and should I never see you again, and youshould come where she is, remember her, for your poor mother's sake. "And now, without his dreaming of it, this devoted Samaritan in black, who, perhaps, had long ago joined her dear friend in the grave, wascoming to that very boy, now grown to manhood, to claim for her racewhat the mother had asked for her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of allthose little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansionedheart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism ofslavery. "My heart, " he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the grossabomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang ofdistress, and the iron entered my soul. " With apostolic faith and zealhe had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up hisbruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great love, he had gone about thecountry on his self-imposed task. To do this work he had given up thebusiness of a saddler, in which he had prospered, had sacrificed hispossessions, and renounced the ease that comes with wealth; had courtedunheard-of hardships, and wedded himself for better and worse to povertyand unremitting endeavor. Nothing did he esteem too dear to relinquishfor the slave. Neither wife nor children did he withhold. Neither thesummer's heat nor the winter's cold was able to daunt him or turn himfrom his object. Though diminutive and delicate of body, no distance ordifficulty of travel was ever able to deter him from doing what hishumanity had bidden him do. From place to place, through nineteenStates, he had traveled, sowing as he went the seeds of his holypurpose, and watering them with his life's blood. Not Livingstone norStanley on the dark continent exceeded in sheer physical exertion andendurance the labors of this wonderful man. He belongs in the categoryof great explorers, only the irresistible passion and purpose, whichpushed him forward, had humanity, not geography, as their goal. Where, in the lives of either Stanley or Livingstone do we find a record ofmore astonishing activity and achievement than what is contained inthese sentences, written by Garrison of Lundy, in the winter of 1828?"Within a few months he has traveled about twenty-four hundred miles, ofwhich upwards of nineteen hundred were performed _on foot!_ during whichtime he has held nearly fifty public meetings. Rivers and mountainsvanish in his path; midnight finds him wending his solitary way over anunfrequented road; the sun is anticipated in his rising. Never was moralsublimity of character better illustrated. " Such was the marvelous man, whose visit to Boston, in the month of March, of the year 1828, datesthe beginning of a new epoch in the history of America. The event ofthat year was not the "Bill of Abominations, " great as was the nationalexcitement which it produced; nor was it yet the then impendingpolitical struggle between Jackson and Adams, but the unnoticed meetingof Lundy and Garrison. Great historic movements are born not in thewhirlwinds, the earthquakes, and the pomps of human splendor and power, but in the agonies and enthusiasms of grand, heroic spirits. Up to thistime Garrison had had, as the religious revivalist would say, no"realizing sense" of the enormity of slave-holding. Occasionally anutterance had dropped from his pen which indicated that his heart wasright on the subject, but which evinced no more than the ordinaryopposition to its existence, nor any profound convictions as to his ownor the nation's duty in regard to its extinction. His first reference tothe question appeared in connection with a notice made by him in the_Free Press_ of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa, " in which theauthoress sings of:

 "The wild and mingling groans of writhing millions, Calling for vengeance on my guilty land. "

He commended the verses "to all those who wish to cherish female genius, and whose best feelings are enlisted in the cause of the poor oppressedsons of Africa. " He was evidently impressed, but the impression belongedto the ordinary, transitory sort. His next recorded utterance on thesubject was also in the _Free Press_. It was made in relation with somejust and admirable strictures on the regulation Fourth of July oration, with its "ceaseless apostrophes to liberty, and fierce denunciations oftyranny. " Such a tone was false and mischievous--the occasion was forother and graver matter. "There is one theme, " he declares, "whichshould be dwelt upon, till our whole country is free from the curse--itis slavery. " The emphasis and energy of the rebuke and exhortation liftsthis second allusion to slavery, quite outside of merely ordinaryoccurrences. It was not an ordinary personal occurrence for it served toreveal in its lightning-like flash the glow and glare of a consciencetaking fire. The fire slumbered until a few weeks before Lundy enteredBoston, when there were again the glow and glare of a moral sense in thefirst stages of ignition on the enormity of slave institutions. The actof South Carolina in making it illegal to teach a colored person to readand write struck this spark from his pen: "There is somethingunspeakably pitiable and alarming, " he writes in the _Philanthropist_, "in the state of that society where it is deemed necessary, forself-preservation, to seal up the mind and debase the intellect of manto brutal incapacity. .. . Truly the alternatives of oppression areterrible. But this state of things cannot always last, nor ignorancealone shield us from destruction. " His interest in the question wasclearly growing. But it was still in the gristle of sentiment waiting tobe transmuted into the bone and muscle of a definite and determinedpurpose, when first he met Lundy. This meeting of the two men, was toGarrison what the fourth call of God was to Samuel, the Hebrew lad, whoafterward became a prophet. As the three previous calls of God and theconversations with Eli had prepared the Jewish boy to receive andunderstand the next summons of Jehovah, so had Garrison's formerexperience and education made him ready for the divine message whenuttered in his ears by Lundy. All the sense of truth and the passion forrighteousness of the young man replied to the voice, "Here am I. " Thehardening process of growth became immediately manifest in him. Whereasbefore there was sentimental opposition to slavery, there began then anopposition, active and practical. When Lundy convened many of theministers of the city to expose to them the barbarism of slavery, Garrison sat in the room, and as Lundy himself records, "expressed hisapprobation of my doctrines. " The young reformer must needs stand up andmake public profession of his new faith and of his agreement with theanti-slavery principles of the older. But it was altogether differentwith the assembled ministers. Lundy, as was his wont on such occasions, desired and urged the formation of an anti-slavery society, but thesesons of Eli of that generation were not willing to offend theirslave-holding brethren in the South. Eyes they had, but they refused tosee; ears, which they stopped to the cry of the slave breaking inanguish and appeal from the lips of this modern man of God. Garrison, eleven years later, after the lips, which were eloquent then with theirgreat sorrow, were speechless in the grave, told the story of thatministers' meeting. And here is the story:

"He (Lundy) might as well have urged the stones in the streets to cryout in behalf of the perishing captives. Oh, the moral cowardice, thechilling apathy, the criminal unbelief, the cruel skepticism, that wererevealed on that memorable occasion! My soul was on fire then, as it isnow, in view of such a development. Every soul in the room was heartilyopposed to slavery, but, it would terribly alarm and enrage the South toknow that an anti-slavery society existed in Boston. But it would doharm rather than good openly to agitate the subject. But _perhaps aselect_ committee might be formed, to be called by some name that wouldneither give offence, nor excite suspicion as to its real design! One ortwo only were for bold and decisive action; but as they had neitherstation nor influence, and did not rank among the wise and prudent, their opinion did not weigh very heavily, and the project was finallyabandoned. Poor Lundy! that meeting was a damper to his feelings. " Thereis no doubt that Garrison was one of the very few present, who "were forbold and decisive action" against the iniquity. The grief anddisappointment of his brave friend touched his heart with a brother'saffection and pity. The worldly wisdom and lukewarmness of the clergykindled a righteous indignation within his freedom-loving soul. This washis first bitter lesson from the clergy. There were, alas, many andbitterer experiences to follow, but of them he little recked at thetime. As this nineteenth-century prophet mused upon the horrible thingthe fires of a life purpose burned within him. And oftener thenceforthwe catch glimpses of the glow and glare of a soul bursting into flame. The editorials in the _Philanthropist_, which swiftly followed Lundy'svisit, began to throw off more heat as the revolving wheels of anelectrical machine throw off sparks. The evil that there was in theworld, under which, wherever he turned, he saw his brother manstaggering and bleeding, was no longer what it had been, a vague andshadowy apparition, but rather a terrible and tremendous reality againstwhich he must go forth to fight the fight of a lifetime. And so hegirded him with his life purpose and flung his moral earnestness againstthe triple-headed curse of intemperance, slavery, and war. A mightyhuman love had begun to flow inward and over him. And as the tidesteadily rose it swallowed and drowned all the egoism of self and racein the altruism of an all-embracing humanity. When an apprentice in theoffice of the Newburyport _Herald_, and writing on the subject of SouthAmerican affairs he grew hot over the wrongs suffered by Americanvessels at Valparaiso and Lima. He was for finishing "with cannon whatcannot be done in a conciliatory and equitable manner, where justicedemands such proceedings. " This was at seventeen when he was a boy withthe thoughts of a boy. Six years later he is a man who has looked uponthe sorrows of men. His old boy-world is far behind him, and theever-present sufferings of his kind are in front of him. War now is nolonger glorious, for it adds immeasurably to the sum of human misery. War ought to be abolished with intemperance and slavery. And this dutyhe began to utter in the ears of his country. "The brightest traits inthe American character will derive their luster, not from the laurelspicked from the field of blood, not from the magnitude of our navy andthe success of our arms, " he proclaimed, "but from our exertions tobanish war from the earth, to stay the ravages of intemperance among allthat is beautiful and fair, to unfetter those who have been enthralledby chains, which we have forged, and to spread the light of knowledgeand religious liberty, wherever darkness and superstition reign. .. . Thestruggle is full of sublimity, the conquest embraces the world. " Lundyhimself did not fully appreciate the immense gain, which his cause hadmade in the conversion of Garrison into an active friend of the slave. Not at once certainly. Later he knew. The discovery of a kindred spiritin Boston exerted probably no little influence in turning for the secondtime his indefatigable feet toward that city. He made it a second visitin July, 1828, where again he met Garrison. His experience with theministers did not deter him from repeating the horrible tale wherever hecould get together an audience. This time he secured his first publichearing in Boston. It was in the Federal Street Baptist Church. He spokenot only on the subject of slavery itself, the growth of anti-slaverysocieties, but on a new phase of the general subject, viz. , the futilityof the Colonization Society as an abolition instrument. Garrison waspresent, and treasured up in his heart the words of his friend. He didnot forget how Lundy had pressed upon his hearers the importance ofpetitioning Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District ofColumbia, as we shall see further on. But poor Lundy was unfortunatewith the ministers. He got this time not the cold shoulder alone but aclerical slap in the face as well. He had just sat down when the pastorof the church, Rev. Howard Malcolm, uprose in wrath and inveighedagainst any intermeddling of the North with slavery, and brought themeeting with a high hand to a close. This incident was the firstcollision with the church of the forlorn hope of the Abolition movement. Trained as Garrison was in the orthodox creed and sound in that creedalmost to bigotry, this behavior of a standard-bearer of the church, together with the apathy displayed by the clergy on a former occasion, caused probably the first "little rift within the lute" of his creed, "that by and by will make the music mute, and, ever widening, slowlysilence all. " For in religion as in love, "Unfaith in aught is want offaith in all. " The Rev. Howard Malcolm's arbitrary proceeding hadprevented the organization of an anti-slavery committee. But this wasaffected at a second meeting of the friends of the slave. Garrison wasone of the twenty gentlemen who were appointed such a committee. Hiszeal and energy far exceeded the zeal and energy of the remainingnineteen. He did not need the earnest exhortation of Lundy to impressupon his memory the importance of "activity and steady perseverance. " Heperceived almost at once that everything depended on them. And so he hadformed plans for a vigorous campaign against the existence of slavery inthe District of Columbia. But before he was ready to set out along theline of work, which he had laid down for Massachusetts, the scene of hislabors shifted to Bennington, Vermont. Before he left Boston, Lundy hadrecognized him as "a valuable coadjutor. " The relationship between thetwo men was becoming beautifully close. The more Lundy saw of Garrison, the more he must have seemed to him a man after his own heart. And so nowonder that he was solicitous of fastening him to his cause with hooksof steel. The older had written the younger reformer a letter almostpaternal in tone--he must do thus and thus, he must not be disappointedif he finds the heavy end of the burthen borne by himself, while thoseassociated with him do little to keep the wheels moving, he mustremember that "a few will have the labor to perform and the honor toshare. " Then there creeps into his words a grain of doubt, a vague fearlest his young ally should take his hands from the plough and go the wayof all men, and here are the words which Paul might have written toTimothy: "I hope you will persevere in your work, steadily, but not maketoo large calculations on what may be accomplished in a particularlystated time. You have now girded on a holy warfare. Lay not down yourweapons until honorable terms are obtained. _The God of hosts is on yourside. _ Steadiness and faithfulness will most assuredly overcome everyobstacle. " The older apostle had yet to learn that the younger alwaysdid what he undertook in the field of morals and philanthropy. 

But the scene had shifted from Boston to Bennington, and with the youngreformer goes also his plan of campaign for anti-slavery work. Thecommittee of twenty, now nineteen since his departure, slumbered andslept in the land of benevolent intentions, a practical illustration ofLundy's pungent saying, that "philanthropists are the slowest creaturesbreathing. They think forty times before they act. " The committee neveracted, but its one member in Vermont did act, and that promptly andpowerfully as shall shortly appear. Garrison had gone to Bennington toedit the _Journal of the Times_ in the interest of the reelection ofJohn Quincy Adams to the Presidency. For this object he was engaged aseditor of the paper. What he was engaged to do he performed faithfullyand ably, but along with his fulfillment of his contract with thefriends of Mr. Adams, he carried the one which he had made with humanitylikewise. In his salutatory he outlined his intentions in this regardthus: "We have three objects in view, which we shall pursue throughlife, whether in this place or elsewhere--namely, the suppression ofintemperance and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation of everyslave in the republic, and the perpetuity of national peace. Indiscussing these topics what is wanting in vigor shall be made up inzeal. " From the issue of that first number if the friends of Adams hadno cause to complain of the character of his zeal and vigor in theirservice, neither had the friends of humanity. What he had proposed doingin Massachusetts as a member of the anti-slavery committee of twenty, heperformed with remarkable energy and success in Vermont. It was toobtain signatures not by the hundred to a petition for the abolition ofslavery in the District of Columbia, but by the thousands, and that fromall parts of the State. He sent copies of the petition to everypostmaster in Vermont with the request that he obtain signatures in hisneighborhood. Through his exertions a public meeting of citizens ofBennington was held and indorsed the petition. The plan for polling theanti-slavery sentiment of the State worked admirably. The result was amonster petition with 2, 352 names appended. This he forwarded to theseat of Government. It was a powerful prayer, but as to its effect, Garrison had no delusions. He possessed even then singularly clear ideasas to how the South would receive such petitions, and of the coursewhich it would pursue to discourage their presentation. He was no lessclear as to how the friends of freedom ought to carry themselves underthe circumstances. In the _Journal of the Times_ of November, 1828, hethus expressed himself: "It requires no spirit of prophecy to predictthat it (the petition) will create great opposition. An attempt will bemade to frighten Northern 'dough-faces' as in case of the Missouriquestion. There will be an abundance of furious declamation, menace, andtaunt. Are we, therefore, to approach the subject timidly--with half aheart--as if we were treading on forbidden ground? No, indeed, butearnestly, fearlessly, as becomes men, who are determined to clear theircountry and themselves from the guilt of oppressing God's free andlawful creatures. " About the same time he began to make his assaults onthe personal representatives of the slave-power in Congress, cauterizingin the first instance three Northern "dough-faces, " who had votedagainst some resolutions, looking to the abolition of the slave-tradeand slavery itself in the District of Columbia. So while the South thusearly was seeking to frighten the North from the agitation of theslavery question in Congress, Garrison was unconsciously preparing acountercheck by making it dangerous for a Northern man to practiceSouthern principles in the National Legislature. He did not mince hiswords, but called a spade a spade, and sin, sin. He perceived at oncethat if he would kill the sin of slave-holding, he could not spare thesinner. And so he spoke the names of the delinquents from the housetop ofthe _Journal of the Times_, stamping upon their brows the scarlet letterof their crime against liberty. He had said in the October before: "Itis time that a voice of remonstrance went forth from the North, thatshould peal in the ears of every slaveholder like a roar of thunder. .. . For ourselves, we are resolved to agitate this subject to the utmost;nothing but death shall prevent us from denouncing a crime which has noparallel in human depravity; we shall take high ground. _The alarm mustbe perpetual. _" A voice of remonstrance, with thunder growlaccompaniment, was rising higher and clearer from the pen of the youngeditor. His tone of earnestness was deepening to the stern bass of themoral reformer, and the storm breath of enthusiasm was blowing to ablaze the glowing coals of his humanity. The wail of the fleeingfugitive from the house of bondage sounded no longer far away and unrealin his ears, but thrilled now right under the windows of his soul. Themasonic excitement and the commotion created by the abduction of Morganhe caught up and shook before the eyes of his countrymen as an objectlesson of the million-times greater wrong daily done the slaves. "Allthis fearful commotion, " he pealed, "has arisen from the abduction of_one man_. More than two millions of unhappy beings are groaning outtheir lives in bondage, and scarcely a pulse quickens, or a heart leaps, or a tongue pleads in their behalf. 'Tis a trifling affair, whichconcerns nobody. Oh! for the spirit that rages, to break every fetter ofoppression!" Such a spirit was fast taking possession of the writer. 

Of this Lundy was well informed. He had not lost sight of his youngcoadjutor, but had watched his course with great hope and growingconfidence. In him he found what he had discovered in no one else, anti-slavery activity and perseverance. He had often found men whoprotested loudly their benevolence for the negro, but who made not theslightest exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes. "They willpen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or so--and then--_the subject isexhausted!_" It was not so with his young friend, the Bennington editor. He saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject of Africanemancipation can never be exhausted until the system of slavery itselfbe totally annihilated. " He was faithful among the faithless found byLundy. To reassure his doubting leader, Garrison took upon himselfpublicly a vow of perpetual consecration to the slave. "Before God andour country, " he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation ofthe enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost in our pursuits. Thepeople of New England are interested in this matter, and they must bearoused from their lethargy as by a trumpet-call. They shall not quietlyslumber while we have the management of a press, or strength to hold apen. " The question of slavery had at length obtained the ascendency overall other questions in his regard. And when Lundy perceived this he setout from Baltimore to Bennington to invite Garrison to join hands withhim in his emancipation movement at Baltimore. He performed the longjourney on foot, with staff in hand in true apostolic fashion. The twomen of God met among the mountains of Vermont, and when the elderreturned from the heights the younger had resolved to follow him to thevales where men needed his help, the utmost which he could give them. Heagreed to join his friend in Baltimore and there edit with him hislittle paper with the grand name (_The Genius of UniversalEmancipation_), devoted to preaching the gospel of the gradualabolishment of American slavery. Garrison was to take the position ofmanaging editor, and Lundy to look after the subscription list. Theyounger to be resident, the elder itinerant partner in the publicationof the paper. Garrison closed his relations with the _Journal of theTimes_, March 27, 1829, and delivered his valedictory to its readers. This valedictory strikes with stern hammer-stroke the subject of histhoughts. "Hereafter, " it reads, "the editorial charge of this paperwill devolve on another person. I am invited to occupy a broader field, and to engage in a higher enterprise; that field embraces the wholecountry--that enterprise is in behalf of the slave population. "

"To my apprehension, the subject of slavery involves interests ofgreater moment to our welfare as a republic, and demands a more prudentand minute investigation than any other which has come before theAmerican people since the Revolutionary struggle--than all others whichnow occupy their attention. No body of men on the face of the earthdeserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much asthe slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected. It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our nationalinconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African. It istrue examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices arenumerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic, vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow thisfabric of oppression. I trust in God that I may be the humble instrumentof breaking at least one chain, and restoring one captive to liberty; itwill amply repay a life of severe toil. " The causes of temperance andpeace came in also for an earnest parting word, but they had clearlydeclined to a place of secondary importance in the writer's regard. Tobe more exact, they had not really declined, but the slavery questionhad risen in his mind above both. They were great questions, but it was_the_ question--had become _his_ cause. 

Lundy, after his visit to Garrison at Bennington, started on a trip toHayti with twelve emancipated slaves, whom he had undertaken to colonizethere. Garrison awaited in Boston the return of his partner toBaltimore. The former, meanwhile, was out of employment, and sorely inneed of money. Never had he been favored with a surplusage of the rootof all evil. He was deficient in the money-getting and money-savinginstinct. Such was plainly not his vocation, and so it happened thatwherever he turned, he and poverty walked arm in arm, and theinterrogatory, "wherewithal shall I be fed and clothed on the morrow?"was never satisfactorily answered until the morrow arrived. This led himat times into no little embarrassment and difficulty. But since he wasalways willing to work at the case, and to send his "pride on apilgrimage to Mecca, " the embarrassment was not protracted, nor did thedifficulty prove insuperable. 

The Congregational societies of Boston invited him in June to deliverbefore them a Fourth of July address in the interest of the ColonizationSociety. The exercises took place in Park Street Church. Ten days beforethis event he was called upon to pay a bill of four dollars for failureto appear at the May muster. Refusing to do so, he was thereuponsummoned to come into the Police Court on the glorious Fourth to showcause why he ought not to pay the amercement. He was in a quandary. Hedid not owe the money, but as he could not be in two places at the sametime, and, inasmuch as he wanted very much to deliver his address beforethe Congregational Societies, and did not at all long to make theacquaintance of his honor, the Police Court Judge, he determined to paythe fine. But, alack and alas! he had "not a farthing" with which todischarge him from his embarrassment. Fortunately, if he wanted money hedid not want friends. And one of these, Jacob Horton, of Newburyport, who had married his "old friend and playmate, Harriet Farnham, " came tohis rescue with the requisite amount. 

On the day and place appointed Garrison appeared before theCongregational Societies with an address, to the like of which, it issafe to say, they had never before listened. It was the Fourth of July, but the orator was in no holiday humor. There was not, in a singlesentence of the oration the slightest endeavor to be playful with hisaudience. It was rather an eruption of human suffering, and of thehumanity of one man to man. What the Boston clergy saw that afternoon, in the pulpit of Park Street Church, was the vision of a soul on fire. Garrison burned and blazed as the sun that July afternoon burned andblazed in the city's streets. None without escaped the scorching rays ofthe latter, none within was able to shun the fervid heat of the former. Those of my readers who have watched the effects of the summer's sun ona track of sandy land and have noted how, about midday, the heat seemsto rise in sparkling particles and exhalations out of the hot, surcharged surface, can form some notion of the moral fervor and passionof this Fourth of July address, delivered more than sixty years ago, inBoston. Through all the pores of it, over all the length and breadth ofit, there went up bright, burning particles from the sunlit sympathy andhumanity of the young reformer. 

In beginning, he animadverted, among other things, on the spread ofintemperance, of political corruption, on the profligacy of the press, and, amid them all, the self-complacency and boastfulness of thenational spirit, as if it bore a charmed life. 

"But, " he continued, "there is another evil which, if we had to contendagainst nothing else, should make us quake for the issue. It is agangrene preying upon our vitals--an earthquake rumbling under ourfeet--a mine accumulating material for a national catastrophe. It shouldmake this a day of fasting and prayer, not of boisterous merriment andidle pageantry--a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory joy. It should spike every cannon, and haul down every banner. Our garbshould be sack-cloth--our heads bowed in the dust--our supplications forthe pardon and assistance of Heaven. 

"Sirs, I am not come to tell you that slavery is a curse, debasing inits effects, cruel in its operations, fatal in its continuance. The dayand the occasion require no such revelation. I do not claim thediscovery as my own, that 'all men are born equal, ' and that among theirinalienable rights are 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 'Were I addressing any other than a free and Christian assembly, theenforcement of this truth might be pertinent. Neither do I intend toanalyze the horrors of slavery for your inspection, nor to freeze yourblood with authentic recitals of savage cruelty. Nor will time allow meto explore even a furlong of that immense wilderness of suffering whichremains unsubdued in our land. I take it for granted that the existenceof these evils is acknowledged, if not rightly understood. My object isto define and enforce our duty, as Christians and philanthropists. "

This was, by way of exordium, the powerful skirmish line of the address. Assuming the existence of the evil, he advanced boldly to his theme, viz. , the duty of abolishing it. To this end he laid down fourpropositions, as a skillful general plants his cannon on the heightsoverlooking and commanding his enemies' works. The first, broadlystated, asserted the kinship of the slave to the free population of therepublic. They were men; they were natives of the country; they were indire need. They were ignorant, degraded, morally and socially. They werethe heathen at home, whose claims far outranked those in foreign lands;they were higher than those of the "Turks or Chinese, for they have theprivileges of instruction; higher than the Pagans, for they are notdwellers in a Gospel land; higher than our red men of the forest, for wedo not bind them with gyves, nor treat them as chattels. "

Then he turned hotly upon the Church, exclaiming: "What has Christianitydone by direct effort for our slave population? Comparatively nothing. She has explored the isles of the ocean for objects of commiseration;but, amazing stupidity! she can gaze without emotion on a multitude ofmiserable beings at home, large enough to constitute a nation offreemen, whom tyranny has heathenized by law. In her public servicesthey are seldom remembered, and in her private donations they areforgotten. From one end of the country to the other her charitablesocieties form golden links of benevolence, and scatter theircontributions like rain drops over a parched heath; but they bring nosustenance to the perishing slave. The blood of souls is upon hergarments, yet she heeds not the stain. The clanking of the prisoner'schains strike upon her ear, but they cannot penetrate her heart. "

Then, with holy wrath upon the nation, thus:

"Every Fourth of July our Declaration of Independence is produced, witha sublime indignation, to set forth the tyranny of the mother country, and to challenge the admiration of the world. But what a pitiful detailof grievances does this document present, in comparison with the wrongswhich our slaves endure? In the one case it is hardly the plucking of ahair from the head; in the other, it is the crushing of a live body onthe wheel--the stings of the wasp contrasted with the tortures of theInquisition. Before God I must say that such a glaring contradiction asexists between our creed and practice the annals of six thousand yearscannot parallel. In view of it I am ashamed of my country. I am sick ofour unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of ourhypocritical cant about the inalienable rights of man. I would not formy right hand stand up before a European assembly, and exult that I aman American citizen, and denounce the usurpations of a kingly governmentas wicked and unjust; or, should I make the attempt, the recollection ofmy country's barbarity and despotism would blister my lips, and cover mycheeks with burning blushes of shame. "

Passing to his second proposition, which affirmed the right of the freeStates to be in at the death of slavery, he pointed out that slavery wasnot sectional but national in its influence. If the consequences ofslave-holding did not flow beyond the limits of the slave section, theright would still exist, on the principle that what affected injuriouslyone part must ultimately hurt the whole body politic. But it was nottrue that slavery concerned only the States where it existed--the partswhere it did not exist were involved by their constitutional liabilityto be called on for aid in case of a slave insurrection, as they were inthe slave representation clause of the national compact, through whichthe North was deprived of its "just influence in the councils of thenation. " And, furthermore, the right of the free States to agitate thequestion inhered in the principle of majority rule--the white populationof the free States being almost double that of the slave States, "andthe voice of this overwhelming majority should be potential. " Herepelled in strong language the wrongfulness of allowing the South tomultiply the votes of those freemen by the master's right to count threefor every five slaves, "because it is absurd and anti-republican tosuffer property to be represented as men, and _vice versa_, because itgives the South an unjust ascendancy over other portions of territory, and a power which may be perverted on every occasion. "

He looked without shrinking upon the possibility of disunion even then. 

"Now I say that, on the broad system of equal rights, " he declared, "this inequality should no longer be tolerated. If it cannot be speedilyput down--not by force but by fair persuasion--if we are always toremain shackled by unjust, constitutional provisions, when the emergencythat imposed them has long since passed away; if we must share in theguilt and danger of destroying the bodies and souls of men _as the priceof our Union_; if the slave States will haughtily spurn our assistance, and refuse to consult the general welfare, then the fault is not ours ifa separation eventually takes place. "

Considering that he was in his twenty-fourth year, and that theAbolition movement had then no actual existence, the orator evincedsurprising prescience in his forecast of the future, and of the strifeand hostility which the agitation was destined to engender. 

"But the plea is prevalent, " he said, "that any interference by the freeStates, however benevolent or cautious it might be, would only irritateand inflame the jealousies of the South, and retard the cause ofemancipation. If any man believes that slavery can be abolished withouta struggle with the worst passions of human nature, quietly, harmoniously, he cherishes a delusion. It can never be done, unless theage of miracles returns. No; we must expect a collision, full of sharpasperities and bitterness. We shall have to contend with the insolence, and pride, and selfishness of many a heartless being. 

"Sirs, the prejudices of the North are stronger than those of the South;they bristle like so many bayonets around the slaves; they forge andrivet the chains of the nation. Conquer them and the victory is won. Theenemies of emancipation take courage from our criminal timidity. .. . Weare . .. Afraid of our own shadows, who have been driven back to the wallagain and again; who stand trembling under their whips; who turn pale, retreat, and surrender at a talismanic threat to dissolve the Union. .. . "But the difficulties did not daunt him, nor the dangers cow him. He didnot doubt, but was assured, that truth was mighty and would prevail. "Moral influence when in vigorous exercise, " he said, "is irresistible. It has an immortal essence. It can no more be trod out of existence bythe iron foot of time, or by the ponderous march of iniquity, thanmatter can be annihilated. It may disappear for a time; but it lives insome shape or other, in some place or other, and will rise withrenovated strength. Let us then be up and doing. In the simple andstirring language of the stout-hearted Lundy, all the friends of thecause must go to work, keep to work, hold on, and never give up. " Theclosing paragraph is this powerful peroration: "I will say, finally, that I despair of the republic while slavery exists therein. If I lookup to God for success, no smile of mercy or forgiveness dispels thegloom of futurity; if to our own resources, they are daily diminishing;if to all history our destruction is not only possible but almostcertain. Why should we slumber at this momentous crisis? If our heartswere dead to every thought of humanity; if it were lawful to oppress, where power is ample; still, if we had any regard for our safety andhappiness, we should strive to crush the vampire which is feeding uponour life-blood. All the selfishness of our nature cries aloud for abetter security. Our own vices are too strong for us, and keep us inperpetual alarm; how, in addition to these, shall we be able to contendsuccessfully with millions of armed and desperate men, as we must, eventually, if slavery do not cease?" Exit the apprentice, enter themaster. The period of preparation is ended, the time of action begun. The address was the fiery cry of the young prophet ere he plunged intothe unsubdued wilderness of American slavery. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE MAN BEGINS HIS MINISTRY. 

Some time in August, 1829, Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began withLundy the editorship of _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_. Radicalas the Park Street Church address was, it had, nevertheless, ceased torepresent in one essential matter his anti-slavery convictions andprinciples. The moral impetus and ground-swell of the address hadcarried him beyond the position where its first flood of feeling had forthe moment left him. During the composition of the address he wastransported with grief and indignation at the monstrous wrong whichslavery did the slaves and the nation. He had not thought out forhimself any means to rid both of the curse. The white heat of theaddress destroyed for the instant all capacity for such thinking. "Whocan be amazed, temperate, and furious--in a moment? No man. Theexpedition of his violent love outran the pauser reason" He had acceptedthe colonization scheme as an instrument for removing the evil, andcalled on all good citizens "to assist in establishing auxiliarycolonization societies in every State, county, and town"; and implored"their direct and liberal patronage to the parent society. " He had notapparently, so much as dreamed of any other than gradual emancipation. "The emancipation of all the slaves of this generation is most assuredlyout of the question, " he said; "the fabric which now towers above theAlps, must be taken away brick by brick, and foot by foot, till it isreduced so low that it may be overturned without burying the nation inits ruins. Years may elapse before the completion of the achievement;generations of blacks may go down to the grave, manacled and lacerated, without a hope for their children. " He was on the Fourth of July a firmand earnest believer in the equity and efficacy of gradualism. But afterthat day, and some time before his departure for Baltimore, he began tothink on this subject. The more he thought the less did gradualism seemdefensible on moral grounds. John Wesley had said that slavery was the"sum of all villainies"; it was indeed the sin of sins, and as suchought to be abandoned not gradually but immediately. Slave-holding wassin and slaveholders were sinners. The sin and sinner should both bedenounced as such and the latter called to instant repentance, and theduty of making immediate restitution of the stolen liberties of theirslaves. This was the tone ministers of religion held every where towardsin and sinners, and this should be the tone held by the preachers ofAbolition toward slavery, and slaveholders. To admit the principle ofgradualism was for Abolition to emasculate itself of its most virilequality. Garrison, consequently rejected gradualism as a weapon, andtook up instead the great and quickening doctrine of immediatism. Lundydid not know of this change in the convictions of his coadjutor untilhis arrival in Baltimore. Then Garrison frankly unburdened himself anddeclared his decision to conduct his campaign against the nationaliniquity along the lines of immediate and unconditional emancipation. The two on this new radicalism did not see eye to eye. But Lundy withsententious shrewdness and liberality suggested to the young radical:"Thee may put thy initials to thy articles and I will put my initials tomine, and each will bear his own burden. " And the arrangement pleasedthe young radical, for it enabled him to free his soul of the necessitywhich was then sitting heavily upon it. The precise state of his mind inrespect of the question at this juncture in its history and in his ownis made plain enough in his salutatory address in _The Genius ofUniversal Emancipation_. The vow made in Bennington ten months before todevote his life to philanthrophy, and the dedication of himself made sixmonths afterward to the extirpation of American slavery, he solemnlyrenews and reseals in Baltimore. He does not hate intemperance and warless, but slavery more, and those, therefore, he formally relegatesthenceforth to a place of secondary importance in the endeavors of thefuture. It is obvious that the colonization scheme has no strong holdupon his intelligence. He does not conceal his respect for it as aninstrument of freedom, but he puts no high value on its utility. "It maypluck a few leaves, " he remarks, "from the Bohon Upas, but can neitherextract its roots nor destroy its withering properties. Viewed as anauxiliary, it deserves encouragement; but as a remedy it is altogetherinadequate. " But this was not all. As a remedy, colonization was notonly altogether inadequate, its influence was indirectly pernicious, inthat it lulled the popular mind into "a belief that the monster hasreceived his mortal wound. " He perceived that this resultantindifference and apathy operated to the advantage of slavery, and to theinjury of freedom. Small, therefore, as was the good which theColonization Society was able to achieve, it was mixed with no littleill. Although Garrison has not yet begun to think on the subject, toexamine into the motives and purposes of the society, it does not take aprophet to foresee that some day he will. He had already arrived atconclusions in respect of the rights of the colored people "to choosetheir own dwelling place, " and against the iniquity of theirexpatriation, which cut directly at the roots of the colonizationscheme. Later the pro-slavery character of the society will be whollyrevealed to him. But truth in the breast of a reformer as of others mustneeds follow the great law of moral growth, first the blade, then theear, and then the full corn in the ear. It is enough that he has madethe tremendous step from gradual to immediate and unconditionalemancipation on the soil. 

At this period he tested the disposition of slaveholders to manumittheir slaves. The Colonization Society had given it out that there wasno little desire on the part of many masters to set their slaves free. All that was wanted for a practical demonstration in this direction wasthe assurance of free transportation out of the country for theemancipated slaves. Lundy had made arrangement for the transportation offifty slaves to Hayti and their settlement in that country. So he andGarrison advertised this fact in the _Genius_, but they waited in vainfor a favorable response from the South--notwithstanding the followinghumane inducement which this advertisement offered: "THE PRICE OFPASSAGE WILL BE ADVANCED, and everything furnished of which they maystand in need, until they shall have time to prepare their houses andset in to work. " No master was moved to take advantage of theopportunity. This was discouraging to the believers in the efficacy ofcolonization as a potent anti-slavery instrument. But Garrison was nosuch believer. With unerring moral instinct he had from the start placedhis reliance "on nothing but the eternal principles of justice for thespeedy overthrow of slavery. "

He obtained at this period an intimate personal knowledge of the freecolored people. He saw that they were not essentially unlike otherraces--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar aboutthem, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the commonproperty of mankind in similar circumstances. He forthwith became theirbrave defender against the common slanders of the times. "There is aprevalent disposition among all classes to traduce the habits and moralsof our free blacks, " he remarked in the _Genius_. "The most scandalousexaggerations in regard to their condition are circulated by a thousandmischievous tongues, and no reproach seems to them too deep orunmerited. Vile and malignant indeed is this practice, and culpable arethey who follow it. We do not pretend to say that crime, intemperance, and suffering, to a considerable extent, cannot be found among the freeblacks; but we do assert that they are as moral, peaceable, andindustrious as that class of the whites who are, like them, in indigentcircumstances--and far less intemperate than the great body of foreignimmigrants who infest and corrupt our shores. " This idea of the naturalequality of the races he presented in the _Genius_ a few weeks beforewith Darwinian breadth in the following admirable sentences: "I deny thepostulate that God has made, by an irreversible decree, or any inherentqualities, one portion of the human race superior to another. No matterhow many breeds are amalgamated--no matter how many shades of colorintervene between tribes or nations give them the same chances toimprove, and a fair start at the same time, and the result will beequally brilliant, equally productive, equally grand. "

At the same time that he was making active, personal acquaintance withthe free colored people, he was making actual personal acquaintance withthe barbarism of slavery also. "The distinct application of a whip, andthe shrieks of anguish" of the slave, his residence in Baltimore hadtaught him was "nothing uncommon" in that city. Such an instance hadcome to him while in the street where the office of the _Genius_ waslocated. It was what was occurring at almost all hours of the day and inalmost all parts of the town. He had not been in Baltimore a month whenhe saw a specimen of the brutality of slavery on the person of a negro, who had been mercilessly flogged. On his back were thirty-seven gashesmade with a cowskin, while on his head were many bruises besides. It wasa Sunday morning, fresh from his terrible punishment, that the poorfellow had found the editors of the _Genius_, who, with the compassionof brothers, took him in, dressed his wounds, and cared for him for twodays. Such an experience was no new horror to Lundy, but it wasdoubtless Garrison's first lesson in that line, and it sank many fathomsdeep into his heart. 

Maryland was one of the slave-breeding States and Baltimore a slaveemporium. There was enacted the whole business of slavery as acommercial enterprise. Here the human chattels were brought and herewarehoused in jails and other places of storage and detention. Here theywere put up at public auction, and knocked down to the highest bidder, and from here they were shipped to New Orleans, the great distributingcenter for such merchandise. He heard what Lundy had years before heard, the wail of captive mothers and fathers, wives, husbands and children, torn from each other; like Lundy, "he felt their pang of distress; andthe iron entered his soul. " He could not hold his peace in the midst ofsuch abominations, but boldly exposed and denounced them. Hisindignation grew hot when he saw that Northern vessels were largelyengaged in the coastwise slave-trade; and when, to his amazement, helearned that the ship _Francis_, owned by Francis Todd, a Newburyportmerchant, had sailed for New Orleans with a gang of seventy-five slaves, his indignation burst into blaze. He blazoned the act and the name ofFrancis Todd in the _Genius_, and did verily what he had resolved to do, viz. , "to cover with thick infamy all who were concerned in thisnefarious business, " the captain as well as the owner of theill-freighted ship. He did literally point at these men the finger ofscorn. Every device known to the printer's art for concentrating thereader's attention upon particular words and sentences, Garrison madeskillful use of in his articles--from the deep damnation of the heavyblack capitals in which he printed the name Francis Todd, to the smallcaps in which appeared the words, "sentenced to solitary confinement forlife, " and which he flanked with two terrible indices. But the articlesdid not need such embellishment. They were red hot branding ironswithout them. One can almost smell the odor of burning flesh as he readsthe words: "It is no worse to fit out piratical cruisers or to engage inthe foreign slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade along our coast;and the men who have the wickedness to participate therein, for thepurpose of keeping up wealth should be ==>SENTENCED TO SOLITARYCONFINEMENT FOR LIFE;