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William Lloyd Garrison by Archibald H. Grimke

A >> Archibald H. Grimke >> William Lloyd Garrison




The _Liberator_ was made the official organ of the society, and in this
way was added to its other weapons that of the press. This was a capital
arrangement, for by it both the paper and the society were placed under
the direction of the same masterly guidance. There was still one arrow
left in the moral quiver of the organization to reach the conscience of
the people, and that was the appointment of an agent to spread the
doctrines of the new propaganda of freedom. In August the board of
managers, metaphorically speaking, shot this arrow by making Garrison
the agent of the society to lecture on the subject of slavery "for a
period not exceeding three months." This was the first drop from a cloud
then no bigger than a hand, but which was to grow and spread until,
covering the North, was, at the end of a few short years, to flood the
land with anti-slavery agents and lecturers.

Our anti-slavery agent visited portions of Massachusetts, Maine, and
Rhode Island, preaching the Abolition gospel in divers places, and to
many people--notably at such centers of population as Worcester,
Providence, Bangor, and Portland, making at the latter city a signal
conversion to his cause in the person of General Samuel Fessenden,
distinguished then as a lawyer, and later as the father of William Pitt
Fessenden. The anti-slavery schoolmaster was abroad, and was beginning
to turn New England and the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where
he sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the forms.

So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the society during the
first year of its existence that it was no empty declaration or boast of
the _Abolitionist_, the new monthly periodical of the society, that
"probably, through its instrumentality, more public addresses on the
subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people
of color, have been made in New England, during the past year (1832)
than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization."

The introduction of the principle of association into the slavery
agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an
achievement of the first importance. To Garrison, more than to any man,
or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense
initiative. He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged
the method" of the Abolition movement. The marshaling of the
anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a
common cause, was a master stroke of moral generalship. This master
stroke the leader followed up promptly with a second stroke not less
masterly. That second stroke was his "Thoughts on African Colonization,"
published in the summer succeeding the formation of the New England
Anti-Slavery Society.

Garrison's championship of the cause of the slave had started with
strong faith in the efficacy and disinterestedness of the colonization
scheme as an instrument of emancipation. It commanded, therefore, his
early support. In his Park Street Church address he evinced himself in
earnest sympathy with the friends of colonization. But after his arrival
in Baltimore a change began to exhibit itself in this regard. He began
to qualify his confidence in its utility; began to discern in it
influences calculated to retard general emancipation. As these doubts
and misgivings arose within him he expressed them frankly in the
_Genius_. Lundy had been suspicious of the pro-slavery purposes or
interests of the enterprise for many years. He could not reconcile
himself to the significant or, at least, singular fact of so many
slaveholders being in the membership and the offices of the association.
Then, in addition to this lack of confidence on the part of Lundy in the
scheme, Garrison became acquainted, for the first time, with the objects
of the society's philanthropy--the class of free people of color. He
found that these people were not at all well affected to the society;
that they had no appreciation of its benevolent intentions in respect to
themselves. He found, on the contrary, that they were positively
embittered toward it and toward its designs for their removal from the
country as toward their worst enemy. This circumstance was undoubtedly a
poser to their young friend. How could he reconcile this deep-seated and
widespread disbelief in the purity of the motives of the Colonization
Society, with the simple integrity and humanity of the enterprise
itself? Later, his acquaintance with such representatives of the free
people of color in Philadelphia as James Forten and his son-in-law,
Robert Purvis, served but to confirm those first impressions which he
received in Baltimore from the Watkinses and the Greeners. It was the
same experience in New York and New Haven, in Boston and Providence. He
learned that from the very beginning, in the year 1817, that the free
people of color in Richmond and Philadelphia had, by an instinctive
knowledge of threatened wrong and danger, met and resolved against the
society and its sinister designs upon themselves. These people did not
wish to leave the country; they did not wish to be sent to Liberia; but
the society, bent on doing them good against their will, did want them
to leave the country, did want to send them to Liberia.

And why did the society desire to remove the free people of color out of
the country? Was it from motives of real philanthropy? The colored
people were the first to detect its spurious humanity, the first to see
through the artful disguises employed to impose upon the conscience of
the republic. Their removal, they intuitively divined, was proposed not
to do their race a benefit, but rather to do a service to the owners of
slaves. These objects of the society's pseudo-philanthropy had the
sagacity to perceive that, practically, their expatriation tended to
strengthen the chains of their brethren then in slavery; for if the
South could get rid of its free colored population, its slave property
would thereby acquire additional security, and, of consequence,
increased market value. Like cause, like effect. If the operation of the
colonization scheme was decidedly in the interest of the masters, it was
the part of wisdom to conclude as the free colored people did actually
conclude that the underlying motive, the hidden purpose of the society
was also in the interest of the masters.

Garrison did not reach his conclusions as to the pro-slavery character
and tendency of the society abruptly. The scales fell away gradually
from his eyes. He was not completely undeceived until he had examined
the reports of the society and found in them the most redundant evidence
of its insincerity and guilt. It was out of its own mouth that he
condemned it. When he saw the society in its true character, he saw what
he must do. It was a wolf in sheep's skin running at large among the
good shepherd's flock, and inflicting infinite hurt upon his poor sheep.
He no longer wondered at the horror which the colonization scheme
inspired among the free people of color. They were right. The society
was their dangerous and determined enemy; it was the bulwark of the
slave-holding classes. With the instinct of a great purpose he resolved
to carry this powerful bulwark of slavery by assault. To the attack he
returned week after week in the _Liberator_, during a year and a half.
Then he hurled himself upon it with all his guns, facts, arguments,
denunciations, blowing away and burning up every shred of false covering
from the doctrines, principles, and purposes of the society, revealing
it to mankind in its base and monstrous character.

The society's one motive "to get rid of the free people of color," was
outrageous enough, but this was not its only sin. There was another
phase to the mischief it was working, which lifted it to the rank of a
great sinner. It was not only harmful in its principles and purposes.
"It imperatively and effectually seals up the lips," so Garrison accused
it, "of a vast number of influential and pious men, who, for fear of
giving offence to those slaveholders with whom they associate, and
thereby leading to a dissolution of the compact, dare not expose the
flagrant enormities of the system of slavery, nor denounce the crime of
holding human beings in bondage. They dare not lead to the onset against
the forces of tyranny; and if they shrink from the conflict, how shall
the victory be won? I do not mean to aver that in their sermons, or
addresses, or private conversations, they never allude to the subject of
slavery; for they do so frequently, or at least every Fourth of July.
But my complaint is that they content themselves with representing
slavery as an evil--a misfortune--a calamity which has been entailed
upon us by former generations,--_and not as an individual_ CRIME,
embracing in its folds, robbery, cruelty, oppression, and piracy. _They
do not identify the criminal_; they make no direct, pungent, earnest
appeal to the consciences of men-stealers." This was a damning bill, but
it was true in every particular; and the evidence which Garrison adduced
to establish his charges was overwhelming and irrefragable.

Nearly fifty years afterward, Elizur Wright described the baleful
influence of the society upon the humanity and philanthropy of the
nation. "The humanity and philanthropy," he said, "which could not
otherwise be disposed of, was ingeniously seduced into an African
Colonization Society, whereby all slaves who had grown seditious and
troublesome to their masters could be transplanted on the pestiferous
African coast. That this wretched and seemingly transparent humbug could
have deluded anybody, must now seem past belief; but I must with shame
confess the fact that I for one was deluded by it. And that fact would
put me in doubt of my own sanity at the time if I did not know that high
statesmen, presidents of colleges, able editors, and that most undoubted
of firm philanthropists, Gerritt Smith, shared the same delusion. Bible
and missionary societies fellowshipped that mean and scurvy device of
the kidnapper, in their holy work. It was spoken of as the most glorious
of Christian enterprises, had a monthly magazine devoted to itself, and
taxed about every pulpit in the land for an annual sermon in its favor."

Such was the Colonization Society, and its entrenched strength in the
piety and philanthropy of the country at the moment when Garrison
published his "Thoughts." It did not seem possible that a single arm
however powerful, was able to start its roots; but, directly upon the
launching of this bolt, the roots of the Bohun Upas, as Garrison
graphically designated the society, were seen to have started, and the
enterprise appeared blasted as by fire. The deluded intellect and
conscience of the free States saw in the fierce light, which the
pamphlet of the reformer threw upon the colonization scheme how
shamefully imposed upon they had been. They had believed the society
"the most glorious of Christian enterprises," and, lo! it stood revealed
to them a "scurvy device of the kidnapper." The effect was
extraordinary. The book was seized and its contents devoured by some of
the finest minds of the North. Here is an example of the interest which
it excited and the converts which it made: "Last Monday evening was our
Law Club meeting, and I had the great satisfaction of hearing Judge
Mellen, our Chief-Justice, say he had read your 'Thoughts,' was a
thorough convert to your views, and was ready to do all in his power to
promote them. Mr. Longfellow [father of Henry W. Longfellow] was present
also, and with equal warmth and clearness expressed himself also in
favor of your views. This is getting the two first men in the State for
talents and influence in benevolent effort. I have no doubt they will
head the list of those who will subscribe to form here an anti-slavery
society. Mr. Greenleaf [Simon] also, will cordially come in, and I need
not say he is one of the first [men] in the State, for his character is
known." This quotation is made from a letter of General Samuel
Fessenden, of Portland, Me., to Mr. Garrison, dated December 14, 1832.
Among the remarkable minds which the "Thoughts" disillusioned in respect
of the character and tendency of the Colonization Society were Theodore
D. Weld, Elizur Wright, and Beriah Green, N.P. Rogers, William Goodell,
Joshua Leavitt, Amos A. Phelps, Lewis Tappan, and James Miller McKim.

Garrison's assertion that "the overthrow of the Colonization Society was
the overthrow of slavery itself," was, from the standpoint of a student
of history, an exaggerated one. We know now that the claim was not
founded on fact, that while they did stand together they did not fall
together. But the position was, nevertheless, the strongest possible one
for the anti-slavery movement to occupy at the time. In the disposition
of the pro-slavery forces on the field of the opening conflict in 1832,
the colonization scheme commanded the important approaches to the
citadel of the peculiar institution. It cut off the passes to public
opinion, and to the religious and benevolent influences of the land. To
reach these it was necessary in the first place to dislodge the society
from its coign of vantage, its strategical point in the agitation. And
this is precisely what "The Thoughts on African Colonization" did. It
dislodged the society from its powerful place in the moral sentiment of
the North. The capture of this position was like the capture of a
drawbridge, and the precipitation of the assaulting column directly upon
the walls of a besieged castle. Within the pamphlet was contained the
whole tremendous enginery of demolition. The anti-slavery agent and
lecturer thenceforth set it up wherever he spoke.

To him it was not only the catapult; it furnished the missile-like facts
and arguments for breaching the walls of this pro-slavery stronghold as
well.

The effect of the publication of "The Thoughts" in this country was
extraordinary, but the result of their circulation in England was hardly
less so. It produced there as here a revolution in public sentiment upon
the subject. The philanthropy and piety of Great Britain had generally
prior to the unmasking of the society, looked upon it as an instrument
of Emancipation, and had accordingly given it their powerful
countenance, and not a little material support. But from the moment that
the pamphlet reached England a decided change in this regard became
manifest. The society made fruitless attempts to break the force of the
blow dealt it by Garrison in the United States. But wherever its
emissaries traveled "The Thoughts" confronted and confounded them. So
that Mr. Garrison was warranted in saying that "all that sophistry or
misrepresentation could effect to overthrow its integrity has been
attempted in vain. The work, as a whole, stands irrefutable." The
attempts made to maintain its hold upon the British public were
characterized by duplicity and misrepresentation beyond anything
practiced in America. The work of deceiving the philanthropy of Great
Britain was conducted by the emissary of the society, Elliott Cresson, a
man perfectly fitted to perform his part with remarkable thoroughness
and industry. Three thousand miles away from America, and practically
secure from contradiction, he went about making outrageous statements as
to the anti-slavery character and purpose of the colonization
enterprise. As there was no one in England sufficiently acquainted with
the operations and designs of the society, he was enabled to falsify
facts, to conceal the real principles of the scheme with astonishing
audacity and activity. He approached Wilberforce, and duped Clarkson
into a belief in the anti-slavery aim of the society.

Unmasked in America, the time had come when the interests of the
Abolition movement on this side of the Atlantic required that it should
be stripped of its disguises on the other side also. No better
instrument could be selected for this purpose than the man who had torn
the mask from its features in the United States. And so in March, 1833,
the Board of Managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society notified
the public of the appointment of "William Lloyd Garrison as their agent,
and that he would proceed to England as soon as the necessary
arrangements can be made, for the purpose of procuring funds to aid in
the establishment of the proposed MANUAL LABOR SCHOOL FOR COLORED YOUTH,
and of disseminating in that country the truth in relation to American
slavery, and to its ally, the American Colonization Society." The
managers offered in justification of their step the fact that "Elliott
Cresson is now in England as an agent for the Colonization Society, and
that he has procured funds to a considerable amount by representing that
the object of the society is 'to assist in the emancipation of all the
slaves now in the United States.' It is important that the
philanthropists of that country should be undeceived, and that the real
principles and designs of the Colonization Society should be there made
known."

In pursuance of this mission Garrison sailed from New York, May 2, 1833.
Twenty days later he landed in Liverpool. His arrival was opportune, for
all England was watching the closing scene in the drama of West India
Emancipation. He was an eye-witness of the crowning triumph of the
English Abolitionists, viz., the breaking by Act of Parliament of the
fetters of eight hundred thousand slaves. He was in time to greet his
great spiritual kinsman, William Wilberforce, and to undeceive him in
respect of the Colonization Society, before death claimed his body, and
to follow him to his last resting-place by the side of Pitt and Fox, in
Westminster Abbey.

A highly interesting incident of this visit is best told in Mr.
Garrison's own words. He said:

"On arriving in London I received a polite invitation by letter from Mr.
Buxton to take breakfast with him. Presenting myself at the appointed
time, when my name was announced, instead of coming forward promptly to
take me by the hand, he scrutinized me from head to foot, and then
inquired, 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Garrison, of Boston, in
the United States?' 'Yes, sir,' I replied, 'I am he; and I am here in
accordance with your invitation.' Lifting up his hands he exclaimed,
'Why, my dear sir, I thought you were a black man! And I have
consequently invited this company of ladies and gentlemen to be present
to welcome Mr. Garrison, the black advocate of emancipation, from the
United States of America.' I have often said that that is the only
compliment I have ever had paid to me that I care to remember or to tell
of! For Mr. Buxton had somehow or other supposed that no white American
could plead for those in bondage as I had done, and therefore I must be
black!"

Garrison promptly threw down his challenge to Elliott Cresson, offering
to prove him an impostor and the Colonization Society "corrupt in its
principles, proscriptive in its measures, and the worst enemy of the
free colored and slave population of the United States." From the first
it was apparent that Cresson did not mean to encounter the author of the
"Thoughts" in public debate. Even a mouse when cornered will show fight,
but there was no manly fight in Cresson. Garrison sent him a letter
containing seven grave charges against his society, and dared him to a
refutation of them in a joint discussion. This challenge was presented
four times before the agent of colonization could be persuaded to accept
it. Garrison was bent on a joint public discussion between himself and
Mr. Cresson. But Mr. Cresson was bent on avoiding his opponent. He
skulked under one pretext or another from vindicating the colonization
scheme from the seven-headed indictment preferred against it by the
agent of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. As Cresson could not be
driven into a joint discussion with him there was nothing left to
Garrison but to go on without him. His arraignment and exposure of the
society in public and private was thorough and overwhelming. He was
indefatigable in the prosecution of this part of his mission. And his
labor was not in vain. For in less than three months after his reaching
England he had rendered the Colonization Society as odious there as his
"Thoughts" had made it in America. The great body of the anti-slavery
sentiment in Great Britain promptly condemned the spirit and object of
the American Colonization Society. Such leaders as Buxton and Cropper
"termed its objects _diabolical_;" while Zachary Macaulay, father of the
historian, did not doubt that "the unchristian prejudice of color (which
alone has given birth to the Colonization Society, though varnished over
with other more plausible pretences, and veiled under a profession of a
Christian regard for the temporal and spiritual interests of the negro
which is belied by the whole course of its reasonings and the spirit of
its measures) is so detestable in itself that I think it ought not to be
tolerated, but, on the contrary, ought to be denounced and opposed by
all humane, and especially by all pious persons in this country."

The protest against the Colonization Society "signed by Wilberforce and
eleven of the most distinguished Abolitionists in Great Britain,"
including Buxton, Macaulay, Cropper, and Daniel O'Connell, showed how
thoroughly Garrison had accomplished his mission. The protest declares,
thanks to the teachings of the agent of the New England Anti-Slavery
Society, that the colonization scheme "takes its roots from a cruel
prejudice and alienation in the whites of America against the colored
people, slave or free. This being its source the effects are what might
be expected; that it fosters and increases the spirit of caste, already
so unhappily predominant; that it widens the breach between the two
races--exposes the colored people to great practical persecution, in
order to _force_ them to emigrate; and, finally, is calculated to
swallow up and divert that feeling which America, as a Christian and
free country, cannot but entertain, that slavery is alike incompatible
with the law of God and with the well-being of man, whether the enslaver
or the enslaved." The solemn conclusion of the illustrious signers of
this mighty protest was that: "That society is, in our estimation, not
deserving of the countenance of the British public." This powerful
instrument fell, as Garrison wrote at the time, "like a thunderbolt upon
the society." The damage inflicted upon it was immense, irreparable. The
name of Thomas Clarkson was conspicuous by its absence from the protest.
He could not be induced to take positive ground against the society.
Garrison had visited him for this purpose. But the venerable
philanthropist, who was then blind, had taken position on _neutral
ground_, and could not, after an interview of four hours, be induced to
abandon it. But, fortunately, potent as the name of Clarkson would have
been in opposition to the society, it was not indispensable to its
overthrow in Great Britain. Garrison had won to his side "all the
staunch anti-slavery spirits," while Cresson was able to retain only "a
few titled, wealthy, high-pretending individuals."

The success of the mission was signal, its service to the movement
against slavery in America manifold. Garrison writing from London to the
board of managers, summarized the results produced by it as follows:
"1st, awakening a general interest among the friends of emancipation in
this country, and securing their efficient cooeperation with us in the
abolition of slavery in the United States; 2d, dispelling the mists with
which the agent of the American Colonization Society has blinded the
eyes of benevolent men in relation to the design and tendency of the
society; 3d, enlisting able and eloquent advocates to plead our cause;
4th, inducing editors of periodicals and able writers to give us the
weight of their influence; 5th, exciting a spirit of emulation in the
redemption of our slave population among the numerous female
anti-slavery societies; 6th, procuring a large collection of
anti-slavery documents, tracts, pamphlets, and volumes, which will
furnish us with an inexhaustible supply of ammunition." These were
indeed some of the grand results of laborious weeks. His mission was
ended. He was profoundly grateful to the good God for its success. The
great movement which he had started against oppression in his own
country was awaiting his aggressive leadership. He did not tarry abroad,
therefore, but set sail from London August 18, 1833, for New York, where
he landed six weeks later.





CHAPTER VIII



COLORPHOBIA


Garrison's Abolitionism was of the most radical character. It went the
whole length of the humanity of the colored race, and all that that
implied. They were, the meanest members, whether bond or free, his
brothers and his sisters. From the first he regarded them as bone of his
bone and blood of his blood, as children with him of a common father.
Poor and enslaved and despised to be sure, wronged by all men, and
contemned by all men, but for that very reason they were deserving of
his most devoted love and labor. He never looked down upon them as
wanting in any essential respect the manhood which was his. They were
men and as such entitled to immediate emancipation. They were besides
entitled to equality of civil and political rights in the republic,
entitled to equality and fraternity in the church, equality and
fraternity at the North, equality and fraternity always and everywhere.
This is what he preached, this is what he practiced. In not a single
particular was he ever found separating himself from his brother in
black, saying to him "thus far but no farther." He never drew the line
in public or private between him and the people whose cause was his
cause--not even socially. He went into their homes and was in all things
one with them. He forgot that he was white, forgot that they were black,
forgot the pride of race, forgot the stigma of race too in the tie of
human kinship which bound him to them. If he had what they did not
possess, the rights of a man, the civil and political position of a man
in the State, the equality of a brother in the church, it could not make
him feel better than they, it filled him instead with a righteous sense
of wrong, a passionate sympathy, a supreme desire and determination to
make his own rights the measure of theirs.

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