Chapter III: William Lloyd Garrison (2)

He said that the resolution "was introduced under peculiar circumstances, during considerable excitement, and he went for it as a _peace offering to the South_, without sufficiently reflecting upon the precise import of its phraseology, but after a little deliberation he was sorry! He was convinced that if the resolution remained on the journal, it would be disastrous to the whole Northern church."

Dr. A. J. Few, of Georgia, arose, and it is instructive to see how resolute men, who have made up their minds, and know exactly what they mean to do, despise timid men, who are divided between policy and conscience. Dr. Few said:

"Look at it! What do you declare to us, in taking this course! Why, simply, as much as to say, 'We cannot sustain you in the condition which you cannot avoid! We cannot sustain you in the _necessary conditions_ of slaveholding; one of its _necessary conditions_ being the rejection of negro testimony!' If it is not sinful to hold slaves, under all circumstances, _it is not sinful to hold them in the only condition, and under the only circumstances in which they can be held_. The rejection of negro testimony is one of the necessary circumstances under which slaveholding can exist; indeed, it is utterly impossible for it to exist without it; therefore it is not sinful to hold slaves _in the condition and under the circumstances in which they are held at the South, inasmuch as they can be held under no other circumstances_. * * * If you believe that slaveholding is necessarily sinful, come out with the abolitionists, and honestly say so. If you believe that slaveholding is necessarily sinful, you believe we are necessarily sinners; and if so, come out and honestly declare it, and _let us leave you_. * * * We want to know distinctly, precisely and honestly the position which you take. We cannot be tampered with by you any longer. We have had enough of it. We are tired of your sickly sympathies. * * * If you are not opposed to the principles which it involves, unite with us, like _honest men_, and go home, and boldly meet the consequences."

From this it appears that the Southern slaveocracy was not only a very united, determined body, but also remarkably logical as to the necessary ways and means which were essential to the support of their system, and that not only they were prepared to go the whole length themselves, but they meant to have nothing to do with any one who would not go the whole length with them.

The result of this one victory was to split the Methodist church in two. Mr. Peck was right in supposing that there was yet enough conscience in the Northern Methodists to feel the impossibility of holding a book of discipline which called slavery "the sum of all villainies," and yet keeping union with those who were making it the first object of life to uphold it. Some such crisis of conscience, always brought on by the slave-driving, dictatorial, determined and logical South, in time rent asunder all the principal denominations into a northern and southern wing. For however they might have been disposed towards the policy of non-intervention, the South never allowed them to stand long on that ground. They must not only cease to remonstrate against slavery, but help them by consenting to positive laws and measures in its defence. So great was the power of this dictatorial spirit, that when the New School Presbyterian church had broken off from the great body of southern churches, who went with the Old School, yet the one or two synods who were left among them extorted from the whole body the decree that "masters ought not to be disciplined for selling slaves without their consent, even when fellow members of the same churches with themselves."

Now this history of what went on in the church of America--for the church, meaning by it all the religious denominations, did embody as a general fact, the whole religious and moral force of the country, shows more strongly than anything else what was likely to be going on in bodies that did not profess any moral character or considerations. If this was the state to which the dictation of the southern slavepower had driven the church, what was to be hoped of the political world and the world of trade?

Mr. Garrison looked over this dark field, and saw the battle--for there _was_ a battle all over the land--a battle in which the truth and the right were being steadily, daily and everywhere beaten. The church and the world seemed to be vieing with each other who could retreat fastest before their victorious masters, and every day some new right of humanity was thrown down for the pursuing army to worry and tear--just as retreating fugitives throw back a lamb or a dog to stop a pack of hungry wolves.

Garrison saw at once that the root of all this defeat and disaster was the desire of UNION with slaveholders, and forthwith he unfurled his banner and sounded his trumpet to the watchword, NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS.

Immediately the Constitution of the United States was brought up before him. Does not the constitution form a union with slaveholders? Has it not express compromises designed to protect slave property? Is not the basis of representation throughout all the southern states made on three-fifths of a slave population? Now Mr. Garrison, what do you say to that?

"What I say," said Garrison, "is, that slavery is a sin against God and man, and if the constitution of the United States does agree to defend and protect it, it is a sinful league, and it is a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell," and out came the _Liberator_ with the solemn curses of the old prophets at its head, and the Garrisonian abolitionists organized themselves on the principle that they would hold no union with slaveholders in church or in state, they would belong to no religious or secular body which did not treat slavery as a sin against God, and they would lift up their testimony against every person, party or denomination in church or in state that made any concession to the slaveholding power, for the sake of accomplishing _any_ purpose whatsoever.

Here we see the whole scope of subject-matter for the _Liberator_, and for all the lectures and speeches from the platforms of the Garrisonian abolition societies for years and years. For as there was scarcely a thing in society in those days that was not the joint work of the North and the South, and as the South _never_ made a concession, of course there was through all the various ramifications of political, social and religious life, a continued series of concessions on the part of the North. These concessions were always, everywhere unsparingly discussed, reproved and denounced by the Garrisonians, and so there was controversy constantly and everywhere.

The ministry of New England, from the days of President Edwards, had adopted a peculiar and pungent style of preaching immediate repentance of sin. They repudiated all half efforts, insensible approaches, dream-like floatings toward right, and narrowed the question of individual responsibility down to the present moment, and urged repentance on the spot as the duty of all. Garrison had received his early education in this school, and he drove his preaching of immediate repentance for the sin of slavery, his requirements for an instant clearing of the soul from all complicity with it, with the solemnity of an old Puritan. He had the whole language of the Old Testament at his tongue's end, and a text from the old prophets ready like an arrow on a bow-string, to shoot into every loop-hole of the concessions and compromises that were constantly going on. He reproved without fear or favor, ministers, elders, Christians, statesmen, governors, authors, and denounced the whole church as contaminated by the sanction and support it gave to the accursed thing.

He was denounced in turn by the church as an infidel and an opposer of religion, but he persisted in hurling right and left the stern denunciations of the Old Testament: "When thou sawest a thief, thou _consentedst_ with him--thou hast been partaker with adulterers," and he declared that the visible union of church and state with an organization which practiced systematic robbery on four millions of human beings, and made legal marriage among them an impossibility, was in the very highest sense consenting with thieves, and being made partakers with adultery.

There is not the least doubt that the course of _entire_ separation from slaveholders in church and state, would have been a perfect and efficient stop to the evil, could it have been compassed. Could we once imagine a state of things in which every man and woman in the United States who admitted that slavery was an injustice, should come to the point of refusing all fellowship or connection with it, either in church or state, or in any of the traffic or intercourse of life, we should imagine a state in which there would have been immediately a majority which could have revised the constitution of the United States, and cast out the offensive clauses, as has since been done.

But measures so stringent and thorough, supposed an education of the public conscience which had not yet taken place, and the Garrisonian Abolitionists therefore were always a small minority, extremely unfashionable and every where spoken against. Small as they were, they were the indispensables of the great conflict--its very heart. Garrison and his band of coadjutors formed a _steady force_ which acted night and day with unvarying consistency. While everybody else in the United States had something else to conserve, some side issues to make, some other point to carry, Garrison and his band had but one thing to say--that American slavery is a sin; but one thing to do--to preach immediate repentance and forsaking of sin. They withdrew from every organization which could in any way be supposed to tolerate or hold communion with it, and walked alone, a small, but always active and powerful body. They represented the pure, abstract form of every principle as near as it is possible for it to be represented by human frailty. Free speech, free inquiry and freedom of conscience found perfect expression in their meetings, and the _Liberator_ was the one paper in which any honest, well-meaning person might print _any_ conscientious opinion, however contrary to those generally received in society. Of course it became the channel for much crude thought, for much startling and strange expression; and its circulation was confined almost entirely to the small party whose opinions it expressed. A large portion of the Liberator was every week devoted to extracts cut from southern papers, giving a vivid picture of the barbaric state of society, produced by slavery. Here, without note or comment, came the accounts clipped from different southern papers, of the assaults, frays and murders daily perpetrated by white men on each other in a land where violence was ever above law. There were, too, the advertisements of slave auctions and runaway negroes; of blood-hounds kept for human hunting; while in a weekly corner called the "Refuge of Oppression," all the violent doctrines of the most rabid slave holders found every week a faithful reproduction in their own language. For an exact picture of the image and body of the most extreme form of southern slave holding and its results on society, the _Liberator_ was as perfect a moral daguerreotype as could be produced.

A solemn instance of the terrible sequence of Divine retribution has been presented to this generation which will not soon be forgotten. All this disgusting, harrowing, dreadful record of cruelty, crime and oppression which the _Liberator_ went on, year after year, in vain holding up to the inspection of the North, as being perpetrated within the bounds of slaveholding society, was shrunk from as too dreadful and disgusting to be contemplated.

"We do not wish to have our feelings harrowed; we do not wish to be appalled and disgusted with records of cruelty and crime," was the almost universal voice of good society at the North, as they went steadily on, compromising with and yielding to the exactions of a barbarous oligarchy. God so ordered it in return, that the cup of trembling which had so long been drunk by the slave alone, should be put into the hands of thousands of the sons and daughters of the free North. Thousands of them were starved, tortured, insulted, hunted by dogs, separated from home and friends, and left to linger out a cruel death in life, through the barbarity of those very slaveholders, with whose sins we had connived, with whose cruelties practiced on the helpless negroes we had refused to interfere. So awful a lesson of the justice of a living God we trust will never be forgotten. If every northern man and woman had from the very first been as careful in regarding the rights of the slave, as determined to hold no fellowship with evil as Garrison, the solution of our great national question might have been a far more peaceful one.

In the days of the great conflict, Mr. Garrison was accused of being in a bad spirit, of the utterance of violent, angry and abusive language. A very mistaken idea of his personal character, in fact, went abroad in the world.

In his personal intercourse he is peculiarly bland and urbane, one of the few men capable of conducting an argument on the most interesting subject without the slightest apparent excitement of voice or manner, allowing his adversary every polite advantage and admitting all his just statements with perfect fairness. It is said that a fiery young southerner once fell into a discussion on slavery with him when he was travelling incog., on board a steamboat. Garrison quite won his heart by the fairness and courtesy with which he discussed the subject, and brought him to admissions which the frank southerner in a good humor was quite willing to make. On parting he said to him, "If that Garrison there in Boston were only like you, we should be more ready to listen to him."

A great deal of this amiability doubtless is owing to the singular steadiness and healthiness of Garrison's nervous system. In this he was one of the most peculiarly constituted men, in whom nature ever combined traits expressly for a great work. All his personal habits are those of a methodical unexcitable man, and not in the least like the hurry and enthusiasm of a fanatic. He is methodical, systematic and precise in all his arrangements, neat and careful in respect to the minutest trifle.

His handwriting is always of the finished completeness of a writing master, and in the most vehement denunciations, not a letter was ever misplaced or a comma or exclamation point, omitted. Every thing he ever wrote was perfected for the press as it left his pen. Such habits as these speak a composed and equable nervous system. In fact, Garrison's nerves never knew what it was to shiver and vibrate either with irritation or with fear. He is gifted with the most perfect imperturbable cheerfulness, which no outward discomposure seems to have any power to shake.

His politely bowing to the furious Boston mob before descending to put himself in their hands, is a very characteristic thing, and during all the tossings and tumults of the hour that followed, Garrison was probably the serenest person that ever had his clothes torn off his back for expressing his opinions.

That language in the Liberator which looked to the world as if it must have been uttered in a passion, because it was so far above the usual earnestness of expression on such subjects, was in his case the result of a deliberate system.

Garrison said that the world blinded conscience and made false issues with itself by the habitual calling of things by the wrong names; that there was no kind of vice which might not be disguised under a polite phrase. Theft might be spoken of as an ingenious transfer of property--adultery as a form of the elective affinity, and so on, but that all such phraseology had an immoral tendency.

In like manner the stealing of men and women from Africa--the systematic appropriation of all the fruits of their industry and labor--was robbery. Whoever did this was a thief.

Garrison called slaveholders, no matter of what rank in society, of what personal amiabilities and virtues, man-thieves. Whoever formed union with slaveholders, united with man-thieves, and as the partaker in law is judged as being a thief, those who united with man-thieves became themselves thieves.

Having reasoned this out logically, Garrison steadily and systematically applied these terms wherever he thought they applied. The Garrisonian tract, "The church a den of thieves," is a specimen of this kind of logic, and this unsparing use of terms. Whatever may be thought of the justice of such reasoning or the propriety of such logical application of terms, we still wish the fact to stand out clear, that these denunciations were not boiled up by heated passions, but reasoned out by logic, and that it was a part of a systematic plan to bring back the moral sense of society by a habit of calling things by discriminating names. Thus in the Liberator every agent of the United States who helped to catch and return a slave was always spoken of as a kidnapper--all defences of the fugitive slave law were familiarly denominated defences of kidnapping. Theodore Parker, in his sermons about the time of the fugitive slave law, makes very effective use of these terms, and it is not to be denied that the habit of thus constantly using language which in a word makes a moral discrimination is a very powerful influence in forming popular opinion.

People will boggle a great while about fulfilling constitutional obligation when catching a slave is put in those terms, but when it is put as "kidnapping," the question becomes far more direct and simple. The Garrisonians doubtless were philosophical in the precision of the moral nomenclature they adopted, and their success in stimulating drugged and paralyzed moral sentiment was largely owing to it.

To be sure, in the application of wholesale moral syllogism to particular individual cases, there was often something that appeared extremely hard and unjust to the individual. When an amiable northern Doctor of Divinity, who never owned a slave in his life and never expected to, found himself cited in the Liberator by the familiar designation of a man-thief, because he had been in the General Assembly, good naturedly uniting with a large body of southern slaveholders in suppressing all inquiry into their great systematic robbery, the northern Doctor was naturally indignant and so were all his friends and adherents.

To be sure it was only a skillful turning of that syllogistic crank by which New England theology demonstrated that every individual not conscious of a certain moral change of heart, was a malignant enemy of God, and had not a spark of moral excellence of any kind, no matter what sort of a man he might be, or what moral virtues he might practice.

Garrison simply reversed the crank and turned this unsparing kind of logic back on the church and clergy, who felt some of the surprise and pain of the eagle in the fable who found himself shot through by an arrow feathered from his own wing; and in both cases it may be doubted whether great moral syllogisms do not involve many instances of individual and personal injustice.

But it is best to let Garrison state his own case as he did in the Liberator:

"I am accused of using hard language. I admit the charge. I have not been able to find a soft word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it. The man who makes a chattel of his brother--what is he? The man who keeps back the hire of his laborers by fraud--what is he? They who prohibit the circulation of the Bible--what are they? They who compel three millions of men and women to herd together, like brute beasts--what are they? They who sell mothers by the pound, and children in lots to suit purchasers--what are they? I care not what terms are applied to them, provided they do apply. If they are not thieves, if they are not tyrants, if they are not men-stealers, I should like to know what is their true character, and by what names they may be called. It is as mild an epithet to say that a thief is a thief, as it is to say that a spade is a spade.

"The anti-slavery cause is beset with many dangers; but there is one which we have special reason to apprehend. It is that this hollow cant about hard language will insensibly check the free utterance of thought and close application of truth which have characterized abolitionists from the beginning. As that cause is becoming popular, and many may be induced to espouse it from motives of policy rather than from reverence for principle, let us beware how we soften our just severity of speech, or emasculate a single epithet. The whole scope of the English language is inadequate to describe the horrors and impurities of slavery. Instead therefore, of repudiating any of its strong terms, we rather need a new and stronger dialect.

* * * * *

"The cry of hard language has become stale in my ears. The faithful utterance of that language has, by the blessing of God, made the anti-slavery cause what it is, ample in resources, strong in numbers, victorious in conflict. * * * Soft phrases and honeyed accents were tried in vain for many a year;--they had no adaptation to the subject. 'Canst thou draw out the leviathan, Slavery, with a hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put a hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make many supplications unto thee? wilt thou take him for a servant forever? Shall not one be cast down at the sight of him? Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether mill-stone. When he raiseth up himself, even the mighty are afraid. He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.' O, the surpassing folly of those 'wise and prudent' men, who think he may be coaxed into a willingness to be destroyed, and who regard him as the gentlest of all fish--provided he be let alone! They say it will irritate him to charge him with being a leviathan; he will cause the deep to boil like a pot. Call him a dolphin, and he will not get angry! If I should call these sage advisers by their proper names, no doubt they would be irritated too."

The era of mob violence, which swept over the country in consequence of the anti-slavery agitation, led to a discussion of the peace question, in which Garrison took an earnest part as a champion of the principles of non-resistance, and in 1838 he led the way in organizing the New England Non-Resistance Society, whose declaration of sentiments was prepared by him. The active part taken by the women of the country in these moral changes, led to a discussion of the rights of women. Mr. Garrison was at once an advocate for the principle that women should be allowed liberty to do whatever God and nature qualified them to do--to vote, to serve on committees, and to take part in discussions on equal terms with the other sex. Upon this principle there was a division in the Anti-Slavery Society in 1840; and in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, held that year in London, Mr. Garrison, being delegate from that society, refused to take his seat because the female delegates from the United States were excluded. Probably no act of Mr. Garrison's eventful life was a more difficult and triumphant exercise of consistent principle than this.

He had come over to England for sympathy, for at home he was despised, and rejected, and hated, and Exeter Hall was filled with an applauding, tumultuous crowd, ready to make him the lion of the hour, but not ready to receive his female coadjutors.

As usual, Mr. Garrison conferred not with flesh and blood for a moment, but rose, bade farewell to the society, and leaving his protest, walked out serenely through the crowd, and thus sealed his protest in favor of the equal rights of woman.

The consideration that he thus renounced an overwhelming public sympathy, and cut himself loose from the patronage of all good society in England, could not weigh a moment with him in comparison with a principle, and the doctrine of the moral, social and political equality of woman may be said to have found in Garrison its first public champion.

The question now arises: If Garrison and his little band were indeed morally right in their position--_No union with slaveholders_, on what ground did the whole valiant anti-slavery corps proceed who did not come out from the church or the state, but saw their way clear to remain in existing organizations, and fight in and by them.

The free soil party of the political abolitionists generally were headed by men of pure and vital moral sense, who believed just as sincerely as Mr. Garrison that slavery was a wrong and an injustice. How then could they avoid the inference that they could have no union with slaveholders? The statement of this ground properly belongs to the biographical sketches of Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, which will immediately follow this.

The Garrisonians, and Mr. Garrison at their head, had so perfect an instinct in their cause that they always could feel when a party was at heart morally sincere and in earnest. So, though they always most freely and most profusely criticised the works and ways of the political abolitionists, they were on the whole on excellent terms with them.

They had gotten up such a name for speaking just their minds of every body and thing, that their privilege of criticism came to be allowed freely, and on the whole the little band was thought by the larger one to do good political work by their more strictly and purely moral appeals to the conscience of the community. Where there had been pretty active Garrisonian labor in lecturing, came in the largest political vote.

It is but justice to say that Mr. Garrison's conduct throughout his course demonstrated that it was not a constitutional love of opposition, or a delight in fault-finding which inspired his denunciations of slavery and of the Union as the defence of slavery. For from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, Garrison became a warm, enthusiastic Unionist. When the United States flag, cleansed of all stain of slavery, was once more erected on Fort Sumter, Garrison made the voyage down to testify by his presence at the scene his devotion and loyalty to the flag of his country.

Garrison's non-resistant principles did not allow him to take any active part in the war. But in the same manner they caused him to allow perfect and free toleration to such of his sons as desired to enter the army. The right of individual judgment in every human being was always sacred with him, and the military command which took possession of Charleston had among its officers a son of William Lloyd Garrison.

The scene in the Boston Music Hall, on the 1st of January, 1864, when the telegraphic dispatch of the Emancipation Proclamation was received by an enthusiastic concourse of citizens, and welcomed by the first literary talent of Boston, was one of those occurrences of the visible triumph of good men in their day and generation, of which the slavery conflict gives many instances.

This scene was in all respects a remarkable one, as marking the moral progress of Boston, but in order to feel its full power we must again run our eye over the events of the past few years, of which it was the outcome.

It was only thirty-four years since the Legislature of Georgia had passed an act signed by Gov. Lumpkin, offering the sum of five thousand dollars for whoever would bring into the State of Georgia the person of William Lloyd Garrison, there to answer to the laws of Georgia for the publication of the _Liberator_--an "incendiary sheet." Everybody knew that this proclamation meant a short shrift and a long rope to Garrison, but there was at that time no counter movement on the part of his own State for his protection, no official declaration on the part of the Massachusetts Legislature to certify that she considered offering rewards for the kidnapping of her citizens to be a violation of State rights. In fact, so completely was Garrison, thus threatened by the South, unprotected by law and public sentiment at the North, that five years later, when the outcry from slaveholding legislatures became stronger, a Massachusetts Governor actually recommended imposing pains and penalties on the abolitionists for the discussion of the subject, and the Legislature actually took into discussion the propriety of doing so.

Was ever thirty years productive of a greater moral change than this 1st of January, 1864, witnessed?

An assemblage of all that Boston had to show of intellect, scholarship, art, rank and fashion, all came together of one accord to one place to celebrate the triumph of those great principles for which Garrison had once been dragged with a rope ignominiously through the streets of Boston.

Now that serene head, with its benevolent calmness, rising in one of the most conspicuous and honored seats in the house, was the observed of all observers. The hisses of mob violence, the scoffs and sneers, had changed to whispered tributes all over the house, "There he is, look!" and mothers pointed him to their children. "There is the good man who had the courage to begin this glorious work, years ago!"

Of Garrison's appearance at this time, it is sufficient to say that it was no more nor less serene and untroubled than when he stood amid the hisses of the mob in Faneuil Hall. He had always believed in this victory as steadfastly in the beginning as in the end, for God, who makes all his instruments for his own purposes, had given him in the outset that "faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen," and to God alone, without a thought of self, did he ascribe the glory.

On the 1st of January, 1865, Mr. Garrison having finished the work for which the Liberator was established in Boston, came out with his last editorial announcing the discontinuing of that paper. He says:

"The object for which the _Liberator_ was commenced--the extermination of chattel slavery--having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalities, (of which I hope to avail myself,) under new auspices, with more abundant means and with millions instead of hundreds for allies.

"Most happy am I to be no longer in conflict with the mass of my fellow-countrymen on the subject of slavery. For no man of any refinement or sensibility can be indifferent to the approbation of his fellow-men, if it be rightly earned. But to obtain it by going with the multitude to do evil, is self-degradation and personal dishonor. Better to be always in a minority of one with God--branded as a madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel--frowned upon by the powers that be, and mobbed by the populace--or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose 'soul is marching on,' though his 'body lies mouldering in the grave,' or burnt to ashes at the stake, like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross, like Him who 'gave himself for the world,' in defence of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of the multitude crying, 'It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!'

"Commencing my editorial career when only twenty years of age, I have followed it continuously till I have attained my sixtieth year--first in connection with _The Free Press_, in Newburyport, in the spring of 1826; next, with _The National Philanthropist_, in Boston, in 1827; next, with _The Journal of the Times_, in Bennington, Vt., in 1828-9; next, with _The Genius of Universal Emancipation_, in Baltimore, in 1829-30; and finally, with the _Liberator_, in Boston, from the 1st of January, 1831, to the 1st of January, 1866,--at the start, probably the youngest member of the editorial fraternity in the land, now, perhaps, the oldest, not in years, but in continuous service,--unless Mr. Bryant, of the New York _Evening Post_, be an exception.

"Whether I shall again be connected with the press, in a similar capacity, is quite problematical; but at my period of life, I feel no prompting to start a new journal at my own risk, and with the certainty of struggling against wind and tide, as I have done in the past.

"I began the publication of the _Liberator_ without a subscriber, and I end it--it gives me unalloyed satisfaction to say--without a farthing as the pecuniary result of the patronage extended to it during thirty-five years of unremitted labors.

"From the immense change wrought in the national feeling and sentiment on the subject of slavery, the _Liberator_ derived no advantage at any time in regard to its circulation.

* * * * *

"Farewell, tried and faithful patrons! Farewell, generous benefactors, without whose voluntary but essential pecuniary contributions the _Liberator_ must have long since been discontinued! Farewell, noble men and women who have wrought so long and so successfully, under God, to break every yoke! Hail, ye ransomed millions! Hail, year of jubilee! With a grateful heart and a fresh baptism of the soul, my last invocation shall be--

'Spirit of Freedom! on--
Oh! pause not in thy flight
Till every clime is won,
To worship in thy light:
Speed on thy glorious way,
And wake the sleeping lands!
Millions are watching for the ray,
And lift to thee their hands.
Still 'Onward!' be thy cry--
Thy banner on the blast;
And as thou rushest by,
Despots shall shrink aghast.
On! till thy name is known
Throughout the peopled earth;
On! till thou reign'st alone,
Man's heritage by birth;
On! till from every vale, and where the mountains rise,
The beacon lights of Liberty shall kindle to the skies!'

WM. LLOYD GARRISON."

There were those in the party of the Garrisonian Abolitionists whose course at this time seemed to justify the popular impression that faultfinding had so long been their occupation, that they were not willing to accept even their own victory at the price of giving up their liberty of denunciation. It is doubtless very dangerous to the finer tissues of one's moral nature to live only to deny and contend and rebuke.

But Mr. Garrison showed conclusively that it was love of right and not love of contention, that animated him by this prompt, whole hearted acknowledgment of the good when it came. No American citizen ever came more joyfully and lovingly into the great American Union, than he who so many years had stood outside of it, for conscience' sake; and he showed just as much steadiness and independence in disregarding the criticisms of some of his former coadjutors, as he formerly had in disregarding those of pro-slavery enemies. He would not say that a work was _not_ done which _was_ done--he was honest and fair in acknowledging honest and fair work, and he very wisely distinguished between emancipation, as a fixed and final fact, and reconstruction, as belonging to the new era founded on emancipation. In his last editorial he very quietly and sensibly states his views on this subject, and repels the charge which had been made that he was deserting the battle before the victory was won. He ends by saying:

"I shall sound no trumpet and make no parade as to what I shall do for the future. After having gone through with such a struggle as has never been paralleled in duration in the life of any reformer, and for nearly forty years been the target at which all poisonous and deadly missiles have been hurled, and having seen our great national iniquity blotted out, and freedom 'proclaimed throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof,' and a thousand presses and pulpits supporting the claims of the colored population to fair treatment where not one could be found to do this in the early days of the anti-slavery conflict, I might, it seems to me--be permitted to take a little repose in my advanced years, if I desired to do so. But, as yet, I have neither asked nor wished to be relieved of any burdens or labors connected with the good old cause. I see a mighty work of enlightenment and regeneration yet to be accomplished at the South, and many cruel wrongs done to the freedmen which are yet to be redressed; and I neither counsel others to turn away from the field of conflict, under the delusion that no more remains to be done, nor contemplate such a course in my own case."

Mr. Garrison's health, which had suffered severely from his long labors, required the relief of foreign travel.

He once more revisited England, where his course was one unbroken triumph. A great breakfast was given in his honor at St. James' Hall, London, at which John Bright presided. The Duke of Argyle presented a complimentary address to Mr. Garrison, congratulating him on the successful termination of the Anti-Slavery struggle. Lord John Russell seconded this address, and at this time magnanimously retracted certain hasty sayings in regard to the recent conflict in America, at its commencement. In the city of Edinburgh he was received in a crowded public meeting with tumultuous cheering, and the freedom of the city was solemnly presented to him by the Lord Provost and magistracy. In a private letter he says:

"I need not tell you that I went to England with no purpose or thought of being lionized, but only quietly to see old friends, to seek recreation, hoping to renovate my failing health by the voyage. But I shall ever gratefully remember those friendly manifestations towards me and my native land."

In conclusion, it is but justice to human nature in general and to New England in particular, to say that the poets of New England, true to a divine inspiration always honored Garrison, even in his days of deepest darkness and rebuke. Longfellow, Russell, Lowell, Whittier and Emerson, came out boldly with Anti-Slavery poems. They were the wise men, star-led, who brought to the stable and the manger of the infant cause, the gold, frankincense and myrrh. It was a great opportunity, and they had grace given them to use it, and not all the fame they had won otherwise, honors them so much as those tributes to humanity and liberty which they bestowed in the hour of her utmost need.

We will conclude this sketch by a letter from Mr. Garrison, which best shows the spirit in which he regards the result of the great conflict.

"DEAR MRS. STOWE:

For your very appreciative and congratulatory letter on the "marvellous work of the Lord," which the Liberator marks as finished, I proffer you my heartfelt thanks, and join with you in a song of thanksgiving to Him, who, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm has set free the captive millions in our land.

"The instrumentalities which the God of the oppressed has used for the overthrow of the slave system, have been as multifarious and extraordinary as that system has been brutal and iniquitous. Every thing that has been done, whether to break the yoke or to rivet it more strongly, has been needed to bring about the great result. The very madness of the South has worked as effectively anti-slavery-wise as the most strenuous efforts of the abolitionists.

"The outlawry of all Northern men of known hostility to slavery--the numberless pro-slavery mobs and lynchings, her defiant and awful defence of the traffic in human flesh, her increasing rigor and cruelties towards the slaves, and finally her horrible treason and rebellion to secure her independence as a vast slaveholding empire, through all time, all mightily helped to defeat her impious purpose and to hasten the year of jubilee. Thus it is that

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

And who but God is to be glorified?