William Lloyd Garrison Part 2

This revival of slavery disappointed the humane expectation of its decline and ultimate extinction entertained by the founders of the republic. It built up instead a growing and formidable slave cla.s.s, and interest in the Union. With the rise of giant slave interests, there followed the rise of a power devoted to their encouragement and protection.

Three far-reaching concessions the slave States obtained in the convention of 1787, viz., the right to import slaves from Africa until 1808; the rendition of fugitive slaves escaping into the free States, and the three-fifths slave representation clause of the Const.i.tution-all of which added vastly to the security and value of this species of property, and as a consequence contributed to the slave revival.

The equality of the States in the upper branch of the National Legislature, taken in connection with the right of the slave States to count five slaves as three freemen in the apportionment of representatives to the lower House of Congress, gave the Southern section an almost immediate ascendency in the Federal Government. To the South was thus opened by an unexpected combination of circ.u.mstances a wide avenue for the acquisition of fabulous wealth, and to Southern public men an incomparable arena for the exercise of political abilities and leaders.h.i.+p. An inst.i.tution, which thus ministered to two of the strongest pa.s.sions of mankind-avarice and ambition-was certain to excite the most intense attachment. Its safety naturally, therefore, became among the slave cla.s.s an object of prime importance. Southern jealousy in this regard ultimated inevitably in Southern narrowness, Southern sectionalism, which early manifested themselves in the exclusion from lead in national affairs of Northern public men, reputed to be unfriendly to slavery. Webster as late as 1830, protested warmly against this intolerance. Like begets like. And the proscribing of anti-slavery politicians by the South, created in turn not a little sectional feeling at the North, and helped to stimulate there a consciousness of sectional differences, of antagonism of interests between the two halves of the Union.

Discontent with the original basis of the Union, which had given the South its political coign of vantage, broke out first in New England. The occasion, though not the cause, of this discontent was, perhaps, the downfall of the Federal party, whose stronghold was in the East. The commercial and industrial crisis brought on by the embargo, and which beggared, on the authority of Webster, "thousands of families and hundreds of thousands of individuals" fanned this Eastern dissatisfaction into almost open disaffection towards a government dominated by Southern influence, and directed by Southern statesmans.h.i.+p. To the preponderance of this Southern element in national legislation New England traced her misfortunes. She was opposed to the War of 1812, but was overruled to her hurt by the South. In these circ.u.mstances New England went for correcting the inequalities of the original basis of the Union, which gave to the South its undue preponderance in shaping national laws and policies. This was the purpose of the Hartford Convention, which proposed the abrogation of the slave representation clause of the Const.i.tution, and the imposition of a check upon the admission of new States into the Union. The second proposition did not say "new slave States," but new slave States was, nevertheless, intended by the Convention. Here in point of time and magnitude, was the first distinct collision of the two sets of ideas and interests of the Republic.

Following the Treaty of Ghent other and imperious questions engaged the public attention-questions of the tariff, of finance, internal improvements, national defence, a new navy, forts and fortifications. Hard times, too, engrossed an enormous share of this attention. The immediate needs and problems of the hour pushed into the background all less pressing ones. The slavery question amidst the clamor and babel of emergent and material interests, lost something of its sectional heat and character. But its fires were not extinguished, only banked as events were speedily to reveal.

The application of Missouri for admission into the Union as a slave State four years after the Hartford Convention blew to a blaze the covered embers of strife between the sections. The North was violently agitated. For the admission of a new slave State meant two more slave votes in the Senate, and an increase on the old inequitable basis of slave representation in the lower House of Congress. It meant to the Northern section indefinite Southern ascendency, prolonged Southern lead in national legislation. All the smouldering pa.s.sions of the earlier period, of embargo, and non-intercourse, and the war of 1812, flamed suddenly and fiercely in the heart of the free States.

The length and bitterness of that controversy excited the gravest apprehensions for the stability of the Union. The dread of disunion led to mutual concessions, to the Missouri Compromise. The slave-holding section got its immediate claim allowed, and the free States secured the erection of a line to the north of which slavery was forever prohibited. And besides this, the admission of Maine was supposed to neutralize whatever political advantages, which would accrue to the South from the admission of Missouri as a slave State. Both sections were content, and the slavery question was thought to be permanently settled. With this final disposition of an ugly problem, the peace and permanence of the Union were viewed universally as fixed facts. Still, considering the gravity of the case, a little precaution would not go amiss. The slavery question had shaken men's faith in the durability of the republic. It was therefore adjudged a highly dangerous subject. The political physicians with one accord prescribed on the ounce-of-prevention principle, quiet, SILENCE, and OBLIVION, to be administered in large and increasing doses to both sections. Mum was the word, and mum the country solemnly and suddenly became from Maine to Georgia. But, alas! beneath the ashes of this Missouri business, deep below the unnatural silence and quiet, inextinguishable fires were burning and working again to the surface of politics. In such circ.u.mstances a fresh outbreak of old animosities must occur as soon as the subterranean heat should reach the point of highest combustibility in the federal system. The tariff proved to be that point of highest combustibility.

Alexander Hamilton inaugurated the policy of giving governmental aid to infant manufactures. The wisdom of diversifying the industries of the young nation was acquiesced in by the leading statesmen of both sections. Beset as the republic then was by international forces hostile to democratic inst.i.tutions, it was natural enough that the great men who presided over its early years should seek by Federal legislation to render it, as speedily and completely as possible, industrially self-dependent and self-supporting. The war of 1812 enforced anew upon the attention of statesmen the importance of industrial independence. The war debt, together with certain governmental enterprises and expenditures growing out of the war, was largely, if not wholly, responsible for the tariff of 1816. This act dates the rise of our American system of protection. It is curious to note that Southern men were the leaders of this new departure in the national fiscal policy. Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes were the guiding spirits of that period of industrial ferment and activity. They little dreamt what economic evils were to fall in consequence upon the South. That section was not slow to feel the unequal action of the protective principle. The character of its labor incapacitated the South from dividing the benefits of the new revenue policy with its free rival. The South of necessity was restricted to a single industry, the tillage of the earth. Slave labor did not possess the intelligence, the skill, the patience, the mechanical versatility to embark successfully in manufacturing enterprises. Free labor monopolised the protected industries, and Northern capital caught all the golden showers of fiscal legislation. What the South needed, from an economic point of view, was unrestricted access to the markets of the world for her products, and the freest compet.i.tion of the world in her own markets. The limitations imposed upon the slave States by their industrial system was in itself a tremendous handicap in their struggle for an advantageous place in the New World of the nineteenth century; in their struggle with their free sisters for political leaders.h.i.+p in the Union. But with the development of the protective principle those States fell into sore financial distress, were ground between the upper millstone of the protective system and the nether millstone of their own industrial system. Prosperity and plenty did presently disappear from that section and settled in the North. In 1828 Benton drew this dark picture of the state of the South:

"In place of wealth, a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough for common expenses; the price of all property down; the country drooping and languis.h.i.+ng; towns and cities decaying, and the frugal habits of the people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial for the preservation of their family estates."

He did not hesitate to charge to Federal legislation the responsibility for all this poverty and distress, for he proceeds to remark that:

"Under this legislation the exports of the South have been made the basis of the Federal revenue. The twenty odd millions annually levied upon imported goods are deducted out of the price of their cotton, rice, and tobacco, either in the diminished prices which they receive for those staples in foreign ports, or in the increased price which they pay for the articles they have to consume at home."

A suffering people are not apt to reason clearly or justly on the causes which have brought them to indigence. They feel their wretchedness and reach out for a victim. And the law-making power usually happens to be that victim. As the distress of the South increased, the belief that Federal legislation was responsible for it increased likewise. The spread and deepening of this conviction in the Southern States precipitated among them an ominous crisis in their attachment to the Union. Nullification and an embittered sectionalism was the hateful legacy bequeathed to the republic by the tariff controversy. It left the South in a hyper-sensitive state in all matters relating to her domestic interests. It left the North in a hyper-sensitive condition on all matters touching the peace and stability of the Union. The silence and oblivion policy on the subject of slavery was renewed with tenfold intensity. Ulysses-like the free States bound themselves, their right of free speech, and their freedom of the press on this subject, for fear of the Siren voices which came thrilling on every breeze from the South. Quiet was the word, and quiet the leaders in Church and State sought to enforce upon the people, to the end that the vision of "States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, of a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched it may be, in fraternal blood," might not come to pa.s.s for their "glorious Union."

The increasing friction and heat between the sections during twenty-five years, had effected every portion of the Federal system, and created conditions favorable to a violent explosion. Sectional differences of a political and industrial complexion, forty years had sufficed to develop. Sectional differences of a moral and social character forty years had also sufficed to generate. To kindle all those differences, all that ma.s.s of combustible feelings and forces into a general conflagration a spark only was wanted. And out of the glowing humanity of one man the spark was suddenly struck.

It is curious to note that in the year 1829, the very year in which William Lloyd Garrison landed in Baltimore, and began the editors.h.i.+p of The Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation, the American Convention, or national a.s.sembly of the old State societies for the abolition of slavery, fell into desuetude. It was as if Providence was clearing the debris of an old dispensation out of the way of the new one which his prophet was beginning to herald, as if guarding against all possibility of having the new wine, then soon to be pressed from the moral vintage of the nation, put into old bottles. The Hour for a new movement against slavery had come, and with its arrival the Man to hail it had also come.

Other men had spoken and written against slavery, and labored for the freedom of the slave before Garrison had thought upon the subject at all. Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson, Franklin, Jay, and Hamilton had been Abolitionists before he was born, but theirs was a divided interest. The establishment of a more perfect union was the paramount object of their lives. John Wesley had denounced slavery in language quite as harsh as Garrison's, but his, too, was a divided interest, the religious revival of the eighteenth century being his distinctive mission. Benezet, Woolman, and Lundy were saints, who had yearned with unspeakable sympathy for the black bondmen, and were indefatigable in good works in his behalf, but they had not that stern and iron quality without which reforms cannot be launched upon the attention of mankind. What his predecessors lacked, Garrison possessed to a marvelous degree-the undivided interest, the supremacy of a single purpose, the stern stuff out of which the moral reformer is made, and in which he is panoplied. They were all his, but there was another besides-immediatism. This element distinguished the movement against slavery, started by him, from all other movements begun before he arrived on the stage, for the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves in the Union.

This doctrine of immediate as opposed to gradual emanc.i.p.ation, was not original with Garrison, nor was he the first to enunciate it. More than a dozen years before he was converted to it, Rev. George Bourne, in "The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable," had shown that "the system (of slavery) is so entirely corrupt that it admits of no cure but by a total and immediate abolition. For a gradual emanc.i.p.ation is a virtual recognition of the right, and establishes the rect.i.tude of the practice. If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and if it be inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated." In 1824, eight years after the publication of Bourne's book, and five years before Garrison announced the doctrine in the Genius, the Rev. James Duncan maintained it, in his "Treatise on Slavery," with no uncertainty of sense or conviction. But neither Bourne nor Duncan had been able to effect an incarnation of the doctrine, without which the good which it aimed at could not be achieved. What they failed to effect, it is the glory of Garrison that he achieved in his own person. He was "total and immediate Abolition" personified. "Truth is mighty and will prevail," is a wise saying and worthy of acceptation. But this ultimate prevailing of TRUTH depends mainly upon individual effort, applied not intermittently, but steadily to a particular segment of the circle of conduct. It is the long, strong, never-ending pull and tug upon the wheels of conduct, which marks the great reformer. He finds his age or country stuck in some Serbonian bog of iniquity. He prays, but he prays with his shoulders braced strenuously against the body of society, and he does not cease his endeavors until a revolution in conduct places his age or country on firm ground beyond its Serbonian bog. The coming of such a man is no accident. When the Hour is ready and the Man comes, a new epoch in the life of a people arises from the conjunction. Of such vast consequence verily was the coming into American history of William Lloyd Garrison.

CHAPTER V.

THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.

After leaving Baltimore, Garrison clung pathetically to the belief that, if he told what he had seen of the barbarism of slavery to the North, he would be certain to enlist the sympathy and aid of its leaders, political and ecclesiastical, in the cause of emanc.i.p.ation. The sequel to his efforts in this regard proved that he was never more mistaken in his life. He addressed letters to men like Webster, Jeremiah Mason, Lyman Beecher, and Dr. Channing, "holding up to their view the tremendous iniquity of the land, and begging them, ere it should be too late, to interpose their great power in the Church and State, to save our country from the terrible calamities which the sin of slavery was bringing upon us." But there is no evidence that this appeal produced the feeblest ripple in the lives of the two first; and upon the two last it was equally barren of result. Dr. Channing, indeed, did not take the trouble to hear any one of the three lectures of the young philanthropist. Dr. Beecher, however, was at the pains to be present at the first lecture given at Julien Hall. But he betrayed no real interest in the subject. He had no time to devote to anti-slavery, had, in fine, too many irons in the fire already. To this impotent apology of the great preacher of immediatism in his dealing with all kinds of sin, except the sin of slave-holding, for not espousing the cause of the slave, Mr. Garrison made his famous retort:

"Then you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your duty to the slave."

What more did this poor and friendless man, with his one idea and his harsh language, know of duties and dangers than Daniel Webster, who was busy saving the Union; than Lyman Beecher, who was not less busy saving souls; or than Dr. Channing, who was quite as busy saving liberalism in matters of religion? What folly and presumption it must have seemed to these mighty men this attempt of Garrison to impress upon them a proper sense of their obligations to their country.

"Your zeal," said Dr. Beecher to him, with unlimited condescension of tone-"your zeal is commendable, but you are misguided. If you will give up your fanatical notions and be guided by us (the clergy) we will make you the Wilberforce of America."

And so what was the young man, burning up with his one idea, to do in presence of such a failure to win these men to the leaders.h.i.+p of the anti-slavery movement? He could not hold his peace; his message he was compelled to deliver in the ears of the nation whether its leaders would hear or forbear. Perhaps the common people would hearken to what the wise and powerful had rejected. At any rate they should hear what was resting upon his soul with the weight of a great woe, the force of a supreme command. But how was he, penniless and friendless, to roll from his bosom the burden which was crus.h.i.+ng it; to pause long enough in the battle for bread to fight the battle of the slave? Ah, if he had money! but no money did he have, not a dollar in his pocket! Oh, if he had rich friends who would dedicate their riches to the preaching of the gospel of freedom! but alas! rich friends there were none. Oh, if he could cry to the Church for help in this hour of his need! but it was slowly dawning on him that not from the Church would help come to his cause; for a grievous thing had happened to the Church. The slave gorgon sat staring from the pews, and turning the pulpits to stone, turning also to stone the hearts of the people.

Undismayed by the difficulties which were closing in around him, Garrison resolutely set himself to accomplish his purpose touching the establishment of a weekly paper devoted to the abolition of slavery. He had promised in his Prospectus to issue the first number of the Public Liberator "as soon as subscriptions thereto may authorize the attempt." But had he waited for the fulfillment of this condition, the experiment could never have been tried. When subscribers did not come in, the paper, he determined should go forth all the same. But there are some things in the publication of a paper which no man can dispense with, which indispensable somethings are: types, a press, an office, and an a.s.sistant. All these requisites were wanting to the man whose sole possession seemed an indomitable will, a faith in himself, and in the righteousness of his cause, which nothing could shake, nor disappointment nor difficulty, however great, was able to daunt or deter. To such an unconquerable will, to such an invincible faith obstacles vanish; the impossible becomes the attainable. As Garrison burned to be about his work, help came to him from a man quite as penniless and friendless as himself. The man was Isaac Knapp, an old companion of his in Newburyport, who had also worked with him in the office of the Genius, in Baltimore. He was a practical printer, and was precisely the sort of a.s.sistant that the young reformer needed at this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a man like himself acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited capacity for the endurance of unlimited hards.h.i.+ps. Together they worked out the financial problems which blocked the way to the publication of the paper. The partners took an office in Merchants' Hall building, then standing on the corner of Congress and Water streets, Boston, which gave their joint enterprise a local habitation. It had already a name. They obtained the use of types in the printing office of the Christian Examiner, situated in the same building. The foreman, Stephen Foster, through his ardent interest in Abolition, made the three first numbers of the paper possible. The publishers paid for the use of the types by working during the day at the case in the Examiner's office. They got the use of a press from another foreman with Abolition sympathies, viz., James B. Yerrington, then the printer of the Boston Daily Advocate. Thus were obtained the four indispensables to the publication of the Liberator-types, a press, an office, and an a.s.sistant.

When at length the offspring of such labor and sacrifices made its appearance in the world, which was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point of size, insignificant enough. It did not look as if its voice would ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it saw the light. Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet with four columns to the page, measuring fourteen inches one way and nine and a quarter the other, and you will get an idea of the diminutiveness of the Liberator on the day of its birth. The very paper on which it was printed was procured on credit. To the ordinary observer it must have seemed such a weakling as was certain to perish from inanition in the first few months of its struggle for existence in the world of journalism. It was domiciled during successive periods in four different rooms of the Merchant's Hall building, until it reached No. 11, "under the eaves," whence it issued weekly for many years to call the nation to repentance. A photographic impression of this cradle-room of the anti-slavery movement has been left by Oliver Johnson, an eye-witness. Says Mr. Johnson: "The dingy walls; the small windows, bespattered with printer's ink; the press standing in one corner; the composing-stands opposite; the long editorial and mailing table, covered with newspapers; the bed of the editor and publisher on the floor-all these make a picture never to be forgotten." For the first eighteen months the partners toiled fourteen hours a day, and subsisted "chiefly upon bread and milk, a few cakes, and a little fruit, obtained from a baker's shop opposite, and a petty cake and fruit shop in the bas.e.m.e.nt," and, alas, "were on short commons even at that." Amid such hard and grinding poverty was the Liberator born. But the great end of the reformer glorified the mean surroundings:

"O truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nursed; What humble hands unbar those gates of morn Through which the splendors of the New Day burst."

About the brow of this "infant crying in the night," shone aureole-like the sunlit legend: Our country is the world-our countrymen are mankind. The difference between this motto of the Liberator and that of the Free Press: Our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country-measures the greatness of the revolution which had taken place in the young editor. The grand lesson he had learned, than which there is none greater, that beneath diversities of race, color, creed, language, there is the one human principle, which makes all men kin. He had learned at the age of twenty-five to know the mark of brotherhood made by the Deity Himself: "Behold! my brother is man, not because he is American or Anglo-Saxon, or white or black, but because he is a fellow-man," is the simple, sublime acknowledgment, which thenceforth he was to make in his word and life.

It was Mr. Garrison's original design, as we have seen, to publish the Liberator from Was.h.i.+ngton. Lundy had, since the issue of the Prospectus for the new paper, removed the Genius to the capital of the nation. This move of Lundy rendered the establishment of a second paper devoted to the abolition of slavery in the same place, of doubtful utility, but, weighty as was this consideration from a mere business point of view, in determining Garrison to locate the Liberator in another quarter, it was not decisive. Just what was the decisive consideration, he reveals in his salutatory address in the Liberator. Here it is:

"During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery," he confides to the reader, "every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free States-and particularly in New England-than at the South. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless; prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slaveowners themselves. Of course there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emanc.i.p.ation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birthplace of liberty." This final choice of Boston as a base from which to operate against slavery was sagacious, and of the greatest moment to the success of the experiment and to its effective service to the cause.

If the reformer changed his original intention respecting the place of publication for his paper, he made no alteration of his position on the subject of slavery. "I shall strenuously contend," he declares in the salutatory, "for the immediate enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of our slave population." "In Park Street Church," he goes on to add, "on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly a.s.sented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my G.o.d, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity."

To those who find fault with his harsh language he makes reply: "I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen-but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-AND I WILL BE HEARD." Martin Luther's "Here I take my stand," was not braver or grander than the "I will be heard," of the American reformer. It did not seem possible that a young man, without influence, without money, standing almost alone, could ever make good those courageous words. The country, in Church and State, had decreed silence on the subject of slavery; the patriotism of the North, its commerce, its piety, its labor and capital had all joined hands to smother agitation, and stifle the discussion of a question that imperilled the peace and durability of Webster's glorious Union. But one man, tearing the gag from his lips, defying all these, cried, "Silence, there shall not be!" and forthwith the whole land began to talk on the forbidden theme:

"O small beginnings ye are great and strong, Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!

Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong.

Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain!"

CHAPTER VI.

THE HEAVY WORLD IS MOVED.

Archimedes with his lever desired a place to stand that he might move the world of matter. Garrison with his paper, having found a place for his feet, demonstrated speedily his ability to push from its solid base the world of mind. His plan was very simple, viz., to reveal slavery as it then existed in its naked enormity, to the conscience of the North, to be "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." And so, week after week, he packed in the columns of the Liberator facts, the most d.a.m.ning facts, against slaveholders, their cruelty and tyranny. He painted the woes of the slaves as if he, too, had been a slave. For the first time the masters found a man who rebuked them as not before had they been rebuked. Others may have equivocated, but this man called things by their proper names, a spade, a spade, and sin, sin. Others may have contented themselves with denunciations of the sins and with excuses for the sinner, as a creature of circ.u.mstances, the victim of ancestral transgressions, but this man offered no excuses for the slave-holding sinner. Him and his sin he denounced in language, which the Eternal puts only into the mouths of His prophets. It was, as he had said, "On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation." The strength and resources of his mother-tongue seemed to him wholly inadequate for his needs, to express the transcendent wickedness of slave-holding. All the harsh, the stern, the terrible and tremendous energies of the English speech he drew upon, and launched at slaveholders. Amid all of this excess of the enthusiast there was the method of a calculating mind. He aimed to kindle a conflagration because he had icebergs to melt. "The public shall not be imposed upon," he replied to one of his critics, "and men and things shall be called by their right names. I retract nothing, I blot out nothing. My language is exactly such as suits me; it will displease many, I know; to displease them is my intention." He was philosopher enough to see that he could reach the national conscience only by exciting the national anger. It was not popular rage, which he feared but popular apathy. If he could goad the people to anger on the subject of slavery he would soon be rid of their apathy. And so week after week he piled every sort of combustible material, which he was able to collect on board the Liberator and lighting it all, sent the fiery messenger blazing among the icebergs of the Union. Slaveholders were robbers, murderers, oppressors; they were guilty of all the sins of the decalogue, were in a word the chief of sinners. At the same moment that the reformer denied their right of property in the slave, he attacked their character also, held them up in their relation of masters to the reprobation of the nation and of mankind as monsters of injustice and inhumanity. The tone which he held toward them, steadily, without shadow of change, was the tone of a righteous man toward the workers of iniquity. The indifference, the apathy, the pro-slavery sympathy and prejudice of the free States rendered the people of the North hardly less culpable. They were working iniquity with the people of the South. This was the long, sharp goad, which the young editor thrust in between the bars of the Union and stirred the guilty sections to quick and savage outbursts of temper against him and the bitter truths which he preached. Almost directly the proofs came to him that he was HEARD at the South and at the North alike. Angry growls reached his ears in the first month of the publication of the Liberator from some heartless New England editors in denunciation of his "violent and intemperate attacks on slaveholders." The Journal, published at Louisville, Kentucky, and edited by George D. Prentice, declared that, "some of his opinions with regard to slavery in the United States are no better than lunacy." The American Spectator published at the seat of the National Government, had hoped that the good sense of the "late talented and persecuted junior editor" of the Genius, "would erelong withdraw him even from the side of the Abolitionists." And from farther South the growl which the reformer heard was unmistakably ferocious. It was from the State of South Carolina and the Camden Journal, which p.r.o.nounced the Liberator "a scandalous and incendiary budget of sedition." These were the beginning of the chorus of curses, which soon were to sing their serpent songs about his head. Profane and abusive letters from irate slaveholders and their Northern sympathisers began to pour into the sanctum of the editor. Within a few months after the first issue of the Liberator the whole aspect of the world without had changed toward him. "Foes are on my right hand, and on my left," he reported to some friends. "The tongue of detraction is busy against me. I have no communion with the world-the world none with me. The timid, the lukewarm, the base, affect to believe that my brains are disordered, and my words the ravings of a maniac. Even many of my friends-they who have grown up with me from my childhood-are transformed into scoffers and enemies." The apathy of the press, and the apathy of the people were putting forth signs that the long winter of the land was pa.s.sing away.

To a colored man belongs the high honor of having been the courier avant of the slavery agitation. This man was David Walker, who lived in Boston, and who published in 1829 a religio-political discussion of the status of the negroes of the United States in four articles. The wretchedness of the blacks in consequence of slavery he depicted in dark and bitter language. Theodore Parker, many years afterward, said that the negro was deficient in vengeance, the lowest form of justice. "Walker's Appeal" evinced no deficiency in this respect in its author. The pamphlet found its way South, and was the cause of no little commotion among the master-cla.s.s. It was looked upon as an instigation to servile insurrection. The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put upon the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the sanguinary character of the book. For he himself was the very reverse of Walker. Garrison was a full believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance as enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical collisions of every description, as wicked and inhuman. He sang to the slave:

"Not by the sword shall your deliverance be; Not by the shedding of your master's blood, Not by rebellion-or foul treachery, Upspringing suddenly, like swelling flood; Revenge and rapine ne'er did bring forth good.

G.o.d's time is best!-nor will it long delay; Even now your barren cause begins to bud, And glorious shall the fruit be!-watch and pray, For lo! the kindling dawn that ushers in the day."

He considered "Walker's Appeal" "a most injudicious publication, yet warranted by the creed of an independent people." He saw in our Fourth-of-July demonstrations, in our glorification of force as an instrument for achieving liberty, a constant incentive to the slaves to go and do likewise. If it was right for the men of 1776 to rise in rebellion against their mother-country, it surely could not be wrong were the slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and strike for their freedom. It certainly did not lie in the mouth of a people, who apotheosized force, to condemn them. What was sauce for the white man's goose was sauce for the black man's gander.

The South could not distinguish between this sort of reasoning, and an express and positive appeal to the slaves to cut the throats of their masters. The contents of the Liberator were quite as likely to produce a slave insurrection as was "Walker's Appeal," if the paper was allowed to circulate freely among the slave population. It was, in fact, more dangerous to the lives and interests of slaveholders by virtue of the pictorial representation of the barbarism and abomination of the peculiar inst.i.tution, introduced as a feature of the Liberator in its seventeenth number, in the shape of a slave auction, where the slaves are chattels, and cla.s.sed with "horses and other cattle," and where the tortures of the whipping-post are in vigorous operation. Here was a message, which every slave, however ignorant and illiterate could read. His instinct would tell him, wherever he saw the pictured horror, that a friend, not an enemy, had drawn it, but for what purpose? What was the secret meaning, which he was to extract from a portrayal of his woes at once so real and terrible. Was it to be a man, to seize the knife, the torch, to slay and burn his way to the rights and estate of a man? Garrison had put no such b.l.o.o.d.y import into the cut. It was designed not to appeal to the pa.s.sions of the slaves, but to the conscience of the North. But the South did not so read it, was incapable, in fact, of so reading it. What it saw was a shockingly realistic representation of the wrongs of the slaves, the immediate and inevitable effect of which upon the slaves would be to incite them to sedition, to acts of revenge. Living as the slaveholders were over mines of powder and dynamite, it is not to be marveled at that the first flash of danger filled them with apprehension and terror. The awful memories of San Domingo flamed red and dreadful against the dark background of every Southern plantation and slave community. In the "belly" of the Liberator's picture were many San Domingos. Extreme fear is the beginning of madness; it is, indeed, a kind of madness. The South was suddenly plunged into a state of extreme fear toward which the Liberator and "Walker's Appeal" were hurrying it, by one of those strange accidents or coincidences of history.

This extraordinary circ.u.mstance was the slave insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, in the month of August, 1831. The leader of the uprising was the now famous Nat Turner. Brooding over the wrongs of his race for several years, he conceived that he was the divinely appointed agent to redress them. He was cast in the mould of those rude heroes, who spring out of the sides of oppression as isolated trees will sometimes grow out of clefts in a mountain. With his yearning to deliver his people, there mingled not a little religious frenzy and superst.i.tion. Getting his command from Heaven to arise against the masters, he awaited the sign from this same source of the moment for beginning the work of destruction. It came at last and on the night of August 21st; he and his confederates made a beginning by ma.s.sacring first his own master, Mr. Joseph Travis, and his entire family. Turner's policy was remorseless enough. It was to spare no member of the white race, whether man, woman, or child, the very infant at the mother's breast was doomed to the knife, until he was able to collect such an a.s.sured force as would secure the success of the enterprise. This purpose was executed with terrible severity and exactness. All that night the work of extermination went on as the slave leader and his followers pa.s.sed like fate from house to house, and plantation to plantation, leaving a wide swathe of death in their track. Terror filled the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable, horrible. James McDowell, one of the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke out in the Virginia Legislature, during the winter afterward. One of the legislators, joined to his idol, and who now, that the peril had pa.s.sed, laughed at the uprising as a "petty affair." McDowell retorted-"Was that a 'petty affair,' which erected a peaceful and confiding portion of the State into a military camp, which outlawed from pity the unfortunate beings whose brothers had offended; which barred every door, penetrated every bosom with fear or suspicion, which so banished every sense of security from every man's dwelling, that let but a hoof or horn break upon the silence of the night, and an aching throb would be driven to the heart? The husband would look to his weapon, and the mother would shudder and weep upon her cradle. Was it the fear of Nat Turner and his deluded, drunken handful of followers which produced such effects? Was it this that induced distant counties, where the very name of Southampton was strange, to arm and equip for a struggle? No, sir, it was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,-a suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family, that the same b.l.o.o.d.y deed might be acted over at any time and in any place, that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion."

Sixty one whites and more than a hundred blacks perished in this catastrophe. The news produced a profound sensation in the Union. Garrison himself, as he records, was horror-struck at the tidings. Eight months before he had in a strain of prophecy penetrated the future and caught a glimpse of just such an appalling tragedy:

"Wo, if it come with storm, and blood, and fire, When midnight darkness veils the earth and sky!

Wo to the innocent babe-the guilty sire- Mother and daughter-friends of kindred tie!

Stranger and citizen alike shall die!

Red-handed slaughter his revenge shall feed, And havoc yell his ominous death-cry, And wild despair in vain for mercy plead- While h.e.l.l itself shall shrink and sicken at the deed!"

After the Southampton insurrection the slavery agitation increased apace, and the Liberator and its editor became instantly objects of dangerous notoriety in it. The eyes of the country were irresistibly drawn to them. They were at the bottom of the uprising, they were instigating the slaves to similar outbreaks. The savage growlings of a storm came thrilling on every breeze from the South, and wrathful mutterings against the agitator and his paper grew thenceforth more distinct and threatening throughout the free States. October 15, 1831, Garrison records in the Liberator that he "is constantly receiving from the slave States letters filled with the most diabolical threats and indecent language." In the same month Georgetown, S.C., in a panic made it unlawful for a free colored person to take the Liberator from the post-office. In the same month the Charleston Mercury announced that "gentlemen of the first respectability" at Columbia had offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction of any white person circulating the Liberator, Walker's pamphlet, "or any other publication of seditious tendency." In Georgia the same symptoms of fright were exhibited. In the same month the grand jury at Raleigh, N.C., indicted William Lloyd Garrison and Isaac Knapp for circulating the Liberator in that county. It was even confidently expected that a requisition would be made by the Executive of the State upon the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts for their arrest, when they would be tried under a law, which made their action felony. "Whipping and imprisonment for the first offence, and death, without benefit of clergy, for the second." Governor Floyd said in his message to the Virginia Legislature in December that there was good cause to suspect that the plans of the Southampton ma.s.sacre were "designed and matured by unrestrained fanatics in some of the neighboring States." Governor Hamilton sent to the South Carolina Legislature in the same month an excited message on the situation. He was in entire accord with the Virginia Executive as to the primary and potent agencies which led to the slave uprising in Virginia. They were "incendiary newspapers and other publications put forth in the non-slave-holding States, and freely circulated within the limits of Virginia." As specimens of "incendiary newspapers and other publications, put forth in the non-slave-holding States," the South Carolina official sent along with his message, copies of the Liberator and of Mr. Garrison's address to the "Free People of Color," for the enlightenment of the members of the Legislature. But it remained for Georgia to cap the climax of madness when her Legislature resolved: