William Lloyd Garrison Part 4

This practical recognition of the negro as a man and a brother was the exact opposite of the treatment which was his terrible lot in the country. Never in all history was there a race more shamefully oppressed by a dominant race than were the blacks by the whites of America. Held as slaves in the South, they were stamped as social outcasts at the North. There was no one, however mean or vicious, who if he possessed a white skin, was not treated more humanely than were they. In the most enlightened of the free States they were discriminated against by public laws and proscribed by public opinion. They were in a word pariahs of the republic. They were shut out from all the common rights, and privileges and opportunities enjoyed by the lowest of the favored race. They were denied equality in the public school. The principle of popular education had no application to a cla.s.s which was not of the people, a cla.s.s which the common sentiment of a Christian nation had placed at the zero point of political values, and meant to keep forever at that point. Entrance to the trades were barred to the blacks. What did they want with such things where there was no white trash so forgetful of his superiority as to consent to work by their side. Nowhere were they allowed the same traveling accommodations as white men, and they were everywhere excluded from public inns. Neither wealth nor refinement was able to procure them admission into other than "Jim Crow cars." If heart-sick at the outrages by every one heaped upon them they turned for consolation to the house of G.o.d, even there the spirit of proscription and caste prejudice met them, and pointed to the "negro pew" where they sat corraled from the congregation as if they had no equal share in the salvation which the pulpit preached. Everywhere the white man had the right of way, even on the highway to heaven! And in no place was the negro made to feel the prejudice against his color more gallingly than in churches arrogating the name of Christian. He had no rights on earth, he had none in trying to get into the bosom of the founder of Christianity, which the white sinners or saints were bound to respect. Even the liberty-loving Quakers of Philadelphia were not above the use of the "negro seat" in their meetings. Somehow they discerned that there was a great gulf separating in this life at least the white from the black believer. That G.o.d had made of one blood all nations of men, St. Paul had taught, but the American church had with one accord in practice drawn the line at the poor despised colored man. He was excluded from ecclesiastical equality, for he was different from other men for whom Christ died. The Bible declared that man was made but a little lower than the angels; the American people in their State and Church supplemented this sentiment by acts which plainly said that the negro was made but a little above the brute creation.

Here are instances of the length to which the prejudice against color carried the churches in those early years of the anti-slavery movement:

In 1830, a colored man, through a business transaction with a lessee of one of the pews in Park Street Church, came into possession of it. Thinking to make the best use of his opportunity to obtain religious instruction for himself and family from this fountain of orthodoxy, the black pew-holder betook him, one Sunday, to "Brimstone Corner." But he was never permitted to repeat the visit. "Brimstone Corner" could not stand him another Lord's day, and thereupon promptly expelled him and his family out of its midst. The good deacons displayed their capacity for s.h.i.+elding their flock from consorting with "n.i.g.g.e.rs," by availing themselves of a technicality to relet the pew to a member who was not cursed with a dark skin. On another Lord's day, in another stronghold of Boston Christianity, Oliver Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns of a large number of the congregation" for daring to take a fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his own into his pew, to listen to Dr. Beecher. The good people of the old Baptist meeting-house, at Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing the heavenly calm of their religious devotions by so much as a thought of believers with black faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they secured themselves from a sight of the obnoxious creatures, while Jehovah, who is no respecter of persons, was in His holy place. Incredible as it may seem, a church in the town of Stoughton, Ma.s.s., to rid itself of even a semblance of Christian fellows.h.i.+p and equality with a colored member, did actually cut the floor from under the colored member's pew!

These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the churches affected Garrison in the most painful manner. He says:

"I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation, and sorrow."

He had such an intimate acquaintance with members of this despised caste in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself. He knew that beneath many a dark skin he had found real ladies and gentlemen, and he knew how sharper than a serpent's tooth to them was the American prejudice against their color. In 1832, just after a visit to Philadelphia, where he was the guest of Robert Purvis, and had seen much of the Fortens, he wrote a friend:

"I wish you had been with me in Philadelphia to see what I saw, to hear what I heard, and to experience what I felt in a.s.sociating with many colored families. There are colored men and women, young men and young ladies, in that city, who have few superiors in refinement, in moral worth, and in all that makes the human character worthy of admiration and praise."

Strange to say, notwithstanding all their merits and advancement, the free people of color received nothing but disparagement and contempt from eminent divines like Dr. Leonard W. Bacon and the emissaries of the Colonization Society. They were "the most abandoned wretches on the face of the earth"; they were "all that is vile, loathsome, and dangerous"; they were "more degraded and miserable than the slaves," and ad infinitum through the whole gamut of falsehood and traduction. It was human for the American people to hate a cla.s.s whom they had so deeply wronged, and altogether human for them to justify their atrocious treatment by blackening before the world the reputation of the said cla.s.s. That this was actually done is the best of all proofs of the moral depravity of the nation which slavery had wrought.

Garrison's vindication of the free people of color in Exeter Hall, London, on July 13, 1833, from this sort of detraction and villification is of historic value:

"Sir," said he, addressing the chair, "it is not possible for the mind to coin, or the tongue to utter baser libels against an injured people. Their condition is as much superior to that of the slaves as the light of heaven is more cheering than the darkness of the pit. Many of their number are in the most affluent circ.u.mstances, and distinguished for their refinement, enterprise, and talents. They have flouris.h.i.+ng churches, supplied by pastors of their own color, in various parts of the land, embracing a large body of the truly excellent of the earth. They have public and private libraries. They have their temperance societies, their debating societies, their moral societies, their literary societies, their benevolent societies, their saving societies, and a mult.i.tude of kindred a.s.sociations. They have their infant schools, their primary and high schools, their sabbath schools, and their Bible cla.s.ses. They contribute to the support of foreign and domestic missions to Bible and tract societies, etc. In the city of Philadelphia alone they have more than fifty a.s.sociations for moral and intellectual improvement. In fact, they are rising up, even with mountains of prejudice piled upon them, with more than t.i.tanic strength, and trampling beneath their feet the slanders of their enemies. A spirit of virtuous emulation is pervading their ranks, from the young child to the gray head. Among them is taken a large number of daily and weekly newspapers, and of literary and scientific periodicals, from the popular monthlies up to the grave and erudite North American and American Quarterly Reviews. I have at this moment, to my own paper, the Liberator, one thousand subscribers among this people; and, from an occupancy of the editorial chair for more than seven years, I can testify that they are more punctual in their payments than any five hundred white subscribers whose names I ever placed indiscriminately in my subscription book."

There was an earnest desire on the part of the free people of color to raise the level of their cla.s.s in the Union. At a convention held by them in Philadelphia, in 1831, they resolved upon a measure calculated to make up, to some extent, the deprivations which their children were suffering by being excluded from the higher schools of learning in the land. So they determined to establish a college on the manual-labor system for the education of colored youth. They appealed for aid to their benevolent friends, and fixed upon New Haven as the place to build their inst.i.tution. Arthur Tappan, with customary beneficence, "purchased several acres of land, in the southerly part of the city, and made arrangements for the erection of a suitable building, and furnis.h.i.+ng it with needful supplies, in a way to do honor to the city and country."

The school, however, was never established owing to the violent hostility of the citizens, who with the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council resolved in public meeting to "resist the establishment of the proposed college in this place by every lawful means."

The free people of color were derided because of their ignorance by their persecutors, but when they and their friends proposed a plan to reduce that ignorance, their persecutors bitterly opposed its execution. New Haven piety and philanthropy, as embodied in the Colonization Society, were not bent on the education of this cla.s.s but on its emigration to the coast of Africa solely. In such sorry contradictions and cruelties did American prejudice against color involve American Christianity and humanity.

This outrage was perpetrated in 1831. Two years afterward Connecticut enacted altogether the most shameful crime in her history. There lived in the year 1833, in the town of Canterbury, in that State, an accomplished young Quaker woman, named Prudence Crandall. Besides a superior education, she possessed the highest character. And this was well; for she was the princ.i.p.al of the Female Boarding School located in that town. The inst.i.tution was, in 1833, at the beginning of its third year, and in a flouris.h.i.+ng condition. While pursuing her vocation of a teacher, Miss Crandall made the acquaintance of the Liberator through a "nice colored girl," who was at service in the school. Abhorring slavery from childhood, it is no wonder that the earnestness of the Liberator exerted an immediate and lasting influence upon the sympathies of the young princ.i.p.al. The more she read and the more she thought upon the subject the more aroused she became to the wrongs of which her race was guilty to the colored people. She, too, would lend them a helping hand in their need. Presently there came to her a colored girl who was thirsting for an education such as the Canterbury Boarding School for young ladies was dispensing to white girls. This was Miss Crandall's opportunity to do something for the colored people, and she admitted the girl to her cla.s.ses. But she had no sooner done so than there were angry objections to the girl's remaining.

"The wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village," Miss Crandall records, "told me that if I continued that colored girl in my school it would not be sustained."

She heroically refused to turn the colored pupil out of the school, and thereby caused a most extraordinary exhibition of Connecticut chivalry and Christianity.

Seeing how matters stood with her in these circ.u.mstances, Prudence Crandall conceived the remarkable purpose of devoting her school to the education of colored girls exclusively. She did not know whether her idea was practicable, and so in her perplexity she turned for counsel to the editor of the Liberator. She went to Boston for this purpose, and there, at the old Marlboro' Hotel, on Was.h.i.+ngton street, on the evening of January 29, 1833, she discussed this business with Mr. Garrison. This visit and interview confirmed the brave soul in her desire to change her school into one for the higher education of colored girls. It was expected that a sufficient number of such pupils could be obtained from well-to-do colored families in cities like Boston, Providence, and New York to a.s.sure the financial success of the enterprise. When Miss Crandall had fully matured her plans in the premises she announced them to the Canterbury public. But if she had announced that she contemplated opening a college for the spread of contagious diseases among her townspeople, Canterbury could not possibly have been more agitated and horrified. Every door in the village was slammed in her face. She was denounced in town meetings, and there was not chivalry enough to cause a single neighbor to speak in her defence. Samuel J. May had to come from an adjoining town for this purpose. "But," says Mr. May, "they would not hear me. They shut their ears and rushed upon me with threats of personal violence."

As there was nothing in the statutes of Connecticut which made the holding of such a school as that of Miss Crandall's illegal, the good Canterbury folk procured the pa.s.sage of a hasty act through the Legislature, which was then in session, "making it a penal offence, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any one in that State keeping a school to take as his or her pupils the children of colored people of other States." But the heart of the young Quaker woman was the heart of a heroine. She dared to disregard the wicked law, was arrested, bound over for trial, and sent to jail like a common malefactor. It was no use, persecution could not cow the n.o.ble prisoner into submission to the infamous statute. In her emergency truth raised up friends who rallied about her in the unparalleled contest which raged around her person and her school. There was no meanness or maliciousness to which her enemies did not stoop to crush and ruin her and her cause. "The newspapers of the county and of the adjoining counties teemed with the grossest misrepresentations, and the vilest insinuations," says Mr. May, "against Miss Crandall, her pupils, and her patrons; but for the most part, peremptorily refused us any room in their columns to explain our principles and purposes, or to refute the slanders they were circulating." Four or five times within two years she was forced into court to defend her acts against the determined malignity of men who stood high in the Connecticut Church and State. The shops in the town boycotted her, the churches closed their doors to her and her pupils. Public conveyances refused to receive them, and physicians to prescribe for them. It is said that the heroic soul was cut off from intercourse with her own family, in the hope doubtless that she would the sooner capitulate to the negro-hating sentiment of her neighbors. But firm in her resolve the fair Castellan never thought of surrendering the citadel of her conscience at the bidding of iniquitous power. Then, like savages, her foes defiled with the excrement of cattle the well whence the school drew its supply of water, attacked the house with rotten eggs and stones, and daubed it with filth. This drama of diabolism was fitly ended by the introduction of the fire fiend, and the burning of the detestable building devoted to the higher education of "n.i.g.g.e.rs." Heathenism was, indeed, outdone by Canterbury Christianity.

The circ.u.mstances of this outrage kindled Garrison's indignation to the highest pitch. Words were inadequate to express his emotions and agony of soul. In the temper of bold and clear-eyed leaders.h.i.+p he wrote George W. Benson, his future brother-in-law, "we may as well, first as last, meet this proscriptive spirit, and conquer it. We-i.e., all the friends of the cause-must make this a common concern. The New Haven excitement has furnished a bad precedent-a second must not be given or I know not what we can do to raise up the colored population in a manner which their intellectual and moral necessities demand. In Boston we are all excited at the Canterbury affair. Colonizationists are rejoicing and Abolitionists looking sternly." Like a true general Garrison took in from his Liberator outlook the entire field of the struggle. No friend of the slave, however distant, escaped his quick sympathy or ready reinforcements. To him the free people of color turned for champions.h.i.+p, and to the Liberator as a mouthpiece. The battle for their rights and for the freedom of their brethren in the South advanced apace. Everywhere the army of their friends and the army of their foes were in motion, and the rising storm winds of justice and iniquity were beginning "to bellow through the vast and boundless deep" of a nation's soul.

CHAPTER IX.

AGITATION AND REPRESSION.

William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English mission was signalized by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of anti-slavery mobs in the North. The news of his British successes had preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his pro-slavery countrymen. For had he not with malice prepense put down the "most glorious of Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country in the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And when O'Connell in Exeter Hall pointed the finger of scorn at America and made her a by-word and a hissing in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting got up to further the designs of this "misguided young gentlemen who has just returned from England whither he has recently been for the sole purpose as it would seem [to the Commercial Advertiser] of traducing the people and inst.i.tutions of his own country." Had he not caught up and echoed back the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:-"Shame on the American Slaveholders! Base wretches should we shout in chorus-base wretches, how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"

The noise of these treasons on a foreign sh.o.r.e, "deafening the sound of the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder goes," to borrow O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had reached the country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The national sensitiveness was naturally enough stung to the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is not content with disturbing the peace of the Union with his new fanaticism, but must needs presume to make the dear Union odious before the world as well. And his return, what is it to be but the signal for increased agitation on the slavery question. The conquering hero comes and his fanatical followers salute him forthwith with a new anti-slavery society, which means a fresh instrument in his hands to stir up strife between the North and the South. "Are we tamely to look on, and see this most dangerous species of fanaticism extending itself through society?" shrieked on the morning of Mr. Garrison's arrival in New York Harbor, the malignant editor of the Courier and Enquirer.

The pro-slavery and lawless elements of the city were not slow to take the cue given by metropolitan papers, and to do the duty of patriots upon their country's enemies. Arthur Tappen and his anti-slavery a.s.sociates outwitted these patriotic gentlemen, who attended in a body at Clinton Hall on the evening of October 2, 1833, to perform the aforesaid duty of patriots, while the objects of their attention were convened at Chatham Street Chapel and organizing their new fanaticism. The mob flew wide of its mark a second time, for when later in the evening it began a serenade more expressive than musical before the entrance to the little chapel on Chatham street the members of the society "folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away." The Abolitionists accomplished their design and eluded their enemies at the same time. But the significance of the riotous demonstration went not un.o.bserved by them and their newly arrived leader. It was plain from that night that if the spirit of Abolitionism had risen, the spirit of persecution had risen also.

A somewhat similar reception saluted the reformer in Boston. An inflammatory handbill announced to his townsmen his arrival. "The true American has returned, alias William Lloyd Garrison, the 'Negro Champion,' from his disgraceful mission to the British metropolis," etc., etc., and wound up its artful list of lies with the malignant suggestion that "He is now in your power-do not let him escape you, but go this evening, armed with plenty of tar and feathers and administer to him justice at his abode at No. 9 Merchant's Hall, Congress street." In obedience to this summons, a reception committee in the shape of "a dense mob, breathing threatenings which forboded a storm," did pay their respects to the "true American" in front of his abode at the Liberator office. Fortunately the storm pa.s.sed over without breaking that evening on the devoted head of the "Negro Champion." But the meaning of the riotous demonstration it was impossible to miss. Like the mob in New York it clearly indicated that the country was on the outer edge of an area of violent disturbances on the subject of slavery.

The peril which Garrison had twice escaped was indeed grave, but neither it nor the certainty of future persecution could flutter or depress his spirits. "For myself," he wrote subsequently in the Liberator, "I am ready to brave any danger even unto death. I feel no uneasiness either in regard to my fate or to the success of the cause of Abolition. Slavery must speedily be abolished; the blow that shall sever the chains of the slaves may shake the nation to its center-may momentarily disturb the pillars of the Union-but it shall redeem the character, extend the influence, establish the security, and increase the prosperity of our great republic." It was not the rage and malice of his enemies which the brave soul minded, but the ever-present knowledge of human beings in chains and slavery whom he must help. Nothing could separate him from his duty to them, neither dangers present nor persecutions to come. The uncertainty of life made him only the more zealous in their behalf. The necessity of doing, doing, and yet ever doing for the slave was plainly pressing deep like thorns into his thoughts. "I am more and more impressed;" he wrote a friend a few weeks later, "I am more and more impressed with the importance of 'working whilst the day lasts.' If 'we all do fade as a leaf,' if we are 'as the sparks that fly upward,' if the billows of time are swiftly removing the sandy foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the captive, and for our country, and for the subjugation of a hostile world, must be done quickly. Happily 'our light afflictions are but for a moment.'"

This yearning of the leader for increased activity in the cause of immediate emanc.i.p.ation was shared by friends and disciples in different portions of the country. Few and scattered as were the Abolitionists, they so much the more needed to band together for the great conflict with a powerful and organized evil. This evil was organized on a national scale, the forces of righteousness which were rising against it, if they were ever to overcome it and rid the land of it, had needs to be organized on a national scale also. Garrison with the instinct of a great reformer early perceived the immense utility of a national anti-slavery organization for mobilizing the whole available Abolition sentiment of the free States in a moral agitation of national and tremendous proportions.

He had not long to wait after his return from England before this desire of his soul was satisfied. It was in fact just a month afterward that a call for a convention for the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society went out from New York to the friends of immediate emanc.i.p.ation throughout the North. As an evidence of the dangerously excited state of the popular mind on the subject of slavery there stands in the summons the significant request to delegates to regard the call as confidential. The place fixed upon for holding the convention was Philadelphia, and the time December 4, 1833.

Garrison bestirred himself to obtain for the convention a full representation of the friends of freedom. He sent the call to George W. Benson, at Providence, urging him to spread the news among the Abolitionists of his neighborhood and to secure the election of a goodly number of delegates by the society in Rhode Island. He forthwith bethought him of Whittier on his farm in Haverhill, and enjoined his old friend to fail not to appear in Philadelphia. But while the young poet longed to go to urge upon his Quaker brethren of that city "to make their solemn testimony against slavery visible over the whole land-to urge them, by the holy memories of Woolman and Benezet and Tyson to come up as of old to the standard of Divine Truth, though even the fires of another persecution should blaze around them," he feared that he would not be able to do so. The spirit was surely willing but the purse was empty, "as thee know," he quaintly adds, "our farming business does not put much cash in our pockets." The cash he needed was generously supplied by Samuel E. Sewall, and Whittier went as a delegate to the convention after all. The disposition on the part of some of the poorer delegates was so strong to be present at the convention that not even the lack of money was sufficient to deter them from setting out on the expedition. Two of them, David T. Kimball and Daniel E. Jewett, from Andover, Ma.s.s., did actually supplement the deficiencies of their pocket-books by walking to New Haven, the aforesaid pocket-books being equal to the rest of the journey from that point.

About sixty delegates found their way to Philadelphia and organized on the morning of December 4th, in Adelphi Hall, the now famous convention. It was a notable gathering of apostolic spirits-"mainly composed of comparatively young men, some in middle age, and a few beyond that period." They had come together from ten of the twelve free States, which fact goes to show the rapid, the almost epidemic-like spread of Garrisonian Abolitionism through the North. The Liberator was then scarcely three years old, and its editor had not until the second day of the convention attained the great age of twenty-eight! The convention of 1787 did not comprise more genuine patriotism and wisdom than did this memorable a.s.sembly of American Abolitionists. It was from beginning to end an example of love to G.o.d and love to men, of fearless scorn of injustice and fearless devotion to liberty. Not one of those three score souls who made up the convention, who did not take his life in his hand by reason of the act. It was not the love of fame surely which brought them over so many hundreds of miles, which made so many of them endure real physical privation, which drew all by a common, an irresistible impulse to congregate for an unpopular purpose within reach of the teeth and the claws of an enraged public opinion.

The convention, as one man might have said with the single-minded Lundy, "My heart was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress; and the iron entered my soul." The iron of slavery had indeed entered the soul of every member of the convention. It was the divine pang and pity of it which collected from the East and from the West this remarkable body of reformers.

The story of how they had to find a president ill.u.s.trates the contemporary distrust and antagonism, which the anti-slavery movement aroused among the men of standing and influence. Knowing in what bad odor they were held by the community, and anxious only to serve their cause in the most effective manner, the members of the convention hit upon the plan of asking some individual eminent for his respectability to preside over their deliberations, and thereby disarm the public suspicions and quiet the general apprehensions felt in respect of the incendiary character of their intention. So in pursuance of this plan six of their number were dispatched on the evening of December 3d to seek such a man. But the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes proved a failure. After two attempts and two repulses the committee were not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation by Beriah Green, who was one of the six. "If there is not timber amongst ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get along without one, or go home and stay there until we have grown up to be men." The next day Green was chosen, and established in a manner never to be forgotten by his a.s.sociates that the convention did possess "timber big enough to make a president of."

Narrow as were the circ.u.mstances of many of the members, the convention was by no means dest.i.tute of men of wealth and business prominence. Such were the Winslows, Isaac and Nathan, of Maine, Arnold Buffum, of Ma.s.sachusetts, and John Rankin and Lewis Tappan, of New York. Scholars.h.i.+p, talents, and eloquence abounded among the delegates. Here there was no lack, no poverty, but extraordinary sufficiency, almost to redundancy. The presence of the gentler s.e.x was not wanting to lend grace and picturesqueness to the occasion. The beautiful and benignant countenance of Lucretia Mott shed over the proceedings the soft radiance of a pure and regnant womanhood; while the handful of colored delegates with the elegant figure of Robert Purvis at their head, added pathos and picturesqueness to the personnel of the convention. Neither was the element of danger wanting to complete the historic scene. Its presence was grimly manifest in the official intimation that evening meetings of the convention could not be protected, by the demonstrations of popular ill-will which the delegates encountered on the streets, by the detachment of constabulary guarding the entrance to Adelphi Hall, and by the thrillingly significant precaution observed by the delegates of sitting with locked doors. Over the a.s.sembly it impended cruel and menacing like fate. Once securely locked within the hall, the Abolitionists discreetly abstained from leaving it at noon for dinner, well knowing how small a spark it takes to kindle a great fire. It was foolhardy to show themselves unnecessarily to the excited crowds in the streets, and so mindful that true courage consisteth not in recklessness, they despatched one of their number for crackers and cheese, which they washed down with copious draughts of cold water. But they had that to eat and drink besides, whereof the spirits of mischief without could not conceive.

The grand achievement of the convention was, of course, the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but the crown of the whole was unquestionably the Declaration of Sentiments. The composition of this instrument has an interesting history. It seems that the delegates considered that the remarkable character of the movement which they were launching upon the wide sea of national attention demanded of them an expression altogether worthy of so momentous an undertaking. The adoption of a const.i.tution for this purpose was felt to be inadequate. A const.i.tution was indispensable, but some other expression was necessary to give to their work its proper proportion and importance. Such a manifestation it was deemed meet to make in the form of a declaration of sentiments. A committee was accordingly appointed to draft the declaration. This committee named three of its number, consisting of Garrison, Whittier, and Samuel J. May to draw up the doc.u.ment. The sub-committee in turn deputed Garrison to do the business.

Mr. May has told in his Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict, how he and Whittier left their friend at ten o'clock in the evening, agreeing to call at eight the following morning and how on their return at the appointed hour they found Garrison with shutters closed and lamps burning, penning the last paragraph of the admirable doc.u.ment. He has told how they three read it over together two or three times, making some slight alterations in it, and how at nine o'clock the draft was laid by them before the whole committee. The author of the recollections has left a graphic account of its effect upon the convention. "Never in my life," he says, "have I seen a deeper impression made by words than was made by that admirable doc.u.ment upon all who were present. After the voice of the reader had ceased there was silence for several minutes. Our hearts were in perfect unison. There was but one thought with us all. Either of the members could have told what the whole convention felt. We felt that the word had just been uttered which would be mighty, through G.o.d, to the pulling down of the strongholds of slavery." Such was the scene at the first reading of the Declaration of Sentiments, Dr. Atlee, the reader. The effect at its final reading was, if possible, even more dramatic and eloquent. Whittier has depicted this closing and thrilling scene. He has described how Samuel J. May read the declaration for the last time. "His sweet, persuasive voice faltered with the intensity of his emotions as he repeated the solemn pledges of the concluding paragraphs. After a season of silence, David Thurston of Maine, rose as his name was called by one of the secretaries and affixed his name to the doc.u.ment. One after another pa.s.sed up to the platform, signed, and retired in silence. All felt the deep responsibility of the occasion-the shadow and forecast of a life-long struggle rested upon every countenance."

The effects, so electrical and impressive, which followed the reading of the declaration were not disproportioned to its merits, for it was an instrument of singular power, wisdom, and eloquence. Indeed, to this day, more than half a century after it was written it still has virtue to quicken the breath and stir the pulses of a sympathetic reader out of their normal time. A great pa.s.sion for freedom and righteousness irradiates like a central light the whole memorable doc.u.ment. It begins by a happy reference to an earlier convention, held some fifty-seven years before in the same place, and which adopted a declaration holding "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness;" and how at the trumpet-call of its authors three millions of people rushed to arms "deeming it more glorious to die instantly as free men, than desirable to live one hour as slaves"; and how, though few in number and poor in resources those same people were rendered invincible by the conviction that truth, justice, and right were on their side. But the freedom won by the men of 1776 was incomplete without the freedom for which the men of 1833 were striving. The authors of the new declaration would not be inferior to the authors of the old "in purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of purpose, intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity of spirit." Unlike the older actors, the younger had eschewed the sword, the spilling of human blood in defence of their principles. Theirs was a moral warfare, the grappling of truth with error, of the power of love with the inhumanities of the nation. Then it glances at the wrongs which the fathers suffered, and at the enormities which the slaves were enduring. The "fathers were never slaves, never bought and sold like cattle, never shut out from the light of knowledge and religion, never subjected to the lash of brutal taskmasters," but all these woes and more, an unimaginable mountain of agony and misery, was the appalling lot of the slaves in the Southern States. The guilt of this nation, which partners such a crime against human nature, "is unequaled by any other on earth," and therefore it is bound to instant repentance, and to the immediate rest.i.tution of justice to the oppressed.

The Declaration of Sentiments denies the right of man to hold property in a brother man, affirms the ident.i.ty in principle between the African slave trade and American slavery, the imprescriptibility of the rights of the slaves to liberty, the nullity of all laws which run counter to human rights, and the grand doctrine of civil and political equality in the Republic, regardless of race and complexional differences. It boldly rejects the principle of compensated emanc.i.p.ation, because it involves a surrender of the position that man cannot hold property in man; because slavery is a crime, and the master is not wronged by emanc.i.p.ation but the slaves righted, restored to themselves; because immediate and general emanc.i.p.ation would only destroy nominal, not real, property, the labor of the slaves would still remain to the masters and doubled by the new motives which freedom infuses into the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of her children; and, finally because, if compensation is to be given at all it ought to be given to those who have been plundered of their rights. It spurns in one compact paragraph the pretensions of the colonization humbug as "delusive, cruel, and dangerous."

But lofty and uncompromising as were the moral principles and positions of the declaration, it nevertheless recognized with perspicuity of vision the Const.i.tutional limitations of the Federal Government in relation to slavery. It frankly conceded that Congress had no right to meddle with the evil in any of the States. But wherever the national jurisdiction reached the general government was bound to interfere and suppress the traffic in human flesh. It was the duty of Congress, inasmuch as it possessed the power, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast and between the States. The free States are the particeps criminis of the slave States. They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the Const.i.tution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves. This relations.h.i.+p is criminal, "is full of danger, IT MUST BE BROKEN UP."

So much for the views and principles of the declaration, now for the designs and measures as enumerated therein: "We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city, town and village in our land.

"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty, and of rebuke.

"We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively, anti-slavery tracts and periodicals.

"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering and the dumb.

"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all partic.i.p.ation in the guilt of slavery.

"We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by giving a preference to their productions; and

"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to speedy repentance."

The instrument closes by pledging the utmost of its signers to the overthrow of slavery-"come what may to our persons, our interests, or our reputations-whether we live to witness the triumph of Liberty, Justice, and Humanity, or perish untimely as martyrs in this great, benevolent, and holy cause." Twin pledge it was to that ancestral, historic one made in 1776: "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

Whittier has predicted for the Declaration of Sentiments an enduring fame: "It will live," he declares, "as long as our national history." Samuel J. May was equally confident that this "Declaration of the Rights of Man," as he proudly cherished it, would "live a perpetual, impressive protest against every form of oppression, until it shall have given place to that brotherly kindness which all the children of the common Father owe to one another." As a particular act and parchment-roll of high thoughts and resolves, highly expressed, it will not, I think, attain to the immortality predicted for it. For as such it has in less than two generations pa.s.sed almost entirely out of the knowledge and recollection of Americans. But in another sense it is destined to realize all that has been foreshadowed for it by its friends. Like elemental fire its influence will glow and flame at the center of our national life long after as a separate and sovereign ent.i.ty it shall have been forgotten by the descendants of its ill.u.s.trious author and signers.

The convention was in session three days, and its proceedings were filled with good resolutions and effective work. Arthur Tappan was elected President of the national organization, and William Green, Jr., Treasurer. Elizur Wright, Jr., was chosen Secretary of Domestic Correspondence, William Lloyd Garrison Secretary of Foreign Correspondence, and Abraham L. c.o.x Recording Secretary. Besides these officers there were a Board of Management and a number of Vice-Presidents selected. For three days the hearts of the delegates burned within them toward white-browed Duty and the master, Justice, who stood in their midst and talked with divine accents to their spirits of how men were enslaved and cruelly oppressed by men, their own brothers, and how the cry of these bondmen came up to them for help. And with one accord there fell upon the delegates a pang and pity, an uplifting, impelling sense of 'woe unto us' if we withhold from our brethren in bonds the help required of us. This rising tide of emotion and enthusiasm gathering ma.s.s at each sitting of the convention, culminated during the several readings of the Declaration of Sentiments. And when on the third day Beriah Green brought the congress to a close in a valedictory address of apostolic power and grandeur, and with a prayer so sweet, so fervent, and strong as to melt all hearts, the pent-up waters of the reform was ready to hurl themselves into an agitation the like of which had never before, nor has since, been seen or felt in the Union. Thenceforth freedom's little ones were not without great allies, who were "exultations, agonies, and love, and man's unconquerable mind."

Everywhere the flood of Abolitionism burst upon the land, everywhere the moral deluge spread through the free States. Anti-slavery societies rose as it were, out of the ground, so rapid, so astonis.h.i.+ng were their growth during the year following the formation of the national society. In nearly every free State they had appeared doubling and quadrupling in number, until new societies reached in that first year to upwards of forty. Anti-slavery agents and lecturers kept pace with the anti-slavery societies. They began to preach, to remonstrate, to warn, entreat, and rebuke until their voices sounded like the roar of many waters in the ears of the people. Wherever there was a school-house, a hall, or a church, there they were, ubiquitous, irrepressible, a cry in the wilderness of a nation's iniquity. Anti-slavery tracts and periodicals multiplied and started from New York and Boston in swarms, and clouds, the thunder of their wings were as the thunder of falling avalanches to the guilty conscience of the country. There was no State, city, town, or village in the Republic where their voice was not heard.