Dr. Furness came into the cause when it was in its infancy, and had few adherents. From that time till the day of its triumph he was one with it, sharing in all its trials and vicissitudes. In the operations of the Vigilance Committee he took the liveliest interest. Though not in form a member he was one of its chief co-laborers. He brought it material aid continually, and was one of its main reliances for outside support. His quick sympathies were easily touched and when touched were sure to prompt him to corresponding action. He would listen with moistened eyes to a tale of outrage, and go away saying never a word. But the story of wrong would work upon him; and through him upon others. His own feelings were communicated to his friends, and his friends would send gifts to the Committee"s treasury. A wider spread sympathy would manifest itself in the community, and the general interests of the cause be visibly promoted. It was in the latter respect, that of moral co-operation, that Dr. Furness"s services were most valuable. After hearing a harrowing recital, whether he would or not, it became the burden of his next Sunday"s sermon. Abundant proof of this may be found in his printed discourses. Take the following as an ill.u.s.tration. It is an extract from a sermon delivered on the 29th of May, 1854, a period when the slave oligarchy was at the height of its power and was supported at the North by the most violent demonstrations of sympathy. The text was, "Feed my Lambs:"
"And now brothers, sisters, children, give me your hearts, listen with a will to what I have to say. As heaven is my witness, I would not utter one word save for the dear love of Christ and of G.o.d, and the salvation of your own souls. Does it require any violent effort of the mind to suppose Christ to address each one of us personally the same question that He put to Peter, "Lovest thou me?" * * * And at the hearing of His brief command, "Feed my lambs," so simple, so direct, so unqualified, are we prompted like the teacher of the law who, when Christ bade him love his neighbor as himself, asked, "And who is my neighbor?" and in the parable of the good Samaritan, received an answer that the Samaritans whom he despised, just as we despise the African, was his neighbor, are we prompted in like manner to ask, "Who are the lambs of Christ?" Who are His lambs? Behold that great mult.i.tude, more than three millions of men and feeble women and children, wandering on our soil; no not wandering, but chained down, not allowed to stir a step at their own free will, crushed and hunted with all the power of one of the mightiest nations that the world has yet seen, wielded to keep them down in the depths of the deepest degradation into which human beings can be plunged. These, then that we despise, are our neighbors, the poor, stricken lambs of Christ.
To cast one thought towards them, may well cause us to bow down our heads in the very dust with shame. No wonder that professing to love Christ and his religion, we do not like to hear them spoken of; for so far from feeding the lambs of Christ, we are exciting the whole a.s.sociated power of this land, to keep them from being fed. "Feed my lambs," We might feed them with fraternal sympathy, with hope, with freedom, the imperishable bread of Heaven. We might lead them into green pastures and still waters, into the glorious liberty wherewith Christ died to make all men free, the liberty of the children of G.o.d. We might secure to them the exercise of every sacred affection and faculty, wherewith the Creator has endowed them. But we do none of those things. We suffer this great flock of the Lord Jesus to be treated as chattels, bought and sold, like beasts of burden, hunted and lacerated by dogs and wolves. I say we, we of these Free Northern communities, because it is by our allowance, signified as effectually by silence, as by active co-operation, that such things are. They could continue so, scarcely an hour, were not the whole moral, religious and physical power of the North pledged to their support. Are we not in closest league and union with those who claim and use the right to buy and sell human beings, G.o.d"s poor, the lambs of Christ, a union, which we imagine brings us in as much silver and gold as compensates for the sacrifice of our humanity and manhood? Nay, are we not under a law to do the base work of bloodhounds, hunting the panting fugitives for freedom? I utter no word of denunciation. There is no need. For facts that have occurred only within the last week, transcend all denunciation. Only a few hours ago, there was a man with his two sons, hurried back into the inhuman bondage, from which they had just escaped, and that man, the brother, and those two sons, the nephews of a colored clergyman of New York, of such eminence in the New School Presbyterian Church, that he has received the honors of a European University, and has acted as Moderator in one of the Presbyteries of the same Church, when held in the city where he resides. Almost at the very moment the poor fugitive with his children, were dragged through our city, the General a.s.sembly of that very branch of the Presbyterian Church, now in session here, after discussing for days the validity of Roman Catholic baptism, threw out as inexpedient to be discussed, the subject of that great wrong which was flinging back into the agony of Slavery, a brother of one of their own ordained ministers, and could not so much as breathe a word of condemnation against the false and cruel deed which has just been consummated at the capitol of the nation.
When such facts are occurring in the midst of us, we cannot be guiltless concerning the lambs of Christ. It is we, we who make up the public opinion of the North, we who consent that these free States shall be the hunting-ground, where these, our poor brothers and sisters, are the game; it is we that withhold from them the bread of life, the inalienable rights of man. As we withhold these blessings, so is it in our power to bestow them.
The sheep then that Christ commands us, as we love Him, to feed, are those who are famishing for the lack of the food which it is in our power to supply. And we can help to feed and relieve and liberate them, by giving our hearty sympathy to the blessed cause of their emanc.i.p.ation, to the abolition of the crying injustice with which they are treated, by uttering our earnest protest against the increasing and flagrant outrages of the oppressor, by withholding all aid and countenance from the work of oppression."
To say that Dr. Furness, in his pleadings for the slave, was "instant in season and out of season," is not to exaggerate. So palpably was this true, that even some of his sympathizing friends intimated to him, that his zeal carried him beyond proper bounds, and that his discourses were needlessly reiterative. To these friends,--who, it is needless to say, did not fully comprehend the breadth and bearing of the question,--he would reply as he did in the following extract from a sermon delivered soon after the one above quoted:
"Again and again, I have had it said to me, with apparently the most perfect simplicity, "Why do you keep saying so much about the slaves? Do you imagine that there is one among your hearers who does not agree with you? We all know that Slavery is very wrong. What, is the use of harping upon this subject Sunday after Sunday? We all feel about it just as you do." "Feel about it just as I do," Very likely, my friends. It is very possible that you all feel as much, and that many of you feel about it more than I do. G.o.d knows that my regret always has been not that I feel so much, but that I do not feel more. Would to Heaven that neither you nor I could eat or sleep for pity, pity for our poor down-trodden brothers and sisters. But the thing to which I implore your attention now, is, not what we know and feel, but the delusion which we are under, in confounding _knowing_ with _doing_, in fancying that we are working to abolish Slavery because we know that it is wrong. This is what I would have you now to consider, the deception that we practise on ourselves, the dangerous error into which we fall, when we pa.s.s off the knowledge of our duty for the performance of it.
These are two very distinct things. If you know what is right, happy are ye if ye do it.
Observe, my friends, what it is to which I am now entreating your consideration. It is not the wrongs nor the rights of the oppressed upon which I am now discoursing. It is our own personal exposure to a most serious mistake. It is a danger, which threatens our own souls, to which I would that our eyes should be open and on the watch.
And here, by the way, let me say that one great reason why I refer as often as I do, to that great topic of the day, which, in one shape or another, is continually shaking the land and marking the age in which we live, is not merely the righting of the wronged, but the instruction, the moral enlightenment, the religious edification of our own hearts, which this momentous topic affords. To me this subject involves infinitely more than a mere question of humanity. Its political bearing is the very least and most superficial part of it, scarcely worth noticing in comparison with its moral and religious relations. Once, deterred by its outside, political aspect, I shunned it as many do still, but the more it has pressed itself on my attention, the more I have considered it--the more and more manifest has it become to me, that it is a subject full of light and of guidance, of warning and inspiration for the individual soul. It is the most powerful means of grace and salvation appointed in the providence of Heaven, for the present day and generation, more religious than churches and Sabbaths. It is full of sermons. It is a perfect gospel, a whole Bible of mind-enlightening, heart-cleansing, soul-saving truth. How much light has it thrown for me on the page of the New Testament!
What a profound significance has it disclosed in the precepts and parables of Jesus Christ! How do His words burst out with a new meaning! How does it help us to appreciate His trials and the G.o.dlike spirit with which He bore them!"
The dark winter of 1860 broke gloomily over all abolitionists; perhaps upon none did it press more heavily, than upon the small band in Philadelphia. Situated as that city is, upon the very edge of Slavery, and socially bound as it was, by ties of blood or affinity with the slave-holders of the South, to all human foresight it would a.s.suredly be the first theatre of bloodshed in the coming deadly struggle. As Dr.
Furness said in his sermon on old John Brown: "Out of the grim cloud that hangs over the South, a bolt has darted, and blood has flowed, and the place where the lightning struck, is wild with fear." The return stroke we all felt must soon follow, and Philadelphia, we feared, would be selected as the spot where Slavery would make its first mortal onslaught, and the abolitionists there, the first victims. Dr. Furness had taken part in the public meeting held on the day of John Brown"s execution, to offer prayers for the heroic soul that was then pa.s.sing away, and had gone with two or three others, to the rail-road station, to receive the martyr"s body, when it was brought from the gallows by Mr. (afterwards General) Tyndale and Mr. McKim, and it was generally feared that he and his church would receive the brunt of Slavery"s first blow. The air was thick with vague apprehension and rumor, so much so, that some of Dr. Furness"s devoted parishioners, who followed his abolitionism but not his non-resistance, came armed to church, uncertain what an hour might bring forth, or in what shape of mob violence or a.s.sa.s.sination the blow would fall. Few of Dr. Furness"s hearers will forget his sermon of December 16, 1860, so full was it of prophetic warning, and saddened by the thought of the fate which might be in store for him and his congregation. It was printed in the "Evening Bulletin,"
and made a deep impression on the public outside of his own church, and was reprinted in full, in the Boston "Atlas."
"But the trouble cannot be escaped. It must come. But we can put it off. By annihilating free speech; by forbidding the utterance of a word in the pulpit and by the press, for the rights of man; by hurling back into the jaws of oppression, the fugitive gasping for his sacred liberty; by recognizing the right of one man to buy and sell other men; by spreading the blasting curse of despotism over the whole soil of the nation, you may allay the brutal frenzy of a handful of southern slave-masters; you may win back the cotton States to cease from threatening you with secession, and to plant their feet upon your necks, and so evade the trouble that now menaces us. Then you may live on the few years that are left you, and perhaps--it is not certain--we may be permitted to make a little more money and die in our beds. But no, friends, I am mistaken. We cannot put the trouble off. Or, we put it off in its present shape, only that it may take another and more terrible form. If, to get rid of the present alarm, we concede all that makes it worth while to live--and nothing less will avail--perhaps those who can deliberately make such a concession, will not feel the degradation, but, stripped of all honor and manhood, they may eat as heartily and sleep as soundly as ever. But the degradation is not the less, but the greater, for our unconsciousness of it. The trouble which we shall then bring upon ourselves, is a trouble in comparison with which the loss of all things but honor is a glorious gain, and a violent death for right"s sake on the scaffold, or by the hands of a mob, peace and joy and victory.
Since we are thus placed, and there is no alternative for us of the free States, but to meet the trouble that is upon us, or by base concessions and compromises to bring upon ourselves a far greater trouble, in the name of G.o.d, let us let all things go, and cleave to the right. Prepared to confront the crisis like men, let us with all possible calmness endeavor to take the measure of the calamity that we dread. G.o.d knows I have no desire to make light of it. But I affirm, that never since the world began, was there a grander cause for which to speak, to suffer and to die, than the cause of these free States, as against that of the States now rushing upon Secession. The great grievance of which they complain, is nothing more nor less than this: that we endanger the right they claim to treat human beings as beasts of burden. And they maintain this monstrous claim by measures inhuman and barbarous, listening not to the voice of reason or humanity, but treating every man who goes amongst them, suspected of not favoring their cause, or of the remotest connection with others who do not favor it, with a most savage and fiendish cruelty. It is the conflict between barbarism and civilization, between liberty and the most horrible despotism that ever cursed this earth, in which we are called to take part.
And all that is great and n.o.ble in the past, all the patriots and martyrs that have suffered in man"s behalf, all the sacred instincts and hopes of the human soul are on our side, and the welfare of untold generations of men. Oh, if G.o.d, in his infinite bounty, grants us the grace to appreciate the transcendent worth of the cause which is now at stake, there is no trouble that can befall us, no, not the loss of property, of idolized parents or children, or life itself, that we shall not count a blessed privilege. To serve this dear cause of peace and liberty and love, we have no need to grasp the sword or any instrument of violence and death. But we must be ready without flinching, to confront the utmost that men can do, and amidst all the uproar and violence of human pa.s.sions, still calmly to a.s.sert and to exercise our sacred and inalienable liberties, let who will frown and forbid, a.s.sured that no just and law-of-G.o.d-abiding people, will ever do otherwise than give us their sympathy and their aid.
Death is the worst that can befall us, if so be that we are faithful to the right. It is a solemn and a fearful thing to die, and mortality shrinks from facing that last great mystery.
But we must all die, my friends, and the dying hour is not far distant from the youngest of us. To most of us it is very near.
To many, only a few brief years remain. And for the sake of these few and uncertain years, shall we push off this present trouble upon our children, who have to stay here a little longer? There is nothing that can so sweeten the bitter cup of mortality when we shall be called to drink it, nothing that can so cheer us in the prospect of parting from all we love, nothing that can send such a blessed light on before us into the dark valley which we must enter, as the consciousness of fidelity to man and to G.o.d. And now in these times of great trouble which have come upon us, we have a peculiar and special opportunity of testifying our fidelity, and of enjoying a full experience of its power to support us. We may gather from this trouble, a sweetness that shall take away from all suffering its bitterness. We may kindle that light in our bosoms, which shall make death come to us as a radiant angel."
Four months after the above was uttered, on the 28th of April, 1861, after the attack on Fort Sumter, and the whole North had burst into a flame, people of all denominations flocked to Dr. Furness"s church, as to that church which had shown that it was founded on a rock, and none can ever forget the long-drawn breath with which the sermon began: "The long agony is over!" It was the _"Te Deum_" of a life-time.
Dr. Furness"s words and counsels were not wanting throughout the war, and his sermons were constantly printed in the daily press and in separate pamphlet form. And since its close he has continued his absorbing study of the historical accounts of Jesus.
Dr. Furncss was born in Boston, in April, 1802, and was graduated at Harvard, in 1820, and five years later became the minister of the First Congregational Unitarian Christians, in this city, and is consequently the senior clergyman, here, on the score of length of pastorate.
Happy is the man, and enviable the gospel minister, who, looking back upon his course in the great anti-slavery contest, can recall as the chief charge brought against him, that of being over-zealous! That he spoke too often and said too much in favor of the slave! There are but few men, and still fewer ministers, who have a right to take comfort from such recollections! and yet it is to this small cla.s.s that the cause is most indebted under G.o.d, for its triumph, and the country for its deliverance from Slavery.
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
The character and career of the leader of the movement for immediate emanc.i.p.ation in this country, are too well known to be dwelt on here; nor, in the s.p.a.ce at our command, is it possible to give in full those facts of his life which have already appeared in print. His earliest biographer was Mary Howitt; and another even more famous auth.o.r.ess, Mrs.
H.B. Stowe, in "Men of Our Times," has stood in the same relation to him, while his life-long friend, Oliver Johnson, has writen the best concise account of him, in "Appleton"s New American Cyclopaedia."
Mr. Garrison (the Cyclopaedia is, on this point, in error) was born December 12, 1804, in Newburyport, Ma.s.s., his father, Abijah Garrison, being a ship-captain, trading with the West Indies, and his mother, f.a.n.n.y Lloyd, a woman of remarkable beauty, as well as piety and force of character. Intemperate habits led the husband and father from home to a solitary and obscure end, leaving his family entirely dependent. William (or as he was always called, Lloyd), was the youngest but one of five children, and had not done with his schooling before he began to contribute to his own support; at first in Lynn, where he was set at shoemaking, at the age of eleven; afterwards in Newburyport, and finally, in 1818, at Haverhill, where he was apprenticed to a cabinet maker. Not finding these trades suited to his taste, the same year he was indentured to Ephraim W. Allen, editor of the "_Newburyport Herald_," and in the printing-office he completed his education, so far as he was to have any, with such early success, as soon to be an acceptable contributor to his employer"s paper, while the authorship of his articles was still his own secret. As soon as his apprenticeship came to a close, in 1826, he became proprietor of the "_Free Press_," in his native city, but the paper failed of support. Seeking work as a journeyman, in Boston, he was engaged in 1827 to edit, in the interest of "total abstinence," the "_National Philanthropist,"_ the first paper of its kind ever published. On a change of proprietors in 1828, he was induced to join a friend in Bennington, Vt., in publishing the "_Journal of the Times_," which advocated the election of John Quincy Adams for president, besides being devoted to peace, temperance, anti-slavery and other reforms. In this town, Mr. Garrison began his agitation of the subject of Slavery, "in consequence of which there was transmitted to Congress an anti-slavery memorial, more numerously signed than any similar paper previously submitted to that body." It was in Bennington, too, that he received from Benjamin Lundy, who had met him the previous year at his boarding-house in Boston, an invitation to go to Baltimore, and aid him in editing the "_Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation_."
Baltimore was no strange city to Mr. Garrison. Thither he had accompanied his mother, in 1815, serving as a ch.o.r.e-boy, and he had visited her just before her death, in 1823. He took leave of Boston in the fall of 1829, after having acted as the orator of the day, July 4th, in Park Street church, and surprised his hearers by the boldness of his utterances on the subject of Slavery. The causes of his imprisonment at Baltimore scarcely need to be repeated. For an alleged "gross and malicious libel" on a townsman (of Newburyport) whose ship was engaged in the coastwise slave-trade, and whom he accordingly denounced in the "_Genius_," he was tried and convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of $50 and costs. The cell in which he was confined for forty-nine days, and from which he was liberated only by the spontaneous liberality of Arthur Tappan, a perfect stranger to him, he had the satisfaction of reseeking, after the close of the war, in company with Judge Bond, but the prison had been removed.
Compelled to part company with Lundy, to whom he has ever owned his moral indebtedness, Mr. Garrison at length started in Boston, in January 1831, his "_Liberator_" with little else besides his "dauntless spirit and a press." The difficulties which beset the birth of this paper were never entirely overcome, and its publication was attended, through all the thirty-five years of its existence, with constant struggle and privation, and with personal labor, at the printer"s case, and over the forms, which only an iron const.i.tution could have endured. The "_Liberator_" was the organ of the editor alone, and he gave room in it to the numerous reforms which were, in his mind, only subordinate to abolition. In 1865 the last volume was issued, Mr. Garrison having already, in May, withdrawn from the American Anti-slavery Society, which he had helped to found, in 1833, and of which, as he drew up the Declaration of Sentiments, he may be supposed to have known something of the original aims and proper duration.
In September, 1834, Mr. Garrison was married to Helen Eliza, daughter of the venerable philanthropist, George Benson, of Providence, R.I., who had, even in the previous century, been an active member of a combined anti-slavery and freedmen"s aid society in that city. In October, 1835, occurred the Boston riot, led by "gentlemen of property and standing,"
in which Mr. Garrison"s life was imperilled, and which made him once more familiar with the interior of a jail--this time, a place of refuge.
In 1832, he went to England, as an agent of the New England Anti-slavery Society, to awaken English sympathy for the anti-slavery movement, and to undeceive Clarkson and Wilberforce and their distinguished a.s.sociates as to the nature and object of the Colonization Society, as to which he had already had occasion to undeceive himself. His mission was eminently successful in both its aspects, and resulted in the subsequent visits of George Thompson to this country, between whom and himself a strong personal attachment had arisen and has ever since continued. A second visit to England he made as a delegate to the World"s Anti-slavery Convention, in which he refused to sit after his female colleagues had been rejected. A third visit, still in behalf of the cause, took place in 1846. Twenty years later--the war over and Slavery abolished--he again went abroad, to repair his health and renew old friendships, and for the first time pa.s.sed over to the Continent. In England, he was greeted with cordial appreciation and hospitality by all cla.s.ses.
Numerous public receptions of a most flattering character were given to him, but without the effect of causing him to magnify his own merits or to forget the honor due to his a.s.sociates in the anti-slavery struggle.
At the London Breakfast, where John Bright presided, and John Stuart Mill, the Duke of Argyll, and others spoke, he said, when called upon to reply: "I disclaim, with all the sincerity of my soul, any special praise for anything I have done. I have simply tried to maintain the integrity of my soul before G.o.d, and to do my duty." In Edinburgh, the "freedom of the city" was conferred upon him with impressive ceremonies--he being the third American ever thus honored. In Paris he was also received with distinction, his special mission to that city being to attend the International Anti-slavery Convention, in the capacity of a delegate from the American Freedman"s Union Commission, of which he was first vice-president.
The justice of the war on the part of the North, and its effect on the fate of Slavery at the South, were never subjects of doubt in the mind of Mr. Garrison, and he quickly recognized the force of events which had taken from the abolitionists the helm of direction, and reunited them with their countrymen in the irresistible flood which no man"s hand guided, and no man"s hand could stay. An agitator from conviction and not from choice, he was only too glad to lay down the heavy burden of a life-time, and retire to well-earned repose, after such a vision of faint hope realized as certainly no other reformer was ever blessed with. He had lived to see the disunion which he advocated on sacred principles, attempted by the South in the name of the sum of all villanies; the uprising of the North; the grand career of Lincoln; the proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation; the arming of the blacks--his own son among their officers; the end of the rebellion; and the consummation of his prayers and labors for the salvation of his country. He had taken part in the ceremonies at the recovery of Sumter, had walked the streets of Charleston, and received floral tokens of the grat.i.tude of the emanc.i.p.ated. To him it seemed as if his work was done, and that he might, without suspicion or accusation, cease to be conspicuous, or to occupy the public attention in any way relating to the past and recalling his part in the anti-slavery struggle. Notoriety, no longer a necessity, was eagerly avoided; and the physical rest which was now enjoined upon him the liberality of his friends having enabled him to secure, he settled down into the quiet life of a private citizen, whose great duty had become to him merely one of the duties which every man owes his country and his race. His sweet temper, his modesty, his unfailing cheerfulness, his rarely mistaken judgment of men and measures; his blameless and happy domestic life, and his hospitality; his warm sympathy with all forms of human suffering--these and other qualities which cannot be enumerated here, will doubtless receive the just judgment of posterity.
As a fitting adjunct to the foregoing sketch, extracts from some of the speeches made at the London breakfast so magnanimously extended to Mr.
Garrison in 1867, are here introduced. As presiding officer on the occasion, John Bright, M.P. spoke as follows:
SPEECH OF MR. BRIGHT, M.P.
The position in which I am placed this morning is one very unusual for me, and one that I find somewhat difficult; but I consider it a signal distinction to be permitted to take a prominent part in the proceedings of this day, which are intended to commemorate one of the greatest of the great triumphs of freedom, and to do honor to a most eminent instrument in the achievement of that freedom. (Hear, hear.) There may be, perhaps, those who ask what is this triumph of which I speak? To put it briefly, and, indeed, only to put one part of it, I may say that it is a triumph which has had the effect of raising 4,000,000 of human beings from the very lowest depths of social and political degradation to that lofty height which men have attained when they possess equality of rights in the first country on the globe. (Cheers.) More than this, it is a triumph which has p.r.o.nounced the irreversible doom of slavery in all countries and for all time. (Renewed cheers.) Another question suggests itself--how has this great matter been accomplished? The answer suggests itself in another question.
How is it that any great matter is accomplished? By love of justice, by constant devotion to a great cause, and by an unfaltering faith that that which is right will in the end succeed. (Hear, hear.)
When I look at this hall, filled with such an a.s.sembly; when I partake of the sympathy which runs from heart to heart at this moment in welcome to our guest of to-day, I cannot but contrast his present position with that which, not so far back but that many of us can remember, he occupied in his own country. It is not forty years ago, I believe about the year 1829, when the guest whom we honor this morning was spending his solitary days in a prison in the slave-owning city of Baltimore. I will not say that he was languishing in prison, for that I do not believe; he was sustained by a hope that did not yield to the persecution of those who thus maltreated him; and to show that the effect of that imprisonment was of no avail to suppress or extinguish his ardor, within two years after that he had the courage, the audacity--I dare say many of his countrymen used even a stronger phrase than that--he had the courage to commence the publication, in the city of Boston, of a newspaper devoted mainly to the question of the abolition of slavery. The first number of that paper, issued on the 1st January, 1831, contained an address to the public, one pa.s.sage of which I have often read with the greatest interest, and it is a key to the future life of Mr. Garrison. He had been complained of for having used hard language, which is a very common complaint indeed, and he said in his first number: "I am aware that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for such severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retract a single inch, and I will be heard".
(Cheers.) And that, after all, expresses to a great extent the future course of his life.
But what was at that time the temper of the people amongst whom he lived, of the people who are glorying now, as they well may glory, in the abolition of slavery throughout their country? At that time it was very little better in the North than it was in the South. I think it was in the year 1835 that riots of the most serious character took place in some of the northern cities; during that time Mr. Garrison"s life was in the most imminent peril; and he has never ascertained to this day how it was that he was left alive on the earth to carry on his great work. Turning to the South, a State that has lately suffered from the ravages of armies, the State of Georgia, by its legislature of House, Senate, and Governor, if my memory does not deceive me, pa.s.sed a bill, offering ten thousand dollars reward, (Mr. Garrison here said five thousand) well, they seemed to think there were people who would do it cheap, (laughter) offered five thousand dollars, and zeal, doubtless, would make up the difference, for the capture of Mr. Garrison, or for adequate proof of his death. Now, these were menaces and perils such as we have not in our time been accustomed to in this country in any of our political movements, (hear, hear) and we shall take a very poor measure indeed of the conduct of the leaders of the emanc.i.p.ation party in the United States if we estimate them by any of those who have been concerned in political movements amongst us. But, notwithstanding all drawbacks, the cause was gathering strength, and Mr. Garrison found himself by and by surrounded by a small but increasing band of men and women who were devoted to this cause, as he himself was. We have in this country a very n.o.ble woman, who taught the English people much upon this question, about thirty years ago; I allude to Harriet Martineau. (Cheers.) I recollect well the impression with which I read a most powerful and touching paper which she had written, and which was published in the number of the _Westminster Review_ for December, 1838. It was ent.i.tled "The Martyr Age of the United States." The paper introduced to the English public the great names which were appearing on the scene in connection with this cause in America.
There was, of course I need not mention, our eminent guest of to-day; there was Arthur Tappan, and Lewis Tappan, and James G.
Birney of Alabama, a planter and slave-owner, who liberated his slaves and came north, and became, as I think, the first presidential candidate upon abolition principles in the United States. (Hear, hear.) There were besides them, Dr. Channing, John Quincy Adams, a statesman and President of the United States, and father of the eminent man who is now Minister from that people amongst us. (Cheers.) Then there was Wendell Phillips, admitted to be by all who know him perhaps the most powerful orator who speaks the English language. (Hear, hear.) I might refer to others, to Charles Sumner, the well-known statesman, and Horace Greeley, I think the first of journalists in the United States, if not the first of journalists in the world. (Hear, hear.) But besides these, there were of n.o.ble women not a few. There was Lydia Maria Child; there were the two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, ladies who came from South Carolina, who liberated their slaves, and devoted all they had to the service of this just cause; and Maria Weston Chapman, of whom Miss Martineau speaks in terms which, though I do not exactly recollect them, yet I know described her as n.o.ble-minded, beautiful and good. It may be that there are some of her family who are now within the sound of my voice. If it be so, all I have to say is, that I hope they will feel, in addition to all they have felt heretofore as to the character of their mother, that we who are here can appreciate her services, and the services of all who were united with her as co-operators in this great and worthy cause. But there was another whose name must not be forgotten, a man whose name must live for ever in history, Elijah P. Lovejoy, who in the free State of Illinois laid down his life for the cause. (Hear, hear.) When I read that article by Harriet Martineau, and the description of those men and women there given, I was led, I know not how, to think of a very striking pa.s.sage which I am sure must be familiar to most here, because it is to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
After the writer of that epistle has described the great men and fathers of the nation, he says: "Time would fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephtha, of David, of Samuel, and the Prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens." I ask if this grand pa.s.sage of the inspired writer may not be applied to that heroic band who have made America the perpetual home of freedom?
(Enthusiastic cheering.)
Thus, in spite of all that persecution could do, opinion grew in the North in favor of freedom; but in the South, alas! in favor of that most devilish delusion that slavery was a Divine inst.i.tution. The moment that idea took possession of the South war was inevitable. Neither fact nor argument, nor counsel, nor philosophy, nor religion, could by any possibility affect the discussion of the question when once the Church leaders of the South had taught their people that slavery was a Divine inst.i.tution; for then they took their stand on other and different, and what they in their blindness thought higher grounds, and they said, "Evil! be thou my good;" and so they exchanged light for darkness, and freedom for bondage, and good for evil, and, if you like, heaven for h.e.l.l. * * * *
There was a universal feeling in the North that every care should be taken of those who had so recently and marvellously been enfranchised. Immediately we found that the privileges of independent labor were open to them, schools were established in which their sons might obtain an education that would raise them to an intellectual position never reached by their fathers; and at length full political rights were conferred upon those who a few short years, or rather months, before, had been called chattels, and things to be bought and sold in any market. (Hear, hear.) And we may feel a.s.sured, that those persons in the Northern States who befriended the negro in his bondage will not now fail to a.s.sist his struggles for a higher position. * * *
To Mr. Garrison more than any other man this is due; his is the creation of that opinion which has made slavery hateful, and which has made freedom possible in America. (Hear, hear.) His name is venerated in his own country, venerated where not long ago it was a name of obloquy and reproach. His name is venerated in this country and in Europe wheresoever Christianity softens the hearts and lessens the sorrows of men; and I venture to say that in time to come, near or remote I know not, his name will become the herald and the synonym of good to millions of men who will dwell on the now almost unknown continent of Africa. (Loud cheers.) * * *
To Mr. Garrison, as is stated in one of the letters which has just been read, to William Lloyd Garrison it has been given, in a manner not often permitted to those who do great things of this kind, to see the ripe fruit of his vast labors. Over a territory large enough to make many realms, he has seen hopeless toil supplanted by compensated industry; and where the bondman dragged his chain, there freedom is established for ever. (Loud cheers.) We now welcome him amongst us as a friend whom some of us have known long; for I have watched his career with no common interest, even when I was too young to take much part in public affairs; and I have kept within my heart his name, and the names of those who have been a.s.sociated with him in every step which he has taken; and in public debate in the halls of peace, and even on the blood-soiled fields of war, my heart has always been with those who were the friends of freedom. (Renewed cheering.) We welcome him then with a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for him and for his n.o.ble a.s.sociates, both men and women.