Higher than anywhere else rose this flood-tide in Ma.s.sachusetts. The judge who remanded Anthony Burns to slavery was removed from office, and a Personal Liberty Law, with provisions as bold as they were thorough, enacted for the protection of fugitive slaves. Mr. Garrison sat beside the President of the State Senate when that body voted to remove Judge Loring from his office. Such was Ma.s.sachusetts"s answer to the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, and a triumphant slave-power. Its instant effect was to accelerate in the South the action of the disunion working forces there, to hurry the inevitable moment when the two sections would rush together in a death-grapple within or without Webster"s once glorious Union.
Indeed the foes had already closed in a frightful wrestle for the possession of Kansas. When the National Government adopted the popular sovereignty doctrine in solution of the Territorial problem between the two halves of the Union, freedom and slavery thereupon precipitated their forces upon the debatable land, and, for the first time, the men of the North and the men of the South came into actual physical collision in defence of their respective ideas and inst.i.tutions. The possession of land is nine points of the law among Anglo-Saxons, and for this immense advantage both sides flung themselves into Kansas-the North by means of emigrant aid societies, the South by means of bands of Border ruffians under the direction of a United States Senator. It was distinctly understood and ordained in connection with the repeal of the compromise of 1820, that final possession of the Territories then thrown open to slave labor should be determined by the people inhabiting the same. In the contest for peopling Kansas the superior colonizing resources of the free States was presently made manifest. They, in any fair contest with ballots, had a majority of the polls, and were, therefore, able to vote slavery down. Worsted as the South clearly was in a show of heads, it threw itself back upon fraud and force to decide the issue in its favor. The cartridge-box took the place of the ballot-box in bleeding Kansas, and violence and anarchy, as a consequence, reigned therein for the s.p.a.ce of several years.
This is no place to depict those scenes of slave-holding outrages, supported as they were by a Northern President with Southern principles. The sight of them rapidly changed the pacific character of the free States. Many a peace man dropped his peace principles before this b.l.o.o.d.y duel between the civilization of the South and that of the North. Ministers and churches took up collections to send, not Bibles, but Sharp"s rifles to their brethren in Kansas. The South had appealed to the sword, and the North had sternly accepted the challenge. War was in the air, and the Northern temper, without there being any general consciousness of it, was fast mounting to the war point in the thermometer of the pa.s.sions, thanks to the perfidy and ruffianism of the slave-power in Congress and Kansas.
This trend and strong undertow of the nation toward a civil outbreak and commotion, though unnoted by the mult.i.tude, was yet, nevertheless, seen and felt by many thoughtful and far-seeing minds; and by no one more clearly than by T.W. Higginson, who at the twentieth anniversary of the Boston mob, discoursed thus on this head: "Mr. Phillips told us that on this day, twenty years ago, the military could not protect the meeting, because the guns were outside in the mob-or the men who should have carried them! There has been a time since when the men were on the outside and the guns too; and as surely as this earth turns on its axis, that time will come again! And it is for you, men, who hear me, to think what you will do when that time comes; and it is for you, women, who hear me, to think what you will do, and what you are willing-I will not say, to consent that those you love should do, but what you are willing to urge them to do, and to send them from your homes, knowing that they will do it, whether they live or die." The murderous a.s.sault upon Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber at Washington by Preston S. Brooks, served to intensify the increasing belligerency of the Northern temper, to deepen the spreading conviction that the irrepressible conflict would be settled not with the pen through any more fruitless compromises, but in Anglo-Saxon fashion by blood and iron.
Amid this general access of the fighting propensity, Garrison preserved the integrity of his non-resistant principles, his aversion to the use of physical force as an anti-slavery weapon. Men like Charles Stearns talked of shouldering their Sharp"s rifles against the Border ruffians as they would against wild beasts. For himself, he could not cla.s.s any of his fellow-creatures, however vicious and wicked, on the same level with wild beasts. Those wretches were, he granted, as bad and brutal as they were represented by the free State men of Kansas, but to him they were less blameworthy than were their employers and indorsers, the pro-slavery President and his Cabinet, pro-slavery Congressmen, and judges, and doctors of divinity, and editors. Incomparably guilty as these "colossal conspirators against the liberty, peace, happiness, and safety of the republic" were; and, though his moral indignation "against their treasonable course" burned like fire, he, nevertheless, wished them no harm. He shrank from the idea of the physical collision of man with a brother man, and with him all mankind were brothers. No one is able to draw a sword or point a rifle at any member of the human family, "in a Christian state of mind." He held to Jesus, who condemned violence, forbade the entertainment by his disciples of retaliatory feelings and the use of retaliatory weapons. When Jesus said "Love your enemies," he did not mean, "Kill them if they go too far."
Garrison"s moral radicalism and political sagacity were never exhibited to better advantage than during these tremendous years of the crisis. He saw the sudden rise of a great political organization opposed to the farther extension of slavery to national territory. It was by no means a party after his heart, and for total and immediate emanc.i.p.ation, and the dissolution of the Union, yet he perceived that while this was true, it was, nevertheless, in its narrow purpose, battling against the slave-power, fighting the slave system, and to this extent was worthy of the commendation of Abolitionists. "It helps to disseminate no small amount of light and knowledge," the reformer acutely observed, "in regard to the nature and workings of the slave system, being necessitated to do this to maintain its position; and thus, for the time being, it is moulding public sentiment in the right direction, though with no purpose to aid us in the specific work we are striving to accomplish, namely, the dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of slavery throughout the land." While bating no jot of his anti-slavery principles, he all the same put in practice the apostolic injunction to give credit to whom credit is due, by cordially commending what he found worthy of commendation in the purpose and policy of the Republican party, and by urging a like conduct upon his followers. In the Presidential canva.s.s of 1856 his sympathies went strongly with Fremont as against Buchanan and Fillmore, although his Abolition principles precluded him from voting for the Republican candidate or from urging his disciples to vote for him. But, barring this moral barrier, had he "a million votes to bestow" he "would cast them all for Fremont ... not because he is an Abolitionist or a Disunionist ... but because he is for the non-extension of slavery, in common with the great body of the people of the North, whose attachment to the Union amounts to idolatry."
When the election was over the motto of the Liberator was still "No union with slaveholders," and would have remained the same though Fremont instead of Buchanan had triumphed at the polls, until indeed the domination of the slave-power had ended, and the North and the National Const.i.tution had been divorced from all criminal connection with slavery. The anti-slavery agitation for the dissolution of the Union went on with increased zeal. A State convention, called by T.W. Higginson and others, "to consider the practicability, probability, and expediency of a separation between the free and slave States, and to take such other measures as the condition of the times may require," met at Worcester, Ma.s.s., January 15, 1857, with Frank W. Bird in the chair, and William Lloyd Garrison among the vice-presidents. The pioneer"s speech on the occasion was a characteristic and noteworthy utterance. Its tone throughout was grave and argumentative. Here is a specimen of it, and of the way in which he met the most serious objection to the Abolition movement for disunion: "The air is filled with objections to a movement of this kind. I am neither surprised nor disquieted at this. One of these is of a very singular nature, and it is gravely urged that it is conclusive against disunion. It is to this effect: We must remain in the Union because it would be inhuman in us to turn our backs upon millions of slaves in the Southern States, and to leave them to their fate! Men who have never been heard of in the anti-slavery ranks, or who are ever submitting to a compromise of principle, have their bowels wonderfully moved all at once with sympathy for the suffering slave! Even our esteemed friend, Theodore Parker (who deals in no cant) says, in his letter, that he cannot consent to cut himself off from the slave population. Now, we who are engaged in this movement claim to be equally concerned for the liberation of the slave. If we have not yet proved our willingness to suffer the loss of all things, rather than turn and flee, G.o.d knows that we are prepared to bear any new cross that He, in His Providence, may be disposed to lay upon us. For one, I make no parade of my anxiety for the deliverance of those in bondage; but I do say that it strikes me as remarkable that those who, for a quarter of a century, have borne the heat and burden of the day, should have the imputation cast upon them of intending to leave four millions of slaves in their chains, by seeking the overthrow of this Union!...
" ... I declare that this talk of leaving the slave to his fate is not a true representation of the case; and it indicates a strange dullness of comprehension with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is it to forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his master? What! When the North is pressing down upon four millions of slaves like an avalanche, and we say to her, "Take off that pressure-stand aside-give the slave a chance to regain his feet and a.s.sert his freedom!" is that turning our backs upon him? Here, for example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, and another man is acting as an accessory, without whose aid the robber cannot succeed. In saying to the accomplice. "Hands off! Don"t aid the villain!" shall I be told that this is enabling the highwayman to rob with impunity? What an absurdity! Are we not trying to save the pockets of all travelers from being picked in seeking to break up all connection with highway robbery?"
The convention projected a general convention of the free States to consider the subject, and "Resolved, That the sooner the separation takes place, the more peaceful it will be; but that peace or war is a secondary consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be conquered, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." The projected general convention, owing to the monetary crisis of 1857, did not take place; but the extraordinary public excitement on the slavery question increased rather than diminished during the year. The increasing menace to the domination of the slave-power from this source had become so great that it was deemed prudent on the part of the upholders of that power to allay it by means of an authoritative utterance upon the vexed question of slavery in the national Territories from the highest judicial tribunal in the Land. The Northern respect for the opinion of the Supreme Court, the South and her allies in the free States counted upon as the vehicle of the quieting medicament. For, if the Missouri Compromise were p.r.o.nounced by that Court unconst.i.tutional and, therefore, ab initio, null and void, no wrong was done the North through its formal repeal by Congress. The act of abrogation, in this view, added nothing to the South which did not belong to it as well before as after its pa.s.sage, detracted nothing from the North which was justly its due in the premises. In pursuance of this cunningly devised scheme the Supreme Court delivered itself of an opinion in the famous "Dred Scott Case." So abhorrent it was to the intelligence and moral sense of the free States, that it produced results altogether opposed to those designed by the men who invoked it. Instead of checking, the execrated judgment augmented enormously the existing excitement. Garrison"s bitter taunt that "the Union is but another name for the iron reign of the slave-power," was driven home to the North, by the Dred Scott decision, with the logic of another unanswerable fact. Confidence in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court was seriously shaken, and widespread suspicion struck root at the North touching the subserviency of that tribunal to the interests and designs of the slave-power.
The popular agitation at this fresh and alarming evidence of the purpose and power of the South upset the machinations of the schemers, swelled the numerical strength of the new Northern party opposed to the Territorial aggressions and pretensions of the slave section. So rapid was the growth of the Republican party that the slave leaders antic.i.p.ated its accession to power at the then next Presidential election. So certain were they in their forebodings of defeat that they set about in dead earnest to put their side of the divided house in order for the impending struggle for Southern independence. Military preparations went forward with a vengeance, arms and munitions of war which were the property of the General Government began to move southward, to Southern military depots and posts for the defence of the United States South, when at last the word "DISUNION" should be p.r.o.nounced over the Republic. The Lincoln-Dougla.s.s debate augmented everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty numbers of the new party. More and more the public consciousness and conviction were squaring with Mr. Lincoln"s oracular words in respect that the Union could not "endure permanently half slave and half free."
The darkness and tumult of the rising tempest were advancing apace, when suddenly there burst from the national firmament the first warning peal of thunder, and over Virginia there sped the first bolt of the storm. John Brown with his brave little band, at Harper"s Ferry, had struck for the freedom of the slave. Tired of words, the believer in blood and iron as a deliverer, had crossed from Pennsylvania into Virginia on the evening of October 16, 1859, and seized the United States Armory at Harper"s Ferry. Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and hanged for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had builded better than he knew. For the blow struck by him then and there ended almost abruptly the period of argument and ushered in the period of arms. The jar from that battle-ax at the roots of the slave system hurled together in a death struggle right and wrong, freedom and slavery, in the republic.
This attempt on the part of John Brown to liberate the slaves seemed to Garrison "misguided, wild, and apparently insane, though disinterested and well-intended." On non-resistant grounds he deplored this use of the sword to effect emanc.i.p.ation, and condemned the leader. But, judging him according to the standard of Bunker Hill and the men of 1776, he did not doubt that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable remembrance to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the deeds of a Wallace or Tell, a Washington or Warren."
The raid of Brown and his subsequent execution, and their reception at the North revealed how vast was the revolution in public sentiment on the slavery question which had taken place there, since the murder of Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy died defending the right of free speech and the liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of Ma.s.sachusetts declared that "he died as the fool dieth." Brown died in an invasion of a slave State, and in an effort to emanc.i.p.ate the slaves with a band of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one end of the free States to the other, hero and martyr. Mr. Garrison commenting on this immensely significant fact, acutely and justly observed that: "The sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him, prove how marvelous has been the change affected in public opinion during the thirty years of moral agitation-a change so great indeed, that whereas, ten years since, there were thousands who could not endure my lightest word of rebuke of the South, they can now easily swallow John Brown whole and his rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has merely told us what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank G.o.d!"
But there is another circ.u.mstance hardly less significant of another change at the North even more momentous than the one just noted.
On December 2d, the day on which Brown was hung, solemn funeral observances were held throughout the North by Abolitionists. At the great meeting in Boston, held in Tremont Temple, and presided over by Samuel E. Sewall, Garrison inquired as to the number of non-resistants who were present. To this question there came a solitary reply. There was but one non-resistant beside himself in the hall. Where were his followers? Why had they forsaken their principles? The tide of Northern belligerency, which was everywhere rising to its flood, everywhere rushing and mounting to the tops of those dams which separate war and peace had swept away his followers, had caused them to forsake their principles. True to their Anglo-Saxon instinct, they had reverted to the more human, if less Christian method of cutting the Gordian knot of the republic with the sword.
The irresistible drift of the North toward the point where peace ends and war begins, which that solitary "I" at the John Brown meeting denoted, was still further indicated by what appeared not wholly unlike a change in Mr. Garrison"s att.i.tude on the same subject. His non-resistant position was the same, but somehow his face seemed to turn warward too, with the rest of the nation, in the following pa.s.sage taken from his address at that John Brown meeting:
"Nevertheless, I am a non-resistant," said he, speaking to that solitary confession of non-resistance principles, "and I not only desire, but have labored unremittingly to effect the peaceful abolition of slavery, by an appeal to the reason and conscience of the slaveholder; yet, as a peace man, an ultra peace man, I am prepared to say: Success to every slave insurrection at the South, and in every slave country. And I do not see how I compromise or stain my peace profession in making that declaration. Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the oppressor, the weapons being equal between the parties, G.o.d knows that my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor. Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave insurrections.... Rather than see men wearing their chains, in a cowardly and servile spirit, I would as an advocate of peace, much rather see them breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains. Give me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Concord, rather than the cowardice and servility of a Southern slave plantation."
The unmistakable signs of disintegration, the swift action of the national tragedy, the Charleston Convention, the disruption of the Democratic party, the last bond between the North and the South, filled the heart of the pioneer with solemn joy. "Only think of it!" he exulted at the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, May 8, 1860; "only think of it! the party which has for so many years cried out, "There must be no agitation on this subject" is now the most agitated of all the parties in the country. The party which declares that there ought not to be any sectionalism as against slavery, has now been sundered geographically, and on this very question! The party which had said, "Let discussions cease forever," is busily engaged in the discussion, so that, possibly, the American Anti-Slavery Society might adjourn sine die, after we get through with our present meetings, and leave its work to be carried on in the other direction!" This was all true enough. The sections were at last sundered, and a day of wrath was rising dark and dreadful over "States dissevered, discordant, belligerent."
CHAPTER XX.
THE DEATH-GRAPPLE.
The triumph of the Republican party at the polls was the signal for the work of dissolution to begin. Webster"s terrific vision of "a land rent with civil feuds" became reality in the short s.p.a.ce of six weeks after Lincoln"s election, by the secession of South Carolina from the Union. Quickly other Southern States followed, until a United States South was organized, the chief stone in the corner of the new political edifice being Negro slavery. It was not six weeks after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, when the roar of cannon in Charleston Harbor announced to the startled country that war between the States had begun. The first call of the new President for troops to put down the rebellion and to save the Union, and the patriotic uprising which it evoked made it plain that the struggle thus opened was to be nothing less than a death-grapple between the two sections.
Before the attack on Fort Sumter, Garrison was opposed to coercing the rebel States back into the Union. He admitted the Const.i.tutional power of the National Government to employ force in maintaining the integrity of the Republic. "The Federal Government must not pretend to be in actual operation, embracing thirty-four States," the editor of the Liberator commented, "and then allow the seceding States to trample upon its flag, steal its property, and defy its authority with impunity; for it would then be (as it is at this moment) a mockery and a laughing-stock. Nevertheless to think of whipping the South (for she will be a unit on the question of slavery) into subjection, and extorting allegiance from millions of people at the cannon"s mouth, is utterly chimerical. True, it is in the power of the North to deluge her soil with blood, and inflict upon her the most terrible sufferings; but not to conquer her spirit, or change her determination."
He, therefore, proposed that "the people of the North should recognize the fact that THE UNION IS DISSOLVED, and act accordingly. They should see, in the madness of the South, the hand of G.o.d, liberating them from "a covenant with death" and an "agreement with h.e.l.l," made in a time of terrible peril, and without a conception of its inevitable consequences, and which has corrupted their morals, poisoned their religion, petrified their humanity as towards the millions in bondage, tarnished their character, hara.s.sed their peace, burdened them with taxation, shackled their prosperity, and brought them into abject va.s.salage."
It is not to be wondered at that Garrison, under the circ.u.mstances, was for speeding the South rather than obstructing her way out of the Union. For hardly ever had the anti-slavery cause seen greater peril than that which hung over it during the months which elapsed between Lincoln"s election and the attack on Sumter, owing to the paralyzing apprehensions to which the free States fell a prey in view of the then impending disruption of their glorious Union. Indeed no sacrifice of anti-slavery accomplishments, policy, and purpose of those States were esteemed too important or sacred to make, if thereby the dissolution of the Union might be averted. Many, Republicans as well as Democrats, were for repealing the Personal Liberty Laws, and for the admission of New Mexico as a State, with or without slavery, for the enforcement of the Fugitive State Law, for suppressing the right of free speech and the freedom of the press on the subject of slavery, and for surrendering the Northern position in opposition to the extension of slavery to national Territories, in order to placate the South and keep it in the Union. Nothing could have possibly been more disastrous to the anti-slavery movement in America than a Union saved on the terms proposed by such Republican leaders as William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Thomas Corwin, and Andrew G. Curtin. The Union, under the circ.u.mstances, was sure death to the slave, in disunion lay his great life-giving hope. Therefore his tried and sagacious friend was for sacrificing the Union to win for him freedom.
As the friends of the Union were disposed to haggle at no price to preserve it, so was Garrison disposed to barter the Union itself in exchange for the abolition of slavery. "Now, then, let there be a CONVENTION OF THE FREE STATES," he suggested, "called to organize an independent government on free and just principles; and let them say to the slave States: Though you are without excuse for your treasonable conduct, depart in peace! Though you have laid piratical hands on property not your own, we surrender it all in the spirit of magnanimity! And if nothing but the possession of the Capitol will appease you, take even that without a struggle! Let the line be drawn between us where free inst.i.tutions end and slave inst.i.tutions begin!"
But the thunder of the rebel guns in Charleston Harbor wrought in the reformer a complete revolution in this regard. In the tremendous popular uprising which followed that insult to the national flag he perceived that the old order with its compromises and dispositions to agree to anything, to do anything for the sake of preserving the Union had pa.s.sed away forever. When it was suggested as an objection to his change of base that the "Administration is endeavoring to uphold the Union, the Const.i.tution, and the Laws, even as from the formation of the Government," he was not for a moment deceived by its apparent force, but replied sagely that "this is a verbal and technical view of the case." "Facts are more potential than words," he remarked with philosophic composure, "and events greater than parchment arrangements. The truth is, the old Union is nan est invenius, and its restoration, with its pro-slavery compromises, well-nigh impossible. The conflict is really between the civilization of freedom and the barbarism of slavery-between the principles of democracy and the doctrines of absolutism-between the free North and the man-imbruting South; therefore, to this extent hopeful for the cause of impartial liberty."
With the instinct of wise leadership, he adjusted himself and his little band of Abolitionists, as far as he was able, to the exigencies of the revolution. In his madness there was always remarkable method. When the nation was apathetic, dead on the subject of slavery, he used every power which he possessed or could invent to galvanize it into life. But with the prodigious excitement which swept over the free States at the outbreak of the war, Garrison saw that the crisis demanded different treatment. Abolitionists and their moral machinery he felt should be withdrawn, for a season at least, from their conspicuous place before the public gaze, lest it happen that they should divert the current of public opinion from the South to themselves, and thus injure the cause of the slave. He accordingly deemed it highly expedient that the usual anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held in New York, ought, under the circ.u.mstances, to be postponed, coming as it would but a few weeks after the attack on Sumter, and in the midst of the tremendous loyal uprising against the rebels. This he did, adding, by way of caution, this timely counsel: "Let nothing be done at this solemn crisis needlessly to check or divert the mighty current of popular feeling which is now sweeping southward with the strength and impetuosity of a thousand Niagaras, in direct conflict with that haughty and perfidious slave-power which has so long ruled the republic with a rod of iron, for its own base and satanic purposes."
The singular tact and sagacity of the pioneer in this emergency may be again seen in a letter to Oliver Johnson, who was at the time editing the Anti-Slavery Standard. Says the pioneer: "Now that civil war has begun, and a whirlwind of violence and excitement is to sweep through the country, every day increasing in interest until its bloodiest culmination, it is for the Abolitionists to "stand still and see the salvation of G.o.d," rather than to attempt to add anything to the general commotion. It is no time for minute criticism of Lincoln, Republicanism, or even the other parties, now that they are fusing, for a death-grapple with the Southern slave oligarchy; for they are instruments in the hands of G.o.d to carry forward and help achieve the great object of emanc.i.p.ation for which we have so long been striving.... We need great circ.u.mspection and consummate wisdom in regard to what we may say and do under these unparalleled circ.u.mstances. We are rather, for the time being, to note the events transpiring than seek to control them. There must be no needless turning of popular violence upon ourselves by any false step of our own."
The circ.u.mspection, the tact, and sagacity which marked his conduct at the beginning of the rebellion characterized it to the close of the war, albeit at no time doing or saying aught to compromise his anti-slavery principle of total and immediate emanc.i.p.ation. On the contrary, he urged, early and late, upon Congress and the President the exercise of the war power to put an end for ever to slavery. Radical Abolitionists like Stephen S. Foster were for denying to the Administration anti-slavery support and countenance, and for continuing to heap upon the Government their denunciations until it placed itself "openly and unequivocally on the side of freedom," by issuing the edict of emanc.i.p.ation. Against this zeal without discretion Garrison warmly protested. "I cannot say that I do not sympathize with the Government," said he, "as against Jefferson Davis and his piratical a.s.sociates. There is not a drop of blood in my veins, both as an Abolitionist and a peace man, that does not flow with the Northern tide of sentiment; for I see, in this grand uprising of the manhood of the North, which has been so long groveling in the dust, a growing appreciation of the value of liberty and free inst.i.tutions, and a willingness to make any sacrifice in their defence against the barbaric and tyrannical power which avows its purpose, if it can, to crush them entirely out of existence. When the Government shall succeed (if it shall succeed) in conquering a peace, in subjugating the South, and shall undertake to carry out the Const.i.tution as of old, with all its pro-slavery compromises, then will be my time to criticise, reprove, and condemn; then will be the time for me to open all the guns that I can bring to bear upon it. But blessed be G.o.d that "covenant with death" has been annulled, and that "agreement with h.e.l.l" no longer stands. I joyfully accept the fact, and leave all verbal criticism until a more suitable opportunity."
But it must be confessed that at times during the struggle, Lincoln"s timidity and apparent indifference as to the fate of slavery, in his anxiety to save the Union, weakened Garrison"s confidence in him, and excited his keenest apprehensions "at the possibility of the war terminating without the utter extinction of slavery, by a new and more atrocious compromise on the part of the North than any that has yet been made." The pioneer therefore adjudged it prudent to get his battery into position and to visit upon the President for particular acts, such as the revocation of anti-slavery orders by sundry of his generals in the field, and upon particular members of his Cabinet who were understood to be responsible for the shuffling, hesitating action of the Government in its relation to slavery, an effective fire of criticism and rebuke.
Nevertheless Mr. Garrison maintained toward the Government a uniform tone of sympathy and moderation. "I hold," said he, in reply to strictures of Mr. Phillips upon the President at the annual meeting of the Ma.s.sachusetts Society in 1862; "I hold that it is not wise for us to be too microscopic in endeavoring to find disagreeable and annoying things, still less to a.s.sume that everything is waxing worse and worse, and that there is little or no hope." He himself was full of hope which no shortcomings of the Government was able to quench. He was besides beginning to understand the perplexities which beset the administration, to appreciate the problem which confronted the great statesman who was at the head of the nation. He was getting a clear insight into the workings of Lincoln"s mind, and into the causes which gave to his political pilotage an air of timidity and indecision.
"Supposing Mr. Lincoln could answer to-night," continued the pioneer in reply to his less patient and hopeful coadjutors, "and we should say to him: "Sir, with the power in your hands, slavery being the cause of the rebellion beyond all controversy, why don"t you put the trump of jubilee to your lips, and proclaim universal freedom?"-possibly he might answer: "Gentlemen, I understand this matter quite as well as you do. I do not know that I differ in opinion from you; but will you insure me the support of a united North if I do as you bid me? Are all parties and all sects at the North so convinced and so united on this point that they will stand by the Government? If so, give me the evidence of it, and I will strike the blow. But, gentlemen, looking over the entire North, and seeing in all your towns and cities papers representing a considerable, if not a formidable portion of the people, menacing and bullying the Government in case it dared to liberate the slaves, even as a matter of self-preservation, I do not feel that the hour has yet come that will render it safe for the Government to take that step." I am willing to believe that something of this kind weighs in the mind of the President and the Cabinet, and that there is some ground for hesitancy as a mere matter of political expediency." This admirable and discriminating support of the President finds another capital ill.u.s.tration in weighty words of his in answer to animadversions of Prof. Francis W. Newman, of England, directed against Mr. Lincoln. Says Garrison: "In no instance, however, have I censured him (Lincoln) for not acting upon the highest abstract principles of justice and humanity, and disregarding his Const.i.tutional obligations. His freedom to follow his convictions of duty as an individual is one thing-as the President of the United States, it is limited by the functions of his office, for the people do not elect a President to play the part of reformer or philanthropist, nor to enforce upon the nation his own peculiar ethical or humanitary ideas without regard to his oath or their will."
Great indeed was the joy of the pioneer when President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, issued his Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. The same sagacious and statesmanlike handling of men and things distinguished his conduct after the edict of freedom was made as before. When the question of Reconstruction was broached in an administrative initiative in Louisiana, the President gave great offence to the more radical members of his party, and to many Abolitionists by his proposal to readmit Louisiana to Statehood in the Union with no provision for the extension of the suffrage to the negro. This exhibition of the habitual caution and conservatism of Mr. Lincoln brought upon him a storm of criticism and remonstrances, but not from Garrison. There was that in him which appreciated and approved the evident disposition of the President to make haste slowly in departing from the American principle of local self-government even in the interest of liberty. Then, too, he had his misgivings in relation to the virtue of the fiat method of transforming chattels into citizens. "Chattels personal may be instantly translated from the auction-block into freemen," he remarked in defence of the administrative policy in the reconstruction of Louisiana, "but when were they ever taken at the same time to the ballot-box, and invested with all political rights and immunities? According to the laws of development and progress it is not practicable.... Besides, I doubt whether he has the Const.i.tutional right to decide this matter. Ever since the Government was organized, the right of suffrage has been determined by each State in the Union for itself, so that there is no uniformity in regard to it.
" ... In honestly seeking to preserve the Union, it is not for President Lincoln to seek, by a special edict applied to a particular State or locality, to do violence to a universal rule, accepted and acted upon from the beginning till now by the States in their individual sovereignty.... Nor, if the freed blacks were admitted to the polls by Presidential fiat do I see any permanent advantage likely to be secured by it; for, submitted to as a necessity at the outset, as soon as the State was organized and left to manage its own affairs, the white population with their superior intelligence, wealth, and power, would unquestionably alter the franchise in accordance with their prejudices, and exclude those thus summarily brought to the polls. Coercion would gain nothing." A very remarkable prophecy, which has since been exactly fulfilled in the Southern States. Garrison, however, in the subsequent struggle between Congress and Mr. Lincoln"s successor over this selfsame point in its wider relation to all of the Southern States, took sides against Andrew Johnson and in favor of the Congressional fiat method of transforming chattels personal into citizens. The elimination of Abraham Lincoln from, and the introduction of Andrew Johnson upon the National stage at this juncture, did undoubtedly effect such a change of circ.u.mstances, as to make the Congressional fiat method a political necessity. It was distinctly the less of two evils which at the moment was thrust upon the choice of the Northern people.
The same breadth and liberality of view, which marked his treatment of Mr. Lincoln upon the subject of emanc.i.p.ation and of that of reconstruction, marked his treatment also of other questions which the suppression of the rebellion presented to his consideration. Although a radical peace man, how just was his att.i.tude toward the men and the measures of the War for the Union. Nothing that he did evinced on his part greater tact or toleration than his admirable behavior in this respect. To his eldest son, George Thompson, who was no adherent of the doctrine of non-resistance, and who was commissioned by Governor Andrew, a second lieutenant in the Fifty-fifth Ma.s.sachusetts Regiment, the pioneer wrote expressing his regret that the young lieutenant had not been able "to adopt those principles of peace which are so sacred and divine to my soul, yet you will bear me witness that I have not laid a straw in your way to prevent your acting up to your own highest convictions of duty." Such was precisely his att.i.tude toward the North who, he believed, in waging war against the South for the maintenance of the Union, was acting up to her own highest convictions of duty. And not a straw would he place across her path, under those circ.u.mstances, though every step bore witness to one of the most gigantic and destructive wars in history.
Garrison did not have to wait for posthumous appreciation from his countrymen. His steady and discriminating support of the Government, and his ardent sympathy with the arms of the North won him appreciation in his lifetime. Indeed, there came to him, if not popularity, something closely akin to it during the war. His visit to the capital in June, 1864, well ill.u.s.trates the marvelous changes which had taken place in the Union touching himself and his cause. On his way to Washington the pioneer stopped over at Baltimore, which he had not revisited for thirty-four years, and where the Republican Convention, which renominated Lincoln was in session. He watched the proceedings from the gallery, and witnessed with indescribable emotions the enthusiastic demonstrations of joy with which the whole body of delegates greeted the radical anti-slavery resolution of the Convention. To the reformer it was "a full indors.e.m.e.nt of all the Abolition fanaticism and incendiarism" with which he had been branded for years. The jail where he had been held a prisoner for seven weeks, like the evil which he had denounced, was gone, and a new one stood in its place, which knew not Garrison. In the court-house where he was tried and sentenced he was received by a United States judge as an ill.u.s.trious visitor. Judge Bond hunted up the old indictment against the junior editor of the Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation, where it had lain for a generation, during which that guiltless prisoner had started a movement which had shaken the nation by its mighty power, and slavery out of it. "Eight or nine of the original jurymen who gave the verdict against Mr. Garrison are still living," wrote Theodore Tilton, at the time, to the Independent, "and Judge Bond jocosely threatened to summon them all into Court, that Mr. Garrison might forgive them in public."
At Washington the pioneer"s reception seemed to him like a dream. And no wonder. He was heartily received by President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. He was accorded the most marked attentions on the floor of both branches of Congress. On every side there rose up witnesses to the vastness of the revolution which had taken place, and to the fact that the great Abolitionist was no longer esteemed an enemy of the Republic but one of its ill.u.s.trious citizens. This was evinced in a signal and memorable manner a little later when the National Government extended to him an invitation to visit Fort Sumter as its guest on the occasion of the re-raising over it of the Stars and Stripes. He went, and so also went George Thompson, his lifelong friend and coadjutor, who was the recipient of a similar invitation from the Secretary of War.
This visit of Mr. Garrison, taken in all its dramatic features, is more like a chapter of fiction, with its strange and improbable incidents and situations, than a story of real life. The pioneer entered Georgia and trod the streets of Savannah, whose legislature thirty-three years before had set a price upon his head. In Charleston he witnessed the vast ruin which the war had wrought, realized how tremendous had been the death-struggle between Freedom and Slavery, and saw everywhere he turned that slavery was beaten, was dead in its proud, rebellious center. Thousands upon thousands of the people whose wrongs he had made his own, whose woes he had carried in his soul for thirty-five years, greeted him, their deliverer, in all stages of joy and thanksgiving. They poured out at his feet their overflowing love and grat.i.tude. They covered him with flowers, bunches of jessamines, and honeysuckles and roses in the streets of Charleston, hard by the grave where Calhoun lay buried. ""Only listen to that in Charleston streets!" exclaimed Garrison, on hearing the band of one of the black regiments playing the air of "Old John Brown", and we both broke into tears," relates Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, who stood by the side of the pioneer that April morning under the spire of St. Michael"s church.
"The Government has its hold upon the throat of the monster, slavery," Mr. Garrison a.s.sured an audience of nearly four thousand freedmen, "and is strangling the life out of it." It was even so. Richmond had fallen, and Lee had surrendered. The early and total collapse of the rebellion was impending. The Government was, indeed, strangling the life out of it and out of slavery, its cause and mainspring. The monster had, however, a crowning horror to add to a long list of horrors before fetching its last gasp. The a.s.sa.s.sination of President Lincoln was the dying blow of slavery, aimed through him at the Union which he had maintained. Appalling as was the deed, it was vain, for the Union was saved, and liberty forever secured to the new-born nation. As Garrison remarked at the tomb of Calhoun, on the morning that Lincoln died, "Down into a deeper grave than this slavery has gone, and for it there is no resurrection."
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST.
"Garrison," said George Thompson on the steamer which was conveying the Government party out of Charleston Harbor on their return trip; "Garrison you began your warfare at the North in the face of rotten eggs and brickbats. Behold you end it at Charleston on a bed of roses!" The period of persecution had indeed ended, the reign of missiles had ceased, but with the roses there came to the pioneer not a few thorns. Bitter was the sorrow which visited him in the winter of 1863. Without warning his wife was on the night of December 29th, stricken with paralysis, which crippled her for the rest of her life. No words can adequately express all that she had been to the reformer in his struggle with slavery. She was a providential woman raised up to be the wife and helpmate of her husband, the strenuous man of G.o.d. "As a wife for a period of more than twenty-six years," he wrote her on the completion of her fiftieth year, "you have left nothing undone to smooth the rugged pathway of my public career-to render home the all-powerful magnet of attraction, and the focal point of domestic enjoyment-to make my welfare and happiness at all times a matter of tender solicitude-and to demonstrate the depth and fixedness of that love which you so long ago plighted to me.... Whatever of human infirmity we may have seen in each other, I believe few have enjoyed more unalloyed bliss in wedded life than ourselves." For twelve years after that sad December night the lovely invalid was the object of her husband"s most tender and a.s.siduous care. And when at last she left him in January, 1876, the loneliness which fell upon his heart seemed more than he could bear.
Differences with old a.s.sociates was a grievous thorn which came to the pioneer during the progress of the war. The first marked disagreement between him and them occurred at the annual meeting of the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society not a month after his wife"s prostration. The clash came between the leader and his great coadjutor Wendell Phillips over a resolution introduced by the latter, condemning the Government and declaring its readiness "to sacrifice the interest and honor of the North to secure a sham peace." Garrison objected to the severity of this charge. He believed that there was but one party at the North of which it was true, and that was the party of Copperheads. He endeavored, therefore, to modify the harshness of the resolution by giving it a more moderate tone. But the anti-Lincoln feeling of the Convention proved too strong for his resistance, and Mr. Phillips"s resolution was finally adopted as the sentiment of the society.
The discordant note thus struck grew sharper and louder during the year. The divergence of views in the ranks of the Abolitionists touching the Southern policy of the Administration grew wider, until the subject of Mr. Lincoln"s renomination sundered the little band into two wings-one for renomination, headed by Garrison, the other against renomination, and led by Phillips. These differences presently developed into, if not positive antagonism, then something closely akin to it between the two wings and the two leaders. No little heat was generated from the strong, sharp things said on both sides. Garrison was wiser than Phillips in his unwillingness to have the country, in the homely speech of the President, "swap horses while crossing a stream."
Serious differences of opinion sprang up also between the two leaders and the two wings in relation to the proper time for dissolving the anti-slavery organizations. Garrison held on one side that this time had come with the adoption of the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery, while Phillips held on the other that the societies should continue their operations until the negro was invested with the right to vote. And here it seems that Phillips was wiser than Garrison in his purpose not to abandon in 1865 the old machinery for influencing public sentiment in the negro"s interest.
At the anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in May, 1865, Garrison contended for its dissolution, declaring that "Nothing is more clear in my own mind, nothing has ever been more clear, than that this is the fitting time to dissolve our organization, and to mingle with the millions of our fellow-countrymen in one common effort to establish justice and liberty throughout the land." For two days the debate upon this question raged in the convention, but when the vote was taken it was found that a large majority of the delegates agreed with Mr. Phillips. Mr. Garrison was, nevertheless, reelected President, but declined and withdrew from the society. The controversy was renewed at the annual meeting of the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in January, 1866. But here again a large majority voted against dissolution. Warm words fell from both Garrison and Phillips and their respective supporters, which tried sorely the friendship of the two leaders.
In accordance with his views touching the discontinuance of the anti-slavery societies, Garrison discontinued the publication of the Liberator after the completion of its thirty-fifth volume in December, 1865. He did not mean by this act to cease his labors for the negro. Far from it. For he, like Phillips, stood for his absolute equality before the law. But he perceived that old things had pa.s.sed away, and with them the need of the old instruments, and that what remained to be done for the black man required to be done with new means. "The object," said he in his valedictory, "for which the Liberator was commenced, the extermination of chattel slavery, having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emanc.i.p.ation to other instrumentalites (of which I hope to avail myself), under new auspices, with more abundant means, and with millions instead of hundreds for allies."