William Lloyd Garrison

Chapter 7

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"Stop, sir! You may not pursue this course of remark. It is insulting to this committee and the legislature which they represent."

The Abolitionists, after this insult, determined to withdraw from the hearing, and appeal to the legislature to be heard, not as a favor but of right. A new hearing was, therefore, ordered, and the reformers appeared a second time before the committee. But the scenes of the first were repeated at the second hearing. The chairman was intolerably insolent to the speakers. His violent behavior to William Goodell, who was paying his respects to the Southern doc.u.ments lying on the table of the committee, terminated the second hearing. These doc.u.ments Mr. Goodell described as fetters for Northern freemen, and boldly interrogated the chairman in respect of them thus:

"Mr. Chairman, are you prepared to attempt putting them on?" But the chairman was in no mood to listen to the question. His insolence reached a climax as he exclaimed pa.s.sionately to Mr. Goodell, "Stop, sir! Sit down, sir! The committee will hear no more of this." But the temper of the Abolitionists had risen also, as had also risen the temper of the great audience of citizens who were present at the hearing which was had in the hall of the House of Representatives. "Freemen we came," retorted Goodell, "and as freemen we shall go away." Scarcely had these words died upon the ears when there rose sharply from the auditory, the stern protest "Let us go quickly, lest we be made slaves."

The attempt to suppress the Abolitionists was a failure. It but stimulated the agitation and deepened the popular interest in the subject. Strong allies within and without the legislature were enlisted on the side of freedom. The turning of the tide of public sentiment in the grand old State had come. Slowly did it rise for awhile, but from that event it never ceased to flow in and with increasing volume. The condemnatory report of the insolent chairman proved as innocuous as the baying of dogs at the moon. The legislature refused to indorse it and the pro-slavery resolutions attached to it. They were both ignominiously laid upon the table, and what is more to the purpose as a straw to show the drift of popular opinion on the slavery question in Ma.s.sachusetts, their author failed of a renomination as Senator at the hands of his dissatisfied const.i.tuents.

The conflict was raging not alone in Ma.s.sachusetts but all through the free States. In Congress the battle was a.s.suming an intensely bitter character. Here the South was the agitator. Here she kept the political waters in a state of violent ebullition. As the discord grew, sectionalism threw darkening and portentous shadows over the face of the Union. The South was insisting in all stages of pa.s.sion that the tide of Abolition be checked in the North, that the flood of incendiary publications be suppressed at their sources in the free States. The Southern slave-holding President had suggested the suppression of these by Congress. He would "prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mail, of incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." But when Webster and a few Northern leaders objected to such a proceeding as unconst.i.tutional and in derogation of the freedom of the press, the South treated the objection as inimical to Southern interest and security. Thereupon the Southern excitement increased all the faster. The slave-power was not disposed to accept anything short of complete submission on the part of the North. And this the North could not well yield. While the slave-holding States were clamoring for the suppression of Abolitionism in the free States, Abolitionism was giving evidences of extraordinary expansion, and activity. It had risen well above the zero point in politics. It was gaining numbers and it was gaining votes. A new element had appeared at the polls and both of the old parties began to exhibit a certain degree of impressibility to the latest attraction. The slave-power with quick instinct recognized in the new comer a dangerous rival, and schemed for its destruction. Southern jealousy took on the character of insanity. Neither Northern Whigs nor Northern Democrats were permitted to show any regard for the rival. They were to snub and utterly abolish her, otherwise they should be snubbed and utterly abolished by the slave-power. They could not with impunity give to Abolitionism the scantiest attention or courtesy. Not even a gallant like John Quincy Adams, who was able to see nothing attractive in the little band of reformers. They seemed to him, in fact, "a small, shallow, and enthusiastic party preaching the abolition of slavery upon the principles of extreme democracy." If Mr. Adams had little love for the South, he had none whatever for the Abolitionists. By no stretch of the imagination could he have been suspected of any sentimental attachment to the Abolition movement. For his unvarying att.i.tude towards it was one of grim contempt. But if the old Roman had no love for the Abolitionists, he did have a deep-seated attachment and reverence for certain ancient rights appertaining to free inst.i.tutions, which nothing was able to shake. Among these was the great right of pet.i.tion, viewed by the ex-President as a right of human nature. For a dozen years he stood in Congress its sleepless sentinel. And herein did he perform for freedom most valiant service. It made no difference to the dauntless old man whether he approved of the prayer of a pet.i.tion or not, if it was sent to him he presented it to the House all the same. He presented pet.i.tions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and one, at least, against it, pet.i.tions from black and white, bond and free, with superb fidelity to the precious right which he championed.

This characteristic of the aged statesman kept the Southern members in a state of chronic apprehension and excitement. They bullied him, they raged like so many wild animals against him, they attempted to crush him with votes of censure and expulsion all to no purpose. Then they applied the gag: "That all pet.i.tions, memorials, and papers touching the abolition of slavery, or the buying, selling, or transferring slaves, in any State, or district, or territory of the United States, be laid on the table without being debated, printed, read, or referred, and that no action be taken thereon." Mr. Adam"s denunciation of this action as a violation of the Const.i.tution, of the right of the people to pet.i.tion, and of the right to freedom of speech in Congress, found wide echo through the North. The violence, intolerence, and tyranny of the South were disgusting many of the most intelligent and influential minds in the non-slave-holding States, and driving them into more or less close affiliation with the anti-slavery movement.

And so it was wherever one turned there were conflict and uproar. Everywhere contrary ideas, interests, inst.i.tutions, tendencies, were colliding with inextinguishable rage. All the opposites and irreconcilables in a people"s life had risen and clashed together in a death struggle for mastery. Freedom and slavery, civilization and barbarism had found an Armageddon in the moral consciousness of the Republic. Now the combatants rallied and the battle thickened at one point, now around another. At Washington the tide rolls in with resounding fury about the right of pet.i.tion and the freedom of debate, then through the free States it surges and beats around the right of free speech and the freedom of the press. Storm clouds are flying from the East and from the West, flying out of the North and out of the South. Everywhere the chaos of the winds has burst, and the anarchy of the "live thunder."

Benton with his customary optimism from a Southern standpoint, rejoiced in the year 1836 that the people of the Northern States had "chased off the foreign emissaries, silenced the gabbling tongues of female dupes, and dispersed the a.s.semblies, whether fanatical, visionary, or incendiary, of all that congregated to preach against evils that afflicted others, not them, and to propose remedies to aggravate the disease which they pretended to cure." Calhoun"s pessimism was clearer eyed. The great nullifier perceived at once the insuppressible nature of the Abolition movement and early predicted that the spirit then abroad in the North would not "die away of itself without a shock or convulsion." Yes, it was as he had prophesied, the anti-slavery reform was, at the very moment of Benton"s groundless jubilation, rising and spreading with astonishing progress through the free States. It was gaining footholds in the pulpit, the school, and the press. It was a stalwart sower, scattering broadcast as he walked over the fields of the then coming generation truths and antipathies of social principles, which were to make peace impossible between the slave-holding and the non-slave-holding halves of the Union.

In the year 1836 the anti-slavery leaven or residuum for instance, was sufficiently potent to preserve the statutes of the free States, free from repressive laws directed against the Abolitionists. This was much but there was undoubtedly another phase of the agitation, a phase which struck the shallow eye of Benton, and led him into false conclusions. It was not clear sailing for the reform. It was truly a period of stress and storm. Sometimes the reform was in a trough of the sea of public opinion, sometimes on the crest of a billow, and then again on the bosom of a giant ground swell. In Boston in this selfsame year which witnessed Benton"s exultation over the fall of Abolitionism, the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was not able to obtain the use of hall or church for its annual meeting, and was in consequence forced into insufficient accommodations at its rooms on Washington street. The succeeding year the society was obliged, from inability to obtain the use of either hall or church in the city, to occupy for its annual meeting the loft over the stable connected with the Marlborough Hotel. It is a long way from this rude meeting-house to the hall of the House of Representatives, but in this storm and stress period the distance was traversed in a few brief hours. The society applied in its exigency for the use of the hall for an evening meeting, and the application was granted by the members. It was a jeu d"esprit of Henry B. Stanton, "That when Boston votes we go into a stable, but when the State votes we go into the State House." It was even so, for the incident served to reveal what was true everywhere through the free States that the anti-slavery reform was making fastest progress among people away from the great centres of population. It found ready access to the simple American folk in villages, in the smaller towns, and in the rural districts of New England and the North. And already from these independent and uncorrupted sons and daughters of freedom had started the deep ground swell which was to lift the level of Northern public opinion on the question of slavery.

This Walpurgis period of the movement culminated on November 7, 1837, in a terrible tragedy. The place was a little Illinois town, Alton, just over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, and the victim was Elijah P. Lovejoy. He was a minister of the Presbyterian Church, and the editor of a weekly religious newspaper, first published in St. Louis and removed by him later to Alton. His sin was that he did not hold his peace on the subject of slavery in the columns of his paper. He was warned "to pa.s.s over in silence everything connected" with that question. But he had no choice, he had to cry aloud against iniquities, which, as a Christian minister and a Christian editor, he dared not ignore. His troubles with the people of St. Louis took in the spring of 1836 a sanguinary turn, when he denounced the lynching of a negro by a St. Louis mob, perpetrated under circ.u.mstances of peculiar atrocity. In consequence of his outspoken condemnation of the horror, his office was broken into and destroyed by a mob. Lovejoy thereupon removed his paper to Alton, but the wild-cat-like spirit pursued him across the river and destroyed his press. He replaced his broken press with a new one, only to have his property a second time destroyed. He replaced the second with a third press, but a third time the mob destroyed his property. Then he bought a fourth press, and resolved to defend it with his life. Pierced by bullets he fell, resisting the attack of a mob bent on the destruction of his rights. Lovejoy died a martyr to free speech and the freedom of the press.

The tidings of this tragedy stirred the free States to unwonted depths. The murder of an able and singularly n.o.ble man by a mob was indeed horrible enough, but the blow which took his life was aimed at the right of free speech and the freedom of the press. He was struck down in the exercise of his liberties as a citizen of the town where he met death, and of the State and country to which he belonged. What brave man and good in the North who might not meet a similar fate for daring to denounce evils approved by the community in which his lot was cast? Who was safe? Whose turn would it be next to pay with his life for attempts to vindicate the birthright of his citizenship? What had Lovejoy done, what had he written, that thousands of people who did not agree with Garrison would not have done and have written under like circ.u.mstances? He was not a disciple of Garrison, he did not accept the doctrine of immediate emanc.i.p.ation, and yet a pro-slavery mob had murdered him. Yes, who was safe? Who was to be the next? A great horror transfixed the North, and bitter uncertainty, and tremendous dread of approaching perils to its liberties.

Ah! had not Garrison spoken much plain truth at the public hearing of the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society before the insolent chairman and his committee when he said: "The liberties of the people of the free States are identified with those of the slave population. If it were not so, there would be no hope, in my breast, of peaceful deliverance of the latter cla.s.s from their bondage. Our liberties are bound together by a ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese twins. The blow which cuts them asunder, will inevitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of speech and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and the nation itself will be in bondage; let it remain untrammeled, and Southern slavery must speedily come to an end." The tragedy at Alton afforded startling ill.u.s.tration of the soundness of this remark. Cla.s.ses like individuals gain wisdom only by experience; and the murder of Lovejoy was one of those terrific experiences which furrow themselves in the soul of a people in frightful memories and apprehensions which do not disappear but remain after long lapse of years.

Twelve days after the murder-it was before the development of the telegraph and rapid postal facilities-the news reached Boston. It produced the most profound sensation. Many of the leading citizens felt straightway that if the rights a.s.sailed in the person of Lovejoy were to be preserved to themselves and their section, immediate action was required. A great meeting was proposed, and Faneuil Hall applied for. The application was denied by the munic.i.p.al authorities on the plea that its use for such a purpose might provoke a mob. The city was, however, dealing now not with the despised Abolitionists, but with men of property and standing in the community and was soon brought to its senses by the indignant eloquence of Dr. Channing, appealing to the better self of Boston in this strain: "Has it come to this? Has Boston fallen so low? May not its citizens be trusted to come together to express the great principles of liberty for which their forefathers died? Are our fellow-citizens to be murdered in the act of defending their property and of a.s.suming the right of free discussion? And is it unsafe in this metropolis to express abhorrence of the deed?"

A second application for the hall was granted, and a meeting, which is an historical event in the annals of the old town, was held December 8, 1837-a meeting memorable as an uprising, not of the Abolitionists, but of the conservatism and respectability of the city in behalf of the outraged liberties of white men. Ever memorable, too, for that marvelous speech of Wendell Phillips, which placed him instantly in the front rank of minds with a genius for eloquence, lifted him at once as an anti-slavery instrument and leader close beside William Lloyd Garrison. The wild-cat-like spirit which had hunted Thompson out of the country and Lovejoy to death, had more than made good the immense deficit of services thus created through the introduction upon the national stage of the reform of this consummate and incomparable orator.

The a.s.sa.s.sination of Lovejoy was an imposing object lesson to the North, but it was not the last. Other and terrible ill.u.s.trations of the triumph of mobs followed it, notably the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia on the evening of May 17, 1838. As the murder of Lovejoy formed the culmination of outrages directed against the rights of person, the burning of Pennsylvania Hall furnished the climax of outrages committed against the rights of property. The friends of the slave and of free discussion in Philadelphia feeling the need of a place where they might a.s.semble for the exercise of the right of free speech in a city which denied to them the use of its halls and meeting-houses, determined to erect for themselves such a place. At a cost of forty thousand dollars they built Pennsylvania Hall and devoted it to "Free Discussion, Virtue, Liberty, and Independence."

Two days after the dedicatory exercises were had the hall was occupied by the annual convention of American Anti-Slavery Women. On the evening of May 16th, Garrison, Maria Weston Chapman, Angelina Grimke Weld and others addressed the convention in the new temple of freedom. The scenes of that evening have been graphically described by the first speaker as follows: "The floor of the hall was densely crowded with women, some of the n.o.blest specimens of our race, a large proportion of whom were Quakers. The side aisles and s.p.a.cious galleries were as thickly filled with men. Nearly three thousand people were in the hall. There seemed to be no visible symptoms of a riot. When I rose to speak I was greeted with applause by the immense a.s.sembly, and also several times in the course of my remarks. As soon, however, as I had concluded my address, a furious mob broke into the hall, yelling and shouting as if the very fiends of the pit had suddenly broken loose. The audience rose in some confusion, and would undoubtedly have been broken up, had it not been for the admirable self-possession of some individuals, particularly the women. The mobocrats finding that they could not succeed in their purpose, retreated into the streets, and, surrounding the building, began to dash in the windows with stones and brick-bats. It was under these appalling circ.u.mstances that Mrs. Chapman rose for the first time in her life, to address a promiscuous a.s.sembly of men and women-and she acquitted herself n.o.bly. She spoke about ten minutes, and was succeeded by A.E.G. Weld, who occupied nearly an hour. As the tumult from without increased, and the brick-bats fell thick and fast (no one, however, being injured) her eloquence kindled, her eye flashed, and her cheeks glowed, as she devoutly thanked the Lord that the stupid repose of that city had at length been disturbed by the force of truth. When she sat down, Esther Moore (a Friend) made a few remarks, then Lucretia Mott, and finally Abby Kelley, a n.o.ble young woman from Lynn.

"The meeting broke up about 10 o"clock, and we all got safely home. The next day the street was thronged with profane ruffians and curious spectators-the women, however, holding their meetings in the hall all day, till towards evening. It was given out by the mob that the hall would be burnt to the ground that night. We were to have a meeting in the evening, but it was impossible to execute our purpose. The mayor induced the manager to give the keys of the building into his hands. He then locked the doors, and made a brief speech to the mob, a.s.suring them that he had the keys, and that there would be no meeting, and requesting them to retire. He then went home, but the mob were bent on the destruction of the hall. They had now increased to several thousands, and soon got into the hall by dashing open the doors with their axes. They then set fire to this huge building, and in the course of an hour it was a solid ma.s.s of flame. The bells of the city were rung, and several engines rallied; but no water was permitted to be thrown upon the building. The light of the fire must have been seen a great distance."

At midnight Garrison was spirited out of the city, and conveyed in a covered carriage by a friend to Bristol, about twenty miles, where in the morning he took the steamboat for Boston. The light of that fire was visible a great distance in more senses than one. The burning of Pennsylvania Hall proved a public enlightener. After that occurrence the gentlemen of property scattered through the free States devoted themselves less to the violent suppression of Abolitionism and more to the forcible suppression, upon occasion, of the alarming manifestations of popular lawlessness, which found significant demonstration just a week later in the city of Boston.

Mr. Garrison has preserved for us an instructive account of this affair, too, and here is the story as told by him to his brother-in-law, George W. Benson, in a letter dated May 25th: "The spirit of mobocracy, like the pestilence, is contagious; and Boston is once more ready to reenact the riotous scenes of 1835. The Marlboro" Chapel, having just been completed, and standing in relation to our cause just as did Pennsylvania Hall, is an object of pro-slavery malevolence. Ever since my return, threats have been given out that the chapel should share the fate of the hall. Last evening was the time for its dedication; and, so threatening was the aspect of things, four companies of light infantry were ordered to be in readiness, each being provided with 100 ball cartridges, to rush to the scene of riot on the tolling of the bells. The Lancers, a powerful body of hors.e.m.e.n, were also in readiness. During the day placards were posted at the corners of the streets, denouncing the Abolitionists, and calling upon the citizens to rally at the chapel in the evening, in order to put them down. An immense concourse of people a.s.sembled, a large proportion doubtless from motives of curiosity, and not a few of them with evil designs; but owing to the strong military preparations, the mult.i.tude refrained entirely from any overt acts of violence. They did not disperse till after 10 o"clock, and during the evening shouted and yelled like a troop of wild savages. Some ten or twelve were seized and carried to the watch-house, and this morning fined for their disorderly conduct."

The frightful excesses of the Walpurgis period of the agitation reacted through the free States to an extraordinary extent in favor of Abolition. The greater the horror committed by the wild-cat-like spirit, the greater the help which the reform derived therefrom. The destruction of property, and the destruction of life instead of putting down the hated Abolitionists aroused in the public mind apprehensions and antagonisms in respect of mobs, which proved, immediately and ultimately, of immense advantage to freedom. This revulsion on the part of the North from lawless attempts to abolish Abolitionism, affected almost unavoidably, and in the beginning of it almost unconsciously, the friendly dispositions of that section toward slavery, the root and mainspring of these attempts. Blows aimed at the agent were sure, regardless of the actor"s intention, to glance and strike the princ.i.p.al. In spite of mobs then, and to a remarkable degree because of mobs, Abolitionism had become a powerful motor in revolutionizing public opinion in the free States on the subject of slavery.

CHAPTER XIV.

BROTHERLY LOVE FAILS, AND IDEAS ABOUND.

During those strenuous, unresting years, included between 1829 and 1836, Garrison had leaned on his health as upon a strong staff. It sustained him without a break through that period, great as was the strain to which it was subjected. But early in the latter year the prop gave way, and the pioneer was prostrated by a severe fit of sickness. It lasted off and on for quite two years. His activity the first year was seriously crippled, though at no time, owing to his indomitable will, could he be said to have been rendered completely hors de combat. Almost the whole of 1836 he spent with his wife"s family in Brooklyn, where his first child was born. This new mouth brought with it fresh cares of a domestic character. He experienced losses also. Death removed his aged father-in-law in the last month of 1836, and four weeks later Henry E. Benson, his brother-in-law. Their taking off was a sad blow to the reformer and to the reform. That of the younger man cast a gloom over anti-slavery circles in New England; for at the time of his death he was the secretary and general agent of the Ma.s.sachusetts Society, and although not twenty-three, had displayed uncommon capacity for affairs. The business ability which he brought into his office was of the greatest value where there was such a distinct deficiency in that respect among his coadjutors, and the loss of it seemed irreparable.

Afflicted as he was, the leader was nevertheless cheered by the extraordinary progress of the movement started by him. The growth and activity of Abolitionism were indeed altogether phenomenal. In February, 1837, Ellis Gray Loring estimated that there were then eight hundred anti-slavery societies in the United States, that an anti-slavery society had been formed in the North every day for the last two years, and that in the single State of Ohio there were three hundred societies, one of which had a membership of four thousand names. The moral agitation was at its height. The National Society had hit upon a capital device for increasing the effectiveness of its agents and lecturers. This was to bring them together in New York for a few weeks" study of the slavery question under the direction of such masters as Theodore D. Weld, Beriah Green, Charles Stuart, and others. All possible phases of the great subject, such as, What is slavery? What is immediate emanc.i.p.ation? The consequences of emanc.i.p.ation to the South, etc., etc., pro-slavery objections and arguments were stated and answered. The agents and lecturers went forth from the convention bristling with facts, and glowing with enthusiasm to renew the crusade against slavery. Garrison, broken in health as he was, went on from Boston to attend this school of his disciples. He spoke briefly but repeatedly to them upon the all-absorbing topic which had brought them together. "It was a happy circ.u.mstance, too," he wrote, "that I was present with them, and that they had an opportunity to become personally acquainted with me; for, as I am a great stumbling-block in the way of the people, or, rather, of some people, it would be somewhat disastrous to our cause if any of our agents, through the influence of popular sentiment, should be led to cherish prejudices against me."

In February, 1837, the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society came to the rescue of the Liberator from its financial embarra.s.sments and hand-to-mouth existence by a.s.suming the responsibility of its publication. The arrangement did not in any respect compromise Mr. Garrison"s editorial independence, but lifted from him and his friend Knapp in his own language, "a heavy burden, which has long crushed us to the earth." The arrangement, nevertheless, continued but a year when it was voluntarily set aside by Mr. Garrison for causes of which we must now give an account.

In the letter from which we have quoted above, touching his visit to the Convention of Anti-Slavery Agents, Garrison alludes to one of these causes. He says: "I was most kindly received by all, and treated as a brother, notwithstanding the wide difference of opinion between us on some religious points, especially the Sabbath question." The italics are our own. Until within a few years he had been one of the strictest of Sabbath observers. Although never formally connected with any church, he had been a narrow and even an intolerant believer in the creed and observances of New England orthodoxy. Words failed him in 1828 to express his abhorrence of a meeting of professed infidels: "It is impossible," he exclaimed with the ardor of a bigot, "to estimate the depravity and wickedness of those who, at the present day, reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ," etc. A year and a half later while editing the Genius in Baltimore, he held uncompromisingly to the stern Sabbatical notions of the Puritans. A fete given to Lafayette in France on Sunday seemed to him an act of sheer religious desecration. The carrying of pa.s.sengers and the mails on the Sabbath provoked his energetic reprobation. He was in all points of New England Puritanism, orthodox of the orthodox.

Subsequently he began to see things in a different light. As the area of his experience extended it came to him that living was more than believing, that it was not every one who professed faith in Jesus had love for him in the heart; and that there were many whom his own illiberalism had rated as depraved and wicked on mere points of doctrine, who, nevertheless, shamed by the blamelessness and n.o.bility of their conduct mult.i.tudes of ardent Christians of the lip-service sort. Indeed this contradiction between creed and conduct struck him with considerable force in the midst of his harsh judgments against unbelief and unbelievers. "There are, in fact," he had remarked a year or two after he had attained his majority, "few reasoning Christians; the majority of them are swayed more by the usages of the world than by any definite perception of what const.i.tutes duty-so far, we mean, as relates to the subjugation of vices which are incorporated, as it were, into the existence of society; else why is it that intemperance, and slavery, and war, have not ere this in a measure been driven from our land?"

As the months of his earnest young life pa.s.sed him by, they showed him as they went how horrible a thing was faith without works. "By their fruits ye shall know them," the Master had said, and more and more as he saw how many and great were the social evils to be reformed, and in what dire need stood his country of righteous action, did he come to put increasing emphasis on conduct, as the one thing needful to rid the land of the triple curse of slavery, intemperance, and war. As he mused upon these giant evils, and the desolation which they were singly and together causing in the world, and upon the universal apathy of the churches in respect of them, it seemed to him that the current religion was an offence and an abomination. And in his prophetic rage he denounced it as "a religion which quadrates with the natural depravity of the heart, giving license to sin, restraining no l.u.s.t, mortifying not the body, engendering selfishness, and cruelty!-a religion which walks in silver slippers, on a carpeted floor, having thrown off the burden of the cross and changed the garments of humiliation for the splendid vestments of pride! a religion which has no courage, no faithfulness, no self-denial, deeming it better to give heed unto men than unto G.o.d!" This was in the autumn of 1829, but though he was thus violently denunciatory of contemporary religion, the severity of his judgment against the skepticism of the times had not been materially modified. He still regarded the unbeliever with narrow distrust and dislike. When, after his discharge from Baltimore jail, he was engaged in delivering his message on the subject of slavery, and was seeking an opportunity to make what he knew known to the people of Boston, he was forced, after vainly advertising for a hall or meeting-house in which to give his three lectures, to accept the offer of Abner Kneeland"s Society of Infidels of the use of their hall for that purpose. The spirit of these people, branded by the community as blasphemers, and by himself, too, in all probability, Garrison saw to be as admirable as the spirit displayed by the churches of the city toward him and his cause was unworthy and sinful. But, grateful as he was for the hospitality of the infidels, he, nevertheless, rather bluntly informed them that he had no sympathy with their religious notions, and that he looked for the abolition of slavery to evangelicism, and to it alone.

A few years in the university of experience, where he learned that conduct is better than creeds, and living more than believing, served to emanc.i.p.ate him from illiberal prejudices and narrow sectarianism. He came to see, "that in Christ Jesus all stated observances are so many self-imposed and unnecessary yokes; and that prayer and worship are all embodied in that pure, meek, child-like state of heart which affectionately and reverently breathes but one pet.i.tion-"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Religion ... is nothing but love-perfect love toward G.o.d and toward man-without formality, without hypocrisy, without partiality-depending upon no outward form to preserve its vitality or prove its existence."

This important change in Mr. Garrison"s religious convictions became widely known in the summer of 1836 through certain editorial strictures of his upon a speech of Dr. Lyman Beecher, at Pittsburgh, on the subject of the Sabbath. The good doctor was cold enough on the question of slavery, which involved not only the desecration of the Sabbath, but of the souls and bodies of millions of human beings. If Christianity was truly of divine origin, and Garrison devoutly believed that it was, it would approve its divinity by its manner of dealing with the vices and evils which were dragging and chaining the feet of men to the gates of h.e.l.l. If it parleyed with iniquity, if it pa.s.sed its victims by on the other side, if it did not war incessantly and energetically to put down sin, to destroy wickedness, it was of the earth, earthy, and its expounders were dumb dogs where they should bark the loudest and bite the hardest; and Dr. Beecher appeared to him one of these dumb dogs, who, when he opened his mouth at all, was almost sure to open it at the men who were trying through evil report and good to express in their lives the spirit of Him who so loved the world that He gave His Son to die to redeem it. He bayed loud enough at the Abolitionists but not at the abomination which they were attacking. He was content to leave it to the tender mercies of two hundred years. No such liberal disposition of the question of the Sabbath was he willing to allow. He waxed eloquent in its behalf. His enthusiasm took to itself wings and made a great display of ecclesiastical zeal beautiful to behold. "The Sabbath," quoth the teacher who endeavored to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on the subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his prophetic soul quiescently committed to the operation of two centuries; "the Sabbath," quoth he, "is the great sun of the moral world." Out upon you, said Garrison, the LORD G.o.d is the great sun of the moral world, not the Sabbath. It is not one, but every day of the week which is His, and which men should be taught to observe as holy days. It is not regard for the forms of religion but for the spirit, which is essential to righteousness. What is the command, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," but one of ten commandments? Is the violation of the fourth any worse than the violation of the third or fifth, or sixth? Nowhere is it so taught in the Bible. Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and treading down of the whole ten, what but a vast system of adultery, robbery, and murder, the daily and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?

Mr. Garrison then pa.s.sed to criticisms of a more special character touching the observance of the day thus: "These remarks are made not to encourage men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious and superst.i.tious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that extraordinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon certain transgressors (of the Sabbath particularly and almost exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the prophets. Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its sanct.i.ty." This pious but rational handling of the Sabbath question gave instant offence to the orthodox readers of the Liberator. For it was enough in those days to convict the editor of rank heresy. From one and another of his subscribers remonstrances came pouring in upon him. A young theological student at Yale ordered his paper stopped in consequence of the anti-Sabbatarian views of the editor. A Unitarian minister at Harvard, Ma.s.s., was greatly cut up by reason thereof, and suddenly saw what before he did not suspect. "I had supposed you," he wrote in his new estate, "a very pious person, and that a large proportion of the Abolitionists were religious persons.... I have thought of you as another Wilberforce-but would Wilberforce have spoken thus of the day on which the Son of G.o.d rose from the dead?" Garrison"s query in reply-"Would Wilberforce have denied the ident.i.ty of Christ with the Father?"-was a palpable hit. But as he himself justly remarked, "Such questions are not arguments, but fallacies unworthy of a liberal mind." Nevertheless, so long as men are attached to the leading strings of sentiment rather than to those of reason, such questions will possess tremendous destructive force, as Mr. Garrison, in his own case, presently perceived. He understood the importance of not arousing against him "denominational feelings or peculiarities," and so had steered the Liberator clear of the rocks of sectarianism. But when he took up in its columns the Sabbath question he ran his paper directly among the breakers of a religious controversy. He saw how it was with him at once, saw that he had stirred up against him all that religious feeling which was crystallized around the first day of the week, and that he could not hope to escape without serious losses in one way or another. "It is pretty certain," he writes Samuel J. May in September, 1836, "that the Liberator will sustain a serious loss in its subscriptions at the close of the present volume; and all appeals for aid in its behalf will be less likely to prevail than formerly. I am conscious that a mighty sectarian conspiracy is forming to crush me, and it will probably succeed to some extent."

This controversy over the Sabbath proved the thin edge of differences and dissensions, which, as they went deeper and deeper, were finally to rend asunder the erstwhile united Abolition movement. The period was remarkable for the variety and force of new ideas, which were coming into being, or pa.s.sing into general circulation. And to all of them it seems that Garrison was peculiarly receptive. He took them all in and planted them in soil of extraordinary fertility. It was immediately observed that it was not only one unpopular notion which he had adopted, but a whole headful of them. And every one of these new ideas was a sort of rebel-reformer, a genuine man of war. They had come as a protest against the then existing beliefs and order of things, come as their enemies and destroyers. Each one of them was in a sense a stirrer-up of sedition against old and regnant relations and facts, political, moral, and religious. Whoever espoused them as his own, espoused as his own also the antagonisms, political, moral, and religious which they would excite in the public mind. All of which was directly ill.u.s.trated in the experience of the editor of the Liberator. Each of these new notions presently appeared in the paper along with Abolitionism. What was his intention timid people began to inquire? Did he design to carry them along with the Abolition movement? Suspicious minds fancied they saw "in Mr. Garrison, a decided wish, nay, a firm resolve, in laboring to overthrow slavery, to overthrow the Christian Sabbath and the Christian ministry. His doctrine is that every day is a Sabbath, and every man his own minister. There are no Christian ordinances, there is no visible church." His no-government and non-resistant ideas excited yet further the apprehensions of some of his a.s.sociates for the safety of that portion of the present order to which they clung. As developed by Garrison they seemed to deny the right of the people "to frame a government of laws to protect themselves against those who would injure them, and that man can apply physical force to man rightfully under no circ.u.mstances, and not even the parent can apply the rod to the child, and not be, in the sight of G.o.d, a trespa.s.ser and a tyrant."

Garrison embraced besides Perfectionism, a sort of political, moral, and religious Come-outerism, and faith in "universal emanc.i.p.ation from sin." His description of himself about this time as "an Ishmaelitish editor" is not bad, nor his quotation of "Woe is me my mother! for I was born a man of strife" as applicable to the growing belligerency of his relations with the anti-slavery brethren in consequence of the new ideas and isms, which were taking possession of his mind and occupying the columns of the Liberator.

Among the strife-producers during this period of the anti-slavery agitation, the woman"s question played a princ.i.p.al part. Upon this as upon the Sabbath question, Garrison"s early position was one of extreme conservatism. As late as 1830, he shared the common opinions in regard to woman"s sphere, and was strongly opposed to her stepping outside of it into that occupied by man. A pet.i.tion of seven hundred women of Pittsburgh, Pa., to Congress in behalf of the Indians gave his masculine prejudices a great shock. "This is, in our opinion," he declared, "an uncalled for interference, though made with holiest intentions. We should be sorry to have this practice become general. There would then be no question agitated in Congress without eliciting the informal and contrariant opinions of the softer s.e.x." This top-lofty sentiment accorded well with the customary a.s.sumption and swagger of one of the lords of creation. For the young reformer was evidently a firm believer in the divine right of his s.e.x to rule in the world of politics. But as he grew taller and broader the horizon of woman widened, and her sphere embraced every duty, responsibility, and right for which her gifts and education fitted her. The hard and fast lines of s.e.x disappeared from his geography of the soul. He perceived for a truth that in humanity there was neither male nor female, but that man and woman were one in work and destiny-equals in bearing the world"s burden, equals in building the world"s glory. He heard in his heart the injunction of the eternal wisdom saying: "Whom G.o.d hath joined together let no man put asunder;" and straightway disposed his opinions and prejudices, his thoughts and purposes in cordial obedience therewith. He saw at once the immense value of woman"s influence in the temperance movement, he saw no less quickly her importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she had justified his appeal and proven herself the most devoted of coadjutors.

In the beginning of the movement against slavery the line of demarcation between the s.e.xes was strictly observed in the formation of societies. The men had theirs, the women theirs. Each, s.e.xually considered, were very exclusive affairs. It did not seem to have occurred to the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, or of the national organization to admit women to membership in them, nor did it seem to enter the mind of any woman to prefer a request to be admitted into them. Anti-slavery women organized themselves into female anti-slavery societies, did their work apart from the men, who plainly regarded themselves as the princ.i.p.als in the contest, and women as their moral seconds. The first shock, which this arrangement, so accordant with the oak-and-ivy notion of the masculine half of mankind, received, came when representatives of the gentler s.e.x dropped the secondary role a.s.signed women in the conflict, and began to enact that of a star. The advent of the sisters Grimke upon the anti-slavery stage as public speakers, marked the advent of the idea of women"s rights, of their equality with men in the struggle with slavery.

At the start these ladies delivered their message to women only, but by-and-bye as the fame of their eloquence spread men began to appear among their auditories. Soon they were thrilling packed halls and meeting-houses in different parts of the country, comprised of men and women. The lesson which their triumph enforced of women"s fitness to enact the role of princ.i.p.als in the conflict with slavery was not lost upon the s.e.x. Women went, saw, and conquered their prejudices against the idea of equality; likewise, many men. The good seed of universal liberty and equality fell into fruitful soil and germinated in due time within the heart of the moral movement against slavery.

The more that Sarah and Angelina Grimke reflected upon the sorry position to which men had a.s.signed women in Church and State the more keenly did they feel its injustice and degradation. They beat with their revolutionary idea of equality against the iron bars of the cage-like sphere in which they were born, and within which they were doomed to live and die by the law of masculine might. At heart they were rebels against the foundation principle of masculine supremacy on which society and government rested. While pleading for the freedom of the slaves, the sense of their own bondage and that of their sisters rose up before them and revealed itself in bitter questionings. "Are we aliens," asked Angelina, "because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country-no interests staked on the public weal-no partnership in a nation"s guilt or shame?" This discontent with the existing social establishment in its relation to women received sympathetic responses from many friends to whom the sisters communicated the contagion of their unrest and dissatisfaction. Angelina records that, "At friend Chapman"s, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment prevailing that it is time our fetters were broken. L.M. Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported this view; indeed very many seem to think a new order of things is very desirable in this respect."

This prevalence of a sentiment favorable to women"s rights, which Angelina observed in Mrs. Chapman"s parlors possessed no general significence. For true to the character of new ideas, this particular new idea did not bring peace but a sword. It set Abolition brethren against Abolition brethren, and blew into a flame the differences of leaders among themselves. But the first irruption of strife which it caused proceeded from without, came from the church or rather from the clergy of the Orthodox Congregational churches of Ma.s.sachusetts. This clerical opposition to the idea of women"s rights found expression in the celebrated "Pastoral Letter," issued by the General a.s.sociation of Ministers of that denomination to the churches of the same in the summer of 1837. This ecclesiastical bull had two distinct purposes to accomplish; first, to discourage the agitation of the slavery question by excluding anti-slavery agents from lecturing upon that subject in the churches; and, second, to suppress the agitation of the woman"s question by setting the seal of the disapproval of the clergy to the appearance of women in their new and revolutionary role of public speakers and teachers on the burning subjects of the times. The reverend authors threw up their hands and eyes in holy horror at the "widespread and permanent injury" which seemed to them to threaten "the female character." They scorned the new-fangled notion of woman"s independence, and asked for nothing better than the Pauline definition of her "appropriate duties and influence." "The power of women," quoth they, "is in her dependence.... When she a.s.sumes the place and tone of man as a public reformer, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we put ourselves in self-defence against her, she yields the power which G.o.d has given her for protection, and her character becomes unnatural!"

These Congregational ministers were not the only representatives of the lordly s.e.x to whom the idea of women"s equality was repellent. Anti-slavery brethren, too, were flinging themselves into all postures of self-defence against the dangerous innovation, which the sisters Grimke were letting into the social establishment, by itinerating "in the character of public lecturers and teachers." Amos A. Phelps was quite as strongly opposed to women preachers, to women a.s.suming the "place and tone of man as a public reformer," as Nehemiah Adams himself. He remonstrated, with them against their continued a.s.sumption of the character of public lecturers and teachers, but to no purpose. Sarah and Angelina were uncompromising, refused to yield one iota of their rights as "moral and responsible beings." They firmly declined to make their Quakerism and not their womenhood their warrant for "exercising the rights and performing the duties" of rational and responsible beings, for the sake of quieting tender consciences, like that of Phelps, among the anti-slavery brethren. They were in earnest and demanded to know "whether there is such a thing as male and female virtues, male and female duties." Angelina writes: "My opinion is that there is no difference, and that this false idea has run the ploughshare of ruin over the whole field of morality. My idea is that whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.... I am persuaded that woman is not to be, as she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this glorious work."

The debate on the subject threatened for a short season to push the woman"s question to the level of the slavery question. The contention became acrimonious, and the alienation of friendships was widespread. John G. Whittier and Theodore D. Weld, who were both avowed believers in the idea of women"s rights, nevertheless, felt that the agitation of the subject, under the circ.u.mstances, was a grave blunder. "No moral enterprise, when prosecuted with ability and any sort of energy, ever failed under heaven," wrote Weld to Sarah and Angelina, "so long as its conductors pushed the main principle, and did not strike off until they reached the summit level. On the other hand, every reform that ever foundered in mid-sea, was capsized by one of these gusty side-winds." Both Weld and Whittier endeavored to dissuade the sisters from mooting the question of women"s rights at all, and to urge them to devote their voice and pen to the "main principle" exclusively. But Angelina confesses that "our judgment is not convinced, and we hardly know what to do about it, for we have just as high an opinion of Brother Garrison"s views, and he says "go on."" The influence of Weld and Whittier finally prevailed with "Carolina"s high-souled daughters," and they refrained from further agitation of the subject of Women"s rights lest they should thereby injure the cause of the slave.

But the leaven of equality was not so effectually disposed of. It had secured permanent lodgment in the anti-slavery body, and the fermentation started by it, went briskly on. Such progress did the principle of women"s rights make among the Eastern Abolitionists, especially among those of Ma.s.sachusetts, that in the spring of 1838 the New England Anti-Slavery Society voted to admit women to equal membership with men. This radical action was followed by a clerical secession from the society, which made a stir at the time. For among the seceding members was no less a personage than Amos A. Phelps, who was the general agent of the Ma.s.sachusetts Society, and therefore one of Garrison"s stanchest supporters. The reform inst.i.tuted by the New England Society, in respect of the character of its membership, was quickly adopted by the Ma.s.sachusetts Society and by several local organizations, all of which set the ball of discord spinning among the brethren at a great rate. But by this time all the new ideas, Sabbatical, no-government, perfectionist, non-resistance, as well as women"s rights, were within the anti-slavery arena, and fencing and fighting for a chance to live, with the old ideas and the old order.

Garrison championed all of the new ideas, and in doing so arrayed against himself all of the special champions of the existing establishments. In his reduced physical state, the reformer was not equal to the tremendous concussions of this "era of activity," as Emerson named it. At moments he appeared bewildered amid the loud, fierce clamor of contending ideas, each a.s.serting in turn its moral primacy. For an instant the vision of the great soul grew dim, the great heart seemed to have lost its bearings. All of the new ideas thawed and melted into each other, dissolved into one vague and grand solidarity of reforms. The voice of the whole was urging him amid the gathering moral confusion to declare himself for all truth, and he hearkened irresolute, with divided mind. "I feel somewhat at a loss to know what to do"-he confesses at this juncture to George W. Benson, "whether to go into all the principles of holy reform and make the Abolition cause subordinate, or whether still to persevere in the one beaten track as. .h.i.therto. Circ.u.mstances hereafter must determine this matter." That was written in August, 1837; a couple of months later circ.u.mstances had not determined the matter, it would seem, from the following extract from a letter to his brother-in-law: "It is not my intention at present to alter either the general character or course of the Liberator. My work in the anti-slavery cause is not wholly done; as soon as it is, I shall know it, and shall be prepared, I trust, to enter upon a mightier work of reform."

Meanwhile the relations between the editor of the Liberator and the managers of the national organization were becoming decidedly strained. For it seemed to them that Garrison had changed the anti-slavery character of his paper by the course which he had taken in regard to the new ideas which were finding their way into its columns to the manifest harm of the main principle of immediate emanc.i.p.ation. This incipient estrangement between the pioneer and the executive committee of the national society was greatly aggravated by an occurrence, which, at the time, was elevated to an importance that it did not deserve. This occurrence was what is known in anti-slavery annals as the "Clerical Appeal." Five clergymen, who were obviously unfriendly to Garrison, and distrustful of the religious and social heresies which they either saw or fancied that they saw in the Liberator, and withal jealous lest the severities of the paper against particular pro-slavery ministers should diminish the influence and sacred character of their order, published, in August of 1837, in the New England Spectator an acrid arraignment of editor and paper, upon five several charges, designed to bring Garrisonism to the block and speedy death. This doc.u.ment was followed by two other appeals by way of supplement and rejoinder from the same source, an "Andover Appeal" from kindred spirits and a bitter, personal letter from one of the "seventy agents," all of them having a common motive and purpose, viz., sectarian distrust and dislike of Garrison, and desire to reduce his anti-slavery influence to a nullity.

In his diseased and suffering bodily condition, Garrison naturally enough fell into the error of exaggerating the gravity of these attacks upon himself. Insignificant in an historical sense, they really were an episode, an unpleasant one to be sure for the time being, but no more. To Garrison, however, they appeared in a wholly different light. It seemed a rebellion on a pretty grand scale, which called for all his strength, all the batteries of the friends of freedom, all his terrible and unsparing severities of speech to quell it. All his artillery he posted promptly in positions commanding the camp of the mutineers, and began to pour, as only he could, broadside after broadside into the works of the wretched little camp of rebels. He could hardly have expended more energy and ammunition in attacking a strategical point of Southern slavery, than was expended in punishing a handful of deserters and insurgents. But, alas! he was not satisfied to draw upon his own resources for crushing the clerical sedition, he demanded reinforcements from the central authorities in New York as well. And then began a contention between him and the Executive Committee of the National Society, which issued only in ill.

Garrison considered it the duty of the Executive Committee to disapprove officially of the action of the Ma.s.sachusetts recalcitrants, and also the duty of its organ, the Emanc.i.p.ator, to rebuke the authors of the "appeals." Not so, replied Lewis Tappan and Elizur Wright, your request is unreasonable. If you choose to make a mountain out of a molehill, you choose to make a mistake which the Executive Committee will not repeat. Your troubles are wholly local, of no general importance whatever. "What! Shall a whole army stop its aggressive movements into the territories of its enemies to charge bayonets on five soldiers, subalterns, company, or even staff officers, because they stray into a field to pick berries, throw stones or write an "appeal?" To be frank with you we shall make bold to say that we do not approve of the appeal, it is very censurable, its spirit is bad, but neither do we approve of your action in the premises, it is also very censurable and its spirit is bad. What then? shall the Executive Committee condemn the authors of the appeal and not condemn the editor of the Liberator also? If strict military justice were done should not both parties be cashiered? Let the Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood alone for the present." "I could have wished, yes, I have wished from the bottom of my soul," it is Wright who now holds the pen, "that you could conduct that dear paper, the Liberator, in the singleness of purpose of its first years, without traveling off from the ground of our true, n.o.ble, heart-stirring Declaration of Sentiments-without breathing sentiments which are novel and shocking to the community, and which seem to me to have no logical sequence from the principles on which we are a.s.sociated as Abolitionists. I cannot but regard the taking hold of one great moral enterprise while another is in hand and but half achieved, as an outrage upon commonsense, somewhat like that of the dog crossing the river with his meat. But you have seen fit to introduce to the public some novel views-I refer especially to your sentiments on government and religious perfection-and they have produced the effect which was to have been expected. And now considering what stuff human nature is made of, is it to be wondered at that some honest-hearted, thorough-going Abolitionists should have lost their equanimity? As you well know I am comparatively no bigot to any creed, political or theological, yet to tell the plain truth, I look upon your notions of government and religious perfection as downright fanaticism-as harmless as they are absurd. I would not care a pin"s head if they were preached to all Christendom; for it is not in the human mind (except in a peculiar and, as I think, diseased state) to believe them."

Barring the extreme plainness of speech with which Wright and Tappan gave their advice to Mr. Garrison, it was in the main singularly sound and wise. But the pioneer did not so regard it. He was possessed with his idea of the importance of chastising the clerical critics, and of the duty of the Executive Committee and of the Emanc.i.p.ator to back him in the undertaking. His temper was, under all circ.u.mstances, masterful and peremptory. It was never more masterful and peremptory than in its management of this business. The very reasonable course of the Board at New York suggested to his mind a predominance of "sectarianism at headquarters," seemed to him "criminal and extraordinary." As the Executive Committee and its organ would not rebuke the schismatics, he was moved to rebuke the Executive Committee and its organ for their "blind and temporizing policy." And so matters within the movement against slavery went, with increasing momentum, from bad to worse.

The break in the anti-slavery ranks widened as new causes of controversy arose between the management in Boston and the management at New York. The Ma.s.sachusetts Abolitionists had stood stanchly by Garrison against the clerical schismatics. They also inclined to his side in his trouble with the national board. Instead of one common center of activity and leadership the anti-slavery reform began now to develop two centers of activity and leadership. Garrison and the Liberator formed the moral nucleus at one end, the Executive Committee and the Emanc.i.p.ator the moral nucleus at the other. Much of the energies of the two sides were in those circ.u.mstances, absorbed in stimulating and completing the processes which were to ultimate in the organic division of the body of the movement against slavery. When men once begin to quarrel they will not stop for lack of subjects to dispute over. There will be no lack, for before one disputed point is settled another has arisen. It is the old story of the box of evils. Beginnings must be avoided, else if one evil escapes, others will follow. The anti-slavery Pandora had let out one little imp of discord and many big and little imps were incontinently following.

Against all of the new ideas except one, viz., the idea of anti-slavery political action, the New York leadership, speaking broadly, had opposed itself. But as if by some strange perversity of fate, this particular new idea was the only one of the new ideas to which the Boston leadership did not take kindly. It became in time as the very apple of the eye to the management of the National Society. And the more ardently it was cherished by them, the more hateful did it become with the Boston Board. It was the only one of the new ideas which had any logical sequence from the Abolition cause. In a country where the principle of popular suffrage obtains, all successful moral movements must sometime ultimate in political action. There is no other way of fixing in laws the changes in public sentiment wrought during this period of agitation. The idea of political action was therefore a perfectly natural growth from the moral movement against slavery. The only reasonable objection to it would be one which went to show that it had arrived out of due course, that its appearance at any given time was marked by prematurity in respect of the reasons, so to speak, of the reform. For every movement against a great social wrong as was the anti-slavery movement must have its John-the-Baptist stage, its period of popular awakening to the nature and enormity of sin and the duty of immediate repentance.

The anti-slavery enterprise was at the time of the controversy between the New York and the Boston Boards in this first stage of its growth. It had not yet progressed naturally out of it into its next phase of political agitation. True there were tendencies more or less strong to enter the second stage of its development, but they seem irregular, personal, and forced. The time had not come for the adoption of the principle of a.s.sociated political action against slavery. But the deep underlying motive of the advocates of the third-party idea was none the less a grand one, viz., "to have a free Northern nucleus," as Elizur Wright put it, "a standard flung to the breeze-something around which to rally." Garrison probed to the quick the question in a pa.s.sage of an address to the Abolitionists, which is here given:

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