William Lloyd Garrison

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William Lloyd Garrison
The Liberator
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
Helen Eliza Benson Garrison
(m. 1834; died 1876)
Children5
Signature

William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Garrison promoted "no-governmentism" and rejected the inherent validity of the American government on the basis that its engagement in war, imperialism, and slavery made it corrupt and tyrannical. He initially opposed violence as a principle and advocated for Christian pacifism against evil; at the outbreak of the American Civil War, he abandoned his previous principles and embraced the armed struggle and the Lincoln administration. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society and promoted immediate and uncompensated, as opposed to gradual and compensated, emancipation of slaves in the United States.

Garrison was a typesetter, which aided him in running The Liberator, and when working on his own editorials for the paper, Garrison would set them in type without first writing them out on paper.[1]: 57 

Much like the martyred

Elijah Lovejoy, a price was on Garrison's head; he was burned in effigy and gallows were erected in front of his Boston office. Later on, Garrison would emerge as a leading advocate of women's rights, which prompted a split in the abolitionist community. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement
.

Early life

Portrait of Garrison by Nathaniel Jocelyn, 1833

Garrison was born on December 10, 1805, in

Baltimore, Maryland.[3]

Garrison sold homemade lemonade and candy as a youth, and also delivered wood to help support the family. In 1818, at 13, Garrison began working as an apprentice compositor for the

Boston, Massachusetts, the first American journal to promote legally-mandated temperance
.

He became involved in the anti-slavery movement in the 1820s, and over time he rejected both the

, which espoused the position that slavery should be immediately abolished.

Career

Reformer

At the age of 25, Garrison joined the anti-slavery movement, later crediting the 1826 book of

William J. Watkins had influenced his view.[6]

Genius of Universal Emancipation

Portrait of William Lloyd Garrison in The Century Magazine

In 1829, Garrison began writing for and became co-editor with

Baltimore, Maryland
. With his experience as a printer and newspaper editor, Garrison changed the layout of the paper and handled other production issues. Lundy was freed to spend more time touring as an anti-slavery speaker. Garrison initially shared Lundy's gradualist views, but while working for the Genius, he became convinced of the need to demand immediate and complete emancipation. Lundy and Garrison continued to work together on the paper despite their differing views. Each signed his editorials.

Garrison introduced "The Black List," a column devoted to printing short reports of "the barbarities of slavery – kidnappings, whippings, murders."

coastwise trade on his ship the Francis. (This was completely legal. An expanded domestic trade, "breeding" slaves in Maryland and Virginia for shipment south, replaced the importation of African slaves, prohibited in 1808; see Slavery in the United States#Slave trade
.)

Todd filed a suit for libel in Maryland against both Garrison and Lundy; he thought to gain support from pro-slavery courts. The state of Maryland also brought criminal charges[clarification needed] against Garrison, quickly finding him guilty and ordering him to pay a fine of $50 and court costs. (Charges against Lundy were dropped because he had been traveling when the story was printed.) Garrison refused to pay the fine and was sentenced to a jail term of six months.[8] He was released after seven weeks when the anti-slavery philanthropist Arthur Tappan paid his fine. Garrison decided to leave Maryland, and he and Lundy amicably parted ways.

The Liberator

In 1831, Garrison, fully aware of the press as a means to bring about political change,[9]: 750  returned to New England, where he co-founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, with his friend Isaac Knapp.[10] In the first issue, Garrison stated:

In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this moment to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September 1829. My conscience is now satisfied. I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.[11]

Paid subscriptions to The Liberator were always fewer than its circulation. In 1834 it had two thousand subscribers, three-fourths of whom were black people. Benefactors paid to have the newspaper distributed free of charge to state legislators, governor's mansions, Congress, and the White House. Although Garrison rejected violence as a means for ending slavery, his critics saw him as a dangerous fanatic because he demanded immediate and total emancipation, without compensation to the slave owners. Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Virginia just seven months after The Liberator started publication fueled the outcry against Garrison in the South. A North Carolina grand jury indicted him for distributing incendiary material, and the Georgia Legislature offered a $5,000 reward (equivalent to $146,567 in 2022) for his capture and conveyance to the state for trial.[12]

Knapp parted from The Liberator in 1840. Later in 1845, when Garrison published a eulogy for his former partner and friend, he revealed that Knapp "was led by adversity and business mismanagement, to put the cup of intoxication to his lips,"[13] forcing the co-authors to part.

Among the anti-slavery essays and poems which Garrison published in The Liberator was an article in 1856 by a 14-year-old Anna Elizabeth Dickinson. The Liberator gradually gained a large following in the Northern states. It printed or reprinted many reports, letters, and news stories, serving as a type of community bulletin board for the abolition movement. By 1861 it had subscribers across the North, as well as in England, Scotland, and Canada. After the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment, Garrison published the last issue (number 1,820) on December 29, 1865, writing a "Valedictory" column. After reviewing his long career in journalism and the cause of abolitionism, he wrote:

The object for which the Liberator was commenced – the extermination of chattel slavery – having been gloriously consummated, it seems to be especially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalities, (of which I hope to avail myself,) under new auspices, with more abundant means, and with millions instead of hundreds for allies.[14]

Garrison and Knapp, printers and publishers

Organization and reaction

In addition to publishing The Liberator, Garrison spearheaded the organization of a new movement to demand the total abolition of slavery in the United States. By January 1832, he had attracted enough followers to organize the

New-England Anti-Slavery Society which, by the following summer, had dozens of affiliates and several thousand members. In December 1833, abolitionists from ten states founded the American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS). Although the New England society reorganized in 1835 as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, enabling state societies to form in the other New England states, it remained the hub of anti-slavery agitation throughout the antebellum period. Many affiliates were organized by women who responded to Garrison's appeals for women to take an active part in the abolition movement. The largest of these was the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
, which raised funds to support The Liberator, publish anti-slavery pamphlets, and conduct anti-slavery petition drives.

The purpose of the American Anti-Slavery Society was the conversion of all Americans to the philosophy that "Slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God" and that "duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned, require its immediate abandonment without expatriation."[15]

Portrait of Garrison's wife, Helen Eliza Benson Garrison

Meanwhile, on September 4, 1834, Garrison married Helen Eliza Benson (1811–1876), the daughter of a retired abolitionist merchant. The couple had five sons and two daughters, of whom a son and a daughter died as children.

The threat posed by anti-slavery organizations and their activity drew violent reactions from slave interests in both the Southern and Northern states, with mobs breaking up anti-slavery meetings, assaulting lecturers, ransacking anti-slavery offices, burning postal sacks of anti-slavery pamphlets, and destroying anti-slavery presses. Healthy bounties were offered in Southern states for the capture of Garrison, "dead or alive".[16]

On October 21, 1835, "an assemblage of fifteen hundred or two thousand highly respectable gentlemen", as they were described in the

tar and feathers. The mayor intervened and Garrison was taken to the Leverett Street Jail for protection.[18]

Gallows were erected in front of his house, and he was

The woman question and division

Anne Whitney, William Lloyd Garrison, 1879, Massachusetts Historical Society

Garrison's appeal for women's mass petitioning against slavery sparked controversy over women's right to a political voice. In 1837, women abolitionists from seven states convened in New York to expand their petitioning efforts and repudiate the social mores that proscribed their participation in public affairs. That summer, sisters

Sarah Grimké responded to the controversy aroused by their public speaking with treatises on woman's rights – Angelina's "Letters to Catherine E. Beecher"[20] and Sarah's "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Condition of Woman"[21]
 – and Garrison published them first in The Liberator and then in book form. Instead of surrendering to appeals for him to retreat on the "woman question," Garrison announced in December 1837 that The Liberator would support "the rights of woman to their utmost extent." The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society appointed women to leadership positions and hired Abby Kelley as the first of several female field agents.

In 1840, Garrison's promotion of woman's rights within the anti-slavery movement was one of the issues that caused some abolitionists, including New York brothers

Henry B. Stanton
.

Oliver Johnson

Although Henry Stanton had cooperated in the Tappans' failed attempt to wrest leadership of the AAS from Garrison, he was part of another group of abolitionists unhappy with Garrison's influence – those who disagreed with Garrison's insistence that because the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document, abolitionists should not participate in politics and government. A growing number of abolitionists, including Stanton, Gerrit Smith, Charles Turner Torrey, and Amos A. Phelps, wanted to form an anti-slavery political party and seek a political solution to slavery. They withdrew from the AAS in 1840, formed the Liberty Party, and nominated James G. Birney for president. By the end of 1840, Garrison announced the formation of a third new organization, the Friends of Universal Reform, with sponsors and founding members including prominent reformers Maria Chapman, Abby Kelley Foster, Oliver Johnson, and Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May Alcott).[citation needed]

Although some members of the Liberty Party supported woman's rights, including women's suffrage, Garrison's Liberator continued to be the leading advocate of woman's rights throughout the 1840s, publishing editorials, speeches, legislative reports, and other developments concerning the subject. In February 1849, Garrison's name headed the women's suffrage petition sent to the Massachusetts legislature, the first such petition sent to any American legislature, and he supported the subsequent annual suffrage petition campaigns organized by Lucy Stone and Wendell Phillips. Garrison took a leading role in the May 30, 1850, meeting that called the first National Woman's Rights Convention, saying in his address to that meeting that the new movement should make securing the ballot to women its primary goal.[23] At the national convention held in Worcester the following October, Garrison was appointed to the National Woman's Rights Central Committee, which served as the movement's executive committee, charged with carrying out programs adopted by the conventions, raising funds, printing proceedings and tracts, and organizing annual conventions.[24]

Controversy

In 1849, Garrison became involved in one of Boston's most notable trials of the time. Washington Goode, a black seaman, had been sentenced to death for the murder of a fellow black mariner, Thomas Harding. In The Liberator Garrison argued that the verdict relied on "circumstantial evidence of the most flimsy character ..." and feared that the determination of the government to uphold its decision to execute Goode was based on race. As all other death sentences since 1836 in Boston had been commuted, Garrison concluded that Goode would be the last person executed in Boston for a capital offense writing, "Let it not be said that the last man Massachusetts bore to hang was a colored man!"[25] Despite the efforts of Garrison and many other prominent figures of the time, Goode was hanged on May 25, 1849.

Garrison became famous as one of the most articulate, as well as most radical, opponents of slavery. His approach to emancipation stressed "moral suasion," non-violence, and passive resistance. While some other abolitionists of the time favored gradual emancipation, Garrison argued for the "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves." On July 4, 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, condemning it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell," referring to the compromise that had written slavery into the Constitution.[26]

In 1855, his eight-year alliance with Frederick Douglass disintegrated when Douglass converted to classical liberal legal theorist and abolitionist Lysander Spooner's view (dominant among political abolitionists) that the Constitution could be interpreted as being anti-slavery.[27]

Broadside of John Brown's last speech

The events in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, followed by Brown's trial and execution, were closely followed in The Liberator. Garrison had Brown's last speech, in court, printed as a broadside, available in the Liberator office.

Photograph of Garrison
Garrison and fellow abolitionists George Thompson and Wendell Phillips, seated at table, daguerreotype, c. 1850–1851

Garrison's outspoken anti-slavery views repeatedly put him in danger. Besides his imprisonment in Baltimore and the price placed on his head by the state of

Brooklyn, New York, denounced "the bloodthirsty sentiments of Garrison and his school; and did not wonder that the feeling of the South was exasperated, taking as they did, the insane and bloody ravings of the Garrisonian traitors for the fairly expressed opinions of the North."[29]

After abolition

Photograph of William Lloyd Garrison; an annotation in pencil reads "Mr. Lloyd Garrison W"
Mr. Wm. Lloyd Garrison, [c. 1859–1870]. Carte de Visite Collection, Boston Public Library

After the United States abolished slavery, Garrison announced in May 1865 that he would resign the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and offered a resolution declaring victory in the struggle against slavery and dissolving the society. The resolution prompted a sharp debate, however, led by his long-time friend Wendell Phillips, who argued that the mission of the AAS was not fully completed until black Southerners gained full political and civil equality. Garrison maintained that while complete civil equality was vitally important, the special task of the AAS was at an end, and that the new task would best be handled by new organizations and new leadership. With his long-time allies deeply divided, however, he was unable to muster the support he needed to carry the resolution, and it was defeated 118–48. Declaring that his "vocation as an Abolitionist, thank God, has ended," Garrison resigned the presidency and declined an appeal to continue. Returning home to Boston, he withdrew completely from the AAS and ended publication of The Liberator at the end of 1865. With Wendell Phillips at its head, the AAS continued to operate for five more years, until the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted voting rights to black men. (According to Henry Mayer, Garrison was hurt by the rejection, and remained peeved for years; "as the cycle came around, always managed to tell someone that he was not going to the next set of [AAS] meetings" [594].)[citation needed]

After his withdrawal from AAS and ending The Liberator, Garrison continued to participate in public reform movements. He supported the causes of

Reconstruction and civil rights for The Independent and The Boston Journal.[citation needed
]

In 1870, he became an associate editor of the women's suffrage newspaper, the Woman's Journal, along with

Henry B. Blackwell. He served as president of both the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. He was a major figure in New England's woman suffrage campaigns during the 1870s.[30]

In 1873, he healed his long estrangements from Frederick Douglass and Wendell Phillips, affectionately reuniting with them on the platform at an AWSA rally organized by Abby Kelly Foster and Lucy Stone on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.[31] When Charles Sumner died in 1874, some Republicans suggested Garrison as a possible successor to his Senate seat; Garrison declined on grounds of his moral opposition to taking office.[32]

Antisemitism

Garrison was known to regularly traffic in

Christian antisemitism. Garrison denounced the ancient Jews as an exclusivist people "whose feet ran to evil" and believed that the Jewish diaspora was a deserved punishment, writing that Jewish people deserved their "miserable dispersion in various parts of the earth, which continues to this day."[33] When the Jewish-American sheriff and writer Mordecai Manuel Noah defended slavery, Garrison attacked Noah as "the miscreant Jew" and "the enemy of Christ and liberty." On other occasions, Garrison described Noah as a "Shylock" and as "the lineal descendant of the monsters who nailed Jesus to the cross." He made similar remarks directed at Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of the State of the Confederacy.[34][35][36]

Later life and death

William Lloyd Garrison, engraving from 1879 newspaper

Garrison spent more time at home with his family. He wrote weekly letters to his children and cared for his increasingly ill wife, Helen. She had suffered a small stroke on December 30, 1863, and was increasingly confined to the house. Helen died on January 25, 1876, after a severe cold worsened into pneumonia. A quiet funeral was held in the Garrison home. Garrison, overcome with grief and confined to his bedroom with a fever and severe bronchitis, was unable to join the service. Wendell Phillips gave a eulogy and many of Garrison's old abolitionist friends joined him upstairs to offer their private condolences.[citation needed]

Garrison recovered slowly from the loss of his wife and began to attend Spiritualist circles in the hope of communicating with Helen.[37] Garrison last visited England in 1877, where he met with George Thompson and other longtime friends from the British abolitionist movement.[38]

Suffering from kidney disease, Garrison continued to weaken during April 1879. He moved to New York to live with his daughter Fanny's family. In late May, his condition worsened, and his five surviving children rushed to join him. Fanny asked if he would enjoy singing some hymns. Although he was unable to sing, his children sang favorite hymns while he beat time with his hands and feet. On May 24, 1879, Garrison lost consciousness and died just before midnight.[39]

Grave of William Lloyd Garrison

Garrison was buried in the

United States Marshal, spoke in memory of Garrison at a memorial service in a church in Washington, D.C., saying, "It was the glory of this man that he could stand alone with the truth, and calmly await the result."[41]

Garrison's namesake son, William Lloyd Garrison Jr. (1838–1909), was a prominent advocate of the single tax, free trade, women's suffrage, and of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act. His third son, Wendell Phillips Garrison (1840–1907), was literary editor of The Nation from 1865 to 1906. Two other sons (George Thompson Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, his biographer and named after abolitionist Francis Jackson) and a daughter, Helen Frances Garrison (who married Henry Villard), survived him. Fanny's son Oswald Garrison Villard became a prominent journalist, a founding member of the NAACP, and wrote an important biography of the abolitionist John Brown.

Legacy

Memorial to Garrison on the mall of Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

Leo Tolstoy was greatly influenced by the works of Garrison and his contemporary Adin Ballou, as their writings on Christian anarchism aligned with Tolstoy's burgeoning theo-political ideology. Along with Tolstoy publishing a short biography of Garrison in 1904, he frequently cited Garrison and his works in his non-fiction texts like The Kingdom of God Is Within You. In a 2018 publication, American philosopher and anarchist Crispin Sartwell wrote that the works by Garrison and his other Christian anarchist contemporaries like Ballou directly influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., as well.[42]

Memorials

Works

Books

  • Garrison, Wm. Lloyd (1832). Thoughts on African Colonization; or an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles, and Purposes of the American Colonization Society. Together with the Resolutions, Addresses and Remonstrances of the Free People of Color. 236 pp. Boston: Garrison and Knapp.
  • Garrison, William Lloyd (1843). Sonnets and other poems. Boston: Oliver Johnson.
  • Garrison, William Lloyd (1852). Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison: With an Appendix. Boston: R[obert] F. Wallcut.

Pamphlets

Broadside

Newspapers

See also

References

  1. Atlantic Monthly Press
    .
  2. .
  3. ^ Mayer, 12
  4. ^ Hagedorn, p. 58
  5. ^ Cain, William E. William Lloyd Garrison and the fight against Slavery: Selections from the Liberatoa.
  6. ^ "William Watkins MSA SC 5496-002535". msa.maryland.gov. Archived from the original on June 12, 2020. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
  7. ^ Thomas, 119
  8. .
  9. Project MUSE
    .
  10. ^ Boston Directory, 1831, archived from the original on March 27, 2016, retrieved December 11, 2015, Garrison & Knapp, editors and proprietors Liberator, 10 Merchants Hall, Congress Street
  11. ^ William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator (Inaugural editorial) Archived March 29, 2004, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ "William Lloyd Garrison". prezi.com. Retrieved April 3, 2020.
  13. ^ "Death of Isaac Knapp". theliberatorfiles.com. Retrieved October 30, 2021.
  14. New York Evening Post
    , be an exception. ..."
  15. ^ Quoted in: Clifton E. Olmstead (1960): History of Religion in the United States. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., p. 369
  16. , p. 263.
  17. ^ Mayer, 201–204
  18. ^ "Boston Gentlemen Riot for Slavery". New England Historical Society. Archived from the original on December 29, 2019. Retrieved October 5, 2019.
  19. .
  20. ^ "Letters to Catherine E. Beecher", Knapp (1838), Boston
  21. ^ "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Condition of Woman" Archived 2016-04-02 at the Wayback Machine, Knapp (1838), Boston
  22. ^ Seldon, Horace. "The 'Women's Question' and Garrison". The liberator files. Archived from the original on December 14, 2014. Retrieved December 9, 2014.
  23. ^ "Women's Rights Convention," Liberator, June 7, 1850
  24. , pp. 104, 109, 293 note 26.
  25. ^ Garrison, William Lloyd (March 30, 1849). "Shall He Be Hung?". The Liberator. p. 2 – via newspapers.com.
  26. Prologue Magazine
    . 32 (4).
  27. ^ Spooner, Lysander (1845). "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery".
  28. ^ "William L. Garrison". www.ohiohistorycentral.org. Ohio History Central. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
  29. Brooklyn Daily Eagle
    , Dec. 31, 1860, p. 3; the paper pronounced this an "admirable discourse."
  30. ^ , Merk, Lois Bannister, "Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement." Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1958, Revised, 1961, pp. 14, 25.
  31. ^ Mayer, 614
  32. ^ Mayer, 618
  33. .
  34. Tablet Magazine
    . March 9, 2011. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
  35. ^ "Who cares if Bernie Sanders is Jewish?". WHYY. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
  36. ^ "The Powerful Example Of The Jewish Abolitionists We Forgot". The Forward. January 30, 2015. Retrieved May 7, 2022.
  37. ^ Mayer, 621
  38. ^ Mayer, 622
  39. ^ Mayer, 626
  40. ^ Mayer, 627–628
  41. ^ Mayer, 631
  42. .
  43. ^ "Garrison Trail opens this afternoon". October 18, 2018. Archived from the original on May 7, 2019. Retrieved July 31, 2020.

Bibliography

External links