CHAP. I. Speech-full of good feeling, full of high hopes, full of trust in God." Dr. George B. Cheever and Horace Greeley also participated in the occasion. 1861. MS. Oliver Johnson, W. P. Garrison. Lyman Beecher. Boston. John M. W. P. G. O. Johnson, W. P. G. W. L. Garrison to his Wife. NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 1861. Yesterday, Mrs. Savin, Oliver, Wendell, and myself, went to Brooklyn in the morning, to hear Ward Beecher preach. It was the first time I had been in his spacious chapel. We were provided with the best seats, near to the pulpit, and directly in front of the speaker. Old Dr. Beecher sat directly in front of me, and at the close of the services I gave him my hand, which he grasped cordially, and when I gave him my name, he seemed desirous to have me go to his house in the evening; but I was engaged elsewhere. Besides, age and time have done their work upon him: he is in a state of second childhood, with broken memory, and his speech badly affected, so that continuous conversation is beyond his ability. The house, which is admirably constructed for an auditorium, holds about as many as the Tremont Temple, and was crowded in every part, aisles and all. So it is always. The immense assembly united with the choir in singing, which gave much life to that part of the service. The sermon was upon the nature and functions of conscience, and was a wide-awake and racy discourse. In the audience was Mr. Forbes of Milton Hill, with his daughter. Also, Mrs. Shaw of Staten Island, who, at the close of the proceedings, pressed eagerly forward to take me by the hand, and to express the hope that I would visit Staten Island before my return home. Wendell and I then spent a few moments with Ward Beecher, who seemed well pleased to see us, and who playfully said he thought he could do such a heretic as I some good, if he could only see me often enough! Last evening, we took tea and spent a very agreeable hour with the two female poets, Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose house is much visited. Horace Greeley was one of the company. We had some little discussion together on the peace question. He thinks there is no other way of dealing with tyranny than by knocking the tyrants in the head. After tea, I went with Oliver and Wendell, and Phoebe Cary, to Dr. Cheever's church, to hear one of the series of anti-slavery lectures he is delivering Sunday evening. The assembly was very large, and the Dr. earnest as usual, but his discourse was a hair-splitting defence of the anti-slavery character of the Constitution, and to me excessively tedious and wonderfully absurd, in view of the history of this nation. William Goodell was present, and, of course, enjoyed it to the brim, as it was but the echo of his own chop-logic. He grasped my hand warmly, and urged me to call and see him. In Philadelphia there were more social gatherings and delightful days and evenings with the Motts, McKims, and others of that choice circle.1 Mr. Garrison found many of his Quaker friends deeply troubled by the fact that their sons, whom they had supposed firmly grounded in the peace principles of their Society, had been among the earliest to catch the infection of patriotic fervor and enlist in the army, and there was scarcely a household from which one or more of the young men had not gone forth to the conflict. "I told them," he said, with his usual cheerful philosophy, "that however much they might regret that their sons could not meet the test when it was applied, they should at least rejoice that the boys were true to their real convictions when the shot at Sumter revealed to them that they were simply birthright Quakers, and had not fully comprehended and absorbed the principles of their fathers. They had imagined they were on the plane of the Sermon on the Mount, and they found they were only up to the level of Lexington and Bunker Hill; but they should be honored none the less for their loyalty to truth and freedom." On his return to Boston, Mr. Garrison delivered a Sun 1"Garrison is a real Bishop of souls," wrote Mrs. Chapman to Miller McKim, at this time. And again: "I enjoyed the account of your meeting in the Standard. Garrison is bringing up the rear like a good captain. 'Our dear chief' (as Florence Nightingale calls Sidney Herbert) is one to be proud of. He is so great as a social reformer that, as H. M. [Harriet Martineau] says, in her sketch of him in the Once a Week, he is too great, as such, to be a representative man at present; however, his example may raise up a class hereafter.' I wonder why we have never republished that sketch? I dare say Johnson did not see it, and Garrison would not give it out for the Liberator" (MS. Nov. 2, 1861). CHAP. I. 1861. Νου. 10, 1861; Nov. 18. day morning discourse on the state of the country to an Lib. 31:182. audience that filled Music Hall and applauded his strongest utterances. A week later, he and Mr. Phillips conducted the funeral services of Francis Jackson, who passed away, after a long illness, on the 14th of November, in his 73d year.1 Like Charles F. Hovey, he left a noble bequest to the cause so dear to them both, and provided a fund which lasted beyond the abolition of slavery and helped to swell the contributions for the education of the freedmen.2 More fortunate than Hovey, he survived to see the beginning of the end, and to know that the sum of all villanies was fast tottering to its fall. By the capture of Port Royal and Beaufort in November, and the immediate emancipation thus effected of the thousands of slaves in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, the problem of the education and civilization of the degraded blacks of the rice and cotton belt of that section was presented to the consideration of the philanthropic people of the North, and a few weeks later it was seriously accepted and grappled with; but the last weeks of the year were absorbed in exultation over the victory on the Carolina coast and the seizure of the rebel emissaries Mason and Slidell on the steamer Trent. That the chief James M. promoter of the Fugitive Slave Law should himself be incarcerated in a Boston fort seemed a rare bit of poetic justice, and it was natural that Mr. Phillips's allusion to it in his lecture (on "The War") at New York, in December, should be rapturously applauded. The lecture itself Mason. Dec. 19. 1 They were held in the same parlors of the old Hollis Street house in which the ladies of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society met after the mob of 1835, and received a new ally in Harriet Martineau (ante, 2 : 52, 57, 60). 2 The amount was $10,000, subsequently increased by residuary rights. Mr. Garrison, who for twenty-five years was constantly indebted to Mr. Jackson's generous help in meeting the deficit of the Liberator, was also the recipient of a liberal bequest, and the sum of $5,000 was given in aid of the Woman's Rights movement. Through a contest of the will and an unjust decision of the Supreme Court, this last provision was subsequently annulled, in consequence of which a daughter of Mr. Jackson (Mrs. Eliza F. Eddy) twenty years later bequeathed over $50,000 for the same object, as her protest against the violation of her father's will. occupied seven columns of the Liberator, and is referred Lib. 31:206. to in the following letter from Mr. Garrison to Oliver Johnson: MS. Dec. 26, 1861. "You will see in the Liberator, this week, the speech of Mr. Phillips, delivered at New York, as revised and corrected by himself. And such revision, correction, alteration, and addition you never saw, in the way of emendation! More than two columns of the Tribune's report were in type before P. came into our office; and the manipulation these required was a caution to all reporters and type-setters! I proposed to P. to send his altered 'slips' to Barnum as a remarkable curiosity, and Win- P. T. Barchell suggested having them photographed! But P. desired to make his speech as complete and full as he could, and I am glad J.M. W. you are to receive it without being put to any trouble about it. Doubtless, you will be requested to make some new alterations; for he is constantly criticising what he has spoken, and pays no regard to literal accuracy. This speech will be eagerly read, as it touches ably upon many interesting points. "Gerrit Smith at Peterboro', and Charles Sumner at Washington, both write to me in discouraging tones as to the prospects before us. The Administration has neither pluck nor definite purpose. What tremendous events will hinge upon an actual war with England!" In the Liberator for December 13, the passage from John Quincy Adams on the iniquity of the three-fifths representation clause in the Constitution, which had so long stood at the head of the first page (replaced for a time by a corresponding extract from Dr. Channing) was supplanted by Adams's declaration of the war-powers of the Government with respect to slavery; and the shibboleth, "The United States Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," gave way to the command, “Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." num, the showman. Yerrinton. MSS. G. S., 1861; C. S., Dec. 22. CHAP. II. 1862. Jan. 14. EA CHAPTER II. THE HOUR AND THE MAN.- 1862. ARLY in the new year Mr. Garrison yielded to the urgent solicitation of friends in New York, and delivered a lecture, at Cooper Institute in that city, on "The Abolitionists and their Relations to the War," which subsequently received a wide circulation in pamLib. 32:14. phlet form. In this he vindicated the motives and methods of the Garrisonian abolitionists; replied effectively to the assertions that they were wholly responsible for the war, or had been equally guilty with the secessionists in precipitating it; answered the cry that slavery had nothing to do with the war, and the Government no right or power to touch the institution; and declared emancipation essential for the suppression of the rebellion and for ultimate peace and union. The address, which occupied two hours in delivery, abounded in cogent and forcible passages, but we have room only for two brief quotations. To the charge that the disappearance of the "Covenant with Death" motto from the head of the Liberator indicated a great and sudden change in his views, he replied: Lib. 32: 14. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, you remember what Benedick in the play says: "When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.' And when I said I would not sustain the Constitution because it was a covenant 1 'The Pulpit and Rostrum,' Nos. 26 and 27 (double number), containing the above-named lecture, a pro-slavery speech in the U. S. Senate (Jan. 23, 1862) by Garrett Davis of Kentucky, and Alexander H. Stephens's speech (March 21, 1861) declaring African slavery the corner-stone of the Southern Confederacy. New York, 1862 (Lib. 32 : 39). |