CHAP. X. 1850. Lib. 20: 142. convention shall meet, and wherever it shall be, I shall endeavor to be there, to forward so good, so glorious a movement." Mr. Garrison kept his word. He signed the call headed Lib. 20:181; by Lucy Stone, he attended the Convention, addressed it, Proceedings and was placed on sundry important committees.1 of Woman's Rights Con- 1 Wendell Phillips wrote to Elizabeth Pease on Mar. 9, 1851 (MS.): “You would have enjoyed the Women's Convention. I think I never saw a more intelligent and highly cultivated audience, more ability guided by the best taste on a platform, more deep, practical interest, on any occasion. It took me completely by surprise; and the women were the ablest speakers, too. You would have laughed, as we used to do in 1840, to hear dear Lucretia Mott answer me. I had presumed to differ from her, and assert that the cause would meet more immediate and palpable and insulting opposition from women than men and scolded them for it. She put, as she so well knows how, the silken snapper on to her whiplash, and proceeded to give me the gentlest and yet most cutting rebuke. "T was like her old fire when the London Quakers angered her gentleness—and beautifully done, so that the victim himself could enjoy the artistic perfection of his punishment." Compare ante, 2: 375, 376. CHAPTER XI. GEORGE THOMPSON, M. P.-1851. 1851. HOMPSON was the great central fact in Mr. Garri- CHAP. XI. son's inner life and public activity during the eight months of the Englishman's stay in America. They had been well-nigh inseparable but for exceptionally numerous indispositions which now and again, throughout the year 1851, drove the editor of the Liberator from his post to a sick bed. As it was, they journeyed and lectured not a little together, in Massachusetts and New York State, and enjoyed such genial social intercourse as all the circumstances of an inspiriting time, the hospitality of abolitionists like Bourne Spooner of Plymouth, John T. Sargent of Boston, or Samuel J. May of Syracuse, N. Y., the companionship of wits like Quincy and Phillips and the Westons, and the fusion of noble and charming elements effected by the annual Anti-Slavery Bazaar, fostered in an ever memorable degree. Two occasions of this sort in particular stand out as unsurpassable in feeling, and in the talent which gave them lustre. 18. The first, and the most touching, was the soirée held in Lib. 21: 6, Cochituate Hall, Boston, on the evening of January 24, 1851, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Liberator. The time selected was at the close of the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. แ "You would have enjoyed the Soirée," wrote Wendell Phillips to Elizabeth Pease: "perfectly extempore perfectly extempore-so much so that E. Q. did not know he was to be chairman till I moved it, and then he filled the chair with all that wit and readiness that is possessed by all the Quincys. It was unique the heartiest MS. Mar. 9, 1851. Edmund Quincy. 1851. Lib. 21: 18. CHAP. XI. anti-slavery gathering I ever saw. Thompson had been very ill in the country and was looking quite ghastly, fit for a sick bed, but spoke gloriously; and his presence was, in a great degree, the inspiration to the rest. Add to that, Garrison in tears the occasion and the company scarred with many a struggle and you will easily see that we should feel deeply, and, like all times of deep feeling, it should be mingled of mirth and profound emotion. Such hours come rarely in life.” "I give you joy," said Edmund Quincy in his function of chairman, " on this happy occasion of our assembling ourselves together. It is often our lot to weep with those that weep. It is our felicity to-night to rejoice with those that rejoice. And who, I should like to know, have a better right to rejoice than the American abolitionists? Who have a better right to look upon the world with eyes of joy and gratitude than they who are attempting to rescue the slave from his despair, and the country from its disgrace? I hold that we, of all men and of all women in this broad land, are those who have a right to rejoice, and to thank God for the lot which he has appointed us. And although our usual course lies in different paths from this, although it is not often that we find ourselves assembling on a festive occasion like the present, I am sure that we are not of those who, Cf. ante, p. 144. Lib. 21: 18. Lib. 21:18. "When God sends a cheerful hour, refrain!'" To the temperate toast-"Success and prosperity to the good ship LIBERATOR in her new departure, and health and long life to the pilot who has weathered so many storms"-which was greeted with nine cheers, Mr. Garrison replied: "MR. PRESIDENT FRIENDS OF FREEDOM AND HUMANITY:— If I could only put myself out of the bill to-night—if I could only be reduced to utter forgetfulness -- there would be no drawback in my enjoyment of the festivities of the occasion. But this is a commemoration somewhat personal to myself; and although many have supposed that I have no objection to personalities, yet I do not like to be pointed at myself (in a case like the present), though I am rather apt to point at others. (Laughter.) "The truth is, he who commences any reform which at last becomes one of transcendant importance and is crowned with victory, is always ill-judged and unfairly estimated. At the 1851. outset he is looked upon with contempt, and treated in the most CHAP. XI. opprobrious manner, as a wild fanatic or a dangerous disorganizer. In due time the cause grows and advances to its sure triumph; and in proportion as it nears the goal, the popular estimate of his character changes, till finally excessive panegyric is substituted for outrageous abuse. The praise on the one hand, and the defamation on the other, are equally unmerited. In the clear light of Reason, it will be seen that he simply stood up to discharge a duty which he owed to his God, to his fellowmen, to the land of his nativity." Continuing, the speaker passed in rapid review his antislavery career and the origin of the Liberator, of which he held up the tiny first number; paid by the way his never forgotten tribute to Benjamin Lundy; and gratefully acknowledged once more the indispensable pecuniary Ante, 1: 223. support given him by Samuel E. Sewall and Ellis Gray Loring. To complete the retrospect, he read some of the menacing letters he had been accustomed to receive from the South, and confessed his early expectation of martyrdom in the cause, especially after the State of Georgia had offered its reward for his abduction. Ante, 1 : 247. "But enough in regard to the insults and dangers of the Lib. 20:18. past. If the Liberator has wrought any change in public sentiment in favor of those who are meted out and trodden underfoot, it has been solely through the power of truth. No person shall deceive me with the idea that I deserve anything. Oh, if I can only say that I have done my duty-that I have not failed to 'remember them that are in bonds as bound with them' it is all I desire. One thing I can truly affirm:- I have counted nothing too dear to peril in the cause to which my life is devoted. For that cause I have sacrificed whatever is desirable in a good reputation, or pleasant in human friendship, or alluring in worldly advancement. For it I have broken the strongest political ties, and divorced myself from once venerated religious associations; assured that whatever is hostile to its progress must be inherently corrupt or erroneous, whatever its pretensions to patriotism or piety. "Here I must pause. I am wholly unable to express my feelings. I thank you for this kind manifestation of your regard. But, without your coöperation, what could I have CHAP. XI. 1851. done? It is such as I see around me, and others equally laborious in the field, elsewhere, who have given such an impetus to the cause of emancipation. I can add no more." If Mr. Garrison was moved by his own reminiscences and by the cordiality of the hour, scarcely less so was George Thompson, whose turn came next. Reminiscence for him meant recounting the history of his acquaintance and friendship with Garrison, and the personal conseAnte, 1:355, quences to himself as already detailed in these pages. Passing from this theme, he took up the salutatory of the first number of the Liberator, which he read and developed in his most eloquent manner. 435, etc. Lib. 21:18; ante, 1:225. “I am in earnest. retreat a single inch I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not and I will be heard!' (Sensation.) "These words should give us pause, for they are amongst the most remarkable, as they are amongst the most emphatic and prophetic, ever uttered. Through coming years and ages, they will be household words over the vast continent of America. They constitute the picture of the man before you. I have met with nothing in the language of any other Reformer that ever gave me so clear an insight into the soul of the man as these words into that of Mr. Garrison. Illuminated by his subsequent acts, I am satisfied that I know the man. Sir, I am content to leave to minute philosophers all investigations into the phenomena of external nature, if I may be permitted to attain to some acquaintance with what passes in the minds of those who compass some great moral achievement. I love to study the character of a great reformer. I would give much to be permitted to read his soul at the moment he conceives his great idea. I would fain trace the exercises of that soul amidst the early days of gloom, and disappointment, and peril. And I should like to read it when his prayers and prophecy are in part fulfilled, and he beholds, as our guest does now, the indubitable signs of ultimate success, and stands surrounded, as he is now, by a multitude who honor him, love him, believe in him, and are determined to stand by him. (Great cheers.) 66 'William Lloyd Garrison is our cherished guest to-night; but he is also on his trial. He shall be tried by his own words, and you shall deliver the verdict. On the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one, this same William Lloyd Garrison did fling upon the breeze-ay, it was indeed |