American, 3:2. Lib. 11:26; aid or approbation. It was an error of judgment, simply; but, cf. Free after what we, who sent him out, have said of that Committee, it looks upon the face of it like an imposition.1 We supposed Lib. 11:53. he would make his appeal to the abolitionists at large and take his chance accordingly. I fear, also, that he may not have been so guarded at all times in his language as could have been Ante, 2:342, desirable, respecting the transfer of the Emancipator a transfer that was certainly very dishonorable, and wholly unworthy of the character of those who participated in it.2 Yet I doubt not that the mission of J. A. C. will do much for our persecuted enterprise. 343, 35I. Collins. For what you have done to aid him, we all feel under the deepest obligations. May Heaven reward you a hundred-fold! Fear not that truth shall not triumph over falsehood, right over wrong, and freedom over slavery.3 1 Miss Pease did not so judge the application (MS. Dec. 10, 1840, to Collins); and there can be little doubt that it was ultimately of great advantage to the cause. It at once forced the discussion of the merits of the American schism, and the shamefully partisan action of the London Committee determined many to side with the old organization who might else have remained either indifferent or deceived. See Collins's letter to E. Quincy, Mar. 2, 1841 (MS.). The attempt of the Executive Committee of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, under the influence of Captain Stuart, to follow suit in rebuffing Collins and disavowing the old organization, led to a division and reconstitution by which that important body was saved to the cause in America, at the cost of the resignation of a few members like Dr. Wardlaw (Lib. 11:77, 89, 93, 149; MSS. Feb. 23, 1841, R. Wardlaw to J. A. Collins, and May 2, 1841, Collins to W. L. G.; and Collins's letter to the Glasgow Argus, April 26, 1841). Finally, Harriet Martineau took her stand with Mr. Garrison, Collins, and their associates in the most pronounced manner (Lib. 11:51; MS. Feb. 20, 1841, Miss Martineau to Collins). George Thompson's open adhesion came later (Lib. 11:145, 201). The result was in all respects, pecuniary and moral, disastrous to the British and Foreign A. S. Society. 2"Gerrit Smith says the transfer of the Emancipator was a great outrage-told Burleigh so- not publicly" (MS. Feb. 10, 1841, J. S. Gibbons to W. L. G.). "The transfer of the Emancipator was indefensible" (MS. Nov. 26, 1870, Gerrit Smith to W. L. G.). 3 No one can read the private advisory correspondence of Miss Pease with Collins without feeling admiration for her sagacity, sound judgment, practical business talent, and unfailing grasp of principles. She was the Mrs. Chapman of the British agitation. "What mistakes people make! They think Victoria Queen of England, when it is Elizabeth Pease; and know not that the Allens and Webbs [of Dublin] are the Lords Spiritual and Temporal" (MS. Jan. 30, 1841, E. Quincy to Collins). "What more of royalty has England's queen?" asked Mr. Garrison in his sonnet to Elizabeth Pease (Lib. 12:4). Lib. II: II; 1841, J. A. MS. Mar. 2, Collins to W. L. G. Lib. 11:23, 55, 79; 14: 31; MS. Feb. 1, 1841, J. W. to London Committee. den Colver was efficiently seconded by Torrey, temporarily conducting the Massachusetts Abolitionist, who brought the most cruel accusations against Collins's integrity and manhood; and by Phelps, who dressed up Mrs. Chapman's report of his own remarks at the Chardon-Street Convention, and gave his personal coloring to what was said by others—all to prove the Convention's infidel character and Mr. Garrison's complicity. This he first ventilated in the New England Christian Advocate,1 and Lib. 11: 79. then despatched abroad through the sectarian channels controlled by the London Committee. Mr. Garrison's reply was prompt, and warmed with a natural indigna- Lib. 11:43. tion, for to the charge of infidelity were added fresh insinuations of "no marriage" doctrines, calculated to horrify still more the English mind. In fact, Phelps's 'priestly candor and magnanimity" proved more injurious than Colver's and Torrey's combined defamation, and May 2, 1841, caused great temporary damage abroad. 66 Ante, 2:289. MSS. Apr. E. Pease to Colver's effrontery was equal to a reaffirmation of his falsehoods on the platform of the Massachusetts Anti- Lib. 11:22, Slavery Society at its ninth annual meeting, where they had come up for emphatic condemnation. Edmund Quincy to J. A. Collins, in England. DEDHAM, Jan. 30, 1841. 23, 26. MS. The annual meeting is just over, and went off in the best pos- Lib. 11:22. sible manner. The morning of the first day (Wednesday, 27th) was taken up by Garrison's report,2 which, for a marvel, was finished and printed (!) before the meeting. In the afternoon (Thursday) we passed a severe resolution on Colver's letters to the London Committee - he being present. Bradburn was down upon him in his usual tomahawk and scalp- Geo. Brading-knife style. Colver then made a most demoniacal speech, saying but little on the subject-matter, but wandering over the 1 Edited in Lowell, Mass., by the Rev. Luther Lee. 2 This document, to be found in the regular series of reports, is an elaborate review of the origin of the Mass. Abolition Society and the schism in the American Society, with a brief glance at the Third Party. burn. CHAP. I. 1841. whole universe of abuse which the New Organization have created for their delectation. I never saw a man who seemed to be more possessed with a devil. One of the Westons well said, that the Society might now be thought to have done something to justify his denunciation of it as a Non-Resistance Society, as an ordinary assembly of men of the world would have thrown him out of the window on less provocation. Bradburn and Garrison replied briefly, and the matter ended by the passage of the resolution. We cannot nowadays understand the superstition formerly attached to the stigma of infidelity, both on the part of those who sought to fasten and of those who sought to avoid it. In the popular imagination it belonged in the category of self-operative curses, and was conclusive Lib. 11:43. of all argument. Hence it availed little for Mr. Garrison to reason that if the Chardon-Street Convention was infidel because some infidel addressed it, it was Orthodox Ante, 2: 427. because Phelps, Baptist because Colver, and Methodist because Father Taylor, did likewise. Nor could he hope to escape the imputation of being a double and treble dyed infidel for his attendance at the adjourned second and third sessions of that Convention, which fell in the year now under consideration. Convicted, too, of having "headed" this ungodly gathering in the beginning, the head and front of its offending he must remain to the bitter end. True, Edmund Quincy, who actually headed Lib. 11:47. it, declared that the first suggestion of such a convention Ante, 2:421, was made at Groton, where Garrison was not; that when he heard of it at a private dinner-table, he did not encourAnte, 2:422. age it, and refused to be one of the committee to call it, and even urged Mr. Quincy (in vain) to strike out a strong passage in the call. But, continues the latter 426. Lib. II: 47. "But, then, these new ideas were first started by you, and therefore you are accountable for this development of them! My dear friend, they who say this, do you honor overmuch. You have but obeyed, you have not created, the spirit of the age, which is busy with old ideas, and will in due time change them, and with them the institutions which are their outward manifestations." CHAP. I. 1841. However, it could not be denied that the Convention which assembled for the second time at the ChardonStreet Chapel on Tuesday, March 30, 1841, had met in Lib. 11:58. pursuance of Mr. Garrison's motion, at the previous session, to discuss the origin and authority of the Ministry. The participants and combatants were much the same as before, and a preliminary skirmish again took place over a clerical attempt to restrict discussion within the lines and sanction of the Bible. The defeat of this movement was the only positive action of the Convention, which then freely took sides individually for or against the proposition, “That the order of the ministry, as at present existing, is anti-scriptural and of human origin." In this discussion Mr. Garrison appears to have said nothing, being unable to attend except for a few hours during the Lib. 11: 55. three days; but he forestalled fresh clerical misrepresentation of the Convention by moving a committee to prepare resolutions explanatory of its nature and doings, and these resolutions were from his pen. He also prevented any notice being taken, by way of reply, of a Sabbatarian letter from Clarkson, which Nathaniel Colver had craftily procured, and introduced at the earliest moment. The snare was too obviously meant — on the one hand for Mr. Garrison himself, on the other for the Convention, whose members sought, as Emerson well said, "something better and more satisfying than a vote or a definition.” This peculiar body met once more and finally on the Lib. 11: 175, 26th, 27th, and 28th of October, 1841, taking for its last topic the Church. Various causes kept away its main clerical antagonists, but they were represented by Phelps, who found it as infidel as ever. Mr. Garrison's resolutions are all of the proceedings that can be noticed here: Lectures and Biog. Sketches, ed. 1884, P. 354. 178, 179. "Resolved, That the true church is independent of all human Lib. 11:179. organizations, creeds, or compacts. Resolved, That it is not in the province of any man, or any body of men, to admit to or to exclude from that church any one who is created in the divine image. CHAP. I. 1841. "Resolved, That it is nowhere enjoined as a religious duty, by Christ or his apostles, upon any man, that he should connect himself with any association, by whatever name called; but all are left free to act singly, or in conjunction with others, according to their own free choice." While the glow of this truly spiritual occasion was still on him, Mr. Garrison produced four sonnets, which contain the pith of his contributions to the theological interchange of the Chardon-Street Convention. They Lib. 11:179, appeared in successive numbers of the Liberator, under 183,187,191. the titles, "The Bible," "Holy Time," "Worship," "The True Church." As poesy, none deserves to be quoted entire. As landmarks, they may yield a line or two. From the first, "The Bible": Lib. 11:179. O Book of Books! though skepticism flout Of triumph o'er each incongruity He in thy pages may perchance espy, 1 This adjective was changed to “atheistic" in the edition of Mr. Garri- |