CHAPTER III.

THE EARLY ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT.

Garrison establishes "The Liberator." - The First Number. — A Dingy Office. - Mr. Garrison's Supporters.-Dr. Lyman Beecher. -Jeremiah Evarts. - Oliver Johnson's Testimony. "The Liberator" creates a Stir in the South. - The Might of King Cotton. — Garrison's Appeal to his Countrymen. -The New-England AntiSlavery Society. - Story of its Organization. - Preachers and Politics. The Rise of the American Anti-Slavery Society. — Growth of the Movement. - The Reign of Terror dawning. - The Charleston Riot.-Faneuil Hall pays a Tribute to Slavery, and the New-England Pulpit Dumb!

"When the pulpit preached slave-hunting, and the law bound the victim, and society said, 'Amen! this will make money,' we were 'fanatics,' enthusiasts,' 'seditious,' 'disorganizers,'' scorners of the pulpit,' 'traitors.' Genius of the Past! drop not from thy tablets one of these honorable names. We claim them all as our surest title deeds to the memory and gratitude of mankind. We indeed thought man more than constitutions, humanity and justice of more worth than law. Seal up thy record! If Boston is proud of her part, let her rest assured we are not ashamed of ours."

"The last lesson a man ever learns is, that liberty of thought and speech is the right for all mankind." - PHILLIPS.

IN

N August, 1830, William Lloyd Garrison issued the prospectus of a weekly paper to be published in Washington, and called "The Liberator." The prospectus created no interest, and the proposition was finally "palsied by public indifference." Having thus

made known his project, Mr. Garrison left Washington, and, after looking about him for a while, located in Boston. His object in establishing "The Liberator" was, to fight slavery to the bitter end. He wisely concluded, that "to fight slavery at the South while the North was hostile would be like going into battle in an enemy's country with no base for re-enforcements or supplies."

The first number of the paper appeared in January, 1831; and an exceedingly small folio of four pages it was, too, — so small and insignificant, that nobody, in those days, ventured to think that it would ever be able to exert any influence. If the paper was' unattractive in its external appearance, the office of publication, which was in the third story of the building then known as the Merchants' Hall, was even more so. The dingy walls; the small windows, bespattered with printer's ink; the press standing in one corner, and the composing-stands opposite; the long editorial and mailing table, covered with newspapers; the bed of the editor and publisher on the floor, all these make a picture never to be forgotten. Harrison Gray Otis well described it as "an obscure hole,"

"Yet there the freedom of a race began."

In establishing "The Liberator," Mr. Garrison announced that he should not array himself as the political partisan of any man, and that, in defending the

great cause of human rights, he wished to secure "the assistance of all religions and of all parties."

But who were Mr. Garrison's supporters? At this time Dr. Lyman Beecher stood at the head of the orthodox pulpits in Boston. The great controversy which had been going on between orthodoxy and Unitarianism was drawing nigh to its culmination in the complete divorcement of the two parties. Dr. Beecher was a born belligerent: Dr. Channing, on the Unitarian side, was a man of gentle and humane spirit. Mr. Garrison, being a strict orthodox himself, naturally looked for support to Dr. Beecher and his adherents. Garrison approached Beecher on the subject.

"I have too many irons in the fire already," said the doctor.

"Then, you had better let all your irons burn than neglect your duty to the slave," replied Garrison solemnly.

Dr. Beecher, like a good many other people of his day, while not an advocate of slavery, believed in colonization, in other words, that all the blacks ought to be sent over to Africa. To his mind, immediate emancipation upon American soil suggested a frightful picture, and might prove a curse. "Your zeal," he said to Garrison, "is commendable; but you are misguided. If you will give up your fanatical notions, and be guided by us (the clergy), we will make you the Wilberforce of America."

Disheartened by such indifference on the part of Dr. Beecher, Mr. Garrison next sought Jeremiah Evarts, secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who was an earnest pleader in behalf of the red men of America. But, no: there was a marked difference between red and black; and, with the black, Mr. Evarts would have nothing to do.

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To the honor of Boston, however, there were a few friends who dared to stand by Mr. Garrison. Among those who came to confer with the editor," writes Mr. Oliver Johnson, who was himself a stanch "friend," "I remember Samuel J. May, who combined the courage of Paul with the lovingness of John, and who was ever afterwards a conspicuous figure in the anti-slavery host; Ellis Gray Loring, then a rising young lawyer, with a clear head and a sound conscience, whose death in the prime of his powers left a vacancy that could not be filled; Samuel E. Sewall, of an honored Massachusetts family, a man fitted by his legal attainments and a judicial spirit for a high place on the bench; David Lee Child, the bold editor, and the faithful champion of the oppressed of every nation and clime; John G. Whittier, then almost unknown to fame, but whose flashing eye and intrepid mien foretold the songs of freedom with which he afterward thrilled and stirred the hearts of his countrymen; Joshua Coffin, the antiquarian, Whittier's old schoolmaster, and the

subject of one of his characteristic lays; Arnold Buffum, the Quaker hatter, lately returned from England, where he had caught the spirit of Clarkson, Wilberforce, O'Connell, and Buxton, and thus prepared himself to greet the rising liberator of America; Moses Thacher, an orthodox clergyman, one of the first of the profession to welcome the call for immediate emancipation; and Amos A. Phelps, then pastor of the Congregational church in Pine Street."

Ere long "The Liberator" began to make itself felt, not alone in the North, but also in the South, where every effort was made to prevent its circulation. The Vigilance Association of South Carolina (Columbia), on the 4th of October, 1831, "offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for the apprehension and prosecution to conviction of any white person who might be detected in distributing or circulating 'The Liberator,' or any other publication of a seditious tendency." In a similar manner the paper was proscribed in other sections of the South.

In the North, a moral stupor rested upon the public and the press. Most people regarded Mr. Garrison and his faithful band of co-workers as so many fanatics, as disturbers of the peace, and as breeders of evil. There were moments when it seemed as if the misguided public opinion of the hour would demand the suppression of "The Liberator;" and it is not easy now to see what it was, except the interposition of