William Lloyd Garrison | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Garrison,c. 1870 | |
| Born | (1805-12-10)December 10, 1805 |
| Died | May 24, 1879(1879-05-24) (aged 73) New York City, U.S. |
| Resting place | Forest Hills Cemetery,Boston, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Abolitionist, journalist |
| Known for | EditingThe Liberator Supportingwomen's rights |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 7 |
| Signature | |
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William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was anAmerican abolitionist, journalist, andsocial reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaperThe Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published inBoston untilslavery in the United States was abolished by theThirteenth Amendment in 1865. He supported the rights of women and in the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for thewomen's suffrage movement.
Garrison promoted "no-governmentism", also known as "anarchism", 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. His belief inindividual sovereignty, and critique of coercive authority have been recognized as a precursor to certain strands ofmodern libertarian thought. He initially opposed violence as a principle and advocated forChristian pacifism against evil; however, at the outbreak of theAmerican Civil War, he recognized the necessity of armed struggle as a means to achieve the abolition of slavery and supported theLincoln administration's efforts to end the institution. He was one of the founders of theAmerican Anti-Slavery Society and promoted immediate and uncompensated, as opposed to gradual and compensated, emancipation ofslaves in the United States.
Garrison was atypesetter, which aided him in runningThe Liberator. When working on his own editorials for the paper, Garrison would compose them while setting the type for the publication, without first writing them out on paper.[1]: 57
Garrison was born on December 10, 1805, inNewburyport, Massachusetts,[2] the youngest son of immigrants from the British colony ofNew Brunswick, in present-day Canada. UnderAn Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen, his father Abijah Garrison, a merchant-sailing pilot and master, had obtained American papers and moved his family to Newburyport in 1806. The U.S.Embargo Act of 1807, intended to injure Great Britain, caused a decline in American commercial shipping. His father soon became unemployed and deserted the family in 1808. Garrison's mother was Frances Maria Lloyd, reported to have been tall, charming, and of a strong religious character. She started referring to their son William as Lloyd, his middle name, to preserve her family name; he later printed his name as "Wm. Lloyd". She died in 1823, in the city ofBaltimore, 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 in a 7-year-long arrangement for theNewburyport Herald. He soon began writing articles, often under the pseudonymAristides. (Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general, nicknamed "the Just".) He could write as he typeset his writing, without the need for paper. His most significant contribution to the paper, during the final year of his apprenticeship in 1826 when he was 20 years old, was a severe repudiation ofAmerican Writers byJohn Neal. This started a years-long feud.[4] After his apprenticeship ended, Garrison became the sole owner, editor, and printer of theNewburyport Free Press, acquiring the rights from his friendIsaac Knapp, who had also apprenticed at theHerald. One of their regular contributors was poet and abolitionistJohn Greenleaf Whittier. In this early work as a small-town newspaper writer, Garrison acquired skills he would later use as a nationally known writer, speaker, and newspaper publisher. In 1828, he was appointed editor of theNational Philanthropist inBoston, Massachusetts, the first American journal to promote legally-mandatedtemperance.
He became involved in the anti-slavery movement in the 1820s and over time, he rejected both theAmerican Colonization Society and the gradualist views of most others involved in the movement. Garrison co-foundedThe Liberator to espouse his abolitionist views. Out of its those reading the publication, in 1832 he organized theNew-England Anti-Slavery Society. This society expanded into theAmerican Anti-Slavery Society, which espoused the position that slavery should be abolished immediately, rather than gradually.
On September 4, 1834, Garrison marriedHelen Eliza Benson (1811–1876). She was the daughter of a retired abolitionist merchant. Their relationship was very close as they both worked professionally toward the same objectives. When his wife died, Garrison mourned for a long time and even attempted to find a means for them to continue to communicate through spiritualism. They are buried together in Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston. The couple had two daughters and five sons. Two of their children, a daughter and a son, died as children.
At the age of 25, Garrison joined the anti-slavery movement, later crediting the 1826 book ofPresbyterianReverend John Rankin,Letters on Slavery, for attracting him to the cause.[5] For a brief time, he became associated with theAmerican Colonization Society, an organization that promoted the "resettlement" of free blacks to a territory (now known asLiberia) on the west coast of Africa. Although some members of the society encouraged granting freedom to enslaved people, others considered relocation a means to reduce the number of already free blacks in the United States. Southern members thought reducing the threat of free blacks in society would help preserve the institution of slavery. By late 1829–1830, "Garrison rejected colonization, publicly apologized for his error, and then, as was typical of him, he censured all who were committed to it."[6] He stated that anti-colonialism activist and fellow abolitionistWilliam J. Watkins had influenced his view.[7]
In 1829, Garrison began writing for and became co-editor withBenjamin Lundy of theQuaker newspaperGenius of Universal Emancipation, published at that time inBaltimore, 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 theGenius, 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".[8] For instance, Garrison reported that Francis Todd, a shipper from Garrison's hometown ofNewburyport, Massachusetts, was involved in the domesticslave trade, and that he had recently had slaves shipped from Baltimore toNew Orleans in thecoastwise trade on his ship theFrancis. (This was completely legal. An expanded domestic trade, "breeding" slaves inMaryland andVirginia for shipment south, replaced the importation of African slaves, prohibited in 1808; seeSlavery 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. Garrison was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine of $50 and court costs;[9] 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.[10] He was released after seven weeks when the anti-slavery philanthropistArthur Tappan paid his fine.[11] Garrison decided to leave Maryland, and he and Lundy amicably parted ways.
In 1831, Garrison, fully aware of the press as a means to bring about political change,[12]: 750 returned to New England, where he co-founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper,The Liberator, with his friendIsaac Knapp.[13] 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 theGenius 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.[14]
Paid subscriptions toThe 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, withoutcompensation to the slave owners.Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Virginia just seven months afterThe 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 $157,483 in 2024) for his capture and conveyance to the state for trial.[15]
Knapp parted fromThe 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",[16] forcing the co-authors to part.
Among the anti-slavery essays and poems that Garrison published inThe Liberator was an article in 1856 by a 14-year-oldAnna 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 ofcommunity 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 theThirteenth 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 theLiberator 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.[17]
In addition to publishingThe 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 theNew-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 theAmerican Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). 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 theBoston Female Anti-Slavery Society, which raised funds to supportThe 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 itsimmediate abandonment without expatriation".[18]
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".[19]
On October 21, 1835, "an assemblage of fifteen hundred or two thousand highly respectable gentlemen", as they were described in theBoston Commercial Gazette, surrounded the building housing Boston's anti-slavery offices, where Garrison had agreed to address a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society after the fiery British abolitionistGeorge Thompson was unable to keep his engagement with them. MayorTheodore Lyman persuaded the women to leave the building, but when the mob learned that Thompson was not within, they began yelling for Garrison. Lyman was a staunch anti-abolitionist but wanted to avoid bloodshed and suggested Garrison escape by a back window while Lyman told the crowd Garrison was gone.[20] The mob spotted and apprehended Garrison, tied a rope around his waist, and pulled him through the streets towardBoston Common, calling fortar and feathers. The mayor intervened and Garrison was taken to theLeverett Street Jail for protection.[21]
Gallows were erected in front of his house, and he wasburned in effigy.[22]
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, sistersAngelina Grimké andSarah Grimké responded to the controversy aroused by their public speaking with treatises on woman's rights – Angelina's "Letters to Catherine E. Beecher"[23] and Sarah's "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Condition of Woman"[24] – and Garrison published them first inThe Liberator and then in book form. Instead of surrendering to appeals for him to retreat on the "woman question", Garrison announced in December 1837 thatThe 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 brothersArthur Tappan andLewis Tappan, to leave the American Anti-Slavery Society and form theAmerican and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which did not admit women. In June of that same year, when theWorld Anti-Slavery Convention meeting in London refused to seat America's women delegates, Garrison,Charles Lenox Remond,Nathaniel P. Rogers, and William Adams[25] refused to take their seats as delegates as well and joined the women in the spectators' gallery. The controversy introduced the woman's rights question not only to England but also to future woman's rights leaderElizabeth Cady Stanton, who attended the convention as a spectator, accompanying her delegate-husband,Henry B. Stanton.
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Although Henry Stanton had cooperated in the Tappans' failed attempt to wrest leadership of the AASS 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, andAmos A. Phelps, wanted to form an anti-slavery political party and seek a political solution to slavery. They withdrew from the AASS in 1840, formed theLiberty Party, and nominatedJames G. Birney for president. By the end of 1840, Garrison announced the formation of a third new organization, theFriends of Universal Reform, with sponsors and founding members including prominent reformersMaria Chapman,Abby Kelley Foster,Oliver Johnson, andAmos Bronson Alcott (father ofLouisa May Alcott).[26]
Although some members of the Liberty Party supported women's rights, includingwomen's suffrage, Garrison'sLiberator 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.[27] 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.[28]
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. InThe 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!"[29] 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 thethree-fifths compromise that had written slavery into the Constitution.[30]
In 1855, his eight-year alliance withFrederick Douglass disintegrated when Douglass converted to classical liberal legal theorist and abolitionistLysander Spooner's view (dominant among political abolitionists) that the Constitution could be interpreted as being anti-slavery.[31]
The events inJohn Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, followed by Brown'strial and execution, were closely followed inThe Liberator. Garrison had Brown's last speech, in court, printed as a broadside, available in theLiberator office.
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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 ofGeorgia, he was the object of vituperation and frequent death threats.[32] On the eve of the Civil War, a sermon preached in a Universalist chapel inBrooklyn, 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."[33]
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After the United States abolished slavery, Garrison announced in May 1865 that he would resign the presidency of theAmerican Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) 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 friendWendell Phillips, who argued that the mission of the AASS 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 AASS 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 toBoston, he withdrew completely from the AASS and ended publication ofThe Liberator at the end of 1865. With Wendell Phillips at its head, the AASS continued to operate for five more years, until the ratification of theFifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted voting rights to black men. (According toHenry Mayer, Garrison was hurt by the rejection and remained peeved for years; "as the cycle came around, always managed to tell someone that he wasnot going to the next set of [AASS] meetings" [594].)[citation needed]
After his withdrawal from AASS and endingThe Liberator, Garrison continued to participate in public reform movements. He supported the causes ofcivil rights forblacks and woman's rights, particularly the campaign for suffrage. He contributed columns onReconstruction and civil rights forThe Independent.[34]
In 1870, he became an associate editor of the women's suffrage newspaper, theWoman's Journal, along withMary Livermore,Thomas Wentworth Higginson,Lucy Stone, andHenry B. Blackwell. He served as president of both theAmerican 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.[35]
In 1873, he healed his long estrangements fromFrederick Douglass andWendell 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 theBoston Tea Party.[36] WhenCharles 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.[37]
Garrison called theancient Jews an exclusivist people "whose feet ran to evil" and suggested that theJewish diaspora was the result of their own "egotism and self-complacency".[38][39] When the Jewish-American sheriff and writerMordecai 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".[40][41]
However, Garrison acknowledged prejudice against Jews in Europe, which he compared to prejudice against African Americans, and opposed a proposed amendment to theConstitution of the United States affirming the divinity of Jesus Christ on the basis of religious freedom, writing that "no one can fail to see that the Jew, Unitarian, or Deist could not worship in his own way, as an American citizen, precisely because the Constitution, under which his citizenship exists, would make faith in the New Testament and the divinity of Jesus Christ a national creed".[42]
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 intopneumonia.[34] A quiet funeral was held in the Garrison home. Garrison, overcome with grief and confined to his bedroom with a fever and severebronchitis, 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 attendSpiritualist circles in the hope of communicating with Helen.[43] Garrison last visited England in 1877, where he met withGeorge Thompson and other longtime friends from the British abolitionist movement.[44]
Suffering fromkidney 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.[45]
Garrison was buried alongside his wife in theForest Hills Cemetery in Boston'sJamaica Plain neighborhood on May 28, 1879. At the public memorial service, eulogies were given byTheodore Dwight Weld andWendell Phillips. Eight abolitionist friends, both white and black, served as his pallbearers, including Weld, Phillips,Lewis Hayden, andCharles Lewis Mitchell. Flags were flown at half-staff all acrossBoston.[46][47]Frederick Douglass, then employed as aUnited 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."[48]
Garrison's namesake son, William Lloyd Garrison Jr. (1838–1909), was a prominent advocate of thesingle tax, free trade, women's suffrage, and of the repeal of theChinese Exclusion Act. His third son,Wendell Phillips Garrison (1840–1907), was literary editor ofThe Nation from 1865 to 1906. Two other sons (George Thompson Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, his biographer and named after abolitionistFrancis Jackson) and a daughter,Helen Frances Garrison (who marriedHenry Villard), survived him. Fanny's sonOswald Garrison Villard became a prominent journalist, a founding member of theNAACP, and wrote an important biography of the abolitionistJohn Brown.
Leo Tolstoy was greatly influenced by the works of Garrison and his contemporaryAdin 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 likeThe Kingdom of God Is Within You. In a 2018 publication, American philosopher and anarchistCrispin Sartwell wrote that the works by Garrison and his other Christian anarchist contemporaries like Ballou directly influencedMahatma Gandhi andMartin Luther King Jr. as well.[49]
Garrison & Knapp, editors and proprietors Liberator, 10 Merchants Hall, Congress Street
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