CHAPTER XV.
RANDOM SHOTS.
The division of the anti-slavery organization into two distinct societies did not immediately terminate the war between them. From New York and the American society the contest over the woman's question was almost directly shifted after the triumph of the Garrisonians in the convention, to London and the World's Convention, which was held in the month of June of the year 1840. To this anti-slavery congress both of the rival anti-slavery organizations in America elected delegates. These delegates, chosen by the older society and by its auxiliaries of the States of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, were composed of women and men. Lucretia Mott was not only chosen by the National Society, but by the Pennsylvania Society as well. The Massachusetts Society selected Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston Chapman, and Ann Green Phillips together with their husbands among its list of delegates. England at this time was much more conservative on the woman's question than America. The managers of the World's Convention did not take kindly to the notion of women members, and signified to the American societies who had placed women among their delegates that the company of the women was not expected. Those societies, however, made no alteration in deference to this notice, in the character of their delegations, but stood stoutly by their principle of "the EQUAL BROTHERHOOD of the entire HUMAN FAMILY without distinction of color, sex, or clime."
A contest over the admission of women to membership in the World's Convention was therefore a foregone conclusion. The convention, notwithstanding a brilliant fight under the lead of Wendell Phillips in behalf of their admission, refused to admit the women delegates. The women delegates instead of having seats on the floor were forced in consequence of this decision to look on from the galleries. Garrison, who with Charles Lenox Remond, Nathaniel P. Rogers, and William Adams, was late in arriving in England, finding, on reaching London the women excluded from the convention and sitting as spectators in the galleries, determined to take his place among them, deeming that the act of the convention which discredited the credentials of Lucretia Mott and her sister delegates, had discredited his own also. Remond, Rogers, and Adams followed his example and took their places with the rejected women delegates likewise. The convention was scandalized at such proceedings, and did its best to draw Garrison and his associates from the ladies in the galleries to the men on the floor, but without avail. There they remained an eloquent protest against the masculine narrowness of the convention. Defeated in New York, the delegates of the new American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society triumphed over their victors in London. But their achievements in the World's Convention, in this regard, was not of a sort to entitle them to point with any special pride in after years; and, as a matter of fact, not one of them would have probably cared to have their success alluded to in any sketch of their lives for the perusal of posterity.
Garrison and his associates were the recipients of the most cordial and flattering attention from the English Abolitionists. He was quite lionized, in fact, at breakfasts, fêtes, and soirées. The Duchess of Sunderland paid him marked attention and desired his portrait, which was done for Her Grace by the celebrated artist, Benjamin Robert Haydon, who executed besides a large painting of the convention, in which he grouped the most distinguished members with reference to the seats actually occupied by them during its sessions. Of course to leave Garrison out of such a picture would almost seem like the play of "Hamlet" with Hamlet omitted, a blunder which the artist was by no means disposed to make. Garrison was accordingly invited to sit to him for his portrait. Haydon, who it seems was a student of human nature as well as of the human form, made the discovery of a fact which at first surprised and angered him. In making his groupings of heads he decided to place together the Rev. John Scoble, George Thompson and Charles Lenox Remond. When Scoble sat to him, Haydon told him of his design in this regard. But, remarked Haydon, Scoble "sophisticated immediately on the propriety of placing the negro in the distance, as it would have much greater effect." The painter now applied his test to Thompson who "saw no objection." Thompson did not bear the test to Haydon's satisfaction, who observed that "A man who wishes to place the negro on a level must no longer regard him as having been a slave, and feel annoyed at sitting by his side." But when the artist approached Garrison on the subject it was wholly different. "I asked him," Haydon records with obvious pleasure, "and he met me at once directly."
Thompson was not altogether satisfactory to Garrison either during this visit as the following extract from one of his letters to his wife evinces: "Dear Thompson has not been strengthened to do battle for us, as I had confidently hoped he would be. He is placed in a difficult position, and seems disposed to take the ground of non-committal, publicly, respecting the controversy which is going on in the United States."
Garrison, Rogers, and Remond in the company of Thompson made a delightful trip into Scotland at this time. Everywhere the American Abolitionists were met with distinguished attentions. "Though I like England much, on many accounts," Garrison writes home in high spirits, "I can truly say that I like Scotland better." An instance, which may be coupled with that one furnished by Haydon, occurred during this Scottish tour, and illustrates strongly the kind of stuff of which he was made. On his way to the great public reception tendered the American delegates by the Glasgow Emancipation Society, a placard with the caption, "Have we no white slaves?" was put into his hands. Upon acquainting himself with its contents he determined to read it to the meeting, and to make it the text of remarks when he was called upon to address the meeting. He was presently announced and the immense audience greeted him with every manifestation of pleasure and enthusiasm, with loud cheering and waving of handkerchiefs. Nevertheless he held to his purpose to speak upon the subject of the placard, unwelcome though it should prove to his hearers. "After reading the interrogation, I said in reply: 'No—broad as is the empire, and extensive as are the possessions of Great Britain, not a single white SLAVE can be found in them all;' and I then went on to show the wide difference that exists between the condition of human beings who are held and treated as chattels personal, and that of those who are only suffering from certain forms of political injustice or governmental oppression.... 'But,' I said, 'although it is not true that England has any white slaves, either at home or abroad, is it not true that there are thousands of her population, both at home and abroad, who are deprived of their just rights, who are grievously oppressed, who are dying even in the midst of abundance, of actual starvation? YES!' and I expressly called upon British Abolitionists to prove themselves the true friends of suffering humanity abroad, by showing that they were the best friend of suffering humanity at home." Truth, justice, duty, always overrode with him the proprieties, however sacredly esteemed by others. Of a piece with this fact of the placard of the white slave was his custom in refusing the wine proffered by some of his British friends to their guests. He was not content with a simple refusal and the implied rebuke which it involved, he must needs couple his declaration with an express rebuke to host and hostess for tempting men into the downward way to drunkenness.
While in attendance upon the sessions of the World's Convention Garrison received tidings, of the birth of his third child. The second, whom he named for himself, was born in 1838. The third, who was also a son, the fond father named after Wendell Phillips. Three children and a wife did not tend to a solution of the always difficult problem of family maintenance. The pressure of their needs upon the husband sometimes, simple as indeed they were owing to the good sense and prudence of Mrs. Garrison, seemed to exceed the weight of the atmospheric column to the square inch. The fight for bread was one of the bitterest battles of the reformer's life. The arrangement made in 1837, whereby the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society assumed the responsibility of the publication of the Liberator, Garrison rescinded at the beginning of 1838, for the sake of giving himself greater freedom in the advocacy in its columns of the several other reforms in which he had enlisted, besides Abolitionism. But Garrison and the paper were now widely recognized as anti-slavery essentials and indispensables. Many of the leaders of the movement perceived, as Gerritt Smith expressed it in a letter enclosing fifty dollars for the editor, that "Among the many things in which the Abolitionists of our country should be agreed, are the two following: (1) The Liberator must be sustained; (2) its editor must be kept above want; not only, nor mainly, for his own or his family's happiness; but that, having his own mind unembarrassed by the cares of griping poverty, he may be a more effective advocate of the cause of the Saviour's enslaved poor." A new arrangement, in accordance with this suggestion for the support of the paper and the preservation of the editor from want, was made in 1839, and its performance taken in charge by a committee of gentlemen, who undertook to raise the necessary funds for those objects. Thus it was that Garrison, through the wise and generous provision of friends, was enabled to augment the happiness of an increasing family, and at the same time add to his own effectiveness as an anti-slavery instrument.
Garrison found occasion soon after his return from the World's Convention for the employment of all his added effectiveness for continuing the moral movement against slavery. For what with the strife and schism in the anti-slavery ranks, followed by the excitements of the long Presidential canvass of 1840, wherein the great body of the Abolitionists developed an uncontrollable impulse to political action, some through the medium of the new Liberty party which had nominated James G. Birney for the Presidency, while others reverted to the two old parties with which they had formerly acted—what with all these causes the pure moral movement started by Garrison was in grave danger of getting abolished or at least of being reduced to a nullity in its influence upon public opinion. John A. Collins, the able and resourceful general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, wrote in the deepest anxiety to Garrison from New Bedford, September 1, 1840, on this head. Says he: "I really wish you understood perfectly the exact position the friends of the old organization hold to the two great political parties, and how generally they have been caught up in the whirlwind of political enthusiasm. Could you but go where I have been, and have seen and heard what I have seen and heard; could you see men—aye, and women, too—who have been and still are your warmest advocates, who have eschewed sectarianism, and lost their caste in the circle in which they moved, for their strong adherence to your views and measures, declare that they would sooner forego their Abolitionism than their party.... Now, these are not the views of here and there a straggling Abolitionist, but of seven-tenths of all the voting Abolitionists of the State.... They are entirely unconscious of the demoralizing influence of their course. They need light, warning, entreaty, and rebuke." Besides this demoralization of the Abolitionists, as described by Collins, the parent society at New York fell into bad financial straits. It was absolutely without funds, and without any means of supplying the lack. What should it do in its extremity but appeal to the Massachusetts Society which was already heavily burdened by its own load, the Liberator. The new organ of the national organization, The Anti-Slavery Standard, surely must not be allowed to fail for want of funds in this emergency. The Boston management rose to the occasion. Collins was sent to England in quest of contributions from the Abolitionists of Great Britain. But, great as was the need of money, the relief which it might afford would only prove temporary unless there could be effected a thorough anti-slavery revival. This was vital. And therefore to this end Garrison now bent his remarkable energies.
Agents, during this period when money was scarce, were necessarily few. But the pioneer proved a host in himself. Resigning the editorial charge of the Liberator into the capable hands of Edmund Quincy, Garrison itinerated in the rôle of an anti-slavery lecturer in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, reviving everywhere the languishing interest of his disciples. On the return of Collins in the summer of 1841, revival meetings and conventions started up with increased activity, the fruits of which were of a most cheering character. At Nantucket, Garrison made a big catch in his anti-slavery net. It was Frederick Douglass, young, callow, and awkward, but with his splendid and inimitable gifts flashing through all as he, for the first time in his life, addressed an audience of white people. Garrison, with the instinct of leadership, saw at once the value of the runaway slave's oratorical possibilities in their relations to the anti-slavery movement. It was at his instance that Collins added Douglass to the band of anti-slavery agents. The new agent has preserved his recollections of the pioneer's speech on that eventful evening in Nantucket. Says he: "Mr. Garrison followed me, taking me as his text; and now, whether I had made an eloquent plea in behalf of freedom or not, his was one never to be forgotten. Those who had heard him oftenest, and had known him longest, were astonished at his masterly effort. For the time he possessed that almost fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom attained, in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a single individuality, the orator swaying a thousand heads and hearts at once, and by the simple majesty of his all-controlling thought, converting his hearers into the express image of his own soul. That night there were, at least, a thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket!"
Here is another picture of Garrison in the lecture-field. It is from the pen of N.P. Rogers, with whom he was making a week's tour among the White Mountains, interspersing the same with anti-slavery meetings. At Plymouth, failing to procure the use of a church for their purpose, they fell back upon the temple not made with hands.
"Semi-circular seats, backed against a line of magnificent trees to accommodate, we should judge, from two to three hundred," Rogers narrates, "were filled, principally with women, and the men who could not find seats stood on the green sward on either hand; and, at length, when wearied with standing, seated themselves on the ground. Garrison, mounted on a rude platform in front, lifted up his voice and spoke to them in prophet tones and surpassing eloquence, from half-past three till I saw the rays of the setting sun playing through the trees on his head.... They (the auditory) heeded it not any more than he, but remained till he ended, apparently indisposed to move, though some came from six, eight, and even twelve miles distance." So bravely prospered the revival agitation, under the vigorous preaching of the indomitable pioneer.
In the midst of the growing activities of the revival season of the anti-slavery movement, Garrison had some personal experiences of a distressing nature. One of these was the case of his quondam friend and partner in the publication of the Liberator, Isaac Knapp. He, poor fellow, was no longer the publisher of the paper. His wretched business management of his department tended to keep the Liberator in a state of chronic financial embarrassment. When the committee, who assumed charge of the finances of the paper, took hold of the problem, they determined to let Knapp go. He was paid $150 or $175 as a quid pro quo for his interest in the Liberator. Unfortunate in the business of a publisher, he was yet more unfortunate in another respect. He had become a victim of intemperance. His inebriety increased upon him, accelerated, no doubt, by his business failure. Notwithstanding Garrison's strong and tender friendship for Knapp, the broken man came to regard him as an enemy, and showed in many ways his jealousy and hatred of his old friend and partner. Very painful was this experience to the pioneer.
An experience which touched Garrison more nearly arose out of the sad case of his brother James, who, the reader will recall, ran away from his mother in Baltimore and went to sea. He ultimately enlisted in the United States Navy, and what with the brutalities which he suffered at the hands of his superiors, by way of discipline, and with those of his own uncontrolled passions and appetites, he was, when recovered by his brother William, a total moral and physical wreck. But the prodigal was gathered to the reformer's heart, and taken to his home where in memory of a mother long dead, whose darling was James, he was nursed and watched over with deep and pious love. There were sad lapses of the profligate man even in the sanctuary of his brother's home. The craving for liquor was omnipotent in the wretched creature, and he was attacked by uncontrollable desire for drink. But William's patience was infinite, and his yearning and pity at such times were as sweet and strong as a mother's. Death rung the curtain down in the fall of 1842, on this miserable life with its sorry and pathetic scenes.
About this time a trial of a different sort fell to the lot of Garrison to endure. The tongue of detraction was never more busy with his alleged infidel doctrines or to more damaging effect. Collins, in England, seeking to obtain contributions for the support of the agitation in America found Garrison's infidelity the great lion in the way of success. Even the good dispositions of the venerable Clarkson were affected by the injurious reports in this regard, circulated in England mainly by Nathaniel Colver, a narrow and violent sectary of the Baptist denomination of the United States. It was, of course, painful to Garrison to feel that he had become a rock of offence in the path of the great movement, which he had started and to which he was devoting himself so energetically. To Elizabeth Pease, one of the noblest of the English Abolitionists, and one of his stanchest transatlantic friends, he defended himself against the false and cruel statements touching his religious beliefs. "I esteem the Holy Scriptures," he wrote her, "above all other books in the universe, and always appeal to 'the law and the testimony' to prove all my peculiar doctrines." His religious sentiments and Sabbatical views are almost if not quite identical with those held by the Quakers. "I believe in an indwelling Christ," he goes on to furnish a summary of his confession of faith, "and in His righteousness alone; I glory in nothing here below, save in Christ and in Him crucified; I believe all the works of the devil are to be destroyed, and Our Lord is to reign from sea to sea, even to the ends of the earth; and I profess to have passed from death unto life, and know by happy experience, that there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." These were the pioneer's articles of faith. Their extreme simplicity and theological conservatism it would seem ought to have satisfied the evangelicals of all denominations. They were in essentials thoroughly orthodox. But in the composition of the shibboleths of beliefs non-essentials as well as essentials enter, the former to the latter in the proportion of two to one. It is not surprising, therefore, that Garrison's essentials proved unequal to the test set up by sectarianism, inasmuch as his spiritual life dropped the aspirate of the non-essentials of religious forms and observances.
But the good man had his compensation as well as his trials. Such of a very noble kind was the great Irish address brought over from Ireland by Remond in December 1841. It was signed by Daniel O'Connell, Father Mathew, and sixty thousand Roman Catholics of Ireland, who called upon the Irish Roman Catholics of America to make the cause of the slaves of the United States their cause. Large expectations of Irish assistance in the anti-slavery agitation were excited in the bosoms of Abolitionists by this imposing appeal. Garrison shared the high hopes of its beneficent influence upon the Ireland of America, with many others. Alas! for the "best laid schemes of mice and men," for the new Ireland was not populated with saints, but a fiercely human race who had come to their new home to better their own condition, not that of the negro. Hardly had they touched these shores before they were Americanized in the colorphobia sense, out-Heroded Herod in hatred of the colored people and their anti-slavery friends. Indeed, it was quite one thing to preach Abolitionism with three thousand miles of sea-wall between one and his audience, and quite another to rise and do the preaching with no sea-wall to guard the preacher from the popular consequences of his preaching, as Father Mathew quickly perceived and reduced to practice eight years later, when he made his memorable visit to this country. In vain was the monster document unrolled in Faneuil Hall, and many Abolitionists with Irish blood were put forward to sweep the chords of Erin's heart, and to conjure by their eloquence the disciples of St. Patrick to rally under the banner of freedom. There was no response, except the response of bitter foes. Erin's harp vibrated to no breeze which did not come out of the South. The slave-power had been erected into patron saint by the new Ireland in America, and the new Ireland in America was very well content with his saintship's patronage and service. Thus it happened that the great expectations, which were excited by the Irish address, were never realized. But the pioneer had other fish in his net, had, in fact, meanwhile, got himself in readiness for a launch into a new and startling agitation. As to just what this new and startling agitation was we must refer the reader to the next chapter.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PIONEER MAKES A NEW AND STARTLING DEPARTURE.
When Garrison hoisted the banner of immediate emancipation he was over-confident of success through the instrumentality of the church. It did not enter his heart to conceive that after he had delivered his message touching the barbarism of slavery that a church calling itself Christian, or that a ministry arrogating to itself the character of the Christ, could possibly say him nay. But he learned sadly enough the utter folly of such expectations. For from pew and pulpit the first stones were hurled against him, and the most cruel and persistent opposition and persecution issued. Then as the movement which he had started advanced, he saw how it was, why the church had played him false and the cause of freedom. It was because the poison of slavery which the evil one had injected into the nation's arteries had corrupted the springs of justice and mercy in that body. The Church was not free, it, too, was in bonds to slavery, how then could it help to free the slaves? That was the reason that pulpit and pew cried out against him and persecuted him. It was not they but the slave despotism, which ruled them, which wrought its fell purpose within them.
If the reformer cast his eyes about him for other help it was the same; the slime of the serpent was upon State as well as Church. Both of the two great political parties were bound hands and feet, and given over to the will of the slave tyranny. In all departments of Government, State and National, the positive, all-powerful principle was slavery. Its dread nolo me tangere had forced Congress into the denial of the right of petition, and into the imposition of a gag upon its own freedom of debate. It was the grand President-maker, and the judiciary bent without a blush to do its service. What, then, in these circumstances could the friends of freedom hope to achieve? The nation had been caught in the snare of slavery, and was in Church and State helpless in the vast spider-like web of wrong. The more the reformer pondered the problem, the more hopeless did success look under a Constitution which united right and wrong, freedom and slavery. As his reflections deepened, the conviction forced its way into his mind that the Union was the strong tower of the slave-power, which could never be destroyed until the fortress which protected it was first utterly demolished. In the spring of 1842 the pioneer was prepared to strike into this new path to effect his purpose.
"We must dissolve all connection with those murderers of fathers," he wrote his brother-in-law, "and murderers of mothers, and murderers of liberty, and traffickers of human flesh, and blasphemers against the Almighty at the South. What have we in common with them? What have we gained? What have we not lost by our alliance with them? Are not their principles, their pursuits, their policies, their interests, their designs, their feelings, utterly diverse from ours? Why, then, be subject to their dominion? Why not have the Union dissolved in form as it is in fact, especially if the form gives ample protection to the slave system, by securing for it all the physical force of the North? It is not treason against the cause of liberty to cry, "Down with every slave-holding Union!" Therefore, I raise that cry. And O that I had a voice louder than a thousand thunders, that it might shake the land and electrify the dead—the dead in sin, I mean—those slain by the hand of slavery."
A few weeks later the first peal of this thunder broke upon the startled ears of the country through the columns of the Liberator. The May meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society was drawing near, and the reformer, now entirely ready to enter upon an agitation looking to the dissolution of the Union, suggested "the duty of making the REPEAL OF THE UNION between the North and the South the grand rallying point until it be accomplished, or slavery cease to pollute our soil. We are for throwing all the means, energies, actions, purposes, and appliances of the genuine friends of liberty and republicanism into this one channel," he goes on to announce, "and for measuring the humanity, patriotism, and piety of every man by this one standard. This question can no longer be avoided, and a right decision of it will settle the controversy between freedom and slavery." The stern message of Isaiah to the Jews, beginning, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men that rule this people. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with DEATH and with HELL are we at agreement," seemed to the American Isaiah to describe exactly the character of the National Constitution. "Slavery is a combination of DEATH and HELL," he declares, with righteous wrath, "and with it the North have made a covenant, and are at agreement. As an element of the Government it is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. As a component part of the Union, it is necessarily a national interest. Divorced from Northern protection, it dies; with that protection it enlarges its boundaries, multiplies its victims, and extends its ravages."
The announcement of this new radicalism caused a sensation. Many genuine Garrisonian Abolitionists recoiled from a policy of disunion. Lydia Maria Child and James S. Gibbon of the Executive Committee of the National Society hastened to disavow for the society all responsibility for the disunion sentiment of the editor of the Liberator. His new departure seemed to them "foreign to the purpose for which it was organized." Like all new ideas, it was a sword-bearer, and proved a decided disturber of the peace. The Union-loving portion of the free States had never taken to the Abolition movement, for the reason that it tended to disturb the stability of their idol. But now the popular hatred of Abolitionism was intensified by the avowal of a distinct purpose on the part of its leader to labor for the separation of the sections. The press of the North made the most of this design to render altogether odious the small band of moral reformers, to reduce to a nullity their influence upon public opinion.
Notwithstanding its rejection by James Gibbons and Lydia Maria Child the new idea of the dissolution of the Union, as an anti-slavery object, found instant favor with many of the leading Abolitionists, like Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Parker Pillsbury, Stephen S. Foster and Abby Kelley. At the anniversary meeting of the American Society in 1842, the subject was mooted, and, although there was no official action taken, yet it was apparent that a majority of the delegates were favorable to its adoption as the sentiment of the society.
The ultimate object of Garrison was the abolition of slavery. Disunion led directly to this goal, therefore he planted his feet in that way. But while he shot the agitation at a distant mark, he did not mean to miss less remote results. There was remarkable method in his madness. He agitated the question of the dissolution of the Union "in order that the people of the North might be induced to reflect upon their debasement, guilt, and danger in continuing in partnership with heaven-daring oppressors, and thus be led to repentance."
The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting in January, 1843 "dissolved the Union," wrote Quincy to R.D. Webb, "by a handsome vote, after a warm debate. The question was afterward reconsidered and passed in another shape, being wrapped up by Garrison in some of his favorite Old Testament Hebraisms by way of vehicle, as the apothecaries say." This is the final shape which Garrison's "favorite Old Testament Hebraisms" gave to the action of the society:
"Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell—involving both parties in atrocious criminality—and should be immediately annulled."
At its tenth anniversary, in 1844, the American Society resolved likewise that there should be no Union with slaveholders; and in May of the same year the New England Society voted by a large majority to dissolve the 'covenant with death, and the agreement with hell.' Almost the whole number of the Garrisonian Abolitionists had by this time placed upon their banner of immediate emancipation the revolutionary legend "No Union with slaveholders." Cathago est delenda were now ever on the lips of the pioneer. 'The Union it must and shall be destroyed' became the beginning, the middle, and the end of all his utterances on the slavery question.
The attitude of the anti-slavery disunionists to the Government which they were seeking to overthrow was clearly stated by Francis Jackson in a letter returning to the Governor of Massachusetts his commission as a justice of the peace. Says he, "To me it appears that the vices of slavery, introduced into the constitution of our body politic by a few slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of our National Government that literally there is no health in it. The only remedy that I can see for the disease is to be found in the dissolution of the patient.... Henceforth it (the Constitution) is dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it, and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly declaring that, while I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no compact which helps to rob any other man of his."
The Abolition agitation for the dissolution of the Union was assisted not a little by sundry occurrences of national importance. The increasing arrogance and violence of the South in Congress on all matters relating to the subject of slavery was one of these occurrences. Freedom of debate and the right of petition, Southern intolerance had rendered well nigh worthless in the National Legislature. In this way the North, during several months in every year, was forced to look at the reverse and the obverse faces, of the Union. These object-lessons taught many minds, no doubt, to count the cost which the preservation of the Union entailed upon the free States—"to reflect upon their debasement, guilt, and danger" in their partnership with slaveholders. Another circumstance which induced to this kind of reflection was the case of George Latimer, who was seized as a fugitive slave in Boston in the autumn of 1842. From beginning to end the Latimer case revealed how completely had Massachusetts tied her own hands as a party to the original compact with slavery whose will was the supreme law of the land. In obedience to this supreme law Chief-Justice Shaw refused to the captive the writ of habeas corpus, and Judge Story granted the owner possession of the fugitive, and time to procure evidence of his ownership. But worse still Massachusetts officials and one of her jails were employed to aid in the return of a man to slavery. This degradation aroused the greatest indignation in the State and led to the enactment of a law prohibiting its officials from taking part in the return of fugitive slaves, and the use of its jails and prisons for their detention. The passage of this personal liberty measure served to increase the activity of the anti-Union working forces in the South.
Then, again, the serious difficulty between Massachusetts and two of the slave States in regard to their treatment of her colored seamen aided Garrison in his agitation for the dissolution of the Union by the keen sense of insult and injury which the trouble begat and left upon the popular mind. Colored men in Massachusetts enjoyed a fair degree of equality before her laws, were endowed with the right to vote, and were, barring the prejudice against color, treated by the commonwealth as citizens. They were employed in the merchant service of her interstate trade. But at two of the Southern ports where her vessels entered, the colored seamen were seized by the local police and confined in houses of detention until the vessels to which they belonged were ready to depart, when they were released and allowed to join the vessels. This was a most outrageous proceeding, outrageous to the colored men who were thus deprived of their liberty, outrageous also to the owners of the vessels who were deprived of the service of their employés. Of what avail was the constitutional guaranty that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States", many men began to question? The South was evidently disposed to support only that portion of the national compact which sustained the slave system, all the rest upon occasion it trampled on and nullified. This lesson was enforced anew upon Massachusetts by the affair of her colored seamen. Unable to obtain redress of the wrong done her citizens, the State appointed agents to go to Charleston and New Orleans and test the constitutionality of the State laws under which the local authorities had acted. But South Carolina and Louisiana, especially the former, to whom Samuel Hoar was accredited, evinced themselves quite equal to the exigency to which the presence of the Massachusetts agents gave rise. To cut a long story short, these gentlemen, honored citizens of a sister State, and covered with the ægis of the Constitution, found that they could make no success of the business which they had in hand, found indeed that as soon as that business was made public that they stood in imminent peril of their lives. Whereupon, wisely conceiving discretion to be the better part of valor, they beat a hasty retreat back to their native air. The Massachusetts agents were driven out of Charleston and New Orleans. Where was the sacred and glorious union between Massachusetts and South Carolina and Louisiana that such things were possible—were constantly occurring? The circumstance made a strong impression on the State whose rights were thus grossly violated. It helped to convert Massachusetts to its later opposition to slavery, and to make its public sentiment more tolerant of the Garrisonian opposition to the covenant with death and the agreement with hell. To the agitation growing out of the scheme for the annexation of Texas must, however, be ascribed the premium among all the anti-Union working facts and forces of the first few years after Garrison and his coadjutors had raised the cry of "No union with slaveholders." This agitation renewed the intensity and sectionalism of the then almost forgotten struggle over the admission of Missouri nearly a quarter of a century before, and which was concluded by the Missouri compromise. This settlement was at the time considered quite satisfactory to the South. But Calhoun took an altogether different view of the matter twenty years later. The arrangement by which the South was excluded from the upper portion of the Louisiana Territory he came to regard as a cardinal blunder on the part of his section. The fact is that within those two decades the slave-holding had been completely outstripped by the non-slave-holding States in wealth, population, and social growth. The latter had obtained over the former States an indisputable supremacy in those respects. Would not the political balance settle also in the natural order of things in the Northern half of the Union unless it could be kept where it then was to the south of Mason and Dixon's line by an artificial political make-weight. This artificial political make-weight was nothing less than the acquisition of new slave territory to supply the demand for new slave States. Texas, with the territorial dimensions of an empire, answered the agrarian needs of the slave system. And the South, under the leadership of Calhoun, determined to make good their fancied loss in the settlement of the Missouri controversy by annexing Texas.
But all the smouldering dread of slave domination, all the passionate opposition to the extension of slavery, to the acquisition of new slave territory and the admission of new slave States, awoke hotly in the heart of the North. "No more slave territory." "No more slave States," resounded during this crisis, through the free States. "Texas or disunion," was the counter cry which reverberated through the slave States. Even Dr. Channing, who had no love for Garrison or his anti-slavery ultraism, was so wrought upon by the scheme for the annexation of Texas as to profess his preference for the dissolution of the Union, "rather than receive Texas into the Confederacy." "This measure, besides entailing on us evils of all sorts," the doctor boldly pointed out, "would have for its chief end to bring the whole country under the slave-power, to make the general Government the agent of slavery; and this we are bound to resist at all hazards. The free States should declare that the very act of admitting Texas will be construed as a dissolution of the Union."
The Northern blood was at fever heat, and an unwonted defiance of consequences, a fierce contempt of ancient political bugaboos marked the utterances of men erstwhile timid of speech upon all questions relating to slavery. In the anti-Texas convention held in Faneuil Hall January 29, 1845, all this timidity disappeared in the presence of the new peril. It was not a convention of Abolitionists, although Garrison was a member, but of politicians, mostly of the Whig party. "The anti-slavery spirit of the convention," wrote Edmund Quincy to R.D. Webb, "was surprising. The address and the speeches of the gentlemen, not Abolitionists, were such as caused Garrison to be mobbed ten years ago, and such as we thought thorough three or four years ago. There were no qualifications, or excuses, or twaddle."
Garrison flung himself into the anti-Texas movement with all his customary force and fire. Elected a delegate to the Faneuil Hall Convention by the influence of Francis Jackson, he took a leading part in its proceedings, "created the most stir in the whole matter," Wendell Phillips thought. Charles Sumner, who heard him speak for the first time, was struck with his "natural eloquence," and described his words as falling "in fiery rain." Again at a mass meeting for Middlesex County, held at Concord, to consider the aggressions of the slave-power, did the words of the pioneer fall "in fiery rain." Apprehensive that the performance of Massachusetts, when the emergency arose, would fall far short of her protestations, he exclaimed, "I have nothing to say, sir, nothing. I am tired of words, tired of hearing strong things said, where there is no heart to carry them out. When we are prepared to state the whole truth, and die for it, if necessary—when, like our fathers, we are prepared to take our ground, and not shrink from it, counting not our lives dear unto us—when we are prepared to let all earthly hopes go back to the board—then let us say so; till then, the less we say the better, in such an emergency as this. 'But who are we, will men ask.' that talk of such things? 'Are we enough to make a revolution?' No, sir; but we are enough to begin one, and, once begun, it never can be turned back. I am for revolution were I utterly alone. I am there because I must be there. I must cleave to the right. I cannot choose but obey the voice of God.
" ... Do not tell me of our past Union, and for how many years we have been one. We were only one while we were ready to hunt, shoot down, and deliver up the slave, and allow the slave-power to form an oligarchy on the floor of Congress! The moment we say no to this, the Union ceases—the Government falls."
The Texan struggle terminated in the usual way, in the triumph of the slave-power. Texas was annexed and admitted into the sisterhood of States, giving to the Southern section increased slave representation in both branches of Congress, and thereby aiding to fasten, what at the moment appeared to be its permanent domination in national affairs. As Garrison had apprehended, the performance of the North fell far short of its protestations when the crisis came. It swallowed all its brave words, and collapsed into feeble and disheartened submission to its jubilant and hitherto invincible antagonist. The whole North except the small and irrepressible band of Garrisonian Abolitionists were cast down by the revulsive wave of this disastrous event. Writing to his friend Webb, Garrison discourses thus upon the great defeat: "Apparently the slave-holding power has never been so strong, has never seemed to be so invincible, has never held such complete mastery over the whole, has never so successfully hurled defiance at the Eternal and Just One, as at the present time; and yet never has it in reality been so weak, never has it had so many uncompromising assailants, never has it been so filled with doubt and consternation, never has it been so near its downfall, as at this moment. Upon the face of it, this statement looks absurdly paradoxical; but it is true, nevertheless. We are groping in thick darkness; but it is that darkest hour which is said to precede the dawn of day."