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William Lloyd Garrison: Deliverance from Slavery

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William Lloyd Garrison: Deliverance from Slavery WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON: DELIVERANCE FROM SLAVERY Mariana Antonio Serrano NATIONAL HISTORY DAY February 4, 2020 Word Count: 2238 "My name is 'LIBERATOR'! I propose/ to hurl my shafts at freedom's deadliest foes!/ My task is hard-for I am charged to save/ Man from his brother!-to redeem the slave!"1 With these opening words on January 1, 1831, the very first issue of the abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, was published in Boston, Massachusetts at No.6 Merchants Hall, "at the corner of Walter and Congress streets" 2 . This paper would circulate around the United States to 3000 subscribers and to many more readers,3 bearing on the front page of every issue its motto," Our country is the world-our countrymen are mankind."4 This newspaper ultimately triumphed in spreading the abolitionist fire to the masses. The intense zeal that William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator , held for the cause of the immediate abolition of slavery was the key to his success as an abolitionist . How did William Lloyd Garrison impact the abolitionist movement? William Lloyd Garrison kept the abolitionist movement prosperous despite damaging failures by way of the publication of The Liberator, correspondence with other abolitionist groups, and by standing firm, though the very same abolitionists he worked with disagreed with his "radical" viewpoint on abolitionism, because he was insistent on not telling a part of the truth of the immorality of slavery, but the whole truth. Garrison's beginnings as an abolitionist were rooted in his childhood and adolescence. Frances, his mother, a strongly religious woman, was the source of Garrison's strong belief that 1 W illiam Lloyd Garrison, "Salutation ," The Liberator , Vol. 1, Issue 1, January 1, 1831. 2 Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, (New York: St. Martin's Press,1998),113. ; The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, "The Liberator", https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Liberator-American-newspaper,(Accessed November 12,2019). 3 Mayer,113. 4 Ibid, 447. 1 slavery was evil. 5 Garrison remembered what his mother taught him about religion and morals, especially about going into spiritual battle and of "deliverance". 6 Deliverance in this context for Garrison meant deliverance from sin, which is what he saw slavery as, which he stated clearly in a speech titled "No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery". 7 These religious lessons were present in the opening issue of The Liberator when he says that he will not draw help from political parties, but from religious organizations so he can defend "the great cause of human rights". 8 9 In the same issue, he wrote an original poem called "Universal Emancipation", where he speaks of the difficult fight for freedom of all persons. Garrison believed that not only was the emancipation of the enslaved populus important, but also the emancipatation of free blacks from a social kind of slavery, since most of The Liberator' s readers were free black men, Garrison realized their need. 10 People may have recognized that slavery itself was wrong, but still had a difficult time believing that these free blacks should also have equal rights as the white folk did. Thus, Frances Garrison's religious lessons carried into William Lloyd Garrison's career as an abolitionist. The second crucial event that would lead to Garrison's work as an abolitionist was his first successful job as a teenager at a newspaper in his hometown, Newburyport Herald. 11 He had an apprenticeship there that lasted seven years under Ephraim W. Allen. 12 Allen imparted much 5 "William Lloyd Garrison," B iography.com, A &E Networks Television, 19 June 2019, www.biography.com/writer/william-lloyd-garrison. 6 Mayer, 13. 7 B lackPast, “(1854) William Lloyd Garrison, ‘No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery’ •,” (1854) William Lloyd Garrison, "No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery" •, October 5, 2019, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1854-william-lloyd-garrison-no-compromise-evil-slavery/) 8 William Lloyd Garrison, "To the Public," T he Liberator , Vol. 1, Issue 1, January 1, 1831, 1. 9 Ibid, 1 10 11 Mayer, 23 12 "William Lloyd Garrison," Biography.com, A &E Networks Television, 19 June 2019, www.biography.com/writer/william-lloyd-garrison. 2 wisdom to the young apprentice about the newspaper business including, "the newspaper…'ought to be made the vehicle, and a most effective one, too, for disseminating literary, moral and religious instruction' " 13, and "...an independent press is the surest safeguard of freedom."1 4 Garrison must have remembered these words, for this is the reason he began publication of The Liberator, to tell readers about the truth of slavery. 15 Garrison, unlike his previous attempts at learning a trade, excelled in the art of journalism, and picked up the skills that would help him start his own newspaper. It was at Newbury Port where William Lloyd Garrison found his vocation for the newspaper business. 16 Thus, the culmination of Garrison's education and his experience are present in The Liberator. William Lloyd Garrison had a unique struggle in his fight against slavery, and that was that he held such radical opinions that even other abolitionists did not want to work with him or really even agree with him at all. He stated," I have found the minds of the people strangely indifferent to the subject of slavery. Their prejudices were invincible--stronger, if possible, than those of slaveholders." 17 Simply, that the hearts and minds of many people needed to be changed, a great task in of itself. The biggest obstacle was the amount of people that needed to be integrated into or saved by the abolitionist movement. The populus of enslaved people added up enormously. In a census done in 1860, the number of enslaved people was up to four million. 18 William Lloyd Garrison himself commented on these numbers," In this free and christian 13 Ibid, 27. 14 Ibid, 23 15 Garrison, "To the Public", 1. 16 Ibid, 27. 17 Willliam Lloyd Garrison, “William Lloyd Garrison on Slavery,” Digital History, accessed December 13, 2019, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=348) 18 Lincoln Mullen," These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States," 2014, Smithsonian.com, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/maps-reveal-slavery-expanded-across-united-states-180951452/ 3 republic, too, be it remembered, there were kidnapped during the past year, and reduced to remediless bondage, more than fifty thousand infants, the offspring of slave parents!!! A greater number, this year, is to meet a similar doom! Have we no reason to fear the judgments of Heaven upon our guilty land?" 19 With the abolitionists, they condemned Garrisons' radical idea of immediatism, as well as his relentless condemnation of slavery in his newspaper The Liberator.2 0 Immediatism is the idea that slavery should be ended promptly, and gradual abolitionism vouched for a slower route. 2 1 Garrison called for immediatism, though he knew that gradual abolitionism would win in the end.2 2 Most Northern abolitionists believed in gradual slavery. 23 He still held on to the hope that slavery would be abolished fairly quickly. He saw that immediate abolitionism would also be the immediate deliverance of the people of the sin of slavery," IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION alone can save her from the vengeance of Heaven, and cancel the debt of ages!" 24. His view on the abolition of slavery was seen as radical abolitionism, termed as "Garrisonian". 25 His abolitionism was so extreme and for a good reason too. It needed to be so that people would not want to accept it but go back and accept something that seemed radical, the abolition of slavery, and then slowly come to accept immediate abolitionism. In general, the divisive nature within the abolitionist movement was a real stumbling block for Garrison and his spread of his abolitionist ideas. 19 G arrison, "To the Public". 20 M ayer, 128. 21 B oundless US History, “From Gradualism to Abolitionism,” Lumen, Accessed February 4, 2020, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/anti-slavery-resistance-movements/. 22 M ayer, 129. 23 B oundless US History, “From Gradualism to Abolitionism,” Lumen, Accessed February 4, 2020, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/anti-slavery-resistance-movements/. 24 W illiam Lloyd Garrison, "The Insurrection," The Liberator, Vol. 1, Issue 36, September 3, 1831. 25 Mayer, 129. 4 Those at work in the legislature also hindered progress. Politicians were very taboo on the whole subject of slavery, since it was what was literally tearing the nation apart. Many politicians were only involved on the condition that they would not be asked to discuss slavery, for fear of losing votes. 26 William Lloyd Garrison agreed with them in the sense that there was no way he would be able to entrust such a sensitive and complicated topic as slavery was to a group of people that he believed were in need of serious moral reform.2 7 Part of this included the Constitution. Garrison viewed the Constitution as pro-slavery. He even went so far as to burn a copy of it saying,"So perish all compromises with tyranny." 28 What this statement of Garrison is really saying is that he believes that the Constitution was oppressive, as slavery is a tyrannical relationship between slave and master. Again, here he illustrates how he distrusts the government in matters of slavery, especially in the way the government handled the situation. In the Constitution, there is no outright condemnation of slavery 29. The words "slave" or "slavery" are not in the text on purpose.3 0 A slave voter counts as "three-fifths" of a free man 31.
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