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ABOLITION SOCIETIES IN THE SOUTH.

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cipator in Tennessee, died, and Lundy | second meeting adjourned, an antiwas urged to go thither, unite the Slavery society was formed; and he two journals, and print them himself proceeded to hold fifteen or twenty from the materials of The Emancipa- similar meetings at other places withtor. He consented, and made the in that State. In one instance, he journey of eight hundred miles, one- spoke at a house-raising; in another, half on foot and the rest by water. at a militia muster. Here an antiAt Jonesborough, he learned the art Slavery society of fourteen members of printing, and was soon issuing a was thereupon formed, with the capweekly newspaper beside The Genius, tain of the militia company for its and a monthly agricultural work. He President. One of his meetings was removed his family a few months later, held at Raleigh, the capital. Before and East Tennessee was thencefor- he had left the State, he had organward his home for nearly three years, ized twelve or fourteen Abolition Soduring which The Genius of Univer- cieties. He continued his journey sal Emancipation was the only distinc- through Virginia, holding several tively and exclusively anti-Slavery pe- meetings, and organizing societies— riodical issued in the United States, of course, not very numerous, nor constantly increasing in circulation composed of the most influential perand influence. And, though often sons. It is probable that his Quaker threatened with personal assault, and brethren supplied him with introduconce shut up in a private room with tions from place to place, and that two ruffians, who undertook to bully his meetings were held at the points him into some concession by a flour- where violent opposition was least ish of deadly weapons, he was at no likely to be offered. time subjected to mob violence or legal prosecution.

In the winter of 1823-4, the first American Convention for the Abolition of Slavery was held in Philadelphia; and Lundy made the journey of six hundred miles and back on purpose to attend it. During his tour, he decided on transferring his establishment to Baltimore; and, in the summer of 1824, knapsack on shoulder, he set out on foot for that city. On the way, he delivered, at Deep Creek, North Carolina, his first public address against Slavery. He spoke in a beautiful grove, near the Friends' meeting-house at that place, directly after divine worship; and the audience were so well satisfied that they invited him to speak again, in their place of worship. Before this

He reached Baltimore about the 1st of October, and issued on the 10th No. 1 of Volume IV. of the "Genius," which continued to be well sup-.. ported, though receiving little encou-ragement from Baltimore itself. A year afterward, it began to be issued. weekly.

Lundy visited Hayti in the latter part of 1825, in order to make ar rangements there for the reception of a number of slaves, whose masters. were willing to emancipate them on condition of their removal from the country-in fact, were not allowed,, by the laws of their respective States, to free them otherwise. Being detained longer than he had expected, he was met, on his return to Baltimore, with tidings of the death of his wife, after giving birth to twins, and!

hastened to his dwelling to find it en- | Poughkeepsie, Albany,' Lockport,

tirely deserted, his five children having been distributed among his

friends. In that hour of intense affliction, he renewed his solemn vow to devote his entire energies to the cause of the slave, and to efforts designed to awaken his countrymen to a sense of their responsibility and their danger. In 1828, he traveled eastward, lecturing and soliciting subscribers to his "Genius," and calling, in New York, on Arthur Tappan, William Goodell, and other antiSlavery men. At Boston, he could hear of no Abolitionists, but made the acquaintance, at his boarding house, of WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, a fellow-boarder, whose attention had not previously been drawn to the Slavery question, but who readily embraced his views. He visited successively most of the clergymen of Boston, and induced eight of them, belonging to various sects, to meet him. All of them, on explanation, approved his labors, and subscribed for his periodical; and, in the course of a few days, they aided him to hold an anti-Slavery meeting, which was largely attended. At the close of his remarks, several clergymen expressed a general concurrence in his views. He extended his journey to New Hampshire and Maine, lecturing where he could, and obtaining some encouragement. He spoke also in the principal towns of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut; and, on his homeward route, traversed the State of New York, speaking at

9 Lundy's brief journal of this tour has been preserved; and, next to an entry running-"On the 25th I arrived at Northampton, Mass., after 9 o'clock in the evening, and called at three taverns before I could get lodgings or polite treatment"-we find the following:

Utica, and Buffalo, reaching Baltimore late in October.

Lundy made at least one other visit to Hayti, to colonize emancipated slaves; was beaten nearly to death in Baltimore by a slave-trader, on whose conduct he had commented in terms which seemed disrespectful to the profession; was flattered by the judge's assurance, when the trader came to be tried for the assault, that "he [L.] had got nothing more than he deserved;" and he made two long journeys through Texas, to the Mexican departments across the Rio Grande, in quest of a suitable location on which to plant a colony of freed blacks from the United States, but without success. He traveled in good part on foot, observing the strictest economy, and supporting himself by working at saddlery and harness-mending, from place to place, as circumstances required. Meantime, he had been compelled to remove his paper from Baltimore to Washington; and finally (in 1836), to Philadelphia, where it was entitled The National Inquirer, and at last merged into The Pennsylvania Freeman. His colonizing enterprise took him to Monclova, Comargo, Monterey, Matamoras, and Victoria, in Mexico, and consumed the better part of several years, closing in 1835. He also made a visit to the settlements in Canada, of fugitives from American Slavery, to inquire into the welfare of their inhabitants. On the 17th of May,

"September 6th-At Albany, I made some acquaintances. Philanthropists are the slowest creatures breathing. They think forty times before they act."

There is reason to fear that the little Quaker was a 'fanatic.'

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

He

1838, at the burning by a mob of Pennsylvania Hall-built by Abolitionists, because they could be heard in no other—his little property, consisting mainly of papers, books, clothes, etc., which had been collected in one of the rooms of that Hall, with a view to his migration westward, was totally destroyed. In July, he started for Illinois, where his children then resided, and reached them in the September following. planted himself at Lowell, La Salle county, gathered his offspring about him, purchased a printing-office, and renewed the issues of his "Genius." But in August, 1839, he was attacked by a prevailing fever, of which he died on the 22d of that month, in the 51st year of his age. Thus closed the record of one of the most heroic, devoted, unselfish, courageous lives, that has ever been lived on this continent.10

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, born in obscurity and indigence, at Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1805, and educated a printer, after having tried his boyish hand at shoe-making, woodsawing, and cabinet-making, started The Free Press, in his native place, directly upon attaining his majority; but Newburyport was even then a slow old town, and his enterprise soon proved unsuccessful. He migrated to Boston, worked a few months as a journeyman printer, and then became editor of The National Philanthropist, an organ of the Temperance movement. He left this early in 1828, to become editor, at Bennington, Vermont, of The Journal of the Times, a "National Republican" gazette, and about the ablest and most interesting

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newspaper ever issued in that State. Though earnestly devoted to the reelection of John Quincy Adams, as President, it gave a hearty support to the Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and other Reform projects, and promoted the extensive circulation and signature of memorials to Congress, urging the banishment of Slavery from the District of Columbia. But its patronage was unequal to its merits; and, Mr. Adams having been defeated, its publication was soon afterward discontinued.

Mr. Garrison was, about this time, visited by Lundy, and induced to join him in the editorship of The Genius at Baltimore, whither he accordingly proceeded in the Autumn of 1829. Lundy had been a zealous supporter of Adams; and, under his auspices, a single Emancipation candidate for the Legislature had been repeatedly presented in Baltimore, receiving, at one election, more than nine hundred votes. Garrison, in his first issue, insisted on immediate and unconditional Emancipation as the right of the slave and the duty of the master, and disclaimed all temporizing, all make-shifts, all compromises, condemning Colonization, and everything else that involved or implied affiliation or sympathy with slaveholders. Having, at length, denounced the coastwise slave-trade between Baltimore and New Orleans as "domestic piracy," and stigmatized by name certain Baltimoreans concerned therein, he was indicted for "a gross and malicious libel" on those worthies, convicted, sentenced to pay fifty dollars' fine and costs, and, in default thereof, committed to jail. A judgment

10 Condensed from the "Life of Benjamin Lundy," by Thomas Earle.

in behalf of one of these aggrieved persons of $1,000 and costs was likewise obtained against him on a civil suit, but never enforced. He remained forty-nine days in prison, during which his case excited much sympathy, a protest against his incarceration having been issued by the Manumission Society of North Carolina. At length, the fine and costs were paid by Arthur Tappan, then a wealthy and generous New York merchant, who anticipated, by a few days, a similar act meditated by Henry Clay. Separating himself from Lundy and The Genius, Mr. Garrison now proposed the publication of an anti-Slavery organ in Washington City; but, after traveling and lecturing through the great cities, and being prevented by violence from speaking in Baltimore, he concluded to issue his journal from Boston instead of Washington; and the first number of The Liberator appeared accordingly on the 1st of January, 1830. It was, from the outset, as thorough-going as its editor; and its motto "Our Country is the World -Our Countrymen are all Mankind" -truly denoted its character and spirit. "No Union with slaveholders"

11 "The broadest and most far-sighted intellect is utterly unable to see the ultimate consequences of any great social change. Ask yourself, on all such occasions, if there be any element of right or wrong in the question, any principle of clear, natural justice, that turns the scale. If so, take your part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust God to see that it shall prove the expedient." Wendell Phillips's Speeches and Lectures, p. 18.

"The time has been when it was the duty of the reformer to show cause why he offered to disturb the quiet of the world. But, during the discussion of the many reforms which have been advocated, and which have more or less succeeded, one after another-freedom of the lower classes, freedom of food, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, reform in penal legislation, and a thousand other matters-it seems to me to have been proved conclusively, that govern

was adopted as a principle some years later; as was the doctrine that "The [Federal] Constitution is a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell." To wage against Slavery an uncompromising, unrelenting war, asking no quarter and giving none-to regard and proclaim the equal and inalienable rights of every innocent human being as inferior or subordinate to those of no other, and to repudiate all creeds, all alleged revelations, rituals, constitutions, governments, parties, politics, that reject, defy, or ignore this fundamental truth-such is and has been the distinctive idea of the numerically small, but able and thoroughly earnest class, known as "Garrisonians."" They for many years generally declined, and some of them still decline, to vote, deeming the Government and all parties so profoundly corrupted by Slavery, that no one could do so without dereliction from principle and moral defilement. And, though the formal and definitive separation did not take place till 1839, the alienation between the Garrisonians and the larger number of AntiSlavery men had long been decided and irremediable. A very few years,

It

ment commenced in usurpation and oppression; that liberty and civilization, at present, are nothing else than the fragments of rights which the scaffold and the stake have wrung from the strong hands of the usurpers. Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake. would hardly be exaggeration to say, that all the great truths relating to society and government have been first heard in the solemn protests of martyred patriotism, or the loud cries of crushed and starving labor. The law has been always wrong."-Ibid., p. 14.

"An intelligent democracy says of Slavery as of a church, 'This is justice and that iniquity.' The track of God's thunderbolt is a straight line from one to the other, and the Church or State that cannot stand it, must get out of the way."Ibid., p. 267.

THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.

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dating from 1832-3, when the New | Slavery, refused either to withhold England and the American AntiSlavery Societies were formed respectively, sufficed to segregate the American opponents of Slavery into four general divisions, as follows:

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1. The "Garrisonians" aforesaid. 2. The members of the "Liberty party," who, regarding the Federal Constitution as essentially anti-Slavery, swore with good conscience to uphold it, and supported only candidates who were distinctively, determinedly, pre-eminently, champions of "Liberty for all.”

3. Various small sects and parties, which occupied a middle ground between the above positions; some of the sects agreeing with the latter in interpreting and revering the Bible as consistently anti-Slavery, while refusing, with the former, to vote.

4. A large and steadily increasing class who, though decidedly anti

their votes, or to throw them away on candidates whose election was impossible, but persisted in voting, at nearly every election, so as to effect good and prevent evil to the extent of their power.

An artful and persistent ignoring of all distinction between these classes, and thus covering Abolitionists indiscriminately with odium, as hostile to Christianity and to the Constitution, was long the most effective weapon in the armory of their common foes. Thousands, whose consciences and hearts would naturally have drawn them to the side of humanity and justice, were repelled by vociferous representations that to do so would identify them with the "disunion" of Wendell Phillips, the "radicalism" of Henry C. Wright, and the "infidelity" of Pillsbury, Theodore Parker, and Garrison.

X.

THE CHURCHES AND SLAVERY.

We have seen that the Revolution- | deed, a religious opposition to Slaveary era and the Revolutionary spirit of our country were profoundly hostile to Slavery, and that they were not content with mere protests against an evil which positive efforts, determined acts, were required to remove. Before the Revolution, in

ry, whereof the society of Christian Friends or Quakers were the pioneers, had been developed both in the mother country and in her colonies. George Fox, the first Quaker, bore earnest testimony, so early as 1671, on the occasion of his visit to

but the ultimate causes of the rupture were

12 Sundry differences respecting "Woman's Rights"-whereof the Garrisonians were stanch | deeper than these. As a body, the Garrisonians

asserters and other incidental questions, were the immediate causes of the rupture between the Garrisonians and the political Abolitionists, whereby the American Anti-Slavery Society was convulsed by the secession of the latter in 1840;

were regarded as radical in politics and heterodox in theology; and the more Orthodox, conservative, and especially the clerical Abolitionists, increasingly disliked the odium incited by the sweeping utterances of the Garrisonian leaders.

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