William Lloyd Garrison William Lloyd Garrison Family Life

William Lloyd Garrison

by Julie L. Holcomb

William Lloyd Garrison the radical abolitionist was described equally "a storied, troubling, challenging, profoundly important and controversial effigy."

In Baronial 2005, nearly two hundred descendants of William Lloyd Garrison gathered in Boston, Massachusetts, for a three-twenty-four hour period reunion to explore the life and legacy of the American abolitionist. This was no ordinary family reunion. The issue had been timed to coincide with the bicentennial anniversary of the abolitionist'southward birth. And the Garrison family unit was joined by several distinguished scholars, including David West. Blight and Lois Brownish, who made major presentations at the bookish briefing hosted past the family unit. Such an event is testimony to the impact and the continuing legacy of the radical abolitionist who was described by Blight as "a storied, troubling, challenging, profoundly of import and controversial figure."^[one]

William Lloyd Garrison was born December 12, 1805, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the fourth kid of Francis Maria Lloyd and Abijah Garrison. The Garrisons were recent immigrants to Newburyport from the British colony of New Brunswick, in present-mean solar day Canada. In 1808, Garrison's father, who had struggled with unemployment and alcoholism, abased the family. A devout Baptist, Garrison's mother seldom spoke of her absent hubby and, in many ways, attempted to remove his banner on the family. Frances Garrison moved frequently in this menstruation in search of piece of work as a domestic servant, leaving William to alive with friends. William attended schoolhouse infrequently, often working odd jobs to help his female parent support the family unit, peculiarly later his older brother James left the family to get to sea. William spent at least seven years living autonomously from his mother.

Despite this impoverished, rootless lifestyle, William Lloyd Garrison was securely influenced by his mother's all-consuming Baptist organized religion. Garrison grew into adulthood in an environs of religious revivalism commonly referred to as the Second Keen Awakening.^[ii] He was inspired by the preaching of revivalist ministers Lyman Beecher and Charles Grandison Finney who exhorted their followers to seek a more personal relationship with God. Beecher, Finney, and other evangelicals claimed sin was the result of poor choices made past men and women who possessed gratis will and could choose otherwise. These evangelical influences had a profound and lasting effect on Garrison. He, forth with many other agreeing abolitionists, emphasized the primacy of moral suasion in the fight against slavery. Moral suasion referred to the idea that the hearts and minds of men and women must be changed offset. Only later on this change of center could laws or political structures change.

After serving brief stints as an apprentice first to a shoemaker and and so to a cabinetmaker, Garrison constitute his truthful calling when he was apprenticed to Ephraim W. Allen, owner and editor of the Newburyport Herald in 1818. In 1826, with funds borrowed from his former employer, Garrison acquired the Newburyport Essex Courant, which he renamed the Newburyport Gratuitous Printing. That publication lasted only six months. In Jan 1828, Garrison accepted editorial responsibility for the Boston-based National Philanthropist. Iii months later, Garrison met Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker and publisher of the anti-slavery paper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, while Lundy toured Boston seeking funds for his paper.

In Benjamin Lundy, Garrison found a genuinely radical abolitionist mentor. In the 1820s, Lundy traveled the anti-slavery lecture excursion and used his paper to denounce the evils of slaveholding. He supported gradual emancipation and limited colonization schemes in Haiti and Texas, only he did not support the American Colonization Society (ACS), which had been established in 1817 to promote the establishment of an American colony in Africa for freed slaves and gratis blacks. Supporters of the ACS linked the potential for slave defection to the presence of a large gratuitous black population, claiming slaveholders would be encouraged to free their slaves if those freed slaves were sent to Africa. Colonizationists too claimed emigration to Africa would resolve racial problems and provide racial uplift. African Americans, colonizationists argued, could never attain equality in a white society. Initially, some black abolitionists supported the ACS. However, many abolitionists, regardless of race, came to believe that the ACS was anti-black rather than anti-slavery. Lundy supported colonization not because he distrusted costless blacks. Rather Lundy supported colonization considering he believed it would speed the abolition of slavery.

This shared interest in anti-slavery brought Garrison and Lundy together. Garrison saw in Lundy an older version of himself. Lundy and Garrison shared the craft of printing and based their activism on the twin foundations of the Bible and the Declaration of Independence. The ii men also shared an interest in British abolitionists' efforts to abolish slavery, including the work of British Quaker Elizabeth Heyrick who authored Immediate Not Gradual Abolition in 1824. Heyrick called for grassroots participation in the abolitionist move, urging men, women, and even children to reject the products of slave labor, particularly West Indian slave-grown sugar. Heyrick promoted the Quaker tactic of boycotting slave labor; yet, she added a new twist, linking the rejection of the products of slave labor to the firsthand abolition of slavery.^[3]

Similar Heyrick, Garrison and Lundy both embraced immediatism. Lundy believed slaves had an inherent right to their freedom and that all efforts must be made to bring about the abolition of slavery. Information technology was for this reason that Lundy supported colonization. Slavery must stop past any means necessary. However, Lundy'due south approach epitomized his Quaker faith. For Lundy, the abolition of slavery would be the result of a gradual procedure of conversion, making individuals aware of their Christian duty to end slavery. Garrison, on the other hand, sought a more dramatic terminate to slavery, one that came as the outcome of a climactic, transformative conversion to the immediate abolition of slavery. As Garrison biographer Henry Mayer notes, "Lundy looked to charitable acts [while] Garrison sought crisis and transfiguration."^[four] Thus Lundy labored with the sinner, urging him to see the evil of slavery. Garrison, in contrast, condemned slavery and slaveholders as a threat to the social and economical society.

In 1829, Lundy hired Garrison to assume editorial duties for the Genius of Universal Emancipation. That yr would bring other of import changes for Garrison. In a series of speeches and editorials, Garrison began to denounce gradualism. Garrison was invited to address the afternoon church building service at the Park Street Church building in Boston, Massachusetts on July 4, 1829. Although the American Colonization Society planned to concur its ain service at the Methodists' Bromfield Street chapel, the gild also expected to take upwards a drove for the cause at Park Street. Garrison's oral communication, withal, was non what the group expected. Instead, in his speech, Garrison rewrote the Declaration of Independence to include African Americans. Garrison's speech signaled his growing disillusionment with the ACS.

Garrison's activism brought him to the attention of African American community leaders including the militant black pamphleteer David Walker. In September 1829 Walker, a former slave from North Carolina, published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the Globe. In his Appeal Walker denounced colonization and called for racial unity and, if necessary, armed resistance to slavery. Walker's entreatment acted as a catalyst for both supporters and opponents of slavery including Garrison and Lundy. Walker's Appeal worried Lundy who believed the pamphlet likewise inflammatory to discover in the pages of the Genius. Garrison, however, believed the Appeal to be one "of the nigh remarkable productions of the historic period."^[5] Despite his praise for Walker's Appeal, Garrison withheld comment on the tract until Jan 1830, afterwards a vigorous entrada to suppress the Appeal had begun. In February, Garrison and Lundy were indicted by a Baltimore g jury for libel. Garrison was fined 1 hundred dollars. Unable to pay the fine, Garrison was jailed for fifty days before he was bailed out by New York abolitionists Lewis and Arthur Tappan. For the young abolitionist, imprisonment became a badge of honor, a symbol of his martyrdom for the crusade of freedom. Garrison and Lundy soon parted ways, notwithstanding, every bit Garrison fully embraced radical immediatism.^[6]

In 1831, Garrison published the offset issue of his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. "I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I exercise not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation," Garrison insisted in his debut issue. "I am in earnest, – I will not equivocate, – I will not excuse, – I will non retreat a single inch – and I volition be heard," Garrison promised. The establishment of The Liberator is often cited as the beginning of a new, radical abolitionist movement. Yet, it must be remembered that Elizabeth Heyrick'south Immediate Not Gradual Abolitionism pre-dated Garrison's Liberator by seven years. Garrison was deeply influenced by Heyrick equally well equally the early anti-slavery activism of the Quakers (including Benjamin Lundy) and black resistance to slavery and the American Colonization Society, particularly Walker's Appeal. Those influences along with the religious revivals of the 1820s led Garrison to the conventionalities that the sin of slavery must be abolished without delay and without compromise. Garrison denounced slavery as a sin against God and all slaveholders as sinners. Moreover, Garrison condemned the American Colonization Society, arguing that the racist spirit of the ACS assumed that whites and blacks could not alive together.^[7]

Garrison may not have been the first to need the immediate abolitionism of slavery, but he became the spiritual and intellectual force of radical abolitionism in America, specially in the 1830s and 1840s. He was, equally David W. Blight argues, "the genuine article – a radical perfectionist who demanded vast social changes that Americans were almost wholly unprepared and unwilling to accept. He threw thunderbolts at anyone and everyone he accounted responsible for slavery." Garrison embraced his role equally radical outsider, seeking a thoroughgoing reform of American lodge that would replace human being government with a "regime of God."^[8]

In 1832 Garrison helped found the New England Anti-Slavery Gild. A year later, he played a prominent role in founding the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). The club adopted a constitution and a Declaration of Sentiments written by Garrison and a commission of other delegates. The Declaration emphasized the moral commitment of abolitionists, dedicating the AASS to "the destruction of error by the dominance of truth – the overthrow of prejudice past the power of love – and the abolitionism of slavery by the spirit of repentance." Adoption of the Declaration affirmed supporters' break with colonization and other gradualist measures and reinforced their commitment to immediatism and racial equality. Both the NEASS and the AASS counted blackness abolitionists and women among its membership, signaling the growing radicalism of the movement.^[9]

In September 1834, Garrison married Helen Eliza Benson, the daughter of a retired abolitionist merchant. The Garrisons had five sons and two daughters: William Lloyd, Jr.; Wendell Phillips; George Thompson; Frances Jackson; Charles Follen; Helen Frances; and Elizabeth Pease.

As his involvement in the anti-slavery motility grew, Garrison adult close ties with the abolitionist movement in England, supporting visits by British abolitionists like George Thompson to the United States and in plough visiting abolitionists in England. In the midst of the postal entrada of 1835, Garrison was mistaken for Thompson, attacked, and dragged through the streets of Boston to be lynched. Garrison was saved just through the quick action of the city mayor and police who fought off the mob. In the S, Garrison was burned in effigy. In Atlanta, a advantage was posted at the state upper-case letter, offering a bounty for Garrison's caput.

In 1836, Garrison hired Angelina and Sarah Grimké equally lecturers for the American Anti-Slavery Guild. The Grimké sisters were powerful spokespersons for the anti-slavery crusade. Members of a well-known South Carolina family and former slaveholders, the Grimké sisters' lectures had an authenticity that made the pair favored speakers on the anti-slavery lecture circuit. Inside a short fourth dimension the women attracted large, mixed-gender audiences which brought the infamous rebuke from the Congregational clergy of Massachusetts who declared that when women assumed the public role of men they risked shame and dishonor. The sisters believed they were answering God's call to speak out against slavery and refused to stop lecturing. The clerical denunciations brought the question of women'due south activism into sharper relief every bit other women joined the Grimké sisters in stepping across the boundaries of conventional female behavior in anti-slavery societies.

Garrison shared much in common with the reformers of his fourth dimension. Slavery was but 1 battle (admitting the most significant) against the social inequities and moral depravity that reformers saw everywhere in the antebellum menstruation. Like other reformers, Garrison was involved in many movements to remake American society. For instance, the Grimkés rejected ministerial say-so, questioned the literal truth of the Bible, criticized the coercive power of the state, and demanded equality for women. Garrison endorsed these ideas and expanded upon them to include a sweeping denial of governmental authority, a religious belief in human perfectibility, and nonresistance. Garrison also supported women'southward rights and equal rights for African Americans.

Garrison'southward broad interests in reform and his sharp, uncompromising style led to disagreements with other abolitionists in the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840, tensions in the AASS and in the American movement reached a flashpoint. Garrison's primary opponents, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, bankrupt away from the organization and founded the American and Strange Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison was left with total command of the AASS, which left the American anti-slavery movement deeply divided betwixt supporters of Garrison and the Tappans.

Under the leadership of Garrison, the American Anti-Slavery Social club maintained a broader reform platform including women'south rights. The AASS recruited all abolitionists to the crusade regardless of their religious, social, and political views. Membership in the AASS required only a desire to abolish slavery, thus the society attracted not only anti-slavery activists, simply women'due south rights and peace activists amidst others. The conservative AFASS, under the leadership of Lewis Tappan, argued that other reform movements threatened the anti-slavery cause. Tappan and other members of the AFASS believed the anti-slavery cause must remain orthodox and compatible with traditional views on issues like the proper office of women. To embrace causes likes women's rights was to adventure alienating the general northern public. The AFASS also emphasized political action and formed the first anti-slavery political party, the Freedom Party.

The split up in the American abolitionist movement impacted the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in June 1840 only weeks after the split up in the American move. Equally early as 1839, members of the newly formed British and Strange Anti-Slavery Guild discussed the possibility of hosting a World Anti-Slavery Convention for the purpose of strengthening the international motion against slavery. The BFASS, peculiarly British abolitionist Joseph Sturge, organized the earth gathering of abolitionists. The British abolitionists provided tickets to the gathering, noting that but recognized members of anti-slavery organizations would be admitted. When rumors reached London that some American organizations might send female delegates, Sturge and the members of the BFASS reiterated that only male delegates would be admitted. In spite of the alert, Garrison and the members of the AASS selected a pro-adult female's rights delegation including Lucretia Mott, Wendell Phillips, and Garrison. When Garrison arrived on the fifth day of the Convention, he found that the British abolitionists had refused to recognize the female delegates. In protest Garrison sat in the balcony with the ladies rather than enter the convention and be seated with the other delegates. When a second convention was held in 1843, Garrison and his supporters were not invited.

After the events of 1840, Garrison continued to advocate moral suasion as the primary weapon against slavery. In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring all citizens to help catch delinquent slaves under penalty of a fine or imprisonment. Defendant African Americans were denied both a jury trial and the correct to testify in their ain behalf. The Fugitive Slave Police of 1850 forcefully injected the reality of slavery into the daily lives of northerners, blackness and white. Garrison interpreted the passage of the law as testify of a strengthening slave-ability conspiracy. In May 1854, two events deepened Garrison'south conviction that pro-slavery influences dominated American club and politics.

First, in Washington, D.C., Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an event that triggered a wave of violence on the Western frontier. The Kansas-Nebraska Human activity repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had express slavery in the territories to the region south of breadth 36°30', and left the question of slavery to the settlers of the individual territories. As a upshot, the Kansas territory became "Bleeding Kansas," a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery settlers including the abolitionist John Chocolate-brown who along with his sons gained national notoriety for their office in the murder of five pro-slavery farmers in Pottawatomie, Kansas in 1855. Second, virtually simultaneously with passage of the Kansas bill, federal authorities in Boston arrested fugitive slave Anthony Burns nether the authorisation of the Fugitive Slave Law. After a week of legal maneuvering, Burns was marched through the streets of Boston to exist shipped dorsum to slavery in Virginia. For many Bostonians, abolitionist and non-abolitionist alike, Burns' arrest and return to slavery was a visible reminder of slavery'southward influence on American politics. On July iv, 1854, Garrison staged a public burning of the Fugitive Slave Police force and the United states of america Constitution, calling the latter document "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell." ^[10]

In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, Garrison criticized President Abraham Lincoln as soft on slavery. However, Garrison did support the Wedlock war endeavour. In 1863, he rejoiced when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Annunciation, which Garrison believed transformed the war for the Union into a war to free the slaves. With the successful passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed his work was finished. On April 14, 1865, Garrison joined a group of dignitaries, including President Lincoln, in a flag-raising ceremony at Fort Sumter, Due south Carolina. The following month Garrison left the American Anti-Slavery Society, relinquishing leadership of the organization to Wendell Phillips who continued the organization until 1870. In December 1865, Garrison ceased publication of the Liberator. After the war, Garrison supported the Radical Republicans' plans for Reconstruction.

William Lloyd Garrison died at his daughter's domicile on May 24, 1879 afterward a lengthy period of poor health. On May 28, the day of Garrison's funeral, flags flew at half-staff throughout Boston and the state of Massachusetts. More than than 15 hundred people packed the funeral service including ii generations of abolitionists, blackness and white. Memorial observances for Garrison were held in many cities over the following weeks including an interracial service in Atlanta, Georgia, in the shadow of the capitol building, perhaps the most fitting tribute to this "profoundly important, and controversial figure."^[11] Garrison is cached alongside his wife Helen in the Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, Massachusetts.