USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 7
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able to subsist upon bread and water, and this was no empty boast. For a year and a half the two men actually had no food except such as could be obtained at a baker's shop opposite and a tiny fruitshop in the basement of their building. A friendly cat cheered their loneliness and Mr. Johnson recalls that Garrison, who was fond of animals, would often be found writing while the cat, mounted on the table by his side, caressed his bald forehead in a most affectionate way.
In his first number Garrison declared "I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I will not retreat a single inch - and I will be heard."1 Yet he avowed from the very start his opposition to war and violence under every circumstance. Naturally, however, the slaveholders could not see the matter quite as Garrison did, and when the Liberator's plain heading gave way, in the seventeenth number of the paper, to a cut showing slaves being sold at auction, they with one voice declared the sheet "incendiary " and began to clamor for its suppression. A highly respectable and very conservative journal published at Washington,
1 The Liberator was needed, for one searches in vain for mention in such a paper as the Advertiser, for instance, of American slavery as an institution to be deplored. On the front page of this sheet, the year the Liberator was started, I find, however, in one day long articles reprobating slavery in England, and oppression in Russia and Poland!
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the National Intelligencer, appealed to "the intelligent population of New England " and specifically to Harrison Gray Otis, then mayor of Boston, to prevent the further publication of the Liberator, asserting that in printing such a paper Garrison was performing "a crime as great as that of poisoning a well."
Otis had never heard of the Liberator when his attention was thus called to its deadly influence, but, in answer to the appeal he pro- cured a copy and examined it carefully. Then he had its publication-office sought out and finding it to be " an obscure hole " did not bother himself much further about the matter. The State of Georgia, however, actually passed a law offering $5,000 for the conviction of those responsible for the paper's publication or for its circulation within the bounds of that State!
Meanwhile, the prophet went serenely on his way, getting out his little sheet regularly, and speaking, writing and talking everywhere his doctrine of immediate emancipation. Many who believed in freeing the slaves did not at all agree with him in his insistence that " now is the accepted hour for taking that righteous step." Gradual emancipation and education the while for all blacks was what they counselled. But Garrison argued thus simply : " Slavery is wrong. Every wrong act should be
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immediately abandoned. Therefore slavery ought at once to cease. Do right and leave the results to God." When pressed as to the con- sequences of this doctrine, he would explain that he did not mean that all slaveholders should turn their slaves out of doors, but that they should recognize that the blacks are free and be only their temporary guardian; that they should allow those who might wish to leave to go away whither they would, and should pay wages to all who should desire to remain. "Slavery is the holding of a human being as property." This definition, hit upon by Rev. Amos A. Phelps of Boston, himself soon to become a zealous Abolitionist, contained all that was necessary to justify to Garrison the stand he had found it imperative to take. For a creature with an immortal soul could not be " property."
Thus far, - for nearly a year, - the Liberator had been the organ of no organization; it had merely expressed the views of its high-minded editor. But the time was now come for the formation of a society which should have for its purpose the overthrow of slavery. The first meeting to form such a society was held on Nov. 13, 1831, in the office of Mr. Sewall, and on December 16 there followed another. The names of those present at the second meeting, besides Garrison and Sewall, were Ellis Gray
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Loring and David Lee Child, Boston lawyers; Isaac Knapp, publisher of the Liberator; Samuel J. May, then settled in Brooklyn, Connecticut; Oliver Johnson, William J. Snelling, Alonzo Lewis, Dr. Abner Phelps, Rev. Mr. Blanchard (editor of an anti-masonic religious paper) and Gamaliel Bradford. A constitution was drafted by Ellis Gray Loring and Oliver Johnson, but it was voted to adjourn until January 6, at which time said constitution should be adopted.
The ensuing meeting - held in the school- room of the African Baptist Church 1 on Smith Court, off Joy Street - was one which is a landmark in American history. Writing nearly fifty years afterwards, Oliver Johnson, who had been the youngest person present, said of the occasion, " My recollections of the evening are very vivid. A fierce north-east storm, combin- ing snow, rain, and hail in about equal pro- portions, was raging and the streets were full of slush. They were dark, too, for the city of Boston in those days was very economical of light on 'Nigger Hill.' But the twelve white men who there signed the Constitution of the first association ever organized in this country for the purpose of freeing the blacks were not easily to be discouraged by the frowns
1 The building still stands but is now a synagogue, one of the 32 in Boston wherein worship more than 80,000 Jews; previous to 1840 the family of Peter Spitz represented the only Jews in Boston.
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of nature. As they were stepping out into the storm and darkness, all echoed in their hearts the words of their inspired leader, 'We have met to-night in this obscure school-house; our numbers are few and our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall shall ere long echo with the principles we have set forth. We shall shake the nation by their mighty power.'" This speech and the occasion which called it forth should take its place in history alongside of Franklin's famous bon mot at a similarly crucial point in American affairs. " Gentlemen, if we do not all hang together we shall all hang separately." Great is the pity that no Rembrandt has arisen among Americans to send down through the ages the shadowy interior of that "obscure school-house " in which, while storm and sleet were raging outside, this bravest of all American ventures was launched by a little handful of devoted Boston citizens.
Within a year after the formation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society the women interested in freedom for the slave formed an organization, also. They appear not to have been invited to the meeting held in the African Church, but Garrison was quick to see that this was an injustice and he soon (in 1832) introduced a Ladies' Department into his paper and fol- lowed up that important step by declaring his
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belief that " the cause of bleeding humanity is always, legitimately, the cause of woman," and asserting his strong desire that women should work with men to right the great wrong of slavery. "A million females in this country," he added, " are recognized and held as property - liable to be sold or used for the gratification of the lust or avarice or convenience of un- principled speculators - without the least pro- tection of their chastity. Have these no claims upon the sympathies - prayers - chari- ties - exertions of our white countrywomen?
" ' When woman's heart is bleeding, Shall woman's voice be hushed? '"
Woman's voice had already begun to be heard concerning other issues and the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society - founded October 14, 1832, by a little group of ladies - promptly began to make its influence felt in regard to this cause, also. Lydia Maria Child, Maria Weston Chapman, and her sisters, the Misses Weston, Louisa Loring, the wife of Ellis Gray Loring, Eliza Lee Follen, Susan Cabot, and the lady who was afterwards to become Mrs. Wendell Phillips were a few of those who, through the new organization, were soon doing yeoman service for the Abolitionist cause. In the sum- mer of 1833 Lydia Maria Child published her famous Appeal In Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, a work which
-
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cost her very much in income and in social position. When she first met Garrison she was the most successful woman writer and editor in the United States. But she wrote later in life, " he got hold of the strings of my conscience and pulled me into reform work. It is no use to imagine what might have been if I had never seen him. Old dreams vanished, old associates departed, and all things became new. A new stimulus seized my whole being and carried me whithersoever it would. I could not do other- wise, so help me God."
One important service rendered to the cause by Mrs. Child was her share in the conversion of William Ellery Channing, then in the height of his influence and fame. John Pierpont, of the Hollis Street church, Amos A. Phelps, Charles Follen and Samuel J. May were clergymen who had already rallied to the standard of Garrison. Channing, however, had not yet taken the decisive step. During a visit to the West Indies (in 1830) occasioned by ill health, he had been much impressed with the wrong and evil of slavery and on his return to Boston he began to express himself on the subject. Then Mrs. Child took him in hand and " at every interview," she writes, " I could see that he grew bolder and stronger on the subject, while I felt that I grew wiser and more just. At first I thought him timid and even
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slightly timeserving, but I soon discovered that I had formed this estimate from ignorance of his character. I learned that it was justice to all, not popularity for himself, which made him so cautious. He constantly grew upon my respect, until I came to regard him as the wisest as well as the gentlest apostle of hu- manity." -
To Samuel J. May is due the credit for the definitive crossing-over of Channing to the side of the Garrisonians. The doctor had been expressing to Mr. May his agreement with the Abolitionists in all their essential doctrines, but his disapproval, none the less, of their harsh denunciations, violent language and frequent injustice to their opponents. To which at last Mr. May replied: "If this is so, Sir, it is your fault. You have held your peace and the stones have cried out. If we, who are obscure men, silly women, babes in knowledge, commit those errors, why do not such men as yourself speak and show us the right way? " To which came, after a long pause, the answer, " Brother May, I acknowledge the justice of your reproof. I have been silent too long."
But after that he was silent no longer. By his work on Slavery, his letter to James G. Birney on "The Abolitionists " (1836) and his appearance with the reformers at the State House in that same year he made it very clear
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that he was with - and not against - the work of God and humanity. His attitude in this matter cost him many friends, too, and drew down upon his head a great deal of abuse. But he did not swerve in his devotion to the principles he had at length espoused. And, in that day, to stand firm required a great deal of faith as well as much personal courage. Bryant characterized the struggle as "a war- fare which would only end with life; a friendless warfare lingering through weary day and weary year, in which the timid good stood aloof, the sage frowned and the hissing bolt of scorn would too surely reach its aim." Actual violence was not unknown either. Miss Prudence Cran- dall, a Quaker young woman of high character, who had made colored girls, also, eligible to her young ladies' school in Canterbury, Con- necticut, was for so doing arrested and thrown into jail after every attempt to starve or frighten her out of her position had been tried in vain. In New York mobs sacked the house of Lewis Tappan, brother of that generous soul who had paid Garrison's fine while in jail, and in Vermont Samuel J. May was mobbed five times in one month.
To be sure, the language of the Abolitionists was not calculated to allay prejudice, once aroused. For, as Margaret Fuller strikingly put it, " The nation was deaf in regard to the
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evils of slavery; and those who have to speak to deaf people naturally acquire the habit of saying everything on a very high key." The Liberator was, indeed, "incendiary." In all justice, therefore, we should admit that those Bostonians who honestly feared lest the violent speech which was being used by the reformers should endanger the peace of the land and result only in harm to all concerned, were not of necessity cowards or self-seekers. Often their dissent was merely as to method.
England meanwhile was supporting Mr. Gar- rison handsomely. In 1833 he was welcomed there with open arms by such men as Macaulay, Wilberforce, and O'Connell; and he became the close friend of George Thompson, the hero of the struggle for West India emancipation, - him of whom Lord Brougham said, in the House of Lords at the time of the passage of the Act of Emancipation, "I rise to take the crown of this most glorious victory from every other head and place it upon George Thomp- son's. He has done more than any other man to achieve it." Thompson was a very eloquent speaker, and Garrison felt strongly that, if he would come to America, the cause of Abolition here would be greatly advanced. Such, indeed, proved to be the case in many cities for, from the time Thompson landed in New York, in the fall of 1834, until he sailed again for home
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something over a year later, he made converts unnumbered. Frequently those who had come to scoff remained to pray, so wonderful was his eloquence, and so compelling his zeal for human liberty.
Boston, however, lastingly disgraced herself by her attitude towards George Thompson, - though New York and Brooklyn were not far behind in their enmity. Mrs. Child, in a letter dated August 15, 1835, wrote thus to a Boston friend, " I am at Brooklyn, at the house of a very hospitable Englishman, a friend of Mr. Thompson's. I have not ventured into the city, nor does one of us dare to go to church today, so great is the excitement here. You can form no conception of it. 'Tis like the times of the French Revolution, when no man dares trust his neighbors. Private assassins from New Orleans are lurking at the corners of the streets to stab Arthur Tappan; and very large sums are offered for anyone who will convey Mr. Thompson into the slave States. . . . He is almost a close prisoner in his chamber, his friends deeming him in imminent peril the moment it is ascertained where he is. . .
Within a week after these words were written, fifteen hundred prominent citizens of Boston appended their names to a call for a public meeting in Faneuil Hall to denounce agitation of slavery as putting in peril the existence of
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the Union. Harrison Gray Otis was one of those who, at this famous gathering, spoke eloquently against Thompson and the friends who were working with him for the overthrow of slavery.
But though the Faneuil Hall meeting intensi- fied the feeling against Garrison and Thompson, it was not on that occasion, but two months later, when the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was holding its annual meeting, that the historic demonstration of Boston " gentlemen of
THOMPSON, THE ABOLITIONIST. ,
That infamous foreign scoundrel THOMPSON, will hold forth this afternoon, at the Liberator Office, No. 48, Washington Street. The present is a fair opportu- nity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out! It will be a contest between the Abolitionists and the friends of the Union. A purse of $100 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward the individual who shall first lay violent hands on Thompson, so that he may be brought to the tar kettle before dark. Friends of the Union, be vigilant!
Boston, Wednesday, 12 o'clock. Oct 21. 1835
property and standing " occurred. The meeting was advertised to be held in the Society's hall, then numbered 46 Washington Street, midway between State Street and Cornhill, and an incendiary placard issued that same day at 12 o'clock from the office of the Commercial Gazette announced that " the infamous foreign
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scoundrel, Thompson, will hold forth, this afternoon, at the Liberator office. ... The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Thompson out." It added that one hundred dollars had been raised to be paid to the man who should " first lay violent hands on Thompson, that he might be brought to the tar-kettle before dark." This handbill was distributed in all the places where people were in the habit of congregating, in the insur- ance offices, the reading-rooms, all along State Street, in the hotels and drinking places and among the mechanics at the North End. As a result there gathered from every quarter of the town men bent upon making trouble for Thompson. Between three and four o'clock there were, according to various estimates, from two to five thousand people packing both sides of Washington and State Streets in the neighborhood of the Old State House.
Thompson was not at the meeting, however, nor was he expected. But Garrison was there to deliver a short address, and the ladies of the Society, inferring rightly that the crowd, cheated of its hoped-for victim, would try to rend Gar- rison, advised him to retire from the hall. This he prudently did, but instead of leaving the building, he went into the Liberator office, adjoining the hall, and there busied himself writing to a friend in a distant city an account
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of the riotous demonstrations going on outside. But the letter was never finished, for soon the marauders, who had rushed into the hall in search of him, were kicking out the panels of his office door and, but for the presence of mind of Charles C. Burleigh, would have seized him forthwith and dragged him out. Friends hustled Garrison into a carpenter's shop in the rear of the building and for a time he was safe. But the mob soon discovered his retreat and he was made to descend by a ladder into Wilson's Lane, now a part of Devonshire Street. Then he was seized by his enemies and dragged into State Street, in the rear of the Old State House. From the rough handling of the mob - they had thrown a rope around his body and torn the clothes from his back while disputing as to whether they should hang him or subject him to milder treatment, - Garrison was at length rescued by Mayor Lyman and his officers, who succeeded in getting him into the Old State House (then used as the City Hall and Post-office) through the south door.
The howls of those who had been thus cheated of their victim now became so violent, and their acts grew so alarming, that, to save the old building and Garrison's life, it was hastily decided to commit him to jail as a disturber of the peace, and he was quickly smuggled out of the north door into a waiting hack. After
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a desperate struggle with the infuriated multi- tude, the horses started at break-neck speed through Court Street to Bowdoin Square, through Cambridge into Blossom Street, and thence to Leverett Street jail. And there, just around the corner from his own home at 23 Brighton Street, the editor of the Liberator spent in a cell the night of October 21, 1835. The morning after his incarceration he made upon the walls of his cell this inscription: " William Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a respectable and influential mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that 'all men are created equal,' and that all oppression is odious in the sight of God. Hail Columbia! Cheers for the Autocrat of Russia and the Sultan of Turkey! Reader, let this inscription remain till the last slave in this despotic land be loosed from his fetters! "
The ladies whose meeting had been so rudely interrupted made a brave attempt to pursue the object for which they had come together. Miss Mary S. Parker, the president, opened the exercises by reading a portion of Scripture, and then, in a sweet and serene voice, she offered a prayer for the cause of the slave and besought forgiveness for his oppressors. After the mob had burst inside their hall, however,
DIX PLACE, SHOWING THE HOME OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
TELEGRAPH CO
OLLYLS OBLIUR
OLD STATE HOUSE, WHERE GARRISON WAS MOBBED.
TREMONT STREET SOUTH OF SCHOOL STREET ABOUT 1850.
DOROTHEA LYNDE DIX. From a daguerreotype taken in 1858. Page 227.
MRS. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. From a daguerreotype taken about 1852. Page 122.
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the mayor urged the ladies to retire, saying that it might not be in his power, with his small force, to protect them long. This they did, the police making a passage for them through the jeering crowd outside. Francis Jackson immediately invited them to conclude their meeting at his home on Hollis Street. He was determined that there should be free speech in Boston at whatever peril. But when Hollis Street was reached it was found that Mrs. Jackson was ill, so the meeting finished its business at the home of Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, at No. 11 West Street. It was Mrs. Chapman who, earlier in the afternoon, had replied, - when Mayor Lyman had been urging that it was dangerous for the ladies to remain in their hall, -" If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere."
For almost two weeks after this affair Gar- rison, by the advice of his friends, secluded himself at Brooklyn, Connecticut, from which place, his wife, then in her twenty-fifth year and an expectant mother of her first child, wrote as follows of her emotions on the epoch- making day to Mrs. Chapman's sister:
" BROOKLYN, Oct. 31, 1835.
" I thank you, my dear Miss Weston, for your kind letter, and the expressions of sympathy for me and mine which it contained. When I
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left you at Court Street and ascertained Mr. Garrison was not at the Liberator office, I comforted myself with the reflection that he had retired under the roof of some dear friend, where he was safe. I made a long call at a friend's house and then hastened home, with the fond anticipation of meeting him; but alas! you may judge of my feelings when my domestic informed me a gentleman had just left the house, who seemed exceedingly agitated, and very desirous of seeing me. In a few moments he returned, with a countenance which indicated excessive grief. I prepared myself for the worst, thinking all he would reveal to me could not surpass what I, in a few moments of suspense, had imagined the real danger might be. He kindly and feelingly related all that had transpired, from the time the ruffians seized him at the carpenter's shop and conveyed him to the mayor's office.
" I put on my things with a full determination of seeing him, and ascertaining for a certainty how much injury he had received; but before I reached the office I met with several friends who dissuaded me from attempting it; and not thinking it expedient myself, when I was apprised of the multitude that had assembled, I concluded to tarry with my kind friend, Mrs. Fuller, to await the result. About five I learned he was safely carried to jail for safe-keeping.
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How my heart swelled with gratitude to the Preserver of our being, for having enabled him to pass through the hands of a mob without receiving the slightest injury. My dear husband was wonderfully sustained in a calm and quiet state, during the whole scene of confusion that reigned around him; he was perfectly collected and felt willing to sacrifice his life rather than compromise principles. The two men you allude to in your letter were the ones who were most active in their exertions to save husband; why they were so no one knows, without they were bribed by someone to do it; however, let their motives be what they would, may blessings rest on them for this one act of kindness.
" I was rejoiced our dear friend, Thompson, was in his quiet retreat; for had he been in Boston they would have devoured him like so many wolves, and Bostonians would have been obliged to blush for one of the most atrocious and villainous acts that could have been com- mitted in the sunlight of heaven. I hope he will use every precaution for his own safety that duty requires him to, for the sake of his family and friends.
" I cannot feel too thankful that Mr. May was absent from the city at the time, as he would in all probability have been the next most conspicuous in the cause, and might have received some severe blows if no more.
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"I was glad the ladies, notwithstanding all they had endured for the truth, were permitted to proceed with their meeting without molesta- tion; had I known it was their intention to adjourn to a private house, I would certainly have been one of their number.
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