Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[81]

Chapter 3: the ‘covenant with death.’—1843.

After a summer at the water-cure, Garrison makes his home in Boston, and renews with vigor the disunion campaign. He is followed by the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society in pronouncing the Constitution “ a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” he is made President of the American Society, of which the direction passes over to Boston.

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Zzzr. Garrison returned to his editorial duties in the latter part of January, 1843, but his health¹ was far from restored. He struggled on till June, when a mysterious distress in the left side again caused him² grave apprehensions that he had not long to live. His latest residence in Cambridgeport, though very healthfully situated, was associated with an extraordinary amount of sickness and fatality. As the lease would expire on July 1, it was decided to remove for the summer to the country, and no place offered such attractions as the Community at Northampton, Mass.

This was the third of those original experiments by which Massachusetts, as J. H. Noyes says, “appears to have anticipated the advent of Fourierism, and to have prepared herself for or against the rush of French ideas,” Am. Socialisms, p. 154. throwing them out “on her three avenues of approach— Unitarianism [Brook Farm], Universalism [Hopedale], and Nothingarianism.” Ante, p. 25. The Northampton Association of Education and Industry was, indeed, committed to no creed, not even to communism, as it was a joint-stock concern. All its prominent members were known personally to Mr. Garrison, who vouched for them as “among the freest and best spirits of the age,” Lib. 12.143. when publishing their manifesto. Organization was effected on April 8,³ 1842, and as George W. Benson was one of the founders,⁴ the progress of the enterprise was constantly reported to his brother-in-law. ‘The subject of social reorganization,’ wrote the latter on December 16, 1843, to R. D.⁵ [82] Webb, ‘is attracting general attention, and exciting a growing interest. Many schemes are in embryo, and others have had a birth, and are now struggling for an existence. As experiments to bless our race, I feel an interest in them all, though I am not very sanguine as to the result of this new species of colonization.’

Edmund Quincy to Richard D. Webb.

Dedham, June 27 (–July 26), 1843.

⁶ Garrison has been but in indifferent health since his dreadful illness in the winter. He has some sort of a swelling in his breast, about the region of his heart, which he believes will soon destroy him. He always speaks of it as an animal or devil (I don't mean that he thinks it is either) busy about his heart, which will soon put an end to him. However, Dr. Warren, our⁷ most eminent surgeon, and one of the first in the world, does not regard it as anything serious. When Garrison had finished consulting him, and tendered him his fee, he declined taking any fee ‘from Mr. Garrison,’ which we regard as quite a sign of progress, as the Dr. has never shown any leaning towards anti-slavery.

Notwithstanding this handsome conduct on the part of the Dr., of which G. was duly sensible, he regards his opinion with infinite scorn and contempt, having on the other side the opinions of certain homoeopathists⁸ and hydropathists, not to mention a couple of clairvoyants who examined his internals with the back of their heads. The ocular, or rather occipital, evidence of these last worthies is the most satisfactory to his mind. To most men, the circumstance that they gave diametrically [83] opposite accounts of the case would be startling, but then G. believes them both equally, which arranges the affair satisfactorily.⁹

It is a thousand pities that New Organization is not to do over again, for besides Garrison's heresies about Non-Resistance, Church, Sabbath, Ministry, Perfectionism, and Thomsonianism (do you know what that is?)—which last Phelps industriously¹⁰ bruited about to disgust the country doctors, an influential class with us—they would now have homoeopathy, hydropathy, and animal magnetism to add to the list. The rest of us, however,¹¹ are inclined to hope that Dr. Warren knows as much about the matter as any of these new lights, and that Garrison may get over it.

He is now at Northampton, with Geo. Benson, his wife's brother, at a Community to which Prof. Adam belongs. He¹² went there for rest, and the way he rests himself is to lecture¹³ every night in the neighboring towns, and on Sundays in Northampton in the open air! D. L. Child, however, who took Boston in his way to New York to take the Standard, reports that he¹⁴ looks well and seems well, with the exception of his enemy in the chest. He is also engaged, or is to be, in making selections¹⁵ for the volume of his works. I hope he will have grace to select the best and to omit the mediocre. Literary taste, however, is not his forte. I wish he had left the selections to Mrs. Chapman. When Caroline Weston expressed her regrets that certain things were inserted in the volume of his poems by Johnson, he¹⁶ replied, with a smile, ‘Ah, you know there are all sorts of tastes in the world.’ To which she answered, that was true enough; but when a man was collecting his writings in a permanent form, that there was but one kind of taste to be consulted, and that was the best.¹⁷

The Northampton Community had chosen a beautiful site on Mill River, some two or three miles from the town, in the suburb now known as Florence and as a [84] great manufacturing centre. Mr. Garrison's delight in the natural scenery of the Connecticut Valley was shared for a week in August by N. P. Rogers, with whom he¹⁸ drove in a gig on both sides of the river from Greenfield to Springfield. Shortly afterwards an accident occurred which sadly marred the pleasure of the sojourn at the Community. In watering his horse at a wayside brook, Mr. Garrison, by some maladroitness, upset his wife, with¹⁹ her three-year-old boy in her arms, and her aged mother, who all narrowly escaped drowning.²⁰ Mrs. Garrison's right arm was dislocated at the elbow, but was maltreated by an ignorant doctor as if broken, so that weeks of suffering ensued till the limb could be set. This was made the occasion of special visits to Dr. Stephen Sweet,²¹ the famous bone-setter, at Franklin, Conn., who succeeded in the difficult operation, though a subsequent dislocation of the same joint was carried through life. By the end of October the family had returned to Boston, occupying a new house on Pine Street, with Oliver Johnson and his²² wife as welcome co-tenants.

The Liberator, all this time, had been supplied editorially by several friends—by Quincy and Mrs. Chapman above all—with no loss to the readers of the paper. Mr. Garrison's physical condition and various distractions during the past two years had confirmed his native habit of procrastination, and laid him open to friendly criticism:

Edmund Quincy to W. L. Garrison.

Dedham, November 6, 1843.

²³ I have sent in to you my concluding article on Leavitt,²⁴ which²⁵ I hope will meet with your gracious approbation. This, I²⁶ presume, will terminate my editorial labors for the present, and I [85] gladly resign my share of the vice-regal throne to its legitimate possessor. I congratulate you, and all the friends of the cause at the same time, upon your restoration to health and your ancient occupation. May you live long to discharge it worthily!

And now, upon the occasion of my restoring to you my part of your delegated authority, will you pardon me if I say a word as to what I, in common with the best friends of the paper, wish to see the Liberator in your hands? I am sure that I know you well enough to feel confident that you will pardon the bungling manner in which it is very likely I may perform the delicate and somewhat ungracious task of finding fault and giving advice. I think that you cannot doubt my interest in you and in the Liberator, and that you cannot attribute anything I may say, however awkwardly I may express myself, to anything but an earnest wish to make you and your paper as useful as possible to the cause. Now, my dear friend, you must know that to the microscopic eyes of its friends, as well as to the telescopic eyes of its enemies, the Liberator has faults. These they keep to themselves as much as they honestly may, but they are not the less sensible of them, and are all the more desirous to see them immediately abolished. Luckily, they are not faults of principle—neither moral nor intellectual deficiencies—but faults the cure of which rests solely with yourself.

I hardly know how to tell you what the faults are that we find with it, lest you should think them none at all or else unavoidable. But no matter, of that you must be the judge; we only ask you to listen to our opinions. We think that the paper often bears the marks of haste and carelessness in its getting up; that the matter seems to be hastily selected and put in higgledypiggledy, without any very apparent reason why it should be in at all, or why it should be in the place where it is. I suppose this is often caused by your selecting articles with a view to connect remarks of your own with them, which afterwards in your haste you omit. Then we complain that each paper is not so nearly a complete work in itself as it might be made, but that things are often left at loose ends, and important matters broken off in the middle. I assure you, brother Harriman is not the²⁷ only one of the friends of the Liberator who grieve over your [86] ‘more anon’ and ‘more next week’ which ‘anon’ and ‘next week’ never arrive. This continuation from one number to another is, of course, sometimes unavoidable, but surely should be done as seldom as possible, and never proposed without being performed.

Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important moments like the present neglected. Perhaps the last Liberator and the present are the two most²⁸ important ones in the year, as thousands of persons read them, on account of the elections, who never open an A. S. paper at any other time. And yet the last was without editorial.

We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends and the staunchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the Liberator a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the Liberator and the Emancipator with regard to the manner of getting it up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them—and we knowing all the time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a good paper that Leavitt has, with as much more²⁹ intellectual ability as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me) industry, application, and method.

Now we know that you have talent enough and to spare to write editorials, such as no other editor can; that you have the most ample materials for the best of selections, and eminent tact and sagacity for judging what is timely; and, moreover, that you have abundance of time for doing all this, if you would but have a little method in your madness. A week is long enough and to spare for getting up a paper if it be properly used, and all its work be not crowded into the last day. Fewer hours a day than most men of business have to give to their affairs, would do it all—provided the work were begun soon enough. It is not often that a crisis occurs that demands the editorial of an A. S. paper to be written at the last moment. Selections might be made with an eye to two or three papers ahead, and even editorials written, so as to give you opportunity to perform [87] your important duties as a lecturer. Hildreth told me that in³⁰ Demerara he often prepared the matter in advance of two or three weeks papers (issued three times a week), and then went into the country to enjoy himself. Surely you could do something of the sort by a little forecast and method.

Sound as was this complaint and reproof, the remedy was not to be found in ‘pigeon-holes labelled “ Refuge,” “Selections,” “Selections to be commented upon,” ’ etc. The demands on Mr. Garrison's time and strength merely as a journalist were greater than Mr. Quincy could realize. He had no editorial assistant. The volume of matter, in manuscript and in print, relating to the cause was growing with tremendous rapidity. As a rule, besides reading proof, he shared in the mechanical work of the paper. Add the interruptions to which he was exposed as the leader of the abolitionists; his lecture engagements; his anti-slavery³¹ hospitality; his domestic cares; his constant anxiety concerning his means of support, and the wonder is that he found leisure to write as much as he did, whether for the Liberator, the Massachusetts Board, the American Society, or in his private correspondence.³²

In a more important particular he was never delinquent. As a reformer, he was never dispirited; he never lost his grip on leading principles. He came directly from his sick-room to his post in January, with a cheering survey of recent events during his absence. It had³³ consoled him while ill to reflect that his removal would be of no consequence to the cause. He affirmed anew the irrepressible conflict betwixt freedom and slavery, and advanced fresh arguments for disunion:

‘The proposition,’ said he, ‘may be ridiculed and denounced,³⁴ and some who call themselves abolitionists may be loudest in their condemnation of it; but all this will avail nothing. The hour is coming when men of all sects and of all parties at the North will rally under one banner—the banner of Liberty; [88] and a similar coalition will be seen at the South rallying under the Black flag of slavery. It will not be a strife of blood but a conflict of opinions, and it will be short and decisive. Possibly, in that hour, the South may yield (and such a surrender would be to her victory and renown)--possibly, the spirit of desperation may triumph over her instinct of selfpreservation; but, in either case, the fate of slavery would be sealed, the character of the North redeemed, and an example given to mankind worthy to be recorded on the brightest page of history. Thus much, at least, I am bold to prophesy.’

At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts ³⁵ Anti-Slavery Society in Faneuil Hall, he secured the passage of the following resolution, of his own phrasing, which was shortly hoisted at the Liberator masthead in place of the less pungent declaration which had hitherto been kept flying there:

‘Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North³⁶ and the South is “a covenant with death and an agreement with³⁷ hell” —involving both parties in atrocious criminality—and should be immediately annulled.’

Edmund Quincy to R. D. Webb.

Dedham, January 29, 1843.

³⁸ We dissolved the Union by a handsome vote, after a warm debate.³⁹ The question was afterwards 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.

The Church question next came up, introduced by Garrison in the broadest Herald of Freedom shape, and maintained in a speech attacking the Church and Ministry as direct obstacles to the progress of the cause. This I marvelled at, knowing his extreme caution, and the untenableness of his position on our platform. I replied to him, affirming that the origin or authority of the Church or Ministry were questions we had nothing to do with as members of the Mass. Society; that all we had a right to do was to demand that every one should use all the means and machinery he thinks he has a right to use for the [89] extinction of slavery, leaving him to settle the propriety of the means with his own conscience; that it would be as much a breach of faith to appropriate time or money bestowed by persons believing in the divinity of those things, for the agitation of the slavery question, to an attack upon them, as it would be to apply funds given by one believing them to be mischievous impostures, to their defence and maintenance; that there is nothing the pro-slavery clergy desire so much as to have the issue shifted from their hypocrisy, and faithlessness to their own acknowledged standard of duty, to the authority of that standard.

Rogers replied, making the points you would suppose from⁴⁰ reading the Herald, and made the assertion that slavery could not be abolished until the order of the ministry had been! I know the ministry, like all falsehoods, must miserably perish, but I believe it will survive negro slavery many a long year. The substitute which I moved, denying the Christian character⁴¹ to pro-slavery churches and ministers, and denouncing the inconsistency of abolitionists who sustained them, passed by an almost unanimous vote.

The Non-Resistance question, the Property question (on which Collins is horsed just at present, and galloping away at a great⁴² rate), as well as the Temperance question and multitudes of others, might just as reasonably be made test questions as the Ministry question. The short of the argument you will find in the Annual Report, which I wrote in consequence of Garrison's illness. In fact, this question which Garrison thus proposed bringing upon the A. S. platform, is the very one which New Organization made the false pretence of the secession, and which we most strenuously denied. I think, however, that he will see the utter incompatibility of making such test questions with associated action, and do not apprehend that this false policy will be pushed in Massachusetts.⁴³

Church and state were united in the disunion resolution⁴⁴ which Wendell Phillips offered at the anniversary of the⁴⁵ American Society at New York, and which read as follows: ‘That anti-slavery is only to be advanced by trampling under foot the political and ecclesiastical links which bind slavery to the institutions of this country.’ Mr. Garrison reported, from the business committee, ‘That we [90] cannot regard any man as a consistent abolitionist who, while holding to the popular construction of the Constitution, makes himself a party to that instrument, by taking any office under it requiring an oath, or voting for its support.’ This was laid on the table, but its future triumph was ensured by the election of its mover to be⁴⁶ President of the Society for the ensuing year.

Edmund Quincy to R. D. Webb.

Dedham, June 27 (–July 26), 1843.

⁴⁷ I don't exactly remember when I wrote to you last, but am sure it was before the annual meeting of the Am. A. S. Society at N. Y. It was a singularly pleasant meeting in all its particulars. We did not carry on from Boston so strong a force as we have done for the three last years, when we chartered railways and steamboats; but we were a goodly company notwithstanding. The whole number at the meeting was about as large as it ever was, the deficiency from the Eastern States being made up from the Western; some having come eight and six hundred miles in their own wagons to attend it, at an⁴⁸ inconceivably small expense. This was the first year since the secession that we were fairly wheeled into line of battle against slavery proper. . . .

The principal business of the meeting was to decide what was best to be done with the American Society. Some were for disbanding it, as a machine costing more than it was worth. More were for removing it to Boston, on the ground that there was literally nobody in New York but James S. Gibbons who either would or could act as a member of the Executive Committee. To prevent the scandal of a discussion of these topics before the pro-slavery reporters and the miscellaneous audiences we usually had, we referred all the business of the Society to a Committee of 25, to be arranged and in fact done by them.

In this Committee the question of the removal to Boston was urged vehemently by Garrison, Collins, Foster, Abby Kelley, and others, and was apparently well received by all the rest except the members of the Boston Clique⁴⁹ themselves, viz., Wendell [91] Phillips, Caroline Weston, and myself. We urged that the removal was to all intents and purposes a dissolution; that it would be but the Mass. Society with another name; that it was unnecessary to give pro-slavery and New Organization such a triumph; that the nominal existence of the Society had better be maintained at N. Y., if all it did was to print the Standard, etc. Notwithstanding and nevertheless, the proposition would probably have been carried, had I not meekly suggested the prudence of first ascertaining whether, in case of a removal of the Society, the services of the Boston friends on whom they depended would be secured; for that I thought, from what I knew of their opinions, that they regarded the measure as so unwise that they would decline taking office. Wendell⁵⁰ confirmed what I said.

This was an unexpected damper. Garrison dilated his nostrils like a war-horse, and snuffed indignation at us. ‘If the Boston friends were unwilling to take the trouble and responsibility, then there was nothing more to be said; we must try to get along as well as we could in the old way,’ etc. Any unwillingness to take trouble and responsibility was of course disclaimed, but the necessity of their acting on their own ideas of what was best affirmed. At this crisis, Thomas Earle of Philadelphia proposed, as something that would combine efficiency with the preservation of our old front to the enemy, that a quorum of the Committee should be appointed in Boston, and the business done there.⁵¹ This seemed to satisfy everybody and was adopted.

The appointment of Garrison as President was, I think, an excellent idea, and it was entirely ‘my thunder.’ He ‘nolo episcopari'd’ a little at first, but was prevailed upon to accept the crown. Garrison makes an excellent president at a public meeting where the order of speakers is in some measure arranged, as he has great felicity in introducing and interlocuting remarks; but at a meeting for debate he does not answer so well, as he is rather too apt, with all the innocence and simplicity in the world, to do all the talking himself. This, however, we shall arrange by having Francis Jackson to act as V. P. on such occasions. It seemed necessary to do something to define the position of the Am. Society, as Lewis Tappan had [92] actually had the face to propose to James Gibbons a union meeting at our anniversary, and Leavitt had said in the Emancipator⁵² that the Society would probably have to call in the help of the old Committee to keep it alive! I thought Garrison's election as President would be as effectual a way [as possible] of telling them and everybody else whereabouts we stood. His nomination was received with a burst of applause. The question of who should be editor of the Standard was also one of great importance. Great opposition was made to David Lee Child on account of his bias towards Whiggery, but the matter was referred to the Executive Committee to do the best they could in the premises. The meeting went off with the greatest harmony possible. Wendell Phillips's speech at the public anniversary was one of the most magnificent orations I ever heard or read.

As every act by which Northern freemen were protected in their liberties was regarded by the South as an infringement of the Constitution, the progress of disunion was considerable in the year 1843. Massachusetts passed, in⁵³ answer to the Latimer petition, a Personal Liberty Act forbidding judges and justices to take part in the capture⁵⁴ of fugitive slaves, and sheriffs, jailors, and constables to detain them. The Governor of Vermont recommended a⁵⁵ similar measure. Maine rejected it, as being tantamount⁵⁶ to disunion; but imitated Massachusetts in appointing an agent to protect the State's colored seamen in Southern⁵⁷ ports.⁵⁸

In his admirable report recommending a Personal Liberty Act, Charles Francis Adams said: “It is the slave representation which . . . is effecting, by slow but sure degrees, the overthrow of all the noble principles that were embodied in the Federal Constitution.” Lib. 13.35. Joint resolves were accordingly passed by the Massachusetts Legislature, praying that the clause of the Constitution [93] providing for the representation of slaves might be removed from that instrument;⁵⁹ and these were presented to Congress–in the House by the elder Adams, and not⁶⁰ received. In the Senate they were received with reluctance, and leave to print was refused. King of Alabama⁶¹ termed them ‘a proposition to dissolve the Union,’ and⁶² so did the General Assembly of Virginia in a counter memorial, which was promptly printed by the Senate.⁶³

John Quincy Adams, in conjunction with Giddings, Slade, Gates, Borden, and Hiland Hall, had, earlier in the year, issued an address to the people of the free States,⁶⁴ warning them that an attempt would be made at the next session of Congress to annex Texas. The ‘real design and object of the South,’ they declared, ‘is to add new weight to her end of the lever. . . . We hesitate not to say that annexation, effected by any act or proceeding of the Federal Government or any of its departments, would be identical with dissolution’—as being in violation of the national compact. ‘We not only assert that the people of the free States “ought not to submit to it,” but we say, with confidence, they would not submit to it.’⁶⁵ [94] So Judge Jay, about to sail for Europe, wrote to Gerrit Smith: “Rather than be in union with Texas, let the confederation be shivered. My voice, my efforts will be for dissolution, if Texas be annexed.” Lib. 13.191; of. Lib. 15; 58, [62]. ‘We go one step further,’ commented Mr. Garrison, ‘dissolution now, Texas out of the question.’ The sequel will show which of these classes of disunionists had root, and which would⁶⁶ wither away before the glare of the Slave Power. But it may be noticed here that the group of anti-slavery Whigs led by Adams, who were content with the Union as it had been formed, and even as it had been altered by the admission of fresh slave States, but drew the line at Texas, did not find an enthusiastic response to their disunion⁶⁷ menace in the Liberty Party.

As usual, Mr. Garrison's mind had been occupied with many subjects besides that which claimed his chief attention. Great was the popular fermentation over Millerism,⁶⁸ which drew off many abolitionists from the ranks, including Charles Fitch and J. V. Himes, and was controverted by the editor of the Liberator in two elaborate articles. Communism and socialism also diverted many. In June, Mr. Garrison attended as a spectator two meetings, in the Chardon-Street Chapel, “for the discussion of the questions pertaining to the reorganization of society and the rights of property,” Lib. 13.91. in which Collins took a leading part. He heard nothing which attracted him to the doctrines advocated.⁶⁹ A few weeks previously he had replied to [95] some urging for an expression of his views on “the property question” Lib. 13.47.: ‘We can only say that we have, at present, “no thunder” to expend upon its discussion, pro or con, for reasons that are satisfactory to our own mind. We hope to be always ready to give our cooperation to every Christian and feasible attempt “to regenerate and redeem our species,” come what may.’ In December, Charles Burleigh saw him at the Fourierite Convention of Friends⁷⁰ of Social Reform held in Boston, where he spoke, ‘and spoke well, but not in accordance with the views of the Community leaders.’ Capital punishment, too, was a frequent topic of the Liberator's editorial page, owing to a rather flagrant clerical demonstration in support of it—⁷¹ so that the Massachusetts Legislature was satirically petitioned to make the hangman's office a ministerial perquisite. Finally, amid all these phases of opinion, a revolution was taking place which is thus described in a letter of Edmund Quincy's to R. D. Webb:

‘I am told that Garrison's opinions, as well as Rogers's, have⁷² been greatly modified of late with regard to the Bible. He is ZZZ27 pretty well satisfied that God has not grown wiser by⁷³ experience, and that he did not command people to cut their brothers' throats a thousand years before he commanded them to love one another. As a man I rejoice at his progress, but I don't know whether I do as an abolitionist. It was so convenient to be able to reply to those who were calling him infidel, that he believed as much as anybody, and swallowed the whole Bible in a lump, from Genesis to Revelation, both included. They say that in Connecticut they always keep one member of every pious family unconverted to do their wicked work for them. I suppose my policy is something of the same sort.’