by Noel Rae
By 1824 he had moved once again, to Tennessee, and his paper had “obtained a pretty wide circulation in the United States. As it was the only anti-slavery paper in America, I concluded to attempt the transfer of its publication to one of the Atlantic cities, hoping thereby to extend its influence.” The place he settled on was Baltimore. He made the entire journey from Tennessee on foot, proselytizing as he went. “At one time I went to the raising of a house, and lectured to the persons who were there assembled. At another I called a meeting at a place where there was to be a militia muster. The captain and some of his men attended, as did also a number of Friends.” Afterward, “an anti-slavery society, consisting of fourteen members, was formed. The captain of militia was chosen president, and a member of the Society of Friends, secretary … Before I left the State there were some twelve or fourteen anti-slavery societies organized.”
In January, 1827, Lundy was assaulted by the Baltimore slave-trader, Austin Woolfolk. This incident began when Lundy, following what was then standard journalistic practice, reprinted in the Genius an article from another paper, the Christian Inquirer, about “the execution, at New York, of William Bowser, a slave, for the murder of the captain and mate of the Decatur, a vessel engaged in transporting some of Woolfolk’s slaves to Georgia. The slaves, twenty-nine in number, had risen for their liberty when a few days out from Baltimore, taken possession of the vessel, thrown the captain and mate overboard, and given the command to one of the crew, a white man, upon his promising to carry them to Hayti: but as he knew not how to manage the vessel, she was some days afterwards fallen in with by another vessel, which took her to New York, where the slaves escaped; but Bowser was afterwards apprehended at West Chester, New York, brought to New York City, convicted, and on December 15th, 1826, executed.” But first, again according to standard practice, Bowser was allowed to address the spectators who had come to watch him being hanged, and “as Woolfolk was present, he particularly addressed his discourse to him, saying he could forgive him all the injuries he had done him, and hoped they might meet in Heaven. But this unfeeling soul-seller, with a brutality which becomes his business, told him, with an oath (not to be named,) that he was now going to have what he deserved, and he was glad of it, or words to that effect. He would probably have continued his abusive language to this unfortunate man had he not been stopped by some of the spectators, who were shocked at this unfeeling, profane, and brutal conduct.
“Lundy, in remarking on the above, strongly cautioned the colored people against attempting to obtain their rights by violent measures and urged upon them ‘a spirit of forbearance, forgiveness, and charitable brotherly kindness.’ He added: ‘The citizens of Baltimore have now a clue to unravel the character of that monster in human shape, the Ishmaelite, Woolfolk. The adamantine-hearted creature, knowing himself to be the cause of the death of the captain and mate of the Decatur, and also of the poor unfortunate Bowser, could, with a fiend-like assurance, insult him with his outrageous profanity when he was just about to be launched into eternity …!’”
As it happened, the Christian Inquirer had got it wrong, and Woolfolk had not been present at Bowser’s execution. Soon after, encountering Lundy in the street, he accused him of libel. But Lundy was not inclined to apologize, and tried to move away. Woolfolk stepped up to him “stripped off his coat, gave it to one of the by-standers, and took hold of my collar. Being much stronger than myself, and as I resolved to make no resistance, he found it an easy matter to prostrate my body on the pavement. Then with a brutal ferocity that is perfectly in character with his business, he choked me until my breath was nearly gone, and stamped me in the head and face with the fury of a very demon.” Some bystanders intervened and Lundy, when he had recovered from his wounds, sued Woolfolk. He won his case but the fine imposed by Judge Brice was the token sum of one dollar. The judge also told Lundy “that ‘I got nothing more than I deserved.’”
“In 1828 I made a journey to the middle and eastern States for the purpose of lecturing and obtaining subscriptions to The Genius.” He also visited Philadelphia, New York and Boston where he met William Lloyd Garrison, who “had not then turned his attention to the anti-slavery question. I also visited New Hampshire, Maine and New York, after which I returned home, having, during my tour, considerably increased my subscription list and, as I have since learned, scattered the seed of anti-slavery in strong and luxuriant soil.”
“In the spring of 1829 William Lloyd Garrison joined me at Baltimore in the editorship of the Genius. I then set out again on a tour to lecture, but I was soon obliged to return on account of the imprisonment of Garrison, for writings published in the paper,” he “being less guarded in his language than myself.” (After a trial before the prejudiced Judge Brice, Garrison had been found guilty of libel and, unable to pay the fine of fifty dollars, had been sentenced to six months in prison. Happily, the warden took a liking to him, provided him with a desk in the family’s parlor and invited him to share their meals. “I am as snug as a robin in his cage,” he wrote to a friend. After he had been there six weeks, the rich anti-slavery philanthropist, Arthur Tappan, paid his fine, and Garrison was released and went back to Boston.)
Following Nat Turner’s insurrection in 1831 “the southern papers attributed the origin of the plots to the Genius and the Liberator, especially the latter, which it was said had been circulated in the South in large numbers. It is probable, however, that the conspiracies were instigated chiefly by the pamphlet of David Walker [Appeal to the Colored Citizens], if in fact they owed their origin to any publication whatever. From the time that these events occurred, Anti-Slavery Societies in the South ceased almost entirely to be formed, and those previously established soon sank into disuse.”
The Genius for 1834 contained reports of riots “directed against abolitionists which took place in New York City on the nights of the 9th and 10th of July. The mob broke the doors and windows of the house of Lewis Tappan at midnight of the 9th and carried his furniture into the street and set fire to it … The doors and windows of Dr. Cox’s Presbyterian church were broken; also the windows of Zion’s church, belonging to a colored Methodist society; those of an African Baptist church in Division Street; the doors and windows of Dr. Ludlow’s house; and the doors, windows and furniture of Dr. Ludlow’s church in Spring Street. St. Phillip’s African Episcopal church was nearly destroyed, including a fine organ. An African school house in Orange Street was destroyed; and a number of dwelling houses inhabited by colored people were totally destroyed, and a number [of people] greatly injured.” The Genius also reported that “on the night of the 13th of August, 1834, a series of antiabolition riots, which lasted three nights, commenced at Philadelphia, in the southern suburbs of the city. They were principally directed against the colored people, and the houses occupied by them, or in which they worshiped … The colored people were pursued and beaten, one of them to death, and another lost his life in attempting to swim the Schuylkill in order to escape his pursuers.
“Numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia having been presented to Congress, that body, on motion of Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina made February 8th, 1836, resolved by a vote of 201 to 7 that ‘Congress possesses no constitutional authority to interfere in any way with the institution of slavery in any of the States.’” In May, the House adopted 117 to 68 a resolution “that all petitions, memorials, resolutions and propositions relating in any way, or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery, shall, without being either printed or referred, be laid on the table, and that no further action whatever shall be had thereon.” (Known as the “gag rule,” this was rescinded eight years later.)
Though moribund in the South, the Anti-Slavery Society grew rapidly elsewhere, and in May, 1836, it reported that there were now “five hundred and twenty-six anti-slavery societies known to exist, of which three hundred and twenty-eight had been formed during the preceding year. The Society had expended, during the year, $25,866, be
ing an increase of 150 per cent on the preceding year. It had employed thirteen lecturing agents during a good portion of the time, and had printed upwards of one million of copies of various tracts.”
Meanwhile, acts of violence against abolitionists grew. On July 22, 1836, in Cincinnati, “a large meeting was held at the lower market house, at which resolutions were passed threatening violence if the publication of the Philanthropist was not discontinued, and a committee was appointed to wait upon Mr. Birney [the editor] and his associates, and request them to desist from the publication of their paper, and to warn them that if they persisted the meeting could not hold themselves responsible for the consequences. Mr. Birney and the Executive Committee of the Ohio [Anti-Slavery] Society, having declined to comply with the request, a large mob assembled on the evening of July 31st, proceeded to the office, broke the windows and furniture, scattered the papers and books, and burned many of them, and took out the press, drew it down to the river, broke it to pieces and threw it into the stream. They then went to the houses of Birney and his friend, Donaldson, with a view, apparently, of personal violence; but finding neither of them at home, they proceeded to several houses inhabited by colored people, and tore them down.”
In November, 1837, a mob in Alton, Illinois, murdered the abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy, while also destroying his presses. In 1838, “the Pennsylvania Hall, which had been built at Philadelphia by abolitionists and others, was opened on the 14th of May, and various free discussions and public meetings, among which was that of an Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, were held during that and the two succeeding days. A great and constantly increasing excitement prevailed in the city during this period,” leading the mayor to ask the building’s managers to cancel the meeting scheduled for the evening of the 17th, which they did. Nevertheless a large mob assembled, the doors were forced, “and the Hall was set on fire, with little apparent resistance from the police. The fire engines of the city repaired to the spot, and by their efforts protected the surrounding buildings. Many of the firemen were not disposed to extinguish the fire in the Hall, and some who attempted it were deterred by threats of violence. The Hall, which had cost upward of thirty thousand dollars, was consequently consumed—the wall only being left standing.”
Also suffering great loss was Benjamin Lundy, who was about to set out on a tour in the West, and had “collected the little property that he possessed, and placed it one of the rooms of the Hall, then occupied as the Anti-Slavery Office. It was there consumed in the flames.” Lundy took this loss with his usual disregard for material things: “‘Well,’” he wrote to a friend, “‘My papers, books, clothes—everything of value (except my journal in Mexico, &c.) are all, all gone—a total sacrifice on the altar of Universal Emancipation. They have not yet got my conscience, they have not taken my heart, and until they rob me of these, they cannot prevent me from pleading the cause of the suffering slave … I am not disheartened, though everything of earthly value (in the shape of property) is lost. Let us persevere in the good cause. We shall assuredly “triumph yet.”
Lundy died the following year, but already he had been superseded as abolition’s spokesman by William Lloyd Garrison, an “intelligent and remarkably pure-minded man,” in the opinion of the Boston reformer and novelist, Lydia Maria Child, “whose only fault is that he cannot be moderate on a subject which it is exceedingly difficult for an honest mind to examine with calmness.” Garrison’s lack of moderation applied only to his language; like Lundy, he believed in non-violence, passive resistance and “moral suasion,” rather than political or direct action. To his enemies an “officious and pestiferous fanatic,” a “mawkish sentimentalist” who, like an “antiquated spinster,” wept over the “imaginary sufferings” of slaves, to Frederick Douglass and to many others his words seemed to “glow with holy fire,” and the man himself was “a Moses raised up by God to deliver his modern Israel from bondage.” Soon after his return to Boston from Baltimore, he began publishing The Liberator, with himself as compositor, printer, reporter, publisher and editor. “Of all despicable and degraded beings, a time-serving, shuffling, truckling editor has no parallel,” he had written earlier, and the first issue of his paper, which appeared on January 1, 1831, made it clear that he meant what he said.
He began, as was then not unusual, with some verses that he had written himself—My name is LIBERATOR! I propose/ To hurl my shafts at freedom’s deadliest foes! …” Then he explained why he was publishing in Boston rather than Washington: it was New England, rather than the South, that needed a “revolution in public sentiment.” In New England he had “found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen than among slave owners themselves.” This was why he had “determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and in the birthplace of liberty. That standard is now unfurled; and long may it float, unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe—yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set free! Let southern oppressors tremble—let their secret abettors tremble—let their northern apologists tremble—let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble …” After quoting from the Declaration of Independence to the effect that all men are created equal, and apologizing for having earlier endorsed the “popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition,” he continued: “I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother gradually to extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead …” Finally, another piece of verse: “Oppression! I have seen thee face to face,/ And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow;/ But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now …”
William Lloyd Garrison at the age of thirty, and looking unusually dapper. Though mild in manner and a believer in non-violence, Garrison’s intemperate editorials in The Liberator and rallying cry “No Union with Slavery!” made him a byword in the South for abolitionist “fanaticism.”
In December, 1833, Garrison drew up the Declaration of Sentiments for the American Anti-Slavery Society’s first convention, in Philadelphia: “More than fifty-seven years have elapsed since a band of patriots convened in this place to devise measures for the deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The cornerstone upon which they founded the Temple of Freedom was broadly this—‘that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness.’ At the sound of their trumpet-call three millions of people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen than desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number—poor in resources; but the honest conviction that Truth, Justice and Right were on their side, made them invincible.
“Their principles led them to wage war against their oppressors, and to spill human blood like water, in order to be free. Ours forbid the doing of evil that good may come, and lead us to reject, and to entreat the oppressed to reject, the use of all carnal [i.e. physical] weapons for deliverance from bondage; relying solely upon those which are spiritual, and mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds. Their methods were physical resistance—the marshaling in arms—the hostile array—the mortal encounter. Ours shall be such only as the opposition of moral purity to moral corruption—the destruction of erro
r by the potency of truth—the overthrow of prejudice by the power of love—and the abolition of slavery by the spirit of repentance.”
To bring this about “we shall organize Anti-Slavery Societies, if possible, in every city, town and village in our land—We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty and of rebuke—We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively, anti-slavery tracts and periodicals—We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering and the dumb—We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery—We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by giving preference to their productions; and—We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to speedy repentance. Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be personally defeated, but our principles never! Truth, Justice, Reason, Humanity, must and will gloriously triumph …”
Though eschewing active measures, this challenge to the established order, and to the many profitable businesses based on slavery, alarmed northern “gentlemen of property and standing,” and in 1835, while addressing a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, Garrison was seized by a mob of respectable citizens, who hustled him out of the building with cries of “Lynch him!” and “Turn him right nigger color with tar!” Though his life was in danger, Garrison stuck to his principles of Christian meekness and did not fight back; however, luckily for him, two workmen, Daniel and Buff Cooley, uninhibited by principles of non-resistance, waded into the crowd, grabbed the about-to-be martyr and hauled him off to safety. The incident took place very near the site of the notorious Boston Massacre of 1770, when the redcoats shot and killed five colonists.