As an abolitionist, Garrison was a great man. The purpose here is to mark his association with a variety of other movements, from temperance to spiritualism, and to pass his single claim to greatness by. He is an illustration of the effect of radical cults on a great spirit. We can take for granted the long, heartbreaking struggle for abolition, except where it touches upon those other “ultra” ideas to which Garrison was so receptive.
In the major activity of his life, in his dominant impulses and his moods, Garrison was great: it is, in fact, his greatness which illuminates the workings of radicalism in his time. There were tones in his voice and looks in his eye which no other man had. The phrases we associate with his name have a quality of sincerity and noble indignation which are rare in a self-satisfied age. He called part of the law of the land “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell” and, when cautious colonizers or gradual emancipators begged him to moderate his insistence upon unqualified immediate abolition, he cried out, the moment he had issued from a Baltimore jail and was his own master, “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—And I will be heard.” If we think of him as being surrounded by enthusiasts and defenders and shouting defiance to the miserable South, such words are silly braggadocio; but he was alone. Taking up the work of Abolition with the slight, nervous, gentle Quaker, Lundy, Garrison became a solitary figure as soon as he was recognized as the great power he really was. A thousand temptations beset him to desert his cause, to compromise on buying out the slaves and settling them in Hayti, to be satisfied, as almost all liberals were, with restricting slavery to the South. He not only kept on; he carried the struggle into the real camp of the enemy—New England, where the murderers of Love joy were exalted, where the prospect of a college for negroes in the neighborhood of Yale caused a mass meeting of protest, over which the Mayor of New Haven presided and to which the whole faculty of Yale gave tacit approval. He took the cause of abolition to the anti-slavery champion, Lyman Beecher, a colonizationist, who coldly replied, “I have too many irons in the fire already.” Beecher believed that if the slaves were freed, permission for them to stay in America would be permission to starve, and he begged Garrison to give up his “fanatical notions,” promising him that, if he did, the clergy “will make you the Wilberforce of America.” He preferred to be its Garrison.
He went to jail, he faced mobs, he starved. And he lacked the heroic figure for such deeds—a man of middle size, bald and shaven, “a phrenological head illuminated,” as Alcott said, with large hazel eyes beaming behind glasses. Only a strong nose and firm mouth suggested a fighter. The lips were always smiling benevolently or twisted with a slight sardonic humor. He moved his body briskly, erect, through the slushy streets of Boston, making his way among enemies to the obscure hole with dingy walls and small windows spattered with sticky, black, printer’s ink where his bed, and his table, and his composing room, and his one-man copy desk (littered with exchanges), and all he possessed and cherished were assembled. For a year he had no bills to pay at grocers or butchers; a single bakery provided his food. And all this time, he was not only happy in his struggles; he was enchanted by life, uplifted.
What could you do with a man like this?” asks his distinguished grandson, Oswald Garrison Villard. “You threw him in jail and he liked it immensely and utilized the opportunity to strike off his best bit of verse. You put a price on his head and he gloried in it. You threatened him with death and dragged him through the streets with a rope around his waist and he showed his courage by failing even to be excited, and then went home to utilize your outbreak against him in a most effective sermon against the thing you were trying to uphold. You ridiculed him as a nobody and he calmly admitted it and went on preaching his gospel of liberty. You tried to close the mails to him, to undermine his influence, to destroy his reputation, his judgment, and his sanity, and he went on pounding you, convicting you out of your own mouth and printing in his column in The Liberator headed ‘The Refuge of Oppression’ telltale happenings which portrayed at its worst the institution you were seeking to defend. And then when in despair you sought the aid of the law and of the officials of his State to prosecute him you found that he so walked by day and by night that you could not even indict him for running an underground railroad station, which he was careful not to do because of his conspicuousness.
“You called him an effeminate fanatic because he would stand up for the cause of women in a day when there were fewer suffragists than Abolitionists, and he went calmly insisting that his platform was not occupied unless women stood upon it. You called him crack-brained because he crossed the ocean to plead for the slave and then declined to speak for what was dearest to his soul because the women delegates with him were not admitted to the Convention. You denounced him as the friend and ally of Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone, yes, of Mary Walker, and Garrison’s hopelessly addled brain took it all as a compliment and gloried in these spiritual alliances which some would have dubbed his shame. How could you keep patience with a man like this—one who would not only let loose the savage negro on the community, but believed that every walk of life, every sphere of intellectual activity should be open to the despised sex and actually preached that women, not men, should decide what place women should occupy in modern society.
“And he always insisted upon being happy, no matter what you said or did to him. His heart was the heart of a child even when he denounced a whole class in language of complete immoderation. It did not affect that heart when you assured him for the five-thousandth time that he had thrown away his influence by his vituperation and his denunciation of good men and women who did their duty by their slaves like Christians, or by taking up the despicable cause of those masculine females who wished the ballot. You certainly can not wage polemical warfare with an antagonist like this. He will not play fair; he does not follow the rules of the game. He enters the combat in such a shining armor of happiness and personal righteousness and complete unselfishness as to make it impossible for the point of your sword to enter at any point. And all the time he is belaboring you with his heavy broadsword with the utmost of calmness and most annoying vigor. . . .”
John Jay Chapman has said that, in a cold age, Garrison burned with a spiritual fire. We can measure his greatness in another way: the martyrs of Abolition are Lovejoy and John Brown, but who are its great men? Not Lincoln, who was an Emancipator, but not an Abolitionist fighting, as Garrison fought, forty years for the cause. Lincoln made little of the raid at Harpers Ferry, and used emancipation as a war measure; used it gladly, because he hated slavery, but cautiously because two years earlier he had believed other solutions adequate. In June of 1862, Congress had gone only as far as to abolish slavery in the territories. The announcement of the great proclamation, in September of that year, gave the Confederate states until January 1, 1863, to lay down their arms and return to the union with their slaves. The Proclamation is not the work of an Abolitionist! With Lincoln assured of immortality elsewhere, who stands beside Garrison? Good men and women; inspiring men and women; Lowell, Whittier, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Alcott; but few of them, even, gave their whole energy to the cause, and none would be remembered by that cause alone. After them come men still more definitely of the second order. Garrison stands alone.
What was he doing in the gallery of cult-leaders and Communists? Briefly, he was accepting every one of them as at least a potential messiah. There is something magnificent in his appetite for the radical ideas, the reforms and delusions of his time. He underwent the anti-Masonic hysteria which followed the disappearance of William Morgan and, although he considered the abduction of one man trifling in comparison with the slave-trade, he remained “utterly and irreconcilably opposed to the institution of Masonry.” As a youth, he shared the great American ambition to go to Greece and fight for Marcos Bozzaris, adored Lafayette, and declared that “of all conceits that ever entered into the b
rains of a wise man, that of marriage is the most ridiculous.” Putting away these childish fancies he found time, in a manhood seriously devoted to the great object of abolition, for woman’s suffrage, temperance, non-resistant pacifism, Prison Reform, justice to the Red Man, and attacks upon state lotteries, and had radical ideas on education, spiritualism, keeping the Sabbath holy, and the sinlessness of humanity. He was, moreover, unwilling to sacrifice any of these to the cause of abolition. And the whole turmoil of his life, between 1831 and 1860, was as much due to dissensions he caused among orthodox abolitionists as to battles with hostile mobs.
In education, he rejected “the tinsel, the frippery, and the incumbrance of classical learning, so called” and favored the practical education sponsored by his fellow-abolitionist and mild Perfectionist, Weld. His spiritualism, an additional offense to orthodoxy, was not a mastering influence. He read a great deal of the testimony which was so common in the Forties, and was persuaded of its truth. Presently, he received a number of messages from the spirit world and, although he knew that his acceptance of spiritist phenomena would prejudice his more serious activities, he announced and earnestly defended his belief. In regard to the Sabbath he went further. He was engaged in a bitter struggle with numerous clergymen whose support was needed if The Liberator was to remain the great organ of abolition yet, in the midst of it, he wrote a poem in which, among other infidel doctrines, he advised keeping “not one in seven, but all days holy.” This was the worst kind of Perfectionism, and the clergy, in their Protest, said, “We confess that from the moment of Mr. Garrison’s attack upon the Sabbath, we have entertained suspicions of The Liberator.” From their point of view, they had good grounds.
For Garrison was, in essence, a Perfectionist. Except for plural marriage, he seems to have adopted the whole of Noyes’ teaching, and the letter quoted in connection with Noyes[1] proves him a valuable disciple. The two men met infrequently, but their correspondence indicates an extraordinary sympathy. They had both lived through the same religious experiences, from 1825, when missionary, tract, and Bible Societies began to evangelize the world with true millennial ardor, to the most intense of Finney’s revivals, which took place in 1831, the year The Liberator was founded. Noyes had acquired his Perfectionism by working on the experiences of Finney and developing the theology of Asa Mahan. Garrison turned to more typical New Englanders: through him we see New England liberalism linking itself with Perfectionism. We find Garrison’s ideas repeated by the liberal theologian, Channing, in the hot terms of antinomianism: “The liberation of three millions of slaves is indeed a noble object; but a greater work is the diffusion of principles by which every yoke is to be broken, every government to be regenerated, and a liberty more precious than civil or political is to be secured to the world.” And of the cardinal principle of Perfectionism, “the unutterable worth of every human being,” Channing writes sympathetically: “I am not discouraged by the fact that this great truth has been espoused most earnestly by a party which numbers in its rank few great names. . . . The less prosperous classes furnish the world with its reformers and martyrs. These, however, from imperfect culture, are apt to narrow themselves to one idea, to fasten their eyes on a single evil, to lose the balance of their minds, to kindle with a feverish enthusiasm. Let such remember that no man should take on himself the office of a reformer whose zeal in a particular cause is not tempered by extensive sympathies and universal love.”
And even Emerson gives comfort to the Perfectionist when, mocking at small reforms, he writes: “Society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him.” This statement is pregnant with all the cults of the ego, but the Perfectionist was justified in thinking that his way of renovation was suggested. So it is not surprising to find Garrison and Noyes at one. Noyes traces Judaism “and its successor, Popery” in nearly every form of Protestantism and Garrison exclaims, “Oh, the rottenness of Christendom! Judaism and Romanism are the leading features of Protestantism.” Noyes abandons the Sabbath, and Garrison will not keep it holy. In 1834, Noyes is “landed . . . in a new experience” and has “new views on the way of salvation,” and, three years later, in the spring, he calls at the Anti-slavery office in Boston, and finds Garrison, John Greenleaf Whittier, and other abolitionists, talking politics. “I heard them quietly,” he says, “and when the meeting broke up I introduced myself to Garrison. He spoke with interest of The Perfectionist; said his mind was heaving on the subject of Holiness and the Kingdom of Heaven, and he would devote himself to them as soon as he could get anti-slavery off his hands. I spoke to him especially on the subject of government, and found him, as I expected, ripe for the loyalty of heaven.” On that ripeness he presumed sufficiently to write Garrison an extraordinary letter which influenced the recipient profoundly:
“Newark, N. J., March 22, 1837.
Dear Mr. Garrison: In addressing you, I use the liberty which ought to exist between every member of a race which God made of one blood. Moreover, the fact that I was once most heartily engaged in the cause you advocate, and am now separated from it only by devotion to a kindred object, entitles me to call you brother, with a peculiar emphasis. When I saw you in Boston, we spoke of the Kingdom of God, in its relation to the kingdoms of the world. I rejoiced to find in you a fellowship of views and feelings on this subject which has long been a rarity to me. I proposed to show you a written declaration of my principles, but was prevented. I write now to fulfill that proposal.
“I am willing that all men should know that I have subscribed by name to an instrument similar to the Declaration of ’76, renouncing all allegiance to the government of the United States and asserting the title of Jesus Christ to the throne of the world. . . .”
Noyes proceeds to call the American government “a bloated swaggering libertine,” and wants to know, “What have I, as a Christian, to do with such a villain? . . . I cannot make myself a partaker of their ungodly deeds by mingling in their counsels or assisting their operations.”
Garrison never threw off Perfectionism and, when scandals issued out of Putney, they were promptly put upon Garrison by his enemies. One former adherent withdrew because he felt that Garrison’s abolitionism was not meant to stop with slavery; that all property, all law, and all government would next be attacked. The seceder was willing to work with all who held to the fundamentals of Christianity, but to him a Perfectionist was as bad as Fanny Wright or the blasphemer, Abner Kneeland. A friend wrote to Garrison that the Reverend Daniel Wise had “said that a man in Putney, Vermont, had written something which you had commented on with approbation” and “lately, the same person (he had forgotten Noyes’ name), had written something in a newspaper carrying out the non-resistance doctrines to the alarming consequence intimated by him. The idea was a promiscuous cohabitation of the sexes, which he stated, as near as he could recollect, thus: that a man had no more exclusive right to one woman than, when a number sat together at their dinner, consisting of different dishes, one man had exclusive right to the whole of one dish. He had had the article, but he had lent it to a person to copy, and it was not now in his possession. So, because you had commented favorably on one article, it followed that you endorsed what he published afterwards.” The reference is to the Battle-Axe letter of Noyes, and, although the logic is not good, since Garrison praised Noyes in some respects and blamed in others, it indicates the trend of popular feeling. In 1841, Garrison was moved to write in self-defense: “If what we have heard of the sayings and doings of the perfectionists, especially those residing in Vermont, be true, they have certainly turned the grace of God into licentiousness, and given themselves over to a reprobate mind.” But, he adds, “Whatever may be the conduct of these perfectionists, the duty which they enjoin, the ceasing from all iniquity, at once and forever, is certainly what God requires, and what cannot be denied without extreme hardihood and profligacy of spirit. It is reasonable and therefore attainable. If men cannot help sinning, they are not gui
lty in attempting to serve two masters. If they can, then it cannot be a dangerous doctrine to preach; and he is a rebel against the government of God who advocates an opposite doctrine.”
This is a quixotically fair defense. Garrison would not throw over a doctrine he held, even if it led to excesses he abhorred, even if it imperiled his life-work. The unfounded charge of countenancing “spiritual wives” was enough to make the Evangelical Anti-slavery Society wish that Garrison would not become a member. His belief in human sinlessness made him, in orthodox eyes, a danger to the cause of Abolition. And when he headed “infidel Conventions,” he drove thousands of would-be abolitionists into the societies for colonization. He reached the position of non-coöperation with governments by extending his principle of non-resistance. Ideally he meant that the abolition of government is ultimately desirable. Noyes reached the same antinomian position through his theology, his doctrine of “holiness” based on his idea that Christ had already come to earth. But people made no distinction. In essentials they found Noyes and Garrison identical; hostile to organized Society, hostile to Christianity, and dangerous to common morals. When they heard of Garrison talking to spirits, violating the Sabbath, prospering the cause of women, declaring against the sovereign right of government to make war in self-defense, they knew him for Anti-Christ.
The Stammering Century Page 31