organized under Garrison’s auspices, and in accordance with his principles, was the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which adopted its constitution in January 1832. In the spring of this year Garrison issued his Thoughts on African Colonization, in which he showed by ample citations from official documents that the American Colonization Society was organized in the interest of slavery, and that in offering itself to the people of the North as a practical remedy for that system it was guilty of deception. His book, aided by others taking substantially the same view, smote the society with a paralysis from which it never recovered. Agents of the American Colonization Society in England having succeeded in deceiving leading Abolitionists there as to its character and tendency, Garrison was deputed by the New England Anti-Slavery Society to visit England for the purpose of counteracting their influence. He went in the spring of 1833, when he was but twenty-seven years of age, and was received with great cordiality by British Abolitionists, some of whom had heard of his bold assaults upon American slavery, and had seen a few numbers of the Liberator. The struggle for emancipation in the West Indies was then at the point of culmination; the leaders of the cause, from all parts of the kingdom, were assembled in London, and Garrison was at once admitted to their councils and treated with distinguished consideration. He took home with him a “protest” against the American Colonization Society, signed by Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, Samuel Gurney, William Evans, S. Lushington, T. Fowell Buxton, James Cropper, Daniel O’Connell and others, in which they declared their deliberate judgment that “its precepts were delusive,” and “its real effects of the most dangerous nature.” He also received assurances of the cordial sympathy of British Abolitionists with him in his efforts to abolish American slavery. He gained a hearing before a large popular assembly in London, and won the confidence of those whom he addressed by his evident earnestness, sincerity and ability.
Garrison’s visit to England enraged the pro-slavery people and press of the United States at the outset, and when he returned home in September with the “protest” against the Colonization Society, and announced that he had engaged the services of George Thompson as a lecturer against American slavery, there were fresh outbursts of rage on every hand. The American Anti-Slavery Society was organized in December of that year (1833), putting forth a masterly declaration of its principles and purposes from the pen of Garrison. This added fresh fuel to the public excitement, and when Thompson came over in the next spring, the hostility to the cause began to manifest itself in mobs organized to suppress the discussion of the slavery question. Now began what Harriet Martineau called “the martyr age in America.” In the autumn of 1835 Thompson was compelled, in order to save his life, to embark secretly for England. Just before his departure the announcement that he would address the Woman’s Anti-Slavery Society of Boston created “a mob of gentlemen of property and standing,” from which, if he had been present, he could hardly have escaped with his life. The whole city was in an uproar. Garrison, almost denuded of his clothing, was dragged through the streets with a rope by infuriated men. He was rescued with great difficulty, and consigned to the gaol for safety, until he could be secretly removed from the city.
Anti-slavery societies were greatly multiplied throughout the North, and many men of influence, both in the church and in the state, were won to the cause. Garrison, true to his original purpose, never faltered or turned back. The Abolitionists of the United States were a united body until 1839–1840, when divisions sprang up among them. Garrison countenanced the activity of women in the cause, even to the extent of allowing them to vote and speak in the anti-slavery societies, and appointing them as lecturing agents; moreover, he believed in the political equality of the sexes, to which a strong party was opposed upon social and religious grounds. Then there were some who thought Garrison dealt too severely with the churches and pulpits for their complicity with slavery, and who accused him of a want of religious orthodoxy; indeed, according to the standards of his time he was decidedly heterodox, though he had an intensely religious nature and was far from being an infidel, as he was often charged with being. He was, moreover, not only a non-resistant but also an opponent of all political systems based on force. “As to the governments of this world,” he said, “whatever their titles or forms we shall endeavour to prove that in their essential elements, as at present administered, they are all anti-Christ; that they can never by human wisdom be brought into conformity with the will of God; that they cannot be maintained except by naval and military power to carry them into effect; that all their penal enactments, being a dead letter without any army to carry them into effect, are virtually written in human blood; and that the followers of Jesus should instinctively shun their stations of honor, power, and emolument—at the same time ‘submitting to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake’ and offering no physical resistance to any of their mandates, however unjust or tyrannical.” These views were very distasteful to many, who, moreover, felt that Garrison greatly injured abolitionism by causing it to be associated in men’s minds with these unpopular views on other subjects. The dissentients from his opinions determined to form an anti-slavery political party, while he believed in working by moral rather than political party instrumentalities. These differences led to the organization of a new National Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, and to the formation of the “Liberty Party” (q.v.) in politics. (See Birney, James G.) The two societies sent their delegates to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, and Garrison refused to take his seat in that body, because the women delegates from the United States were excluded. The discussions of the next few years served to make clearer than before the practical workings of the constitution of the United States as a shield and support of slavery; and Garrison, after a long and painful reflection, came to the conclusion that its pro-slavery clauses were immoral, and that it was therefore wrong to take an oath for its support. The Southern states had greatly enlarged representation in Congress on account of their slaves, and the national government was constitutionally bound to assist in the capture of fugitive slaves, and to suppress every attempt on their part to gain their freedom by force. In view of these provisions, Garrison, adopting a bold scriptural figure of speech, denounced the constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell,” and chose as his motto, “No union with slaveholders.”
One class of Abolitionists sought to evade the difficulty by strained interpretations of the clauses referred to, while others, admitting that they were immoral, felt themselves obliged, notwithstanding, to support the constitution in order to avoid what they thought would be still greater evils. The American Anti-Slavery Society, of which Garrison was the president from 1843 to the day of emancipation, was during all this period the nucleus of an intense and powerful moral agitation, which was greatly valued by many of the most faithful workers in the field of politics, who respected Garrison for his fidelity to his convictions. On the other hand, he always had the highest respect for every earnest and faithful opponent of slavery, however far their special views might differ. When in 1861 the Southern states seceded from the Union and took up arms against it, he saw clearly that slavery would perish in the struggle, that the constitution would be purged of its pro-slavery clauses, and that the Union henceforth would rest upon the sure foundations of liberty, justice and equality to all men. He therefore ceased from that hour to advocate disunion, and devoted himself to the task of preparing the way for and hastening on the inevitable event. His services at this period were recognized and honoured by President Lincoln and others in authority, and the whole country knew that the agitation which made the abolition of slavery feasible and necessary was largely due to his uncompromising spirit and indomitable courage.
In 1865 at the close of the war, he declared that, slavery being abolished, his career as an abolitionist was ended. He counselled a dissolution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, insisting that it had become functus officiis, and that whatever needed
