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��WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
��timore and New Orleans. This cost him two suits at law, a fine of fifty dol- lars and forty-nine days' imprisonment in a Baltimore jail. It was, however, proved in court, that the number of slaves carried was much greater than the article specified. The fine was gen- erously paid by Mr. Arthur Tappan, a wealthy anti-slavery man of New York, and Mr. Garrison was released.
On the first of January, following, (1831) Mr. Garrison issued the first number of the Liberator. In it, he de- manded the "immediate and uncondi- tional emancipation of every slave." He made that demand "in the name of justice and humanity, and according to the laws of the living God."
And the world now very well knows that he did not cease to press that claim, nor suspend the publication of the Liberator till the very last slave in the nation was set free by presidential proclamation. Thus wondrously did he fulfill his own prophetic announcement : "I am in earnest. I will not equivo- cate. I will not excuse. I will not re- treat a single inch ; and L will be heard!"
In his youth, Garrison was a pro- nounced politician of the Newburyport whig, or conservative school. But the sound of the Greek revolution against the Moslem power reached his ear and fired his soul with the spirit of freedom. The powerful appeals of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in the United States Congress fed the flame. Webster be- came to him the divinity of the forum, and he named him the " God-like. 1 He even contemplated at one time entering the military school at West Point and hastily preparing himself to take the field in person in behalf of the Greeks. John Randolph had not then told him and Clay and Webster that the "Greeks were at their own doors."
But when Garrison became a grown- up man and abolitionist, he firmly and religiously abjured all violence and the whole spirit of war among men.
When he espoused the cause of the American slave, and the American Anti- slavery Society was formed, the consti- tution contained this emphatic clause : "But this society will never, in any way,
��countenance the oppressed in vindicat- ing their rights by resorting to physical force. "
Mr. Garrison was at this time a Chris- tian, as he understood the word, in all the word can be made rightly to mean. And most of all, he reverenced the doc- trines of freedom and peace. "Peace on earth, good- will to men," were his proclamation and song. To "preach deliverance to the captives, and open- ing of the prisons to them who were bound," were his mission and work.
Human life he held as sacred above all other things. And so capital pun- ishment and war, as well as slavery, were to him an abhorrence. And hence logically, he renounced allegiance to human governments founded in force and military power ; and to announce , defend and extend that high, and to him holy and divine philosophy, he with a few others organized the New England Non-Resistanee Society, of which he was chosen first correspond- ing secretary and member of the exec- utive committee.
And many, if not most of the offi- cial papers of the association bear unmistakable marks of Mr. Garrison's pen, brain and heart.
A portion of the Preamble to the Constitution reads thus :
Whereas, the penal code of the first covenant has been abrogated by Jesus Christ : and whereas our Savior has left us an example that we should follow his steps in forbearance, submission to injury, and non resistance, even when life itself is at stake ; and, whereas the weapons of a true christian are not carnal, but spiritual, and therefore mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds :
And whereas, we profess to belong to a kingdom not of this world, which is without local or geographical bound- aries, in which there is no division of caste nor inequality of sex ; therefore, we the undersigned, etc., etc.
A part of the second article of the Constitution is in these words :
"The members of this society agree in the opinion that no man nor body of men however constituted, or by
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