July 4, 1829—Three years after the author of the Declaration of Independence passed from the American scene, throwing up his hands at the prospect of ending slavery in this country or even freeing all of his own “servants,” the 23-year-old newspaper editor William Lloyd Garrison decided to press home the task of fulfilling Thomas Jefferson’s belief that “all men are created equal” with a fiery Fourth of July address.
Abolitionism was a loathed, even dangerous cause to support, not merely in the South but even in the North, when Garrison accepted the invitation to speak at the Park Street Church in Boston. Even eight years after Garrison spoke, an abolitionist newspaper editor in Illinois—a free state, mind you—named Elijah Lovejoy was murdered for his blistering attacks on the “peculiar institution.”
A number of Americans—even Southerners such as the “Virginian Dynasty” of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe—professed profound unease with slavery but were disinclined to ween the nation from it. The best thing that Americans could do for blacks, they felt, was colonize them elsewhere. African-Americans, in this view, had no place in American life.
Garrison was part of what has been termed the “second wave” of abolitionism. The first wave of the movement, from the founding of the republic through roughly the early 1820s, had been marked by polite, intellectually based strategies, including appeals to Congress by the likes of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.
In the second wave, however, abolitionists such as Garrison, taking their cue from African-American ministers such as Philadelphia’s Richard Allen, decided that this incrementalist approach had reached a dead end. Now, the thinking went, you had to get in the faces of anyone who dared to turn their eyes away from slavery.
That meant eyewitness testimonies about the abuses of slavery. It meant constant, impassioned attacks in newspapers. It meant mock slave auctions. It meant defying the law of the land when adverse rulings such as the Dred Scott decision came down from the Supreme Court. It could even mean resorting to violence, as John Brown did in “bleeding Kansas” and at Harper’s Ferry in the 1850s.
Under these circumstances, many Northerners for the longest period regarded the abolitionists as troublemakers. If you want a contemporary analogy to the philosophical divisions arising, think of the battle now between activist pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Pro-lifers advocate for the right of the fetus in the womb, while pro-choicers push for maximum reproductive freedom, with no limit on how they view their body.
Similarly, fire-eating Southerners attempted to set up an impregnable judicial and legislative consensus against any limitations on their “right to property,” while abolitionists saw any compromise on this point as violating the rights expressed in the Declaration.
The more radical members of the movement, it’s now forgotten, even shared something in common with plantation aristocrats: they were prepared to tear the Union apart, if it meant they could start all over and get everything right this time by banning slavery, even if the new country was only confined to the North.
Garrison was an abolitionist disunion advocate. Twenty-five years to the day after his outspoken entrance onto the public stage, he burnt a copy of the Constitution, urging his followers to respond “Amen.” Many people who agreed with his insistence that the current union was a “devil’s pact”—including his protégé, Frederick Douglass—parted ways with him, believing that saving the Union was necessary to destroying slavery.
But much of that controversy lay in the future. Garrison’s achievement in 1829 lay in fracturing the sense of self-congratulation and complacency that had ensued in America following the War of 1812 (in effect, a second war for American independence), the survival of the nation after a half-century, and the passing of a generation of Founding Fathers already achieving the stature of demi-gods (a sentiment furthered by the passing of Jefferson and John Adams 50 years to the day after the adoption of the Declaration).
In 1829, Park Street Church was concluding an anti-slavery lecture series it had held annually on Independence Day six years before. It was the nerve center of an entire New England reform movement—one that Garrison, because of his background, was temperamentally inclined to support.
Garrison’s father had been engaged in the West Indian trade—in other words, a link in the system that kept slavery alive—before becoming a hopeless alcoholic and abandoning his family. The shame and privation he felt as a child spurred Garrison’s full-throated involvement in the temperance and abolitionist movements.
When he stepped up to the pulpit of Park Street Church, Garrison didn’t waste time on the platitudes to which speakers of the time were becoming increasingly prone. By the start of his third paragraph, he had denounced America’s slave-based politics as “rotten to the core.” He protested the condition of “two millions of wretched, degraded beings, who are pining in hopeless bondage.”
In other words, it was hypocritical to praise freedom in a land that permitted slavery, especially on such a far-reaching scale.
But Garrison did not confine himself to denunciations of slavery, or even to explanations for why it was immoral. The importance of his address to the future progress of abolitionism lay in the four propositions (yes, the same word Lincoln would invoke in the Gettysburg Address) he set out for doing battle against slavery:
* American slaves deserved “the prayers, and sympathies, and charities of the American people.”
Abolitionism was a loathed, even dangerous cause to support, not merely in the South but even in the North, when Garrison accepted the invitation to speak at the Park Street Church in Boston. Even eight years after Garrison spoke, an abolitionist newspaper editor in Illinois—a free state, mind you—named Elijah Lovejoy was murdered for his blistering attacks on the “peculiar institution.”
A number of Americans—even Southerners such as the “Virginian Dynasty” of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe—professed profound unease with slavery but were disinclined to ween the nation from it. The best thing that Americans could do for blacks, they felt, was colonize them elsewhere. African-Americans, in this view, had no place in American life.
Garrison was part of what has been termed the “second wave” of abolitionism. The first wave of the movement, from the founding of the republic through roughly the early 1820s, had been marked by polite, intellectually based strategies, including appeals to Congress by the likes of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.
In the second wave, however, abolitionists such as Garrison, taking their cue from African-American ministers such as Philadelphia’s Richard Allen, decided that this incrementalist approach had reached a dead end. Now, the thinking went, you had to get in the faces of anyone who dared to turn their eyes away from slavery.
That meant eyewitness testimonies about the abuses of slavery. It meant constant, impassioned attacks in newspapers. It meant mock slave auctions. It meant defying the law of the land when adverse rulings such as the Dred Scott decision came down from the Supreme Court. It could even mean resorting to violence, as John Brown did in “bleeding Kansas” and at Harper’s Ferry in the 1850s.
Under these circumstances, many Northerners for the longest period regarded the abolitionists as troublemakers. If you want a contemporary analogy to the philosophical divisions arising, think of the battle now between activist pro-lifers and pro-choicers. Pro-lifers advocate for the right of the fetus in the womb, while pro-choicers push for maximum reproductive freedom, with no limit on how they view their body.
Similarly, fire-eating Southerners attempted to set up an impregnable judicial and legislative consensus against any limitations on their “right to property,” while abolitionists saw any compromise on this point as violating the rights expressed in the Declaration.
The more radical members of the movement, it’s now forgotten, even shared something in common with plantation aristocrats: they were prepared to tear the Union apart, if it meant they could start all over and get everything right this time by banning slavery, even if the new country was only confined to the North.
Garrison was an abolitionist disunion advocate. Twenty-five years to the day after his outspoken entrance onto the public stage, he burnt a copy of the Constitution, urging his followers to respond “Amen.” Many people who agreed with his insistence that the current union was a “devil’s pact”—including his protégé, Frederick Douglass—parted ways with him, believing that saving the Union was necessary to destroying slavery.
But much of that controversy lay in the future. Garrison’s achievement in 1829 lay in fracturing the sense of self-congratulation and complacency that had ensued in America following the War of 1812 (in effect, a second war for American independence), the survival of the nation after a half-century, and the passing of a generation of Founding Fathers already achieving the stature of demi-gods (a sentiment furthered by the passing of Jefferson and John Adams 50 years to the day after the adoption of the Declaration).
In 1829, Park Street Church was concluding an anti-slavery lecture series it had held annually on Independence Day six years before. It was the nerve center of an entire New England reform movement—one that Garrison, because of his background, was temperamentally inclined to support.
Garrison’s father had been engaged in the West Indian trade—in other words, a link in the system that kept slavery alive—before becoming a hopeless alcoholic and abandoning his family. The shame and privation he felt as a child spurred Garrison’s full-throated involvement in the temperance and abolitionist movements.
When he stepped up to the pulpit of Park Street Church, Garrison didn’t waste time on the platitudes to which speakers of the time were becoming increasingly prone. By the start of his third paragraph, he had denounced America’s slave-based politics as “rotten to the core.” He protested the condition of “two millions of wretched, degraded beings, who are pining in hopeless bondage.”
In other words, it was hypocritical to praise freedom in a land that permitted slavery, especially on such a far-reaching scale.
But Garrison did not confine himself to denunciations of slavery, or even to explanations for why it was immoral. The importance of his address to the future progress of abolitionism lay in the four propositions (yes, the same word Lincoln would invoke in the Gettysburg Address) he set out for doing battle against slavery:
* American slaves deserved “the prayers, and sympathies, and charities of the American people.”
* Non-slave-holding states are “constitutionally involved in the guilt of slavery,” and are obligated “to assist in its overthrow.”
* There was no valid legal or religious justification for the preservation of slavery.
* The “colored population” of America needed to be freed, educated, and accepted as equals by whites.
Garrison would go on to establish the foremost abolitionist publication, The Liberator, finally wrapping up publication after the Civil War and Emancipation. In one way, it is surprising that he left the public scene with the last of his propositions still very much in question.
In the larger sense, though, Garrison's career--and his address at the Park Avenue Church--call into question one of the more prevalent truisms of American politics--i.e., that moral questions are so divisive and counterproductive that they have no place in the public realm.
To be sure, Garrison's constant hectoring in The Liberator agitated pro-slavery forces. Yet who is prepared to say now that his polemics and his confrontational strategies did not serve their purpose?
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