Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/641

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GARBISON 629 ty, was never enforced. His friend Lundy and a few other Quakers were the only persons who visited him in jail to express their sympa- thy. The press at the north generally con- demned his imprisonment as unjust, and his letters to different newspapers excited a deep interest. The manumission society of North Carolina protested against his imprisonment as an infraction of the liberty of the press. He remained in jail 49 days, when Arthur Tappan, a merchant of New York, paid the line and costs, and he was set at liberty. It subse- quently appeared that Mr. Tappan had in this act anticipated by a few days the generous purpose of Henry Clay, whose interposition had been invoked by a mutual friend. His next step was to issue a prospectus for an anti- slavery journal, to be published in Washing- ton ; and with a view to excite a deeper in- terest in his enterprise, he prepared a course of lectures on slavery, which he subsequently delivered in Philadelphia, New York, New Haven, Hartford, and Boston. In Baltimore his attempts to obtain a hearing were unsuc- cessful. Private efforts to procure a suitable place for the delivery of his lectures in Bos- ton having been made in vain, he advertised in one of the daily journals that, if a meeting house or hall were not offered before a certain day, he would address the people on the com- mon. An association of persons calling them- selves infidels thereupon proffered him the gratuitous use of a hall under their control, and, no other offer being made, he delivered his lectures in the place thus opened ; taking care, at the same time, to avow his faith in Christianity as the power which alone could break the bonds of the slaves. His lectures were attended by large audiences, and awa- kened in some minds a permanent interest in the anti-slavery cause. His experiences as a lecturer, however, convinced him that Boston rather than Washington was the best location for an anti-slavery journal, and that a revolu- tion of public sentiment at the north must pre- cede emancipation at the south. He accord- ingly issued the first number of the "Libera- tor" in Boston, Jan. 1, 1831, taking for his motto, " My country is the world, my country- men are all mankind;" and declaring, in the face of the almost universal apathy upon the subject of slavery: "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." Mr. Isaac Knapp was his partner in the print- ing and publishing department. As they were without capital or promise of support from any quarter, they were unable to open an of- fice on their own account. The foreman in the office of the " Christian Examiner," being a warm personal friend of Mr. Garrison, gen- erously employed him and his partner as jour- neymen, taking their labor as compensation in part for the use of his types. Mr. Garrison, after working mechanically in the daytime, spent a large portion of the night in editorial labor. Having issued one number, they waited anxiously to see whether they would find en- couragement to proceed. The receipt of $50 from James Forten, a wealthy colored citizen of Philadelphia, with the names of 25 sub- scribers, was the first cheering incentive to perseverance, and the journal was issued with- out interruption from that day. At the end of three weeks they opened an office for them- selves ; but for nearly two years their resour- ces were so restricted that they made the office their only domicile. The " Liberator " attract- ed general attention, not only at the north, but at the south. The mayor of Boston, Harrison Gray Otis, having been appealed to by a south- ern magistrate to suppress it if possible by law, wrote in reply that his officers had " ferreted out the paper and its editor, whose office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a very few insignifi- cant persons of all colors." Almost every mail, at this period, brought letters threatening Mr. Garrison with assassination if he did not discontinue his journal; and in December, 1831, the legislature of Georgia passed an act, offering a reward of $5,000 to any person who should arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of that state, the editor or the publisher. On Jan. 1, 1832, he secured the cooperation of eleven other per- sons in organizing the New England (afterward Massachusetts) anti-slavery society, upon the principle of immediate emancipation. This was the parent of those numerous affiliated associations by which the anti-slavery agitation was for many years maintained. In the spring of 1832 he published a work entitled " Thoughts on African Colonization," &c., in which he set forth at length the grounds of his opposition to that scheme. He went immediately afterward to England, as an agent of the New England anti-slavery society, to solicit the cooperation of the people of that country in measures de- signed to promote emancipation in the United States, and to lay before them his views of the colonization project. He was warmly received by Wilberforce, Brougham, and their associates. In consequence of statements made by Mr. Gar- rison, Wilberforce and eleven of his principal coadjutors issued a protest against the American colonization society, pronouncing its plans de- lusive, and its influence an obstruction to the abolition of slavery. He also succeeded in in- ducing Mr. George Thompson, one of the most prominent champions of the anti-slavery cause in Great Britain, to come to the United States as an anti-slavery lecturer. Soon after Mr. Garrison's return, the American anti-slavery society was organized at Philadelphia, upon the principles of which he was the champion. The " Declaration of Sentiments " issued by the association an elaborate paper, setting forth its principles, aims, and methods was pre- pared by him. The agitation previously ex- cited was now greatly intensified, and at length awakened a resistance which manifested it-