Journalist and abolitionist, was born at Newburyport, Mass., December 10, 1805. He was apprenticed to the printer of the “Newburyport Herald,” and at seventeen began to write for it. In 1824 he became editor of the “Herald,” and in 1829 joint editor of the “Genius of Universal Emancipation,” published in Baltimore. The vigorous expression of his anti-slavery views led to his imprisonment for libel; but friends paid his fine. He delivered emancipation lectures in New York and other places, and returning to Boston, in 1831 started the “Liberator,” a paper which he carried on until slavery was abolished in the United States. For the first few years he was constantly threatened with assassination and prosecution, and was even subjected to personal violence, but he persevered. In 1833, 1846, and 1848 he visited Great Britain, and on his first return organised the Anti-slavery Society, of which he was president. In 1865, after the total abolition of slavery, Garrison’s friends presented him with 30,000 dollars. He died at New York, 24th May 1879. He published “Sonnets and Other Poems” (1847). See Lives by his children (4 vols. 1885–89; new ed. 1893), Johnson (1881,) Grimke (1891), and Goldwin Smith (1892).

Personal

  The haters of Garrison have lived to rejoice in that grand world-movement which, every age or two, casts out so masterly an agent for good. I cannot speak of that gentleman without respect.

  He never trifled, made no account of sharp points or minute particulars, was seldom humorous, not often sarcastic, and cared little for studied phrases. Although, to the surprise of most men, probably, there are more epigrammatic and pithy sayings in his speeches—“hits,” as Brougham somewhat irreverently calls such bursts—mots which will pass into literature—than can be culled from the orations of Webster. His tone was that of a grave and serious indictment; his whole soul freighted his words. Entirely forgetting himself, an intense earnestness melted everyone into the hot current of his argument or appeal, and the influence, strong at the moment, haunted the hearer afterward, and was doubled the next day. He was master of a style of singular elevation and dignity. Windham said the younger Pitt “Could speak a king’s speech off-hand.” So far as dignity of tone was concerned, Garrison could have done it. No American of our day could state a case, or indite a public document, with more wary circumspection, impressive seriousness, or grave dignity than he could. The “Declaration of Sentiments” by the convention which formed the American Anti-slavery Society, and that Society’s statement of its reasons for repudiating the United States Constitution, have a breadth, dignity, and impressive tone such as are found in few, if any, of our state papers since the Revolution, when Dickinson, Jay, Hamilton, and Adams won such emphatic praise from Lord Chatham.

  He stands out in the same distinct relief among his contemporaries as against his predecessors; for while others of his own party equaled or surpassed him in genius, wit, eloquence, personal attractiveness, social position, ingenuity of attack, brilliancy of defense; yet by his clearness and integrity of nature he surpassed them all, and was the natural leader of all. However keen others might be in moral discernment, he was keener; however ably others might deal with a sophist, his exposition was sure to be the most cogent and convincing. To preserve this mastery among his associates he used no manœuvres, exerted no devices, asked no favors. He never attitudinized, and he never evaded; but his power in his own circle was as irresistible as the law of gravitation. He was never hurried or disconcerted or even vexed; indeed, he did not expend himself on special contests or fret about particular measures. Where others fought to win he simply bore his testimony, which in the end proved the path to winning. I well remember how, at the height of some fugitive-slave case, when it seemed to his associates as if the very gate of freedom turned on keeping that particular slave from bondage, he would be found at his compositor’s desk—for he always set up his own editorials—as equable as ever, and almost provokingly undisturbed by the excitement of that fleeting hour.

  I never saw my father draw even a diagram, and he had not the least training in drawing; yet his penmanship was handsome, and wonderfully persistent in its uniformity. It was always, however, very labored and inflexible, and latterly he wrote much in pencil, having begun with quills, then taken to steel nibs, and sometimes used a gold pen…. His ambidextrousness abided with him to the end: he shaved himself with great facility, using either hand; at table he held his knife in his left. He was what would be called a handy man about the house, though not fertile in contrivances. He hung the window-shades and the pictures—the latter with a good eye to symmetry, squareness, and general effect. He helped in everything…. He had neither a Scientific nor, strictly speaking, a poetic love of nature. He had no botanical knowledge whatever, and small cognizance of the varieties of trees or flowers. A solitary walk in the country could hardly have been congenial to him, at least as an habitual diversion…. My father’s love of pets never forsook him—or, rather, of cats: towards dogs he had an aversion…. The love of a pretty face was inextinguishable in my father. It pleased him, as it does many a man, more than any other beautiful thing in nature. His æsthetic sense in general was uncultivated, but it would have repaid cultivating. He had a great fondness for pictures, with but little artistic discrimination, his modest purchases being often dictated by pure sentiment. His visit to the Louvre gave him pleasure, in spite of much that seemed to him rubbish, while the scenes of gory battle canvases at Versailles offended his moral sensibilities. He took real delight and lingered long in the art section of the Paris Exposition of 1867, of which he especially enjoyed the statuary where the intent was chaste. It fell to his lot to befriend artists among other struggling and impecunious fellow-beings, and his charity to them was undoubtedly reinforced by his love of art. To music he was attuned from infancy, and he never ceased to sing.

  I was a frequent visitor at the home of William Lloyd Garrison [1844]. Though he had a prolonged battle to fight in the rough outside world, his home was always a haven of rest. Mrs. Garrison was a sweet-tempered, conscientious woman, who tried, under all circumstances, to do what was right. She had sound judgment and rare common sense, was tall and fine-looking, with luxuriant brown hair, large tender blue eyes, delicate features, and affable manners. They had an exceptionally fine family of five sons and one daughter. Fanny, now the wife of Henry Villard, the financier, was the favorite and pet. All the children, in their maturer years, have fulfilled the promises of their childhood. Though always in straitened circumstances, the Garrisons were very hospitable. It was next to impossible for Mr. Garrison to meet a friend without inviting him to his house, especially at the close of a convention.

  It happened that I met him at one of Parker’s Sunday evenings at home. I soon felt that this was not the man for whom I had cherished so great a distaste. Gentle and unassuming in manner, with a pleasant voice, a benevolent countenance, and a sort of glory of sincerity in his ways and words, I could only wonder at the falsehoods that I had heard and believed concerning him.

  There never was a more benevolent face than William Lloyd Garrison’s. He had a kindly eye, a winning smile, a gentleness of way, a crisp, straightforward way of talking, and a merciless movement in straight lines of thought.

General

  Next, your turning Author. You have no doubt read and heard the fate of such characters, that they generally starve to death in some garret or place that no one inhabits; so you may see what fortune and luck belong to you if you are of that class of people. Secondly, you think your time was wisely spent while you was writing political pieces. I cannot join with you there, for had you been searching the scriptures for truth, and praying for direction of the holy spirit to lead your mind into the path of holiness, your time would have been far more wisely spent, and your advance to the heavenly world more rapid. But instead of that you have taken the Hydra by the head, and now beware of his mouth; but as it is done, I suppose you think you had better go and seek the applause of mortals. But, my dear L., lose not the favour of God; have an eye single to his glory, and you will not lose your reward.

  Garrison is so used to standing alone that, like Daniel Boone, he moves away as the world creeps up to him, and goes farther into the wilderness. He considers every step a step forward, though it be over the edge of a precipice. But, with all his faults (and they are the faults of his position), he is a great and extraordinary man. His work may be over, but it has been a great work. Posterity will forget his hard words and remember his hard work. I look upon him already as an historical personage, as one who is in his niche. You say it is a merit of Theodore Parker’s letter that there is no “Garrisonism” in it. Why, it is full of Garrisonism from one end to the other. But for Garrison’s seventeen years’ toil, the book had never been written. I love you (and love includes respect); I respect Garrison (respect does not include love). There never has been a leader of Reform who was not also a blackguard. Remember that Garrison was so long in a position where he alone was right and all the world wrong, that such a position has created in him a habit of mind which may remain, though circumstances have wholly changed.

  Garrison will be recognised hereafter, not only as at present,—as the Moses of the enslaved race, leading them out of their captivity,—but as more truly the founder of the Republic than Washington himself.

  We ought to rejoice that he whose life has just closed has left to us an example grand like the hill-tops against a clear evening sky. It stands out to be a guide and direction to all of us who come after him. I can think of no funeral in the history of the world where those left behind had so much reason to rejoice. When we look back over his life of more than three-score years and ten, and see it filled with beneficent work, a work that leaves its mark on this age and on the ages to come,—it seems to me, instead of sorrowing we can rejoice that this example is left us. With the full possession of his powers, this friend has completed his work.

  If America had produced no other men of action besides Washington and Garrison, she would have gained the right to place these men amongst the very greatest of the race. Garrison is one of those men who have shown forth the living power of that religion which holds the Bible as the charter of human liberty and the source of our divinest hopes. He gained his influence over men through the appeal which he made to their consciences as believers in that Book. He was a moral reformer to the end, and during many years of the struggle left such of his friends as were inclined, to wage the battle in the political arena. As for him, his arguments, his inspiration, and his encouragement were drawn from sources to which the politician might, or might not choose to repair. That single-hearted, intrepid, clear-eyed printer’s boy, fastening his heart upon high enterprises, looks, to our mind, far greater than a Hannibal or a Wellington; and only those who have been the greatest benefactors of the poor, the weary, and the sad, have a right to be mentioned beside him when the story of his brave life is recalled for the instruction and encouragement of mankind.

  “An Appeal to South Carolina,” tells the real story of the time to an intelligent reader and is historically significant. Mr. Garrison, as author of the pamphlet, comes before us as a narrator of plain facts, revealing virtually the growth of this South-Carolinian element, and prophetic of startling issues: hence it seemed to me that we should accept the two sets of facts with their particular meanings, discriminating between good and evil, and avoid confounding things that differ. In view of this state of things, it must be evident, even to the youngest reader, that when Mr. Garrison, through “The Liberator,” denouncing slaveholding as a sin against God and humanity, called upon the nation for repentance of that sin, and immediate abjuration of it, there was a power of truth and right in his appeal that touched millions.

  He wrote poetry throughout his marvelous career, and some of his sonnets are hardly excelled in depth of feeling and poetic beauty.

  “I began the publication of the ‘Liberator’ without a subscriber, and I end it—it gives me unalloyed satisfaction to say—without a farthing as the pecuniary result of the patronage extended to it during thirty-five years of unremitted labors.” These were Garrison’s words when he brought his editorship to a close. The contrast is curious between the barrenness of the Abolitionist journalism and the immensely profitable circulation of the Abolitionist novel.

  The writings of Garrison, although very voluminous, would not in themselves give their author literary distinction. They were simply a means to an end, a by-product from a career devoted fixedly to the accomplishment of a great purpose. His ringing orations and scathing paragraphs are now as dead as the issue that called them forth. Yet Garrison will ever hold a high place in the history of American thought and literature. While it is yet too early to estimate the true extent of his influence on the spirit of his times, it can with safety be said that this influence was widespread and vital.