William Lloyd Garrison eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 394 pages of information about William Lloyd Garrison.

William Lloyd Garrison eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 394 pages of information about William Lloyd Garrison.
of intemperance, slavery, and war.  A mighty human love had begun to flow inward and over him.  And as the tide steadily rose it swallowed and drowned all the egoism of self and race in the altruism of an all-embracing humanity.  When an apprentice in the office of the Newburyport Herald, and writing on the subject of South American affairs he grew hot over the wrongs suffered by American vessels at Valparaiso and Lima.  He was for finishing “with cannon what cannot be done in a conciliatory and equitable manner, where justice demands such proceedings.”  This was at seventeen when he was a boy with the thoughts of a boy.  Six years later he is a man who has looked upon the sorrows of men.  His old boy-world is far behind him, and the ever-present sufferings of his kind are in front of him.  War now is no longer glorious, for it adds immeasurably to the sum of human misery.  War ought to be abolished with intemperance and slavery.  And this duty he began to utter in the ears of his country.  “The brightest traits in the American character will derive their luster, not from the laurels picked from the field of blood, not from the magnitude of our navy and the success of our arms,” he proclaimed, “but from our exertions to banish war from the earth, to stay the ravages of intemperance among all that is beautiful and fair, to unfetter those who have been enthralled by chains, which we have forged, and to spread the light of knowledge and religious liberty, wherever darkness and superstition reign....  The struggle is full of sublimity, the conquest embraces the world.”  Lundy himself did not fully appreciate the immense gain, which his cause had made in the conversion of Garrison into an active friend of the slave.  Not at once certainly.  Later he knew.  The discovery of a kindred spirit in Boston exerted probably no little influence in turning for the second time his indefatigable feet toward that city.  He made it a second visit in July, 1828, where again he met Garrison.  His experience with the ministers did not deter him from repeating the horrible tale wherever he could get together an audience.  This time he secured his first public hearing in Boston.  It was in the Federal Street Baptist Church.  He spoke not only on the subject of slavery itself, the growth of anti-slavery societies, but on a new phase of the general subject, viz., the futility of the Colonization Society as an abolition instrument.  Garrison was present, and treasured up in his heart the words of his friend.  He did not forget how Lundy had pressed upon his hearers the importance of petitioning Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, as we shall see further on.  But poor Lundy was unfortunate with the ministers.  He got this time not the cold shoulder alone but a clerical slap in the face as well.  He had just sat down when the pastor of the church, Rev. Howard Malcolm, uprose in wrath and inveighed against any intermeddling of the North with
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William Lloyd Garrison from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.