William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist. Archibald Henry Grimké
to the crowds thronging by extemporized booths and bars. Shocking as was the excesses of this period "nothing comparatively was heard on the subject of intemperance—it was seldom a theme for the essayist—the newspapers scarcely acknowledged its existence, excepting occasionally in connection with some catastrophes or crimes—the Christian and patriot, while they perceived its ravages, formed no plans for its overthrow—and it did not occur to any that a paper devoted mainly to its suppression, might be made a direct and successful engine in the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individual confessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts were adopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments of the people." Such was the state of public morals and the state of public sentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This change was brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist city missionary, the Rev. William Collier. His labors among the poor of Boston had doubtless revealed to him the bestial character of intemperance, and the necessity of doing something to check and put an end to the havoc it was working. With this design he established the National Philanthropist in Boston, March 4, 1826. The editor was one of Garrison's earliest acquaintances in the city. Garrison went after awhile to board with him, and still later entered the office of the Philanthropist as a type-setter. The printer of the paper, Nathaniel H. White and young Garrison, occupied the same room at Mr. Collier's. And so almost before our hero was aware, he had launched his bark upon the sea of the temperance reform. Presently, when the founder of the paper retired, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, that the young journeyman printer, with his editorial experience and ability, should succeed him as editor. His room-mate, White, bought the Philanthropist, and in April 1828, formally installed Garrison into its editorship. Into this new work he carried all his moral earnestness and enthusiasm of purpose. The paper grew under his hand in size, typographical appearance, and in editorial force and capacity. It was a wide-awake sentinel on the wall of society; and week after week its columns bristled and flashed with apposite facts, telling arguments, shrewd suggestions, cogent appeals to the community to destroy the accursed thing. No better education could he have had as the preparation for his life work. He began to understand then the strength of deep-seated public evils, to acquaint himself with the methods and instruments with which to attack them. The Philanthropist was a sort of forerunner, so far as the training in intelligent and effective agitation was concerned, of the Genius of Universal Emancipation and of the Liberator. One cannot read his sketch of the progress made by the temperance reform, from which I have already quoted, and published by him in the Philanthropist in April, 1828, without being struck by the strong similitude of the temperance to the anti-slavery movement in their beginnings. "When this paper was first proposed," the young temperance editor records, "it met with a repulsion which would have utterly discouraged a less zealous and persevering man than our predecessor. The moralist looked on doubtfully—the whole community esteemed the enterprise desperate. Mountains of prejudice, overtopping the Alps, were to be beaten down to a level—strong interest, connected by a thousand links, severed—new habits formed; Every house, and almost every individual, in a greater or less degree, reclaimed. Derision and contumely were busy in crushing this sublime project in its birth—coldness and apathy encompassed it on every side—but our predecessor, nevertheless, went boldly forward with a giant's strength and more than a giant's heart—conscious of difficulties and perils, though not disheartened, armed with the weapons of truth—full of meekness, yet certain of a splendid victory—and relying on the promises of God for the issue." What an inestimable object-lesson to Garrison was the example of this good man going forth singlehanded to do battle with one of the greatest evils of the age! It was not numerical strength, but the faith of one earnest soul that is able in the world of ideas and human passions to remove mountains out of the way of the onward march of mankind. This truth, we may be sure, sunk many fathoms deep into the mind of the young moralist. And no wonder. For the results of two years agitation and seed sowing were of the most astonishing character. "The change which has taken place in public sentiment," he continues, "is indeed remarkable … incorporated as intemperance was, and still is, into our very existence as a people. … A regenerating spirit is everywhere seen; a strong impulse to action has been given, which, beginning in the breasts of a few individuals, and then affecting villages, and cities, and finally whole States, has rolled onward triumphantly through the remotest sections of the republic. As union and example are the levers adopted to remove this gigantic vice, temperance societies have been rapidly multiplied, many on the principle of entire abstinence, and others making it a duty to abstain from encouraging the distillation and consumption of spirituous liquors. Expressions of the deep abhorrence and sympathy which are felt in regard to the awful prevalence of drunkenness are constantly emanating from legislative bodies down to various religious conventions, medical associations, grand juries, etc., etc. But nothing has more clearly evinced the strength of this excitement than the general interest taken in this subject by the conductors of the press. From Maine to the Mississippi, and as far as printing has penetrated—even among the Cherokee Indians—but one sentiment seems to pervade the public papers, viz., the necessity of strenuous exertion for the suppression of intemperance." Such a demonstration of the tremendous power of a single righteous soul for good, we may be sure, exerted upon Garrison lasting influences. What a revelation it was also of the transcendent part which the press was capable of playing in the revolution of popular sentiment upon moral questions; and of the supreme service of organization as a factor in reformatory movements. The seeds sowed were faith in the convictions of one man against the opinions, the prejudices, and the practices of the multitude; and knowledge of and skill in the use of the instruments by which the individual conscience may be made to correct and renovate the moral sense of a nation. But there was another seed corn dropped at this time in his mind, and that is the immense utility of woman in the work of regenerating society. She it is who feels even more than man the effects of social vices and sins, and to her the moral reformer should strenuously appeal for aid. And this, with the instinct of genius, Garrison did in the temperance reform, nearly seventy years ago. His editorials in the Philanthropist in the year 1828 on "Female Influence" may be said to be the courier avant of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of to-day, as they were certainly the precursors of the female anti-slavery societies of a few years later.
But now, without his knowing it, a stranger from a distant city entered Boston with a message, which was to change the whole purpose of the young editor's life. It was Benjamin Lundy, the indefatigable friend of the Southern slave, the man who carried within his breast the whole menagerie of Southern slavery. He was fresh from the city which held the dust of Fanny Garrison, who had once written to her boy in Newburyport, how the good God had cared for her in the person of a colored woman. Yes, she had written: "The ladies are all kind to me, and I have a colored woman that waits on me, that is so kind no one can tell how kind she is; and although a slave to man, yet a free-born soul, by the grace of God. Her name is Henny, and should I never see you again, and you should come where she is, remember her, for your poor mother's sake." And now, without his dreaming of it, this devoted Samaritan in black, who, perhaps, had long ago joined her dear friend in the grave, was coming to that very boy, now grown to manhood, to claim for her race what the mother had asked for her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of all those little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansioned heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism of slavery. "My heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul." With apostolic faith and zeal he had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his bruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great love, he had gone about the country on his self-imposed task. To do this work he had given up the business of a saddler, in which he had prospered, had sacrificed his possessions, and renounced the ease that comes with wealth; had courted unheard-of hardships, and wedded himself for better and worse to poverty and unremitting endeavor. Nothing did he esteem too dear to relinquish for the slave. Neither wife nor children did he withhold. Neither the summer's heat nor the winter's cold was able to daunt him or turn him from his object. Though diminutive and delicate of body, no distance or difficulty of travel was ever able to deter him from doing what his humanity had bidden him do. From place to place, through nineteen States, he had traveled, sowing as he went the seeds of his holy purpose, and watering them with his life's blood. Not Livingstone nor Stanley on the dark continent exceeded in sheer physical