Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
History
Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
African American orators; African Americans -- History -- Sources; Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors
William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 10, 1805. He
came of very poor and obscure parentage. His father, who was a seafaring
man, early abandoned the family for causes supposed to relate to his
intemperance. The whole career of Garrison was a struggle against
poverty. His educational advantages were limited. He became a printer's
apprentice when quite a lad, and learned the printing trade. When he
launched his paper, _The Liberator_, which was to deal such destructive
blows to slavery, the type was set by his own hands. The motto of _The
Liberator_ was "Our country is the world, our countrymen mankind."
Garrison did not worship the golden calf. His course could not be
changed, nor his opinion influenced by threats of violence or the bribe
of gold. Money could not persuade him to open his mouth against the
truth, or buy his silence from uncompromising denunciation of the wrong.
He put manhood above money, humanity above race, the justice of God
above the justices of the Supreme Court, and conscience above the
Constitution. Because he took his stand upon New Testament righteousness
as taught by Christ, he was regarded as a fanatic in a Christian land.
When he declared that "he determined at every hazard to lift up a
standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of
Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty," he was regarded as a
public enemy, in a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to freedom!
Garrison drew his arguments from the Bible and the Declaration of
Independence, only to be jeered as a wild enthusiast. He would not
retreat a single inch from the straight path of liberty and justice. He
refused to purchase peace at the price of freedom. He would not drift
with the current of the public opinion of his day. His course was
up-stream; his battle against the tide. He undertook to create a right
public sentiment on the question of freedom, a task as great as it was
difficult. Garrison thundered warnings to arouse the public conscience
before the lightnings of his righteous wrath and the shafts of his
invincible logic wounded the defenders of slavery in all the vulnerable
joints of their armor. He declared: "Let Southern oppressors
tremble--let their secret abettors tremble; let their Northern
apologists tremble; let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks
tremble." For such utterances as these his name throughout the nation
became one of obloquy and reproach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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