William Lloyd Garrison, the AbolitionistGrimké, Archibald Henry
History
William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist
Grimké, Archibald Henry
Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879
The marriage occurred September 4, 1834, and the next day the pair set
up housekeeping in "Freedom's Cottage," on Bower street, Roxbury. The
young housekeepers were rich in every good thing except money; and of
that commodity there was precious little that found its way into the
family till. And money was indispensable even to a philanthropist, who
cared as little for it as did Garrison. He had never in his twenty-eight
years experienced the sensation which a bank account, however small,
gives its possessor. He had been toiling during the last three years in
a state of chronic self-forgetfulness, and of consequence in a state of
chronic inpecuniosity. He had never been careful of what he got--was
careful only of what he gave. For himself he was ready to subsist on
bread and water and to labor more than fourteen hours at the case to
make the issue of the _Liberator_ possible. But surely he could not put
"a fair ladye" on such limited commons even for the sake of his cause.
The laborer is worthy of his hire, and an unworldly minded reformer
ought to be supplied with the wherewithal needful to feed, clothe, and
house himself and those dependent upon him. Some such thought shaped
itself in Garrison's mind as his circumstances grew more and more
straitened, and his future as the head of a family looked more and more
ominous. Anxiety for the morrow pressed heavily upon him as his
responsibilities as a breadwinner hugged closer and closer his everyday
life. Poverty ceased to be the ordinary enemy of former years, whom he
from the lookouts of the unconquerable mind used to laugh to scorn; it
had become instead a cruel foe who worried as by fire the peace of his
soul.
There was the _Liberator_? The _Liberator_ as a moral engine was a
marvelous success; but the _Liberator_ as a money-maker was a most
dismal failure. If its owners had possessed only common aptitude for
business the failure need not have been so complete, indeed the
enterprise might have been crowned with a moderate degree of success.
But never were two men more entirely lacking in the methods, which
should enter into ventures of that character, than were Garrison and
Knapp. Garrison was unfortunate in this respect but it seems that Knapp
was more so. Neither took to book-keeping, and neither overcame his
serious deficiency in this regard. The consequence was that the books
kept themselves, and confusion grew upon confusion until the partners
were quite confounded. Garrison naïvely confesses this fault of the firm
to his brother-in-law thus: "Brother Knapp, you know, resembles me very
closely in his habits of procrastination. Indeed I think he is rather
worse than I am in this respect!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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