William Lloyd Garrison, the AbolitionistGrimké, Archibald Henry
History
William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist
Grimké, Archibald Henry
Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879
Liberty party was benefited by the meetings and speeches of Garrisonian
Abolitionists. What was true of the Liberty party was equally true of
Free Soil and Free Democracy. Although the little band remained small,
it was potent in swelling, year after year, the anti-slavery membership
of all the parties, Whig and Democratic, as well as of those already
mentioned. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" might fairly be classed among the large
indirect results produced by Garrison. "But," as Phillips justly
remarked, "'Uncle Tom' would never have been written had not Garrison
developed the facts; and never would have succeeded had he not created
readers and purchasers." Garrisonism had become an influence, a power
that made for liberty and against slavery in the United States. It had
become such also in Great Britain. George Thompson, writing the pioneer
of the marvelous sale of "Uncle Tom" in England, and of the
unprecedented demand for anti-slavery literature, traced their source to
his friend: "Behold the fruit of your labors," he exclaimed, "and
rejoice."
Mr. Garrison's pungent characterization of the "Union" at the dinner of
the Free Democracy as "but another name for the iron reign of the
slave-power," found almost instant illustration of its truth in the
startling demand of that power for the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise. In 1850 the South lost California, but it received at the
time an advantage of far-reaching consequence, viz., the admission of
the principle of federal non-intervention upon the subject of slavery in
the national Territories into the bill organizing Territorial
Governments for New Mexico and Utah. The train which was to blow down
the slave wall of 1820 and open to slave immigration the northern half
of the Louisiana Territory, was laid in the compromise measures of 1850.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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