William Lloyd Garrison, the AbolitionistGrimké, Archibald Henry
History
William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist
Grimké, Archibald Henry
Garrison, William Lloyd, 1805-1879
To a colored man belongs the high honor of having been the _courier
avant_ of the slavery agitation. This man was David Walker, who lived in
Boston, and who published in 1829 a religio-political discussion of the
status of the negroes of the United States in four articles. The
wretchedness of the blacks in consequence of slavery he depicted in dark
and bitter language. Theodore Parker, many years afterward, said that
the negro was deficient in vengeance, the lowest form of justice.
"Walker's Appeal" evinced no deficiency in this respect in its author.
The pamphlet found its way South, and was the cause of no little
commotion among the master-class. It was looked upon as an instigation
to servile insurrection. The "Appeal" was proscribed, and a price put
upon the head of the author. Garrison deprecated the sanguinary
character of the book. For he himself was the very reverse of Walker.
Garrison was a full believer in the literal doctrine of non-resistance
as enunciated by Jesus. He abhorred all war, and physical collisions of
every description, as wicked and inhuman. He sang to the slave:
"Not by the sword shall your deliverance be;
Not by the shedding of your master's blood,
Not by rebellion--or foul treachery,
Upspringing suddenly, like swelling flood;
Revenge and rapine ne'er did bring forth good.
God's _time is best_!--nor will it long delay;
Even now your barren cause begins to bud,
And glorious shall the fruit be!--watch and pray,
For lo! the kindling dawn that ushers in the day."
He considered "Walker's Appeal" "a most injudicious publication, yet
warranted by the creed of an independent people." He saw in our
Fourth-of-July demonstrations, in our glorification of force as an
instrument for achieving liberty, a constant incentive to the slaves to
go and do likewise. If it was right for the men of 1776 to rise in
rebellion against their mother-country, it surely could not be wrong
were the slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and strike for their
freedom. It certainly did not lie in the mouth of a people, who
apotheosized force, to condemn them. What was sauce for the white man's
goose was sauce for the black man's gander.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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