William Lloyd Garrison

There are reasons we should study history, although I'm not certain we articulate them clearly or loudly enough.  Lessons are there to be learned.  People are there to emulate.  Successes and mistakes are there to see.

One such lesson comes from William Lloyd Garrison. He was an Ante-Bellum abolitionist, one of the first and certainly one of the loudest.  He (and his partner, Isaac Knapp) began publishing his newspaper, The Liberator, on January 1, 1831 and vowed to continue until the end of slavery.  He did just that, stopping only after the 13th Amendment was ratified.

Garrison was a picture of contradiction, short in stature, mild in manner, and soft in speech, while full of fierce passion when it came to abolition.  He was a fighting pacifist.  Relying on the written word, not violence in his opposition, he wrote with such fiery words that any peaceful solution to the issue of slavery became virtually impossible.  In the South, there was a price on his head; the state legislature of Georgia alone offered $5000 for his arrest and conviction for inciting slaves to rebel (after Nat Turner's revolt in VA).  Even in Boston, the "Cradle of Liberty" of the American Revolution, he had to be rescued from mobs intent on doing him harm, even hanging.  Just imagine the man's bravery, his personal courage.

Yet, in the face of all these threats, Garrison stood strong in opposition to slavery, a moral evil.  He not only condemned Southern slave owners (Slavery was a sin; therefore slave owners were sinners and would be condemned to eternal damnation.), but also apathetic Northerners.

His first editorial included, "I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation....  I will not equivocate.  I will not excuse.  I will not retreat a single inch.  I will be heard."  Although The Liberator wasn't wildly popular anywhere except abolitionist circles, which were quite small, word of Garrison's newspapers spread.  Perhaps, even, Garrison and The Liberator are given more credit than actually earned--but I don't think so.

Garrison himself penned one of the lessons we can learn.  It is relevant to today, to the culture we have created.  He wrote, "My crime is that I will not go with the multitudes to do evil."  How easy it is to silently go along with wrong that is committed or, as he accused Northerners, to be apathetic in the face of wrong.  How easy it is, especially today, to sacrifice principles when confronted by opposition, when threatened with labeling and name-calling.  How easy it is to sell out in the name of compromise, "bi-partisanship," or "reaching across the aisle."  The majority, silent or otherwise, is not always right.  William Lloyd Garrison's words are a message we should hear, almost two centuries later, "My crime is that I will not go with the multitudes to do evil."