The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation Read Online Free PDF Page A

mobilizing people of color and also overcoming white prejudice. As we have seen, by 1829 this belief already had a fairly long tradition and was related to the history of black churches and secular organizations in the Eastern cities. Walker was highly unusual in writing a pamphlet that actually reached the hands of Southernslaves, thus igniting a national furor, especially afterNat Turner’s allegedly related slave rebellion of 1831. But the words of Cornish and Walker were also read by important whites, such as the young William Lloyd Garrison, 62 a would-be reformer who, in the words of historianDavid Blight, “came hungry and angry and in need of his own liberation as he learned about the desperation of millions that had been caused by slavery in America.” 63
    Cornish and Walker were by no means the only or the most influential blacks who interacted with Garrison, though Garrison’s refusal to identify such influence makes it difficult to reconstruct the exact connections between black and white reformers. As historianJulie Winch has shown, it wasJames Forten and his fellow black leaders in Philadelphia, including the family of his wealthy and nearly white son-in-law,Robert Purvis, who kept radical abolitionism and opposition to the ACS alive during the 1820s. Aided by the wandering but persistent white Quaker abolitionistBenjamin Lundy, they also helped Garrison emerge in the early 1830s as the central if highly controversial figure in American abolitionism—the man who launched
TheLiberator
in 1831, published an all-out attack on colonization in 1832, founded theNew-England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, and cofounded theAmerican Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. 64
    While it was Lundy, a longtime friend of Forten’s, who converted Garrison to the abolitionist cause, it was Garrison’s repudiation ofcolonization, which Lundy supported in various forms, that won him the devotion ofForten. Forten’s continuing flow of monetary contributions keptGarrison’s
TheLiberator
alive (it then ran for thirty-five years), helped Garrison make his fund-raising trip to England in 1833, and prepared the way for the creation of theAmerican Anti-Slavery Society. Forten also played a major part in persuading the extremely wealthy merchantArthur Tappan, who bailed Garrison out of jail in Baltimore, to sever his ties with the ACS. And Forten played a crucial role in rounding up the black subscribers, who made up some 75 percent of
The Liberator
’s subscription list in 1834. Without that continuing black support the paper could not have survived. Forten also wrote countless letters, some containing confidential and negative information on Liberia, which Garrison printed in
The Liberator.
Forten’s home in Philadelphia became a stopping place for scores of abolitionists of both races. 65
    Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, late in 1805 and was only two when his father deserted the family, putting his upbringing entirely in the hands of a strong and deeply religious mother. He was an apprentice at a local newspaper, began writing at an early age, and by 1828 was editing a Boston paper promoting temperance. That year he metBenjamin Lundy, who since 1821 had been editing
TheGenius of Universal Emancipation,
the first important American abolitionist paper. Lundy was in Boston to gain subscriptions to his paper and raise support for his cause—during his extensive travels he promoted manumissions in the South and assisted black emigrants to Haiti, even sailing to the island a number of times. Lundy in many ways embodied Garrison’s ideal of the reformer-editor, and their meeting opened Garrison’s eyes to the need for an all-out crusade to expose and combat the sins of slavery.
    Garrison agreed to move to Baltimore in 1829 and become assistant editor of
The Genius of Universal Emancipation,
freeing Lundy for other priorities. There is much ambiguity regarding the influences and timing that led him to fuse a commitment to