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

immediatism for Garrison is exemplified by his famous rhetoric in the first issue of
TheLiberator:
    I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. 68
    Such language was far more extreme than that of early black abolitionists, except for some passages inDavid Walker’s
Appeal.
But the blacks’ writing presupposed a kind of immediatism, and 20 percent of the nearly two hundred articles published in
The Liberator
’s first year came from black writers. In order to counteract the claims of slavery’s apologists, many white abolitionists began appending black “testimony” to their essays condemning black slavery. One antiabolitionist declared that Garrison was nothing but a “white Negro.” And black abolitionistWilliam Watkins wrote in
The Liberator
in 1831: “We recognize,in
The Liberator
…a FAITHFUL REPRESENTATIVE OF OURsentiments and interests; and an uncompromising advocate of OUR indefensible rights.” 69 As RichardNewman concludes, “Whites were the newcomers to the more radical abolitionist strategy of declaring a moral war against bondage; black activists had been using it for decades.” 70
    Thanks to this connection, Garrison’s gratitude to his “colored brethren” was more than matched by immense loyalty and affection on the part of blacks. 71 If Garrison’s attacks on slavery andcolonization conveyed little that was new, they served to mobilize the black community. AsJames Forten put it in a letter to Garrison, “Upon the colored population in the free states, it has operated like a trumpet call. They have risen in their hopes and feelings to the perfect stature of men; in this city [Philadelphia], every one of them is as tall as a giant.” 72 TheodoreWright later echoed the same message: “At that dark moment we heard a voice;—it was the voice of GARRISON, speaking in trumpet tones! It was like the voice of an angel of mercy!…The signs of the times began to indicate brighter days.” 73
    While Garrison never directly gave credit to blacks for converting him on the subject of colonization, he did emphasize that blacks had long opposed the idea and strongly refuted opponents’ claims that he himself was responsible for anticolonizationist sentiment in the black community:
    From the organization of the American Colonization Society, down to the present time, the free people of color have publicly and repeatedly expressed their opposition to it. They indignantly reject every overture for their expatriation. It has been industriously circulated by the advocates of colonization, that I have caused this hostility to the African scheme in the bosoms of blacks; and that, until the Liberator was established, they were friendly to it. This story is founded upon sheer ignorance. It is my solemn conviction that I have not proselytized a dozen individuals; for the very conclusive reason that no conversions were necessary. 74
    Following this statement, in his
Thoughts on African Colonization,
Garrison printed sixty-eight pages on “Sentiments of the People of Color,” documenting black protests against colonization. But strangely enough, while he began with the two Philadelphia resolutions of 1817,signed byJames Forten, Garrison overlooked
Freedom’s Journal
and other sources and jumped to