American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with W. Caleb McDaniel, part 4 of 4

We are rolling, so I wouldn't do that right now. Talk about that, sure, yeah. The mobs in the mid-1830s that attack abolitionists in the north really affect most of the leading abolitionists in one way or another. Many of them are targeted by mobs, their property is damaged by mobs. But I think that the abolitionists also responded to that anti-abolitionist violence in a variety of different ways. For Garrison, the fact that northerners were gathering to violently assault abolitionists for speaking about slavery just showed how corrupt Northern society had become and it made him aware of how many other evils needed to be addressed if abolitionists were going to succeed. They needed to deal with the fact that Americans didn't want to hear women talking in public about slavery. They needed to deal with the basic problem that many people seem to think violence was

a legitimate method of dealing with dissent. On the other hand, some abolitionists interpret the mobs as a sign that abolitionism is so unpopular that to adopt other reforms that are unpopular will only invite further violence against the abolitionists and make it impossible to do anything constructive for the slaves. So even though Garrison and other abolitionists share the experience of being targeted by Northern violence, they really emerge from that experience with different understandings of what abolitionists should be doing from there on out. Yeah, because the group can actually hurt finest hour. Sure. It would be down to mobs, but then that's it.

Yeah. Well, the other thing that Garrison learns from the anti-abolitionist mobs is that you can actually gain support for abolitionism from people who had not been on the front lines before. Window Phillips who becomes a leading abolitionist orator is really struck by the violence in Boston's streets targeting abolitionists and that propels him in a real sense into the movement a few years later. So Garrison's conclusion is that if abolitionists will take the best shot of anti-abolitionist mobs and yet at the same time show their Christian principle and maintain their position that they can win a lot of sympathy among Northerners concerned about this outbreak of violence in American society, even if those Northerners don't agree with the abolitionists on all of their positions.

In a way, Garrison draws the same conclusion from the anti-abolitionist mobs that he did in his Baltimore jail cell that a few white abolitionists might have to martyr themselves for the cause to get the country's attention. Thank you. So they win the war. I do they. And Garrison goes to Charleston. I wonder if you could describe the scene in Charleston. Garrison's emotions when he travels to Charleston in 1865 must have been hard to fathom or express. It's the first time that he's traveled farther south than Baltimore. And when he gets to Charleston, he encounters many of the recently emancipated slaves who are living there.

One of them presses a $10 bill into his hand as a token of appreciation, a huge crowd, cheers him and congratulates him as an abolitionist hero. So it's a gratifying moment for Garrison. It's a moment that vindicates, he believes, the sacrifices he's made for the cause. It's also, I think, an emotional moment for Garrison because for the first time he can embrace the nation, he has, for most of his life, been deeply disillusioned by his country. And when he goes to Charleston and he attends a flag raising ceremony at Fort Sumter, here is this radical who a few years before has said that he can't stand under an American flag because of what it represents.

And now he's able to actually assist in pulling the rope that raises the flag over Fort Sumter and it's a powerful moment for him as an agitator because he's finally in his mind reconciled with the country that he's been criticizing for so long. And he, unlike some of his colleagues, sees the end of the struggle at this point. Why would they see this moment differently? Garrison believes that once the 13th Amendment is passed by Congress that abolitionists have completed their mission as abolitionists. He knows that the work is not done, but he also believes that the American anti-slavery society would be a misnomer in America that no longer has slavery.

At the same time, many abolitionists believe that slavery continues in the South after the Emancipation Proclamation after the 13th Amendment. As long as emancipated slaves do not have the security of land, don't have the right to vote, they won't really be able to make gains in the South. And so Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists criticize Garrison for talking as though the crusade has come to an end because they believe that it's now abolitionists' job to call attention to the work that yet remains to deal with the aftermath of slavery in the South. You know, Garrison argues against that point, but it seems to be given lip services to their ideas.

What was his take on reconstruction? Did he become angry? Garrison, certainly even after his retirement from the cause, continued to write about the issues that he had had campaigned for his whole life. Even though the liberator ends, he continues to send editorials to northern newspapers to announcing the course of reconstruction under President Andrew Johnson and calling for Republican leaders to take control of reconstruction in order to make sure that freed people's rights are protected in the South. And looking at the big picture, what place does Garrison have in our history? Garrison is remembered first and foremost because he was one of the earliest white Americans to describe slavery as a national sin that needed to be immediately ended without compensation

and without colonization. I think he should also be remembered as a great American agitator, someone who really defended the principle that any American should be free to advocate for causes that are unpopular on the basis of their conscience. At the time that Garrison lived that wasn't necessarily clear, there were Americans who believed that what the United States had accomplished in its brief life was so important on the world stage that preserving it was the most important thing, even if that meant not talking about divisive subjects like slavery. And what Garrison believed was that a freedom that did not permit criticism of the Republic or continued agitation on issues that needed to be addressed wasn't freedom worthy of

the name. He really staked his career on the belief that agitation was an important part of a democratic society, and that it was important to make sure that dissenting views were heard. I wonder if you had expanded on that, because we take for granted the idea that dissenting views are welcome in that the first amendment protects everything, we don't need to get in the first amendment. Well, many European observers who came to the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, for example, commented on the fact that even though the United States was a freer society

than the countries that he knew in Europe, that there seemed to be a sort of smallness of mind or a concern that Tocqueville had that even though Americans could say anything, they continued to say the same things over and over again and congratulate themselves on what they had done instead of looking to the future. And what Garrison, I think, was pushing against was that sense that the American revolution had been achievement enough. Garrison believed that it was important to have constant agitation in a democratic society that if dissent was not allowed, then that said something about how free the country was, because I think that to a lot of Americans dissent and freedom of speech, that's almost the core, that's the most important American value.

But that wasn't at all the case, and is that his legacy? I think many Americans today take for granted that the freedom of speech is one of the most important freedoms that Americans have. But in the early 19th century, that wasn't necessarily what most Americans would have pointed to as the hallmark of American republicanism. They believed that having a country governed by the people, for the people, of the people was so unique that preserving that was the most important thing of all, saving the union, making sure that the American democratic experiment didn't collapse was most important. Even if that meant taking unpopular abolitionists and dissenters and silencing them or suggesting that divisive issues like slavery shouldn't come up because they might threaten harmony

between the North and the South. I think one of Garrison's legacies is that he believed the way that a democratic society treats its dissenters. Its agitators, its unpopular views, is really a testament to how democratic the society is. Still not getting it, right? No, it's only boil it down. Yeah, more and yeah. And I guess just if you could put the dagger through the heart of it, this is, you know, because we're now, we're Douglass's, Douglass is speaking at the memorial ceremony, we jumped forward between years and, and we know that he ended slavery, but in fact, what left us was something more precious than that and more and more, yeah, simple.

Garrison always will be remembered first and foremost for his role in helping to bring American slavery to an end, but I think he also left us with something that is capable of speaking to us long after slavery has ended. And that is that he believed strongly in the right to dissent and he believed that an agitators role in democratic societies was to ensure that, I flubbed it, let me start over. That was, I think, yeah, yeah. Garrison will always be remembered first and foremost for his role in helping to bring American slavery to an end, but he also left us with something that is capable of speaking to us even after slavery, and that is his belief in the absolute freedom of advocacy in

a democratic society that in order to have a democracy, you need to have people who are willing to point out flaws in a democracy and call their countrymen to higher standards and that to do that is in some ways the most patriotic service that a citizen can render to a democratic society. So Garrison's legacy is not just as an abolitionist, but also in a broader sense as an agitator who really vindicated the right of free speech and dissent in American democracy. Okay, we got it there, error 5. That was terrific, can you, is there, no, I think that's good, okay, good. So what we need to do last thing is sit still for 30 seconds while we get some room tone.

This is room tone, everybody quiet and still please, Mark.