American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with W. Caleb McDaniel, part 1 of 4

First go, but it's like half easy. Yeah, it's half easy. It's half easy. It's half easy. It's half easy. It's half easy. Is that? Yep. Okay, we are often going. So, I wonder if you just give me a sketch of Darius and in the spring of 1828 before he runs into Lundywood, where are the circumstances? Well, Darius and had finished his apprenticeship a few years before and had moved to Boston to try to find work. He had started one newspaper in a small town in Massachusetts that promptly failed. He moved to Boston and was given work editing at Temperance Newspaper there. But neither of those papers was really doing very well. There wasn't much of a sign that abolitionism was on his horizon. He probably thought slavery was wrong, but before he met Lundy, he definitely wasn't an abolitionist. And where had he come from, what were his circumstances growing up? Garrison never really had a stable family life growing up.

His father was a sailor who liked to drink and abandoned the family when he was three years old. His mother tried to compensate for that by instilling in her son's deep Baptist piety. But a few years after Garrison's father left, she was forced for economic reasons to split the family up and moved to another town to do work while she left Garrison with some family friends. So, he was somebody who was very dependent on his mother's approval, but also living in those circumstances had to develop a real independence. And I think that independence revealed itself later in his life. Sorry, Rob, I'm sure a pause for one second. Yeah, I'm excited. Okay, we're rolling. So, who was Benjamin Lundy? Benjamin Lundy was a quaker who had really single-handedly been trying to build a national anti-slavery movement for most of the 1820s.

He was an itinerant reformer who walked across much of the upper south and into the north to try to convince other quakers to join him in petitioning politicians to stop slavery. And he had been publishing a newspaper, the genius of universal emancipation, for about eight years when he met Garrison. And I can't remember four words. We don't have a lot of those. Did that get into the religious climate at the time? It sounds almost chaucer. Well, I think Quakers had a practice very often of traveling to different meetings of friends and encouraging friends in different places. But I think what impressed Garrison about Lundy partly was the dedication that it took to travel around to try to build an anti-slavery movement. And it was really, I think, Lundy's witness to Garrison that convinced him that something needed to be done.

And so what did Lundy tell Garrison? Lundy met with Garrison in the boarding house where Garrison was staying with a group of temperance reformers who were primarily interested in stamping out drink and freeing Americans from bondage to drink. But Lundy was there to talk about slavery. And he recorded later in his autobiography that most of the people in the room didn't really pick up on Lundy's zeal in reforming slavery. But that Garrison very quickly was taken up with Lundy's ideas. Very soon began to praise Lundy in his newspaper in his own newspaper as an editor and was talking as early as the summer of 1828 of possibly joining Lundy in Baltimore to help him edit his anti-slavery newspaper. Can you describe the scene that the boarding house, who was staying there, what was the house like?

Garrison was staying in the house of the man who owned the newspaper that he was editing William Collier, who was a Baptist editor like Garrison's mother, and had really offered Garrison this position to try to make the National Philanthropist, which was the newspaper Garrison was editing into a viable temperance paper. So he probably would have been staying at that house with other evangelicals, other people interested in reforming society, but not people who were necessarily interested in abolition. Why do you think Garrison was so reserved? Well, that's a good question. There's not a lot. Garrison never really explained what it was that Lundy said. He always credited Lundy with being the genesis of his convictions about slavery, but he never explained exactly what was said. I think that he and Lundy had a lot in common in 1828. Both of them had begun their careers in journalism at around the same time. Lundy had started to write for newspaper around the same time. Garrison became a printer's apprentice, and both of them were raised in the same culture of belief that the United States was supposed to be setting a model of liberty to the world.

And were disappointed by the blood that slavery was leaving on the nation's reputation. Lundy, very often in his newspaper, would call attention to the Declaration of Independence's clauses about all men being created equal, and would point to the inconsistency of a nation where slaves were sold in the capital, calling itself the land of freedom. And I think that sense of national hypocrisy or national sin, national complicity in the evils of slavery probably spoke to a young man like Garrison who had been raised in a culture of great patriotism of remembering the revolution that was about 50 years old and starting to think about the nation's future with the more critical eye. That's good. So Garrison goes to Baltimore, people's Lundy there. How was Baltimore different from Boston in terms of black population?

Garrison had actually lived briefly in Baltimore with his mother when his mother was searching for work, had not stayed there long, but it was a very different city by the time that Garrison arrived. It had one of the largest black populations of any city in the country at that time. Certainly there were more black men and women living in Baltimore than in Boston. There were about 5,000 slaves and then I think 10 or 15,000 free blacks living in Baltimore when Garrison moved there. So it was a city where Garrison would have seen the operations of slavery on a day-to-day basis. And I think also would have started to appreciate the way that even for free people of color living in the south and living in the country meant facing a host of obstacles.

Right. And what was the mediasism and how did Garrison come to adopt it in this position? Mediasism was the idea that slaves should be emancipated immediately without any compensation to the owners of the slaves. And it's really it was not a prominent position even among anti-slavery reformers in the 1820s. Most anti-slavery reformers, including Lundy, would have had a sort of big tent view of the anti-slavery reform. And we're open to lots of different ways of seeing slavery come to an end. The most prominent anti-slavery reform supported at the time Garrison moved to Baltimore was the idea that slaves should be manumitted voluntarily by slaveholders in the south and then encouraged to immigrate to Liberia in West Africa.

The American colonization society had the backing of some of the nation's leading politicians and the society planned to pay the expenses to remove free black Americans from the United States and send them to Africa. Even Garrison initially in 1829 after he meets Lundy, his very first public oration on slavery was sponsored by a local chapter of the American colonization society. And Lundy was in his newspaper open to publishing colonizationist and manumission society articles along with more radical calls for immediate emancipation. By the time Garrison moved to Baltimore though, he's already beginning to have second thoughts about colonizationism as a practical way of ending slavery.

I think he suspects even when he gives the speech in 1829 that what lies behind colonizationism is an inability to imagine a country in which blacks and whites live together in equality. And his very first editorial in Lundy's newspaper, Garrison expresses doubts about whether free black Americans are really supportive of the colonization plan. And as he works with Lundy, it very quickly becomes clear to him that most free black northerners almost unanimously reject the colonization society and that pushes him towards immediatism. Well, Garrison was well known even before he came into Baltimore for having a very sharp pen and had even angered his former employer when he was a printer's apprentice after starting his first newspaper.

He had gotten involved in some political controversies in Newbury port. So Garrison was not accustomed to holding back in his columns when he saw wrong even in somebody who was a respected citizen. And in this particular case in Baltimore, he used Lundy's pages to accuse a prominent Newbury port merchant of surreptitiously trading in slaves. Francis Todd, the name of the merchant, immediately sued Garrison for accused Garrison of libel and Garrison was convicted and thrown into jail. So what does he learn in jail? Garrison spins about 50 days in jail. And I think in that period, he really dedicates himself more to his new career as an anti-slavery reformer. He had been involved in various moral reform movements for temperance, for the observance of the Sabbath. But it was really in jail that I think he dedicates himself to a career as an abolitionist.

I think one of the things that Garrison learns in jail is the power of words. Words had put him in jail by attracting the attention of Todd and the courts. And in a very real sense, words got him out of jail. He uses the time in jail to write pamphlets, justifying his course and defending the freedom of the press. And one of these pamphlets comes to the attention of a wealthy philanthropist in New York, Arthur Tappen, who sends Lundy the money to pay Garrison's fine and release him from jail. So I think that in addition to convincing him of the need for sacrifices on the part of slaves, on behalf of slaves, Garrison also learns the importance in jail of freedom of speech and of defending the right of journalists to speak their conscience. He mentions that there were a few slaves in jail that he wrote down some of their stories and so on. What impact did that have?

He very often, Garrison very often in his speeches later talked about encountering runaways in the jail and goading slaveholders who came to collect their slaves or even slave traders in the city who would sometimes come to the jails, hoping to get a good deal on runaway slaves who had been imprisoned but not claimed. I think it's another example of the way that being in Baltimore gave Garrison a direct experience of what slavery was like that many abolitionists shared. They had some encounter very often with slavery that gave them some personal experience with the institution that they reacted against. When he was leaving jail, he wrote later that he realized that a few whites might have to get the expression that they might have to sacrifice for the cause.

It seems like a strategic awakening. Garrison grows up at a time when most Americans are very familiar with the stories of the American Revolution and particularly by that time Americans have just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. They knew the stories of heroes of the age of revolution who had risked their lives and their sacred honor on behalf of freedom. I think that for Garrison and some abolitionists, they were slowly coming to see that this was a cause in which they were called to make the same sorts of sacrifices and take the same sorts of risks as the heroes of the country had in the American Revolution. I mean, it sounds familiar to anybody who's really about civil rights struggle that that was kind of conscious to the population at that time that the press would pay more attention to some white kids got beat up and so on.

And is Garrison where strategically at that point, or is it really more of a philosophical thing? I'm not sure that we have as much of him sort of reflecting on his prison time. He doesn't have a sort of letter from Birmingham jail moment if that's what you're thinking of. But I think that he does imagine himself taking on a new role in through that jail experience of being able to amplify the critiques that free black Americans are already making against slavery. And I think to go back to your question about how does he come to immediatism. Garrison really becomes an immediatist partly on the strength of what he hears from free black northerners who testify against colonizationism, who appeal to their having lived in the country, their whole lives, many of them having fought in the American Revolution.

And really saying quite clearly that this was their home and they wanted freedom in the United States. And I think that Garrison is radicalized by his encounters with free black northerners that he met as he began to work with Benjamin Lundy. Great. Thank you very much. So Garrison, who is traveling around the North is kind of a drum up support for his new project. Who is this audience who's because it doesn't seem like a surefire gangbusters message at that time. Who is the audience and who's who's receptive to it?

Well, after Garrison gets out of jail, it pretty quickly becomes clear that he and Lundy are going to have a hard time working together much longer because Lundy is still open to talking about colonizationism in his paper. I think Lundy has taken a back in a way by how vocal and aggressive Garrison is in attacking Francis Todd. And so Garrison decides to found his own newspaper. And initially his hope is that he might be able to raise enough funds to found the paper in Washington, DC. To continue a campaign, he had participated in earlier in trying to abolish slavery or slave trading in the District of Columbia. But he doesn't find much support for founding the newspaper in Washington, DC. So he returns to Boston to see if he can find supporters for the liberator there.

From the beginning though, he has a hard time finding backers. Most of the evangelicals in Boston who believed that slavery was wrong and something should be done about it favored colonizationism or some more gradual way of dealing with the problem of slavery. And Garrison was determined that this newspaper would call for immediate emancipation of slaves. So he meets a few young men about his age in Boston who hear some of his lectures for this new venture. But most of them as well if they praise Garrison or indicate that they like his lectures face marginalization by their own friends and family. One of the young men who supports Garrison is one of his lifelong friends Samuel J. May who was a unitarian minister who for only saying in his pulpit that he thought Garrison was worth listening to was virtually excommunicated. And his own mother went to his grave believing that he had really gone down a bad path by associating with Garrison.

So it's very hard for Garrison to find support for the liberator in Boston. It's important to remember that by rejecting colonizationism Garrison is doing more than just attacking slavery. He's also putting his finger on the problem of racism in the United States and even in the American North. He is saying that not only slavery has to be ended but that white Americans have to envision a future in which free black Americans are going to become fellow citizens with them of the Republic. And that's a message that is in many ways just as radical in Boston as it would have been in Baltimore. There's one group that does support Garrison from the very beginning and that is Boston's black population and the black community and other northern cities like Philadelphia. One of his earliest backers for the liberator is a wealthy sailmaker named James Forton in Philadelphia who was a veteran of the American Revolution and who had really led the charge among free black Philadelphians in the 1820s against the American colonization society.

And at the very end of 1830 I think on the last day of the year Forton sends Garrison a check for 27 subscriptions to the liberator and Garrison later credited that money and other donations like it from the free black community with really keeping the liberator afloat and getting it started in the first place. So what was new about the liberator from the other things that are coming forward? Well Garrison in the very first issue of the liberator recants colonizationism and makes clear that he believes that slavery is a national sin and that only immediate emancipation can solve the problem. And he takes direct aim at the idea that many northern anti-slavery Americans had that slavery could be dealt with moderately, gradually, judiciously with getting caught up.

Maybe I should go back a little bit. What was the initial question? What was different about the liberator? Oh, what was different about the liberator, right? Garrison in the liberator from the very beginning recants colonizationism and he takes direct aim at the idea that many anti-slavery northerners had that slavery could be dealt with gradually or in moderation. He says in his opening editorial that you might as well tell a father who's rescuing his child from a burning building to act gradually or moderately. Garrison says that slavery is a national sin and sin is not something that you repent from gradually or moderately. He says that if Americans are not going to gradually emancipate themselves from drink, neither should they gradually emancipate themselves from this barbarous institution.

So the liberator from the very beginning insists on immediate emancipation as the only way of dealing with the sin of slavery. You did it very nicely because you did it very nicely. It wasn't simply a matter of a difference in strategy. But I got it, finally. One of the reasons that the conflict between the two camps with the liberator was that it was a really profound. And so if you could just make it immediate and with equal rights. Sure. One of the reasons why calling for immediate emancipation was so radical is because unlike colonizationism, it envisioned a future in which white and black Americans would live together on equal terms. And so in addition to calling for an immediate end to slavery, Garrison was also putting his finger on the problem of racism in American life, which is one reason why the liberator was so controversial, even in Boston and even in the North.

Great. Thank you very much. Great. What did Garrison have to do with planning net turners rebellion? Sorry, I just took the camera. And how was he affected by it the aftermath? Well, after net turners revolt, very quickly many southerners start to try to look at abolitionists in the North and to blame them for what had happened in Virginia. There's no evidence that Garrison's liberator had any influence on net turner or had any influence on the revolt. But very quickly in the southern press, Garrison's name started to be started to be associated with net turners revolt to the point that some southern states advertised rewards if Garrison could be kidnapped and brought south to face justice. Governors of southern states like South Carolina wrote to northern politicians in Massachusetts demanding that they silence the liberator and stop the publication of this newspaper.

So in a way, net turners revolt makes Garrison immediately more famous and gives him more national exposure than he had ever had before. Was the second part of your question his reaction to his reaction to the reaction to the the revolt was in the liberator publicly one of horror he he disavowed violence. He claimed that there was nothing that abolitionists had done to incite net turners violence. At the same time, he he told Americans that if they didn't like net turners revolt, then they shouldn't celebrate the American revolution every year. He pointed out that even without the liberator or any abolitionists in the north that slaves in the south every 4th of July could hear their masters talking about freedom and liberty and independence.

And he said that this was motive enough for them to rise up against their masters. So in a very real sense, even though Garrison distances himself from net turners revolt, he also uses net turners revolt to turn up the heat. Great, great. What was the idea behind the great postal campaign? The great postal campaign was an idea hatched by some of the leading members of the American anti-slavery society to send anti-slavery materials pamphlets, tracks, newspapers through the federal males into the south. Many of these abolitionists in the American anti-slavery society had experience in other evangelical reform organizations in the 1820s and 1830s like the American Track Society. And we're familiar with the ability of northern organizations to publish lots of material to try to convert people to Christianity.

So the idea was to apply that same method of publishing bibles and tracks to the abolitionist movement and to send these tracks and pamphlets into the south in the hopes that southerners might be convicted by their contents. I'm sorry, I taped you. Yeah, that's great.