American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with W. Caleb McDaniel, part 3 of 4

So in Douglas's letters in autobiography he talks a lot about what I hope are Britain likes and how his life has changed. Did Garrison really understand how much Douglas changed when they started touring together in 1847? I don't think Garrison recognized immediately how much Douglas's experience in England had changed his thinking about his future career, but I think it's slowly dawned on Garrison that Douglas had been changed by his trip to England. I mean it seems even from Garrison's letters that they were getting along with gangbusters in the trip, were they both aware of tensions? I mean Douglas must have known this was going ahead. I think the tensions that Douglas felt in England and when he returned to the United States initially were more with some

of Garrison's closest friends and supporters than they were with Garrison himself. Some abolitionists had questioned whether or not Frederick Douglas should have accepted money from English supporters to purchase his freedom. Garrison had supported that decision however, but I think that as tensions grew more and more between Douglas and some of Garrison's closest supporters, Garrison's instincts as time went on were to support his friends as Douglas began to accuse them of attempting to rein him in. Douglas decided that he wanted to move to upstate New York and start a newspaper of his own. Garrison and some of his white supporters in Boston advised Douglas

to continue on the lecture circuit as an orator instead of starting his own newspaper and when Douglas decided to move to New York and start the North Star, Garrison and many of his supporters reacted very negatively to Douglas' decision. What? Garrison criticized Douglas for what he called a sense of in gratitude to him. I think that Garrison also feared that in England, Douglas had been influenced by some of Garrison's critics in the movement from the schism of 1840 and was very suspicious about Douglas's motives for starting the newspaper. Some of the reformers who had helped Douglas purchase his freedom had also been some of Garrison's fiercest critics in the schism of 1840 and so right or wrong Garrison reacted suspiciously and hyper critically to

Douglas' decision. I think that one of the things that most upset Garrison's own friends was the way that he could be very abrupt and critical even of other abolitionists. Garrison in the liberator had a department that he called the Refuge of Oppression and he reserved the columns under that headline for publishing pro-slavery defenses from the South and on occasion he would even include under the Refuge of Oppression the writings of abolitionists with whom he disagreed which I think was a way of throwing down the gauntlet that those

abolitionists certainly didn't appreciate. Yeah, the black, the Nixon's enemies. Yeah, the black list. And what was Garrison accusing Douglas of specific? You know by the early 1850s? Well part of Garrison's ongoing tensions with Douglas were born of the way that their relationship had ended when Douglas moved to New York to start the North Star but Douglas also began to come to conclusions at odds with Garrison's about the union, about the Constitution. Garrison had been preaching since 1844 that abolitionists should call for no union with slaveholders that either slavery should be abolished or the union should be dissolved. And initially even when Douglas moves to New York he

continues to take that position but in the early 1850s Douglas re-thinks his strategy and decides to ally with abolitionists who believe that it's possible to enslavery legally even within the union and under the Constitution. Why did I mean I'm sorry just before we get there why? Yeah, why was there their disagreement so vitriolic? It gets really really ugly. This isn't just about the Constitution. I think that Garrison's conflict with Douglas is one of the low points of his career. It shows I think the limits of possibility for white abolitionists in the movement. Many of them were still I think hampered by ideas

about race and prejudices that they were only half aware of that sometimes broke out into the open. But I think that in another way the fact that Garrison quarreled with Douglas as negatively as he did shows how close they were to begin with. The break was harder and precisely because Douglas and Garrison had been close and worked together so well. I think that you can sort of see and in their breakup the contempt that can come from from familiarity. Thank you. Can you just take us through the scene at Tramingham in 254? Why does Garrison burn the Constitution? By 1854 abolitionists could certainly see lots of signs of progress, lots of reasons for optimism. There were more northern

politicians than in the 1840s who were beginning to denounce the slave power who were calling for an end to the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. But July 4th 1854 was a dark moment for abolitionists in the north. Only a few weeks before a fugitive slave named Anthony Burns had been returned to the south a couple days before. July 4th 1854 is a dark moment for abolitionists. Days before a fugitive slave named Anthony Burns had been escorted through the streets of Boston by federal troops and returned to the south and slavery under the fugitive slave law. Congress had passed the Kansas Nebraska Act which opened the possibility that slavery might expand even to places where it had been previously considered off-limits. And at the

same time on the floor of Congress there had been southern congressmen deriding the abolitionists and criticizing their supporters like Charles Sumner for setting themselves above the fugitive slave law and calling on northerners to violate the law in order to be true to their own conscience and help fugitive slaves escape. In one of those exchanges in 1854 on the floor of the Senate, a senator from Indiana named John Pettit had actually told too much detail. Well the self-evident I was just going to say about the declaration of independence. Can I maybe not the name but to say that on the floor of Congress that summer a congressman had actually called the Declaration of Independence and it's claimed that all men were created equal a self-evident lie. When

Garrison comes to the Grove Framingham on July 4th 1854 I think he's determined to make clear that he believes the Declaration of Independence is a self-evident truth and that he places the Declaration of Independence above the Constitution. So when he burns the Constitution he's making a statement not just about his own uncompromising principle. Garrison is also holding up the Declaration of Independence as America's most important founding document and reversing the order that many Americans put the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in. Great thank you. What was Garrison's take on the radical abolitionist? The party that you know we were talking about the meeting

where Brown goes and collects money. Garrison believed that the radical abolitionist party like the Liberty Party before it was a misguided attempt by abolitionists to try to gain electoral success before they had succeeded in really transforming Northern public opinion. So he ridicules the radical abolitionist party for nominating an abolitionist for president. He knows that there's no real chance that an abolitionist is going to be elected president. And so from his perspective any attempts to mount a campaign are misguided. So we have to hear him in the what did he want from Garrison I would. Yeah. The fact that Herndon comes to

Garrison when he visits Boston shows that Garrison's reputation is still national in scope. The liberator is is widely read across the north. Herndon knows Garrison's name. He knows the liberator and he's come to New England partly to he hopes get the blessing of Garrison and other prominent abolitionists in Boston for the Republican Party that he's active in in Illinois. What role did Garrison play in preparing the ground for Lincoln and the Republicans? I think that one of the ways that Garrison prepared the ground for the Republican Party was by staking such an uncompromising position that it allowed Republicans to gather Northerners onto a broad middle ground of opposition to

slavery. It was easier for Republican politicians to garner anti-slavery votes if they distance themselves from the radicalism of Garrison. They could on the campaign trail argue that slavery was wrong and state that in the bluntous terms possible and at the same time and in the next breaths say unlike Garrison and the abolitionists however we will leave slavery the way it is in the states where it already exists and will only attempt to limit slavery from expanding into the West. So Garrison by being an uncompromising agitator gives Republican politicians a reference point that they can use to help Northerners decide to support an anti-slavery platform without going as far as the abolitionists.

Is it kind of a vindication of his position in after the schism, of his own role, of his view of his own role? Garrison definitely sees the rise of the Republican Party as a vindication of his tactics. For him the Republican Party is a cheering sign of the times in a way that the radical abolitionist party or the liberty party was not. In the Republican Party, Garrison and other abolitionists see Northerners who have spent their whole life in one of the major parties beginning for the first time to talk openly about slavery, to call it a wrong, and to propose national policies on the basis of that position. So Garrison sees the fact that the Republican Party is gaining support in the North as an encouraging sign and something that vindicates his own methods. Great, great. What did Garrison make of Harper's

Ferry and was specifically Brown, you know, the martyr of Brown? When Garrison first learns of Harper's Ferry, like many Northerners, he believes that it was a blunder. He doesn't understand Brown's motives, but as Brown begins to write letters from his prison cell and really begins to construct himself as a martyr figure for northern audiences. Garrison is really impressed by Brown's moral seriousness, and when Brown is executed, like many Northerners, Garrison responds very positively to Brown's behavior on the way to the gallows, and he denounces the South for executing a man of such high character. If I could just add something to that. Garrison's response to the Harper's Ferry raid

is in a lot of ways similar to his response to Nat Turner's revolt. On the one hand, he criticizes the use of violence as he always has in the past, but at the same time, he makes very clear that he regards violence against oppressors as very different from the violence of oppressors. And judged on that basis, Brown, even though he's a violent abolitionist, Garrison sees him as on the right side of history. Does he begin to re-appraise his own position of that violence? Garrison doesn't, after John Brown's raid, begin to consider the use of violence himself or the public supportive violence, but I think that it does mark a gradual change in the way that Garrison talks about anti-slavery violence that's been going on since the late 1840s and after the passage of the future to slave law.

He makes very clear that he believes that any American who praises the violence of the American revolutionary founding fathers and criticizes John Brown's violence is hypocritical and inconsistent. And so with every disavowal of John Brown's violence, Garrison at the same time makes clear that he regards Americans upset over Brown's violence as hypocrisy. You also get the impression that he suddenly feels that he's being swept along, that this is vortex that they're kind of plotting along and fighting and struggling for years and years and all of a sudden that the Appalachians hit. And does he, I wonder if you could talk about that? Garrison is changed by the tide of events in the 1850s.

When he started his abolitionist campaign as a printer, one could still hope in the early 1830s that maybe ranging types in a case, stringing words together in descendences, publishing articles against slavery might persuade the nation to rid itself of slavery. But as time goes by, the reaction of southerners to the abolitionist campaign makes it harder and harder to see how moral swation is going to lead to the vindication that Garrison hopes to see. So I do think that after the fugitive slave law, as more and more northerners are resisting the return of fugitive slaves to the south by force, if necessary, that Garrison begins to be swept along by the changing of ends around him. And do you think you recognize that himself?

Garrison, even though his views on violence are subtly changing, isn't always aware that it's happening. He believes that by holding to his non-resistance principles, he's remaining true to what he believes and to his conscience. But there is also a deeper continuity in the way that Garrison talks about violence on behalf of slaves. Even though he disavows the use of violence in any circumstance, he believes that goes against his Christian faith. At the same time, he always distinguishes between the violence of the oppressed and of the oppressor, and even as early as Nat Turner's revolt, he makes clear that he believes God is on the side of the oppressed. So he wishes success to slave insurrections, even at the same time as he refuses to endorse violence by abolitionists. And how does he feel at the outbreak of war,

with what's his reaction to the news from Fort Sumpton? Garrison, after the war begins, is encouraged by the change that he sees in northern popular sentiment. He believes that the mobilization of the North behind Union armies shows that abolitionists are finally beginning to have an effect on the mass of northerners. At one point, at the very beginning of the war, Garrison reflects back on his long career and says that 30 years ago it was midnight in the anti-slavery cause, but now it is noon. So he sees the Civil War as an encouraging sign of the times and also as proof that the final chapter is near. How did he square that with his passport? Garrison at the very beginning of the war continues to

argue for non-resistance views, but at the same time he also believes that the proper place of an abolitionist is not to at that moment criticize northern armies or Lincoln's administration, but instead to wheel into formation behind the Union cause and try to make sure that the Union Army becomes an instrument of emancipation. Garrison's view of his role as an agitator changes once the war begins from a voice crying in the wilderness to someone who wants to make sure that this unparalleled opportunity that the nation has to deal with slavery once and for all, isn't lost. Great, that's great, thank you. So yeah, what was this feeling by August of 62?

Did he take on the progress in the war? In the beginning of the war, Garrison, like many northern abolitionists, is very critical of Lincoln for not acting more quickly to make emancipation a part of the Union's war aims. After Lincoln in 1861 reverses some orders of emancipation by some abolitionist generals in the Union Army. Garrison and other abolitionists denounce Lincoln. Garrison calls the president a man a very small caliber and quips that even though he's very tall and stature, he is a dwarf in mind. But by 1862 when Lincoln is starting to think about issuing the emancipation proclamation, Garrison urges abolitionists to support the president and he reserves his criticism of Lincoln to those

points on which he thinks Lincoln is most sluggish about slavery. But at the same time, he counsels other abolitionists, not to indulge in minute criticism of the president as he calls it, but instead to recognize and honor whatever steps the president takes towards a more advanced emancipation position. Right, right. But why would Garrison have doubts that Lincoln was going to keep his word, you know, the announces in September? Why would he have doubts he was going to keep his word on January 4th? Many abolitionists feared that Lincoln was using the threat of emancipation as a way to try to induce the Confederates to lay down their arms and come back into the union as a way to try to get border states in the union to

gradually emancipate their slaves. They were concerned that Lincoln was using this preliminary emancipation proclamation as an ultimatum and that it would end as so many policies had in the past with another compromise, overslavery, another half measure, another another halfway house to the end of emancipation. So until January 1st, 1863, when the proclamation becomes official, Garrison and many abolitionists continue to hold Lincoln's feet to the fire. And they're also concerned, I think, that Lincoln who in the past has voiced support for colonizationism and compensation to slaveholders who free their slaves and gradual emancipation schemes that Lincoln might once again

fall short of the high standards that they have for immediate emancipation. Going back to the beginning of the, I just want to place the war in the, you know, Lincoln to abolition. What role did the Garrison Douglas and the abolitionists play in preparing the ground for the Civil War? Did they make it inevitable with different times? I think that the abolitionists certainly accelerated the conflicts that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Many anti-slavery politicians, including Lincoln, tried as late as 1859 and 1860 to distance themselves from John Brown and other abolitionists. But I think that it's a measure of the abolitionists' effectiveness

that they weren't really able to do that. It wasn't believable to southerners or even many northerners to think that a Republican administration that campaigned on the principle that slavery was wrong, that it was morally and politically wrong, could stop short of the radical doctrines that abolitionists were preaching. So abolitionists had managed to become so visible in national life that it was impossible for Americans to talk about the slavery issue or think about slavery without also thinking about the abolitionists. It's a pretty astonishing given number of abolitionists. I mean, it was pretty small game tips. Abolitionists definitely had an impact that far exceeded their numbers. They were able by persevering and getting their ideas out there and newspapers like the liberator

and making themselves visible. Garrison very often would publish southerners who criticized him by name or attacked the liberator in the pages of the liberator. He would respond to what they said in an editorial comment of their own which would provoke another response from southerners and another response from Garrison. And so abolitionists by goading southerners into engaging with them were able to keep a cycle of argument and debate going even though in Garrison's case Ollie had were four pages every week. That's great. Thank you. How did Garrison respond when his son decided that he wanted to enlist? Garrison, I think, believed that the abolitionist movement should be able to accommodate people with a range of views on issues like

non-resistance and women's rights. At the time of the schism he had held that all it took to be an abolitionist was to take the right positions on slavery and emancipation. He never wanted pacifism or any other issue to be a test of membership in an abolitionist society. And I think that that broad view extended to his son and to his children. He privately said that he wished that his son had not made the decision that he did but at the same time he respected the independence of mind that his son displayed. And I think was was proud of the decision that he made.