American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with Julie Roy Jeffrey, part 1 of 5

Good. So as you know, we're picking up the story when Garrison gets to Boston or in 1828 when Garrison is in Boston and so we are kind of covering all that stuff in a flashback. Can you give me a disproportionate of his circumstances and where was Garrison coming from? What was he doing in Boston? Garrison I think by the time he was in Boston was still casting around for a career, a commitment. He was moderately interested in anti-slavery as a group of reforms that he thought were worthwhile to pursue but he still didn't have a sense of exactly where he might go with his interests in reform. He had worked on several newspapers and that was something that he wanted to pursue but he in his and he was only in his 20s at this point was still not sure of his direction and whether he

would ever have his own paper and his own vehicle for whatever program he might presume to promote. And what was his, what were his circumstances growing up? Where was it coming? Bad. He grew up in, I'll get you to start over and use sick Garrison instead of he. Oh Garrison grew up in very humble circumstances. He was born in cement in his early years in Newbury port. His father disappeared early on. I believe his brother might have turned out to be a drunkard. He worked for various newspaper enterprises. He was someone who was to a large extent self-educated and someone who early was interested in political news reporting. And what was, what was religion plays such an important part of the story? What, what was Garrison's religious inheritance? I'm actually not sure. Okay. And very briefly, who

was Benjamin Lundy? Benjamin Lundy was a quaker and a supporter of gradual emancipation who started a newspaper called the Genius of Universal Emancipation and actually to some extent was very parabetetic in, in the years when he encountered Garrison. He went from place to place spreading his message, publishing his newspaper and ran into Garrison once in Boston and then visit him later in 1828 when Garrison was working on a political newspaper in Vermont. And what, what was he preaching? Lundy was preaching gradual emancipation and was a supportive colonization, which was an effort that had begun in the teens and had as two objectives. One was to persuade slaveholders to emancipate their slaves and the other

was to send slaves back to Africa. And this was a cause that initially when Garrison met Lundy, he could accept as a way to deal with the slavery issue. Were there a lot of, sorry, were there a lot of traveling abolitionists at the time? It was quite unusual to, Lundy was a real pioneer in the anti-slavery effort. And he was the one who, in his two encounters with Garrison in 1828, persuaded Garrison that slavery wasn't just one of many issues that Americans needed to confront, but that it was a great moral issue of the day. And that was a very important step towards Garrison's program or change of mind in terms of how to deal with the slavery issue. Do you have a sense of why Garrison was such a ready convert? Garrison was casting about to do something that would be great, I believe. And

he had this sense, not that he had a sense of himself as a great man or a great hero, but he wanted a cause that was a great cause to which he could devote his life. And when he met Lundy, I think he began to understand that maybe working on the slavery issue was the cause that could give meaning to his life and do something really dramatic in terms of changing America. And what, would he have seen a lot of slavery growing up? Was this something that he was well acquainted with? No, I would say that very few people living in the North had much acquaintance with slavery at all. There were occasional fugitives, and there was a small African-American population living in Boston, less than 2,000. So Garrison would not have encountered many slaves, but there was enough sense during the 1820s and into the 1830s that slavery was beginning to be an issue and a problem that he would have,

it would have captured his interest as an intellectual and a moral issue. And why was slavery coming to occupy the attention of the nation? What was the status of slavery in the late 1820s? In the early part of the 19th century, no, let's back up. At the time of the 20th century. Up until about 1800, many Americans thought that slavery would just appear, disappear from the nation as an unwieldy economic system. But with the development of the cotton gin, all that changed. And far from big a dying institution, slavery became more and more entrenched in southern society, and there were more and more enslaved African Americans. And so by the 1820s, it became clear that slavery was not going to disappear.

Far from disappearing, it was on the rise. And this disturbed many northerners, a few northerners, perhaps, is more accurate. And there was a sense, an increasing sense, that the southerners had control of the American political system, and that this in a sense was going to protect the institution of slavery. And you touched on it with Lundy, but what was colonization briefly? Colonization, I think the society was established in 1817, and it gained a lot of support because it didn't call for anything that was actually that radical. It called for persuading slave owners of their own free will to emancipate their slaves, and even better from the point of view of some racist Americans, it proposed sending as many freed blacks as possible out of the country. It was really a scheme that envisioned a white America rather than an America of mixed racial groups.

And was it practical? No, it wasn't practical. In fact, they had very hard time raising any money to send anybody to Africa. And those people who went to Africa were sorely disappointed by their time there, the health issues of being able to live in a land that was no longer a familiar land. These were American blacks, and it was also an approach that increasingly freed blacks, rejected as being a racist solution. Now, why did Garrison go to Baltimore? Oh, you skipped a really important, look, and I just talked. Okay, after meeting Alundi and accepting the view that slavery was the moral issue, Garrison moved gradually towards a more and more radical stance. He gave a 4th of July

address at the Park Street Church in Boston in 1829, in which he declared that slavery was the nation's gravest sin in which he said that northern prejudice was actually more significant than southern prejudice. And when he said that it was dangerous to delay moving on the issue, and this was a more further, a large step further than where he had been when he had visited Lundi the previous year. And in the time after that, Garrison moved gradually to believe in immediate emancipation, which was his position when he went to join Lundi in Baltimore and work on the Lundi's newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. Why do you think he came to that position? He said it was a matter of, later, that it was a matter of gravely considering the issue. But he, even though he had not yet heard as strongly as he would in Baltimore, the message

at Free Blacks, rejected colonization. I think he was coming to realization that colonization was not a way to deal with the slavery and race issue in America. And he was beginning to realize, and this is very important, that slavery was not just a problem, it was a sin. And that was a big step forward for the anti-slavery movement to accept the idea that slavery was a sin because a sin demanded action and the elimination of the sinful state. Right. So, are we good? Yeah, let's just hold for one second. Yeah, you're going to bring the key around a little bit. How's that, Katie? I would have thought the other way around. That's right. Julie, do you mind just looking at the camera? Yeah. Yeah. So, I think either

Katie has to go around enough that the shadow is just kind of war over. It looks a lot better now. But that's the big hole there. I can show you what it is. That's kind of what we've been doing. Probably going to come around and see the more I'm just going to show you. So, Garrison comes to adopt a mediaticism. But he still hasn't been exposed to a lot of black people.

What changes in Baltimore? How does his view of the situation change when he's in Baltimore? Baltimore's really a formative experience for him, not only because he had the opportunity to work on Lundy's paper. It was flattering to be invited to do that. But also because he, for the first time, had real exposure to a large black population. Boston had about 3% of Baltimore, sorry. Do you want to just start over a party because somebody was very... The whole thing? Sure. Baltimore was a formative experience for Garrison. He was sure flattered to be asked to work on Lundy's paper. But it was the first time that he had come into contact with many blacks, including many, many freed blacks. Boston only had about 3% of blacks in his

population, whereas Baltimore had 25%. So, the interaction with blacks was very important and the interaction with the large number of free blacks was especially important because it suggested to Garrison that slavery was not the condition of the black man and the black woman. He mingled socially with blacks. He visited black institutions. He went to a black school and wrote in the newspaper that if anyone had the idea that African-American children couldn't learn, they should visit such a school. He became acquainted with important people in the black community like William Watkins. He urged them to contribute to the newspaper. In fact, Watkins wrote a series of blistering attacks on the idea of colonization in the newspaper itself. And who was Walker? William Watkins was one of the important leaders of the free black community, educated, forceful,

and a proponent of an opa. I actually met David Walker. Oh, no, no, it's not David Walker. It's William Watkins. But I also wanted to ask you about David Walker. We're going to talk about David Walker's paper and I was wondering who he was and what Garrison knew of him. I'm not sure what Garrison knew of him, but Walker was a Boston African-American who wrote a very, very fiery denunciation of, no, this is, wait, Walker wrote a pamphlet in which he urged blacks to be active and forceful in their opposition to slavery and insinuated

or actually expressed the possibility of violence. And this was a road that Garrison did not approve of in terms of how to deal with slavery. Right. What was Garrison? What was the road to Garrison? Well, Garrison developed the road to the program slowly after meeting with Monday and making his speech at the Park Street Church, but his notion was that immediate emancipation was the solution, but the means towards immediate emancipation was what he called moral swation, which was persuasion, and that the end of slavery had to come through peaceful means. He believed you had to change people's minds and hearts, and that only when you change their minds and hearts could slavery come to an end.

Right. Now, how is it that Garrison ended up in jail? Well, Garrison ended up in jail probably because of political ploy of Baltimore citizens who did not really like this thorn in their side in terms of Garrison's position on the newspaper. Garrison was accused of libeling a Newbury Port merchant, that is already rather odd that he's been tried in Baltimore for his supposed libel of the Newbury Port merchant. Garrison had accused the merchant of colluding with in the slave trade, which was true, but the trial that Garrison got in Baltimore was fixed, and Garrison was found guilty of libel and sentenced to either six months in jail or a fine of $50 that he could not afford to pay. And what did he learn in jail? How was he affected by his time in jail? Well, for one thing, his time in jail was

rather comfortable because the head of the jail didn't think that he deserved to be in a cell with common criminals, so actually Garrison stayed in the Warren's house. But during his time in jail, Garrison had the opportunity to talk to fugitive slaves. He had the opportunity to think carefully about what had been going on during his trial, and what he saw was a collusion between supporters of slavery and political authorities. That's why he believed he had been found, brought to trial and found guilty. And he eventually wrote a pamphlet talking about his time in jail. He was rescued after serving about a month and half of his jail sentence by a prominent moneyed New Yorker. So it was an experience that wasn't physically difficult for him, but was a turning point of a kind because I think after his jail sentence, Garrison really felt he had found his cause and that his cause would be to pursue

immediate emancipation on the national stage. Excuse me. There's a quote, when he left jail, he said something that he realized that a few whites would have to be sacrificed for the cause. Yes, a few whites. Yes, a few. I think that idea that a few whites had to be sacrificed for the cause today we would probably see as rather racist, but I think in the context of the period Garrison was right. People would sit up and think about a white person being imprisoned for libel unjustly in a way that they would disregard news of a black person suffering the same kind of fate. Yeah, it was kind of foreshadows the civil rights movement. Yes, yes, it does foreshadow the civil rights movement. And I think that some historians have called the civil rights

movement the second abolitionist movement, see those parallels. And I think when you study the original abolitionist movement, you see many, many parallels between later events and the earlier events. Right, right. It's kind of a miracle. So we pick him up after he's left jail and he's traveling around trying to raise money for his paper. Who's he pitching to? Who's his audience? Well, he goes back to Boston and he hangs around meets with the various Bostonians who are interested in reform causes. And by this time he's really made up his mind what he would wants to do is start an anti-slavery newspaper. And he realizes that there's not enough support in the white reform circles to really carry the venture. Now, he's only in his mid-20s. So this is a very bold decision on his part. And he meets with a group of black Bostonians. There are less than 2,000 black Bostonians.

And he tells them that he wants to start a newspaper that will defend their rights to civilly quality and attack the monster of slavery. And he receives very positive support from the group of African Americans, enough so that in January 1831 he issues the first newspaper or the first issue of his new newspaper, the liberator. And in that first year the support from black Bostonians was absolutely critical. He had many more black supporters and white supporters. And so he had made the right decision to look to the black Bostonians for their blessing and their support and then turn considered him a hero and supported him throughout thick and thin for the most part after that time. What was what was new about the liberator because we you know

we mentioned several other anti-slavery papers. Well, what was new about the liberator was that its commitment was unequivocally to immediate emancipation. Garrison denounced colonization as a pernicious scheme in the paper and said that the action to stop slavery to end slavery had to begin at once. He also attacked racial prejudice. So it was a very radical paper in many ways not only because it dealt with the situation facing northern blacks that is that they were discriminated against but that it attacked a central institution of American society slavery. Right. So by attacking colonization it's almost by implication supporting not equal rights but shared rights and shared society. Yes. Garrison acknowledged very openly that African Americans were Americans. They belonged in this country and that the future of the

country had to be a multiracial future. Not a popular message. No, not at all. Very few people wanted to hear it. That's why the black supporters were so important in that first year or so. Right. Right. So shortly after he starts the paper this incident in Virginia in South Hampton County, can you describe the scene in South Hampton County on the night of August 21st? That night was the night in which Nat Turner and a band of other slaves wreaked violence on their masters and the whites with whom they came into contact. One thing that was particularly shocking to people who heard about the rebellion afterwards was that Nat Turner killed his own master who was considered to be a kind master. And after the first night of the rebellion most of the slaves who had taken part in

insurrection were rounded up but Nat Turner eluded capture for almost two months. And what was what was the reaction? Well the reaction especially in the South was horror and dismay. The southerners had always been afraid that what would happen with their slave population is that they would rise up and kill their masters and it had come true. How what role did Garrison have in planning that Turner's rebellion and how was he affected by it? Garrison had no role in in in that Turner rebellion and he said after oh sorry I'll just get you to start that again. Okay. Garrison had no role in promoting the rebellion. In fact he was against the violence to end slavery but he said that you didn't need to look far to find out that the instigator of the rebellion was slavery itself and this of course was a message that southerners were not willing to hear and in fact were terrified to hear. In the South however

it was seen that the liberator was one of the causes of the rebellion and there were efforts to confiscate the newspaper to burn the newspaper. In some places in Virginia the postmaster took the liberator out of the mailbags and sent it to the governor as proof that Garrison had been involved in the massacre which of course he wasn't. For Garrison himself I think this was another important moment where he realized that government authorities were supporting and colluding with the slave system. He also received threatening letters and even letters that hinted at assassinations so it was probably a very unsettling moment for him too. How homogenous was the South in its support of slavery? I realized it changes over time in the early 1830s. Well that's always something that historians are interested in how much of

the South was really in support of slavery. Obviously the planter class was in support of slavery and I think that many historians believe that even those in the yeoman class who could afford maybe one or two slaves at best were staunch supporters of slavery because for them slavery suggested the possibility if they could get one slave or two slaves or five slaves they might really move up. So it was seen as an institution that allowed the betterment of those who were not on the top. I think historians also believe that even for poor whites who had no chance of owning a slave the institution of slavery suggested that they were somehow better than members of the enslaved class that their skin color was something that elevated them even though they had no slaves. On the other side, from the other side, how was the anti-slavery movement

doing by 1835? By 1835 the anti-slavery movement in the north was in the throws of a busy organizing phase. The local, let me start over, in 1935 there was a great deal of anti-slavery organizing in the north, particularly in the northeast. Lecturers were going to villages and country towns and giving lectures and setting up female and male anti-slavery societies. They were having more trouble in the cities and it seemed as if probably the strength of the anti-slavery movement would lie in the country. In 1833 the first national organization was established the American anti-slavery society. So there were local societies and there was now a national society that embraced immediate emancipation and equal rights for African-Americans as their program.

Right. Their notion of emancipating slavery by making slaveholders realize that they were wrong. It seems a little far-fetched to us. I wonder if you could explain the religious context for that idea that made it seem like a plausible solution. Well, the 1820s and 1830s were a period of great religiosity on the part of American Protestants. Many people believed that once they came to their own personal conversion, it was necessary for them to reach out and change what was wrong in the world. This was kind of the engine of the anti-slavery movement. Initially, since the south was Protestant as well as the north, anti-slavery people believed that if the sin of slavery was pointed out to southerners in terms that they could understand and take in, that they would actually change their minds. This proved, of course, not to be true. Slavery was

much more than a possible sin in the south. It was the central institution of southern society. Rob, sorry for the same change. Okay. Thank you.