American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with Manisha Sinha, part 2 of 4

It's quite well-known. Garrison is staying in a boarding house in Baltimore with Benjamin Lundy and with two black abolitionists, William Watkins and Jacob Greener. Watkins is quite well-known. He writes against a colonization as, quote, a coloured Baltimorean in Freedom's Journal, which is a black abolitionist paper. You cover all that very nice in one of the beginning, very briefly, when he spoke on the phone, he said he had a lot of contact with three black spot-one, to some extent he

adopted their agenda, and I wonder if you might do that again very directly. Garrison gets two very important ideas from African-American abolitionists like Watkins in Baltimore, James Fordon in Philadelphia, and that is his criticism of colonization as a racist movement, as not a genuinely anti-slavery movement. And he gets this notion that the United States should be remade into an interracial democracy. Because African-Americans in rejecting colonization are not asking to remain in slavery or for second-hand citizenship, they are demanding full political equality. So those are two extremely important points that Garrison gets from his encounters with black abolitionists and free blacks in various northern cities.

Now you mentioned before that he, you know, met and spoke with black slaves in jail, I wonder if you'd like to touch on that again. So how is it that he, what was Garrison's interaction with slaves in jail? When Garrison is jailed for libel, the people in his cell are mostly slaves. Slaves being held as punishment, or slaves being held to be shipped down south in the domestic slave trade. And Garrison really encounters slavery face to face for the first time as such. He has seen slaves before, you know, he's been exposed to anti-slavery sentiments, but actually meeting with slave men and women being held in regid conditions, facing separation from families and communities.

I think that's when Garrison realises just how enormous the evil is. And he is done to the core of his being. He actually says that he's ashamed that he hasn't done more about slavery. It says if he realises that most white Americans are oblivious to this enormous suffering and to just the enormity of slavery. And I think that was again one of those transformative experiences that he had like his encounter with Lundy or his encounter with black abolitionists. And he says in that same piece that, I forget the exact word, but a few white lives might have these sacrifice or food might white lives made for this cause. It seems like the same strategic realization that, you know, it's made by freedom writers and so on, that to draw attention to this cause, did he, so he's affected on an emotional level of how does he begin to perceive his role in the movement differently?

I think he realises that in order for abolition to take off white Americans need to be awakened. That few white Americans like him who can completely empathize and identify with the plight of African Americans need to bring attention to their plight. Now Benjamin Lundy, who's a mild mannered abolitionist, had already been roughed up on the streets of Baltimore for being an abolitionist. So Garrison knew the risks he was taking. He himself was imprisoned for libel, for calling attention to the sort of unseemly dealings of a slave trader. Garrison sees it as an issue also of freedom of speech, freedom of press. And he realises that in order for the abolition movement to take off white Americans need to be involved, that African Americans in fact have been protesting these conditions since the inception of the Republic, but that you needed a new abolition movement to encounter

the second slavery that the United States was experiencing. Now I'd like to pull back a moment and look at the big picture, you know, as Garrison sets off on this movement a bit, we think of the right to dissent the right to free speech and assembly and petition as perhaps the most fundamental American values. And if that wasn't at all a case, then, first of all, Garrison is throwing jail for a libel, for an article that had no distortion to it. And so, and then of course, we'll soon see the males are being searched and Jackson's advocating and searching the males and so on. Can you give us a snapshot of what the dissent were faced in 1829, where you heard in the 19th century how it would be very different for somebody for one of us to be dropped

back, then to try it out by Wall Street, for example. I think today we have a much stronger consensus conception of these rights, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, but it was not as if these rights were unknown. Everyone revered the Constitution and a lot of Americans revered the Bill of Rights. Those first 10 amendments to the Constitution that ensured these rights. And when the Federalists violated this Jefferson and Jeffersonian Republicans rose in defense of the freedom of speech and press already in the 18th century. So these issues were there, maybe not as well articulated as we have them today. But it was not as if they did not exist. There was a discourse of civil rights and political rights and civil liberties that the United States as a Republican country had in fact adopted and right from the moment of adopting

the Constitution. The abolitionists gained their first converts amongst white Americans actually over the very issues of civil liberties and the violation of the freedom of speech, freedom of press and assembly. When abolitionists are attacked in the North, they are mobbed constantly. Their presses are destroyed. When they begin their massive petition campaign using the U.S. mail, U.S. postal system, those mails I interfered with are burned and they had the sanction of state governments, of the federal government. And a lot of people like Garrett Smith, William J, descended from the famous Revolutionary family, these people are upset, William Channing, they are moderate anti-slavery men. And they are upset that slavery can so violently challenge the rights of white men of white

men's democracy. So abolitionism actually ironically gains its first largest adherence in the North over the issue of civil liberties, over the violation of the U.S. federal mail, over calls to hang Garrison to imprison him over mob attacks against abolitionists. The first converts, the first early converts to Garrisonianism as it would come to be known were actually white Americans who were extremely disturbed at the violent reaction to the abolitionists. Some may not have even sympathized with their message, but they did not want to tolerate such open violations of civil liberties. So, we pick up again, so Garrison's the release from jail is going on, trying to grow up support for the liberator.

Who was he pitching to and why was he having trouble getting support? And Garrison begins printing the liberator on January 1st, 1831. His subscribers are predominantly African-American, two-thirds of the subscribers are African-Americans. His agents are predominantly African-American. These were agents for the newspapers who got new subscribers. The people who seemed to immediately adopt his sort of uncompromising rhetoric against slavery and to praise him for taking such a strong stance against colonization and for black equality, African-Americans. So in its initial years, actually, the liberator, as Garrison himself put it, was the newspaper of the colored people, he says, they supported white men do not.

As the liberator acquires more subscribers, and by the end of the decade, it has over 2,000 subscribers, even then, a strong minority remained African-American. They remained loyal to that paper. So Garrison's initial supporters are African-American, and he's often mistaken for a black man, and he sees that as the highest compliment to his work. He goes to England, and he meets Thomas Fowl-Buckston, the British abolitionist and parliamentarian, and Buckston is astonished. He looked at Garrison, and he said, are you sure your William Lloyd Garrison and Garrison says, yes, and he says, I always thought you were a black man. And Garrison said, I'll take that as a compliment. And did this not just happen to him once, but a couple of times, in the early 1830s? You mentioned yesterday that when you, in late 1830, when he's trying to raise money,

then how do you speak into it, he's actually addressing most of the black audience. In 1830, when he has actually moved towards immediatism and is making these speeches against colonization, his audiences are mainly African-American. I'm specifically thinking of trying to raise money for the liberator when he's, so I've been created when he's released from jail, and he's going around to, he's honestly speaking toward the Northeast. Right. And in a way, he replicates a little bit of Lundy's path, too. He does get some white supporters, Arthur Tappen, for instance, gives him $100, I mean, not only does he bail Garrison out of the jail, out of Baltimore City jail, but he also gives him money, seed money, to start the liberator. But so does James Forton, the wealthy black abolitionist sailmaker from Philadelphia, gives him $54, and 22 new subscribers.

So he goes to New Haven and their Simeon Jocelyn is one of the early white converts to immediatism, but he's a minister to a black congregation. So he does acquire some white supporters early on, but the mass base of immediatism in the early 1830s, 1830, 1831 is amongst free blacks. And Garrison knows that he publishes his address to free black people that he gives repeatedly in different northern cities. When he publishes his pamphlet against colonization, he includes the resolutions and meetings of free African-Americans in protest against the American colonization society. So he forms these very important links with the black community at this point. And in fact, their support is crucial to the launching of the liberator and his movement.

You tell the story that Samuil May and the people of the race. Yes, Samuil May is a unitarian minister who hears Garrison, and again is one of those early converts to immediatism. With May and the tapens and many of Garrison's early white converts, I rather taken back by his firm, uncompromising militant language. The caricature of Garrison always is that he's sort of this rabid fanatic and that his language is so provocative. But in fact, one of the things that Garrison gets from African-American abolitionists is not just their program against colonization and for black rights, but also their militant rhetoric.

If one reads black abolitionists like David Walker, his appeal to the colored citizens of the world in 1829, which Garrison reviews at length in the first few issues of the liberator and flatteringly, it's reviewed anonymously, so we do not know who reviews it, but the liberator carries these lengthy reviews of the appeal where he quotes from it, verbatim many times. And you can see that Garrison adopts also the militant style and rhetoric of black abolitionism. So when May and tap and chide him for his harsh rhetoric, he says that this sort of rhetoric is needed to literally combat the indifference, the oblivion in which white Americans are living, completely blind to the existence of the enslavement of millions of black Americans. And that's why he says he has mountains of ice to melt with his heart-red rig.

Do you remember I don't have here the one Samuel May says? I think he meets him and Lyman Beecher and some others who are very important religious figures, reformers figures, evangelical figures, in the audience. And they are put off by Garrison's rhetoric. They are put off by even his stance on immediatism. And May feels that if Garrison moderates his rhetoric a little bit, he might win more converts amongst whites. And Garrison realizes that what America needs at that time is shock therapy. They have to be shocked into realizing the enormity of slavery. And it's interesting that African Americans never ask him to moderate his language. In fact, they always say highly complementary things to him as his language, his newspaper

are glad tidings to them. They view it, they praise him. And I think in a way that sustains Garrison in his radicalism, because all the while that whites are asking him to moderate his rhetoric, he's getting exactly the opposite reaction from African Americans. Very quickly, but that's not turned into a billion. How did it affect the mood in South? I think the South became very defensive after the publication of Garrison's liberator, and Nat Turner's Rebellion. And northerners, especially powerful northerners like the Mayor of Boston, Harrison Otis, are surprised that senators should be so sensitive to Garrison's newspaper, which is a small newspaper, which they dismissively say is mainly subscribed to by African Americans.

But I think Nat Turner's Rebellion coming in the heels of the publication of the liberator and of the heels of David Walker's appeal, which had been found amongst African Americans in different port cities in the South, alarms the southerners. They feel as if they're going to be attacked from within and without. And that if abolitionist rhetoric or abolitionist ideas ever appealed to slaves, you would get many more Nat Turner's. And southerners make that link, even though we don't know that that link even existed. Certainly, there's no evidence that Nat Turner ever read Garrison's newspaper. We know Walker's appeal was in the vicinity there in Virginia, in Norfolk, Virginia, further off from where Nat Turner was. But there is no link but the perception for southerners is important. I think it's also important to point out that the notion that southerners became militant

about slavery in response to Garrison, in response to the rise of the abolition movement or Nat Turner's rebellion is not entirely true. Citizens had proven to be quite militant on the slave-requestion earlier. In the 1820s, there are people in South Carolina arguing that slavery must be defended at all costs. It is at this time that you had the nullification crisis over federal tariff laws and South Carolinian slaveholders argue that if the federal government can pass tariff laws not to their liking, they will next day abolish slavery. The very intransigent pro-slavery stance that southerners took in a way predates the rise of abolition. I think many historians looking back have argued that southerners became more militant

and defensive in response to abolition. In fact, I think abolition becomes more militant in response to southerners' intransigence. What do you think triggers that transigence in the first place? Well, southerners have an enormous amount of property invested in slavery. These are, as Irobelin has said, slave societies, societies that depend on slavery, it is the mainstay of their economy, of their societies, and politics in these places are very much formed around the protection of the institution. I think southerners realize the stake very early on during the Missouri crisis, nor that it is astounded at southern speeches defending slavery as an unmitigated good. You could even go back to the Constitutional Convention and find a handful here and there

from Georgia and South Carolina defending slavery very militantly, and even the African slave trade, which everyone sort of agreed was pretty heinous. So, southerners, I think, very quickly at the turn of the century, the start of the 19th century, knew that slavery was what defined their society and certainly slave-holding politicians who tended to dominate the state governments of these areas were quite unapologetic at times in defending slavery. By the 1820s, I think, southerners react violently to innocuous petitions from Quakers, from African-Americans demanding that the slave trade be stopped or that free blacks not be kidnapped into the domestic slave trade, which also happened regularly.

They would react pretty virulently to these very deferential mild petitions, so for southerners they did not really differentiate in the tone of abolitionism for them any kind of anti-slavery, any kind of critique of slavery was a threat and they responded forcefully to it. What was the idea behind the great postal campaign? I think the great postal campaign was a way for abolitionists to test one of their major tactics and that was moral suation, persuading slaveholders that what you're doing is wrong and that you should immediately stop it. And abolitionists had advocated it, there was an abolitionist John Rankin who had persuaded

his own brother to stop buying and selling slaves, he wrote these letters and slavery and later on became a conductor in the Underground Railroad, Garrison discovered Rankin, published to his piece again in the 1830s, more detail than you need, okay, more on the postal. I did then the people we mentioned in the script, okay, all right, too much. Let me just start over again with the postal campaign, okay. You know, really what I think is kind of remarkable again, it kind of hurts back to talk about the segregated awakening, the idea that more slavery was a feasible solution. The postal campaign was a way to illustrate the efficacy of moral suation, of persuading slaveholders, that slavery was wrong.

And though Garrison came up with the tactic of moral suation, it was really the tap and brothers, the executive committee of the American anti-slavery society in New York City, that actually put that tactic into operation. And it was Lewis Tappen, who was a good manager of the society, who sort of thinks of this idea, and it is the Tappan fortune that finances the publication of abolitionist pamphlets, and they decide to mail these pamphlets to Southerners, prominent Southerners, asking them to sort of understand that slavery is an evil, that it was a sin, and also a crime, a crime against humanity. And they sent out these pamphlets to the South, and pretty soon in Charleston, South Carolina, Garrison and Tappen are being burned in effigy.

And what is really a federal crime, the U.S. mail is being interfered with, and abolitionist literature is being taken and burned in public squares. And I think that shocked abolitionists, the new Southerners would oppose them, they did not realize the depth of the opposition. Did they think that moral suation was going to work? I think they had like many people who were children of the Enlightenment, an optimistic view of human nature. And a notion that virtue might triumph over sort itself interests. It was perhaps an IE view, but it was one that they needed to test. And they realized, in fact, after the Great Postal Campaign that they would not be able to convert Southerners in a hurry about slavery. In fact, at the annual meeting of the anti-slavery society, the annual meeting of the anti-slavery

society, soon after, Garrett Smith, an abolitionist from upstate New York, said, all efforts now should be concentrated on converting the North. Because the North also had proven to be resistant, but their abolitionist found fertile ground with moral suation. And in fact, one could argue that moral suation, in the end, worked better in the North than it ever did in the South. It was also the Southern response. The powers that be in the South made sure that moral suation would not work. Because if abolitionists were being marved in the North, in the South, abolitionists were being seen as akin to slave rebels. They would be whipped as a more stressful was in national Tennessee. They would be tired, feathered, imprisoned, and threatened for speaking out against abolition of a speaking out against slavery for abolition.

And so, southerners made sure that there would be no freedom of speech on the issue of slavery in the South. This is when the South sort of closes itself completely on the issue of slavery. Earlier on, you were not putting your life into danger if you criticized slavery, but by that time in the South, if you did, you were taking a serious risk. And it is the reason why the Grimkey sisters are forced to leave Charleston, South Carolina in order to become abolitionists, or later on, other Southern abolitionists like James Mourney are forced to leave the South in order to join the abolition movement. There would be no abolitionism in the South, and in a way, it was forcibly stamped out. So maybe the abolitionists were being naive, but I think they also exposed the tyrannical and undemocratic nature of slavery for many Northern whites who were open to the message of abolitionism.