New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1879-06-14
THE FALL OF SLAVERY.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ABOLlTIONIsT.
Y OLIVER JOHN SON.

unon the stage will know no more of the struggles
| il cost or Of the men and women by whose toll
and sacrifices It was brought about than be found
| in chapter of history but imperfectly written
as yet or than they may be able to gather from the
private recolections of the now venerable actors
who are rapidly disappearing from the field on which
their triumphs won. The war in which the great
conflict was brought to its final elimination, ana
in which such mighty moral and material forces
were engaged, will be duly celebrated In history
but the moral and political agtations that preceded
and led mp to that event. and the men and women
who took conspicuous and honorable part therein.
are far less likely to receive from posterity the
tribute due to their courageous devotion to the
cause of Justice and liberty. The lines of this pic
ture are growing fainter day by day, and soon
every hand that can retouch them viii be moulder-
ing in the dust. As who took constant, though
modest part in those agitatons, from their feeble
beginning to their triumphant conclusion, have
undertaken by request of the Editor of The TRIB-
USE to give its readers the benefit of some of my
recolectons of the events of that time and of the
actors therein.
All great changes in human affairs spring from
causes whose workings may be traced, with more
or less dstinctness, to a remote past. Slavery beng
a very ancient institution, it was not left to Amer
lea to make the first protest against it, There was
not and there could not be any originality in the
American Antl-Slavery movement. The principles
involved were old as humanity itself, and had
had their champions and martyrs long before the
discovery Of the New World. During the colonial
period of orr history and for years after the
adoption of the Constitution, there a strong
currcnt Of opposition to slavery. The discussions
that preceded tho Revolutionary War involving
as they did the fundamental PRINCIPLES of human
liberty, could not but remind all thoughtful per-
sons of the guilt and shame of slayeholdIng The
Declaration OF Independence, though adopted Tor
such purpose, virtually set the seal of condem-
nation upon slavery as system at war with hu-
man nature and the law of God. In lifting up that
beacon-ght before the world the American people
challenged the Judgment of mankind upon their
shameful inconsistency in making merchandise of
human flesh. The sting of tho worlds reproach
around them burning" was lleeny felt by many of
the most eminent statesmen, dynes and Dhlan-
thropists of that day. Franklin, Rush, Hlmilton
and Jay; Hopkins Edwards and Stiles and Wood
man, Lay and Benezet, among the Quakers, de-
serve honorable mention for their sturdy and un-
yielding hostility to slavery.
In a certain sense the AbolitIonists of later pc
Rod entered into aud completed the abors of these
noble and far-saeing men. But am not to write a
history of the introduction Of slavery into this
country, nor to record the efforts of some Of the
founders of the Republic to resist its cncroach-
ments. set my stake at the beginning of the later
movement against slavery which, dating from $780,
went forward with constantly increasing momen-
tum until the letters of the slave melted in the
flames Of war; and my sketches will relate chiefly
TO the earlier years of this agitation. At the
date above mentioned there was hardly ripple of
excitement about slavery in any part of the nation
The fathers Of the Republic had fallen asleep the
Ant-Sayery sentiments of the country, defeated in
the spasmodic Missouri struggle in 1921, had be-
come too feeble to utter even a whisper From one
years end TO another there was scarcely a news
paper in all the land that made the slightest allu
sion to the subject. The Abolition societies in
which Franklin and Rush and Jay were once so
active were either dead or sleeping. One voice
there was, and one only. Need say that was the
voice of Quateri IL was Benjamin Lundy, who,
in his little paper with great name-The GsRias
of Universal Emancipadon-lifted up that +" voice
CRYING in the wilderness" first the banks of the
Ohio subsequently, in Baltimore, then a mart of
the domestic traffic in slaves 1t was a brave and
an earnest voice, but il scarcely heard outside
of the Quaker body to which Mr.. Lundy belonged,
and which had itself become almost rs torpid as
other religious bodies on this question. There was
a time as some one has said, when one Quaker was
enough to shake the country for twenty miles
around but the time had now come when it would
take the whole country for twenty miles around to
shake one Quaker! The cotton traffic had become
profitable, and QIakers in the great
cities loved its gains well as Others The STILL
small voice of conscience wa overwhelmed by the
hOarse clamOrs OF avarice. 1t was universally ac-
cepted proverb that slavery was absolutely neces-
sary to the production of a staple that was filling
the Golfers of Northern merchants and nanufactur-
1y-i.b mt hp DT
people of the North became paralyzed. Pulpit and
press were generally silent. If they spoke at all it
was only to say that slavery was too dangerous a
subject TO bo discussed-that the Union wOuld not
long survive ITS agitation. To Benjamin Lundy
chiefly belongs the honor OF keeping the flame of
Anti-Slavery sentiment from utterly dying ont in
those dark days. and putting the burning torch of
liberty into the hands Of the man raised up by
Providence to load the new crusade against the
Slave Power.
William Lloyd Garrison, the originator and
leader of the latest American movement against
slavery. was born at Newburyport Mass, on the
10Th of December, 1904. His father a sea-cap-
tain from Nova Scotia, and a man of some literary
ambition His mother deeply religious
woman-a Baptist when to be such in Massachu-
setts required no small amount of moral courage.
The son inherited the mothers intuitive reverence
for God and for human nature IS His image, her fine
moral and spiritual constituencies and her abhor-
renee of oppression IN all its forms. As q boy he
was responsive to those sentiments of liberty
and patriotism which pervaded the political
and social atmosphere of the time His
opinions upon every question affecting the
public welfare rested upon tho solid basis of the
Divine Law. Ethical considerations in his mind
outweighed all Others, and any compromise with
an unjust OF oppressive institution in his eyes
sin to be rebuked and denounced. His clear moral
vision penetrated at all the subterfuges of the
champions and apologsts of slavery, enabled him
to discern the true character of the system and to
depict it in language that stirred the cOnsciences