too loving to be sad." He springs from his bed singing at sunrise; and if, during the day, tears should cloud his serenity, they are never shed for himself. His countenance of steady compassion gives hope to the oppressed, who look to him as the Jews looked to Moses. It was this serene countenance, saint-like in its earnestness and purity, that a man bought at a print-shop, where it was exposed without a name, and hung up as the most apostolic face he ever saw. It does not alter the case that the man took it out of the frame and hid it when he found that it was Garrison who had been adorning his parlour. As for his own persecutors, Garrison sees in them the creatures of unfavourable circumstances. He early satisfied himself that "a rotten egg cannot hit truth;" and then the whole matter was settled. Such is his case In 1829, it was very different. He was an obscure lad, gaining some superficial improvement in a country college, when tidings of the Colonization scheme reached him, and filled him with hope for the coloured race. He resolved to devote himself to the cause, and went down to Baltimore to learn such facts as would enable him to lecture on now. While this the subject. The fallacies of the plan melted before his gaze, while the true principle became so apparent as to decide his mission. process was going on, he got into his first trouble. A Mr Todd, a New England merchant, freighted a vessel with slaves for the New Orleans market, in the interval of his annual thanksgivings to God that the soil of his State was untrodden by the foot of a slave. Garrison said what he thought of the transaction in a newspaper; was tried for libel, and committed to prison till he could pay the imposed fine of a thousand dollars-a sum which might have been a million for any ability he had to pay it. Some record of what was his state of mind at this time was left on his prison wall : - "I boast no courage on the battle field, Where hostile troops immix in horrid fray; And Truth-or on the wheel my body break; If I recoil in terror from the flame Or recreant prove when peril rears its crest, To save a limb, or shun the public scorn Then write me down for aye-weakest of woman born." W. L. G. The imprisonment of an honest man for such a cause was an occasion for the outbreak of discontent with slavery on all hands. "I was in danger," says Garrison, "of being lifted up beyond measure, even in prison, by excessive panegyric and extraordinary sympathy." He was freed by the generosity of an entire stranger, Mr. Arthur Tappan, a wealthy merchant of New York, whose entire conduct on the question has been in accordance with the act of paying Garrison's fine. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, 5 Garrison's lectures were now upon abolition, not colonization. He was listened to with much interest in New York; but at Boston he could obtain no place to lecture in; and it was not till it was clear that he intended to collect an audience on the Common, in the midst of the city, that a door was opened to him. He obtained a few coadjutors,for one, a simple-minded clergyman, Mr. May, who on the next Sunday prayed for slaves, among other distressed persons, and was asked, on coming down from the pulpit, whether he was mad? Another of these coadjutors, William Goodell, said, in 1836, "My mind runs back to nearly seven years ago, when I used to walk with Garrison across yonder Common, and to converse on the great enterprise for which we are now met. The work then was all future. It existed only in the ardent prayer and the fixed resolves." It was wrought out by prompt and strenuous action. Garrison and his friend Knapp, a printer, were ere long living in a garret, on bread and water, expending all their spare earnings and time on the publication of the 'Liberator,' now a handsome and flourishing newspaper; then a small shabby sheet, printed with old types. "When it sold particularly well," says Knapp, "we treated ourselves with a bowl of milk." The venerable first number, dated January 1st, 1831, lies before us in its primitive shabbiness; and on its first page, in Garrison's Address to the Public,' we see proof that the vehemence of language, which has often been ascribed to personal resentment (but by none who know him), has been from the beginning a matter of conscience with him. "I am aware," he says, "that many object to the severity of my language, but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-AND I WILL BE heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years-not perniciously, but beneficially; not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that he enables me to disregard the fear of man, and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power. The time was ripe for Garrison's exertions. A pamphlet appeared in the autumn of 1829, at Boston, from the pen of a man of colour, named Walker, which alarmed society not a little. It was an appeal to his coloured brethren, to drown their injuries in the blood of their oppressors. Its language is perfectly appalling. It ran through several editions, though no bookseller would publish it. Not long after, the author was found dead near his own door; but whether he had been assassinated for his book, or had been killed by an accident, is not known. If the slave-owners could but have seen it, Garrison was this man's antagonist, not his coadjutor. Garrison is as strenuous a peace-man❞ as any member of the society of Friends; and this fact, in conjunction with his unlimited influence over the Negro population, is the chief reason why no blood has been shed,-why no insurrectionary movement has taken place in the United States, from the time when his voice began to be heard over the broad land till now. Every evil, however, which happened, every shiver of the master, every growl of the slave, was henceforth to be charged upon Garrison. Some of the Southern States offered rewards for the apprehension of any person who might be detected circulating the Liberator,' or Walker's Appeal;' and one legislature demanded of the Governor of Massachusetts that Garrison should be delivered up to them. The fate of Walker was before his eyes; and it came to his ears, that gentlemen in stage coaches said that it was everywhere thought that "he would not be permitted to live long;" that he "would be taken away, and no one be the wiser for it." His answer, on this and many subsequent occasions, was the same in spirit. "Will you aim at no higher victims than Arthur Tappan, George Thompson, and W. L. Garrison ? And who and what are they? Three drops from a boundless ocean-three rays from a noon-day sun -three particles of dust floating in a limitless atmosphere-nothing, substracted from infinite fulness. Should you succeed in destroying them, the mighty difficulty still remains." As a noble woman has since said, in defence of the individuality of action of the leaders of the cause, "It is idle to talk of leaders.' In the contest of morals with abuses, men are but types of principles. Does any one seriously believe that if Mr. Garrison should take an appealing, protesting, backward step, abolitionists would fall back with him?" The "mighty difficulty" would still remain,— and remain as surely doomed as ever, were Garrison to turn recreant or die. One more dreadful event was to happen before the " peace-man" could make his reprobation of violence heard over the Union. The insurrection of slaves in Southampton county, Virginia, in which eighty persons were slain-parents with their five, seven, or ten children, being massacred in the night-happened in 1832. The affair is wrapped in mystery, as are most slave insurrections, both from policy on the part of the masters, and from the whites being too impatient to wait the regular course of justice, and sacrificing their foes as they could catch them. In the present case many Negroes were slaughtered, with every refinement of cruelty, on the roads, or in their masters' yards, without appeal to judge, jury, or evidence. This kind of management precludes any clear knowledge of the causes of the insurrection; but it is now supposed near the spot to have been occasioned by the fanaticism of a madman, a Negro, who assured the blacks who came to him for religious sympathy that they were to run the course of the ancient Jews— slaying and sparing not. We mention this rising because it is the last on the part of the people of colour. Free or enslaved, they have since been peaceable; while all succeeding violences have been perpetrated by "gentlemen of property and standing." It was natural that those who had suffered by this slaughter or its consequences, those who mourned large families of relations thus cut off, those who, for the sake of their crops, feared the amendment of the system as a result of this exhibition of its tendencies, those who, for the sake of their children, nightly trembled in their beds, should cast about for an object on whom MISS CRANDALL. The to vent their painful feelings; and Garrison was that object. imputation of the insurrection to him was too absurd to be long sustained; but those who could not urge this against him still remonstrated against his "disturbing the harmony and peace of society." Disturbing the slave-holders!" replied he. "I am sorry to disturb anybody. But the slave-holders have so many friends! I must be the friend of the slaves." 66 On the 2nd of March, 1833, there appeared in the Liberator', the following advertisement: "PRUDENCE CRANDALL "Principal of the Canterbury (Connecticut) Female Boarding School, returns her most sincere thanks to those who have patronized her School, and would give information that, on the first Monday of April next, her School will be opened for the reception of young Ladies and little Misses of colour. The branches taught are as follows:-Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, English Grammar, &c." The advertisement closed with a long list of references to gentlemen o. the highest character. The reason of this announcement was, that Miss Crandall, a young lady of established reputation in her profession, had been urgently requested to undertake the tuition of a child of light colour; had admitted her among the white pupils; had subsequently admitted a second, thereby offending the parents of her former pupils; and, on being threatened on the one hand with the loss of all her scholars, and urged on the other to take more of a dark complexion, had nobly resolved to continue to take young ladies of colour, letting the whites depart, if they so pleased. We relate the consequences, because this is, as far as we know, the first instance in the struggle of a protracted persecution of a peaceable individual by the whole of the society of the district. A town-meeting was called on the appearance of the advertisement, and the school was denounced in violent terms. Miss Crandall silently prosecuted her plan. The legislature was petitioned, through the exertions of a leading citizen of Canterbury, Mr. Judson, and a law was obtained in the course of the month of May, making it a penal offence to establish any school for the instruction of coloured persons, not inhabitants of the State, or to instruct, board, or harbour persons entering the State for educational purposes. This law was clearly unconstitutional, as it violated that clause in the constitution which gives to the citizens of each State all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several States.* Perceiving this, Miss Crandall took no notice, but went on with her school. She was accordingly arrested, and carried before a justice of the peace; and the next spectacle that the inhabitants of Canterbury saw was Miss Crandall going to jail. She was bailed out the next day, and her trial issued in nothing, as the jury could not agree. She was again prosecuted, and again; and at length Laws which are infringements of the constitution are not binding upon the Court of Judicature in the last resort, the Supre ne Court of the United States. convicted. She appealed to a higher Court, and struggled on through a long persecution till compelled to yield, from the lives of her pupils being in danger. Her neighbours pulled down her fences, and filled up her well. All the traders in the place refused to deal with her, and she was obliged to purchase provisions and clothing from a great distance. She and her pupils were refused admission to the churches; her windows were repeatedly broken during the night; and, at length, the attacks upon her house became so alarming, and the menaces to her pupils on their way to school so violent, that their parents were compelled to hide the children in their own houses, and Miss Crandall retired from the place. Her conduct was to the last degree meek and quiet; nothing need be said about its courage. By this time the abolition cause was supported by 26 periodicals, circulating from Maine to Virginia and Indiana. Some excellent individuals had done the brave deed of publishing books in aid of the same cause. Among these was Mrs. Child, a lady of whom society was exceedingly proud before she published her Appeal,' and to whom society has been extremely contemptuous since. Her works were bought with avidity before, but fell into sudden oblivion as soon as she had done a greater deed than writing any or all of them. Her nobleminded husband lost his legal practice, sound and respected as were his talents, from affording his counsel to citizens of colour. A circumstance which we happen to know respecting this gentleman and lady illustrates well the state of feeling on the great question in the different classes of minds at the time. Mr. Child was professionally consulted by a gentleman of colour. The client and his lady visited Mr. Child at his residence at Boston one afternoon, and staid beyond the family tea-hour. Mrs. Child at length ordered up tea; but before it could be poured out the visitors took their leave, not choosing to subject Mr. and Mrs. Child to the imputation of sitting at table with people of colour. Boston soon rang with the report that Mr. and Mrs. Child had given an entertainment to coloured people. Some aristocratic ladies, seated in one of the handsomest drawing-rooms in Boston, were one day canvassing this and other abolition affairs, while Dr. Channing appeared absorbed in a newspaper by the fireside. The ladies repeated tale after tale, each about as true as the one they began with, and greeted with loud laughter every attempt of one of the party to correct their mistakes about the ladies who were then under persecution, and in peril for the cause. length Dr. Channing turned his head, and produced a dead silence by observing, in the sternest tone of his thrilling voice, "The time will come when those ladies will find their proper place; and the time will come when the laughers will find their proper place." This happened, however, not in 1833, but when the persecution of the women had risen to its height. At By this time the degraded free blacks began to hold up their heads : and they entered upon a new course of action,-setting out upon a principle of hope instead of despair. As they found the doors of schools shut against them, they formed associations for mutual improvement. The best minds among them sent forth urgent entreaties to the rest to labour at the work of education, pleading that the nearer |