1831

Awakening - 1831 - William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator

A few weeks after his twenty-fifth birthday, on the first day of the year 1831, William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of The Liberator. The front page included this observation:

...a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free states - and particularly in New England - than at the South.  I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudices more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave owners themselves.

Considering that this anti-slavery weekly was published in Boston, it's clear that Garrison was not afraid to be controversial. One full page is taken up by Garrison's account of his own recent libel trial - one, that is, from actions before the existence of this paper.

In it is described how a New England ship took slaves aboard in Maryland for shipping to New Orleans. Garrison had claimed that the slaves were put in chains in a "narrow space" and treated harshly, as they were "carried to market."  The ship's owner, one Francis Todd, objected to these claims, and the general implication of being a slave trader. (Importation of slaves into the United States had been illegal since January 1, 1808.)

The court found that the slaves were never in chains, not treated harshly, given good provisions for the trip, and were "perfectly willing to come on board the ship." (They had been sold as a group to a single master - good fortune, for a slave, as families were kept together.)  Granting some polishing of the circumstances  - although Garrison doesn't object to the findings  -  the shipment was described as being little more than taking on passengers, and was seen as such by the court in the initial criminal case. Found guilty of libel, Garrison was fined fifty dollars, plus court costs.

Francis Todd asked Garrison for an apology. Garrison refused. The paper goes on to relate how Garrison defaulted on the civil suit initiated by Francis Todd in which the jury awarded damages of one thousand dollars.

Throughout this narrative, one can see a person unwilling to back down from matters of moral weight. Even though Garrison appears to have been wrong in the particular accusations which invited the libel suit (no chains, no cramped quarters, nothing at all similar to the long-illegal importation of slaves), that a Yankee-owned ship had been used to transport slaves in any manner was a vile sin that could not be easily washed away. (A short missive to Todd from the jail, while eventually admitting "I owe you no ill-will" mostly attempts to convince him of the wickedness of allowing his ship to be thus used.) Garrison himself admits - on the front page of the first issue - that his words will be severe:

No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; - but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. 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 first issue further included

• A Literary section with poetry, prose, and jokes;
• A description of slave traders in the Capitol;
• A request for submissions on the subject of the clergy's part in eradicating slavery;
• A listing of the jury members who had found against Garrison in the civil libel suit.

Despite threats and blame (e.g. for Nat Turner's rebellion) heaped upon Garrison, The Liberator would continue through the next 35 years, until December 31, 1865, a year that had seen the end of the Civil War, the death of Lincoln, and the abolition of slavery in the once again United States.

(The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison: I will be heard, 1822-1835 includes in its annotations on page 92 an objective summary of the circumstances of Todd libel case.)