Here we go, William Lloyd Garrison. When William Lloyd Garrison started his newspaper,
The Liberator, in Boston, when he was advocating for the immediate abolition of slavery and full
citizenship for the former slaves, he was read out of town on a rail in the North! Not in the South.
Well that’s why I put Garrison in there Michael, I knew you’d love him. He’s totally uncompromising.
Oh, absolutely. He argued for a long time that the North had an obligation to secede
from any kind of organization with the slave holding South. He argued, in his words, that
“Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.” And any compromise in issues of liberty means,
in real life, those issues will never be resolved. This is why he had such a mixed
view on the Civil War. Because on the one hand he understood this is about the federal government
and not about slavery; on the other hand he saw this was a potential, for means he did not like,
for slavery to be ended. In that seventh-grade history textbook
that we were all assigned, the abolitionists are treated cartoonishly. We read that in the South,
they wanted slavery. And in the North, they wanted full civil rights for black Americans. Well, when
William Lloyd Garrison came along and advocated that very thing, he was nearly killed for that,
in Boston! And whats more, we’re told that of course the North opposed secession and the South
favored it. But William Lloyd Garrison thought what was needed was the dissolution of the Union.
His newspaper, which was The Liberator, on the very masthead for twenty-years said, “No
Union With Slave Holders.” It was front and center. And it was a perspective that was very
prominent among many abolitionists. What made William Lloyd Garrison a real American hero
is that he was a journalist who did speak truth to power, and put himself in harms way,
as a consequence of being open and explicit about his radical views. Views that nowadays
are pretty much taken as commonplace. There was no pretense of showing both sides when it
came to an issue of what he regarded as absolute moral evil. There is right and there is wrong,
and he damn well intended to stand on the side of right.
Well, as a matter of fact, the American Anti-Slavery Society, which Garrison co-founded,
was committed to the idea of dissolving the Union. In fact, in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society, said publicly “we now publicly abjure our allegiance to the Constitution
of the United States and the Union and place the broad seal of our reprobation on this unnatural
and unholy alliance between liberty and slavery. The Union in our judgement is not only at war with
the law and government of God, and destructive of the peace, the honor and prosperity of the North,
but of no real benefit to the South since it serves to delay the day of her visitation.
Only to plunge her the deeper into infamy and ruin. We therefore declare its obligation so
far as they relate to ourselves, utterly null and void, and we now publicly pledge ourselves to seek
in all suitable ways its peaceful dissolution.” They continue, “We shall accept of no office under
the Constitution of the United States. As long as slavery remains an element of the government,
nor shall we aid in electing others to fill such offices.”
Yeah, when people find out that the big abolitionists of the day were the first
and foremost ones arguing for secession, attacking the Constitution, and trying to destroy the Union,
their minds are blown. Real American history is rarely simple American history. If you’re
going to look at it as secession is the bad guys and Union are the good guys, you’re calling the
abolitionists villains. And you’re having a very, very two-dimensional version of American history.