Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

[268] of this memorable revival year were peculiarly refreshing to Mr. Garrison. ‘It has been,’ he writes, ‘the happiest¹ week of our existence. We cannot discriminate between the excellence and importance of the different societies: every one of them was the best. Only one thing was wanting—the anniversary of a National Anti-Slavery Society. Such a society must be organized forthwith.’ Worthy of special praise seemed the Rev. Leonard Withington's election sermon, ‘an apology for the clergy, and a defence of their character.’ On the Fourth of July he attended the celebration at Park-Street Church, his ² feelings outraged by the sight of colored boys restricted to pews one-quarter way up the side-aisle, while the girls were kept near the door as usual; and his reason offended by the Rev. Dr. Wisner's specious attempt to prove that infant sprinkling was baptism.

‘You are,’ wrote a gentleman from the District of Columbia to Mr. Garrison, ‘not only breaking the chains³ of the black slave, but also of the white slave.’ As this latter effect was incidental to the former, so the Liberator's warfare upon slavery was an incident, if the main one, in the universal philanthropy of its editor. ‘Human rights in general,’ to use his own phrase, commanded his services at all seasons; and all his earlier testimonies were renewed in the Liberator. His feelings on the subject of intemperance were scarcely surpassed in intensity by those in regard to slavery. He looked⁴ upon ‘every distiller or vender of ardent spirits’ as ‘a poisoner of the health and morals of community’; and could even say, in his address in 1832 before the second annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia: ‘God is my witness that, great as is my⁵ detestation of slavery and the foreign slave trade, I had rather be a slaveholder—yea, a kidnapper on the African coast—than sell this poison to my fellow-creatures for common consumption. Since the creation of the world there has been no tyrant like Intemperance, and no ’