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

‘ [269] slaves so cruelly treated as his.’¹ Abhorring war, he declared his belief that ‘every man who kills another, either in a duel or battle, is, in the eye of God, guilty of his blood.’ He had scruples, over and above the prior claims of the slaves, against publishing an appeal to raise money in aid of the revolted Poles: ‘Ours is² the patriotism of Jesus Christ, not of this world. We justify no war. The victories of liberty should be bloodless, and effected solely by spiritual weapons. If we deemed it pleasing in the sight of God to kill tyrants, we would immediately put ourselves at the head of a black army at the South, and scatter devastation and death on every side.’ For, ‘surely if a man can be justified in³ fighting for a foreign people—the Greeks and Poles, for example—how much more can he be justified in fighting for his own brethren! Yet I am for leaving vengeance to God.’ Nevertheless, when, as in Hayti, ‘the battle⁴ for liberty is begun, we pray that the injured party may in all cases be victorious.’ Not yet had Mr. Garrison carried his peace doctrine so far as to disfranchise⁵ himself rather than, by voting, to sustain a government resting on force. Capital punishment he naturally⁶ held to be ‘unauthorized.’ The penitentiary ‘should⁷ become a place of just yet merciful correction, and of the means of moral reform.’ We see him attending a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, presided over by Mayor Otis, and addressed by the Rev. John Pierpont,⁸ for the abolishment of imprisonment for debt; and⁹ leaving it with a poem¹⁰ running in his head ‘to illustrate the barbarity of a system which, as far as it goes, is scarcely surpassed by African slavery’—the difference being that the people had the remedy in their¹¹ own hands.