After
1850 violence became a more widely accepted
method for abolitionists in their fight against slaveholders. Non-resistants,
those who refused to accept the use of violence in any circumstance, found
themselves in a difficult position of havin g to eiWilliam
Lloyd Garrison
and the Problem of Non-Resistance
Elizabeth Forest
In 1838 William Lloyd Garrison and several fellow nonresistants
broke with the
American Peace Society over the issue of defensive warfare. The
organization
they formed was the New England Non-Resistance Society, and
although it faded ou
t as an organization in the early 1840s, the principles that
defined the Society
remained with the individuals, shaping their approach to life,
their individual
crusades, and, most importantly, their fight against slavery.
These
nonresistants, however, w ould find their belief in nonviolence
challenged as
tensions increased between the North and South over slavery. As
violence became
a more widely accepted method for abolitionists, nonresistants
found themselves
in a difficult position of having either t o hold fast to their
strict pacifist
principles or to acknowledge the use of other means in speeding
the abolition of
slavery. The Compromise of 1850, with its unpopular Fugitive Slave
Law, pushed
nonresistants to alter their willingness to accept violen t means
in the "war"
against slavery.
Radical abolitionists formulated their initial ideas about the
acceptability of
physical force in the 1830s, at the same time that William Lloyd
Garrison
promoted the shift from gradualism to immediatism. The
Constitution of the Am
erican Anti-Slavery Society, written by Garrison in 1833, included
a clause that
rejected any use of violence. "Ours forbids the doing of evil
that good may
come, and lead us to reject, and to entreat the oppressed to
reject, the use of
carnal weapo ns for deliverance from bondage; relying solely upon
those which
are spiritual, and mighty through God to the pulling down of
strong bonds." In
November, 1837, Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist and nonresistant
in Alton,
Illinois, died while defending his printing press. After several
previous
attacks on his press, he chose to use weapons of self-defense.
Most
nonresistants deplored the use of violence by either side.
Garrison wrote in The
Liberator that "we solemnly protest against any of [Christ’s]
professed
followers resorting to carnal weapons under any pretext or in any
extremity
whatever." At a meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society,
nonresistant
Samuel May proposed a resolution "declaring Lovejoy’s actions
incons istent with
the principles of the society" because it was essential to be
"especially
careful in our adherence to our principles." Prior to 1850,
the nonresistants
were perfectly willing to protest the use of any sort of violence.
The formation of the New England Non-Resistance Society in 1838
formalized the
ideological split between conservative peace advocates and the
radical
nonresistants, led by Garrison. John Demos, in his article
"The Antislavery
Movement and the Problem of Violent ‘Means,’" states that the
nonresistant
movement "paralleled various contemporary experiments in
religious
perfectionism; and its long-range expectations were little short
of millennial."
Perfectionism wa s "the notion that individuals could become
sanctified while on
earth" and this notion of perfectionism guided nonresistants
in following the
example of Jesus Christ. They believed that love, not force, would
change
society. In this way, nonre sistants were radical because they
wanted a
"regeneration of American society, which would require a
profound ideological
reorientation and ultimately abolish the government."
Nonresistants would
acknowledge no allegiance to human government, t hey repudiated
all war and all
resorts to violence, they refused to come to any compromise over
their
principles, and they would rely on moral suasion to convince the
unregenerate to
accept nonresistance, always working to perfect themselves in the
image of
Christ.
While nonresistants accepted notions of perfectionism and the coming
of the
millennium as integral to their movement, perhaps one of the most
important
characteristics of their ideology was the focus placed on private
judgment. The
role of individual, private judgment was a significant aspect of
most antebellum
reform movements, stemming from the Protestant Reformation’s
insistence on the
primacy of the individual’s relationship to God, and heightened by
the revivals
of the Second Great Awakening. According to Lewis Perry, private
judgment
"suggested a responsibility to live up to individual and
personal understandings
of virtue. It was a corollary of moral accountability and the
government of
God." The nonresistants a ccepted the right of individuals to
be free to make
their own decisions, but those decisions had to be done in light
of the
teachings of Jesus Christ.
As such, nonresistants wanted a government of God. Slavery, human
government,
and violence were all part of the same paradigm; "they were
sinful invasions of
God’s prerogatives; all tried to set one man between another man
and his
rightful ruler." From this belief stemmed an abhorrence of
human government; it
was natural that nonresistants would oppose such government for
"nothing must be
permitted to fetter the spirit of the individual." Nonresistants
were no t
supposed to vote or hold public office or in any way participate
in supporting a
government that was plainly going against the teachings of Christ
and the New
Testament. This extreme opposition to government in the
nonresistant movement
kept many aboli tionists who believed in nonresistance from
joining Garrison and
the New England Non-Resistance Society. For some abolitionists,
and many critics
of the new organization, the nonresistants were too closely
associated with
anarchism, even if it was " Christian Anarchism."
Significantly, for nonresistants, the refusal to resort to
violence did not
imply that they were passive agents. At a meeting of the New
England
Non-Resistance Society in 1839, Maria W. Chapman stated:
Passive non-resistance is one thing; active non-resistance
another. We mean to
apply our principles. We mean to be bold for God.
Action!—Action!—thus shall we
overcome the violent. Not by their own weapons... but it behooves
us to preach.
We need no body of men to tell us when, and where, and how we may
speak, but
each one is bound to speak as his own reason and conscience
dictate.
Nonresistants relied on moral suasion and individual determination
in their
attack against violence. Words, spoken or written, were the
weapons of choice
and would be used in whatever forum nonresistants could find. For
William Lloyd
Garrison, one of the founders of the New England Non-Resistance
Society,
nonresistance was passive only in the sense that "it will not
return evil for
evil, nor give blow for blow, nor resort to murderous weapons for
protection or
defence." In the Society’s Declaration of Sentiments, written
by Garrison, it
states that "we propose, in a moral and spiritual sense, to
speak and act boldly
in the cause of GOD; to assail iniquity in high places, and in low
places; to
apply our principles to al l existing civil, political, legal and
ecclesiastical
institutions; and to hasten the time, when the kingdoms of this
world will have
become the kingdoms of our LORD and of his CHRIST, and he shall
reign forever."
Nonresistants repudiated obedience to a government that had proven
itself,
through its support of slavery, its willingness to resort to
coercive measures,
and its willingness to resort to war, as going against God.
While Garrison played only a small role in the actual
nonresistance movement of
the late 1830s, he did act as its "cynosure." As one of
the historians of the
movement notes, his real contribution was "his moral convi
ction as well as the
strength of his personality, his gift for leadership, and his
ability to inspire
unswerving confidence in his disciples." His role as the
founder and editor of
The Liberator, a major abolitionist and reform newspaper of t he
era, and the
importance of his position in the nonresistant movement makes
Garrison a central
figure to consider. The Liberator was Garrison’s forum. In the
first issue he
stated emphatically that "I will not equivocate—I will not
excuse— I will not
retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD." Garrison did not
believe in holding
his tongue. When accused of damaging the movement with the
harshness of his
language, Garrison responded by demanding "new and stronger
dialect." In a
letter to Samuel May, dated January 13, 1850, Garrison wrote that
"we must use
great plainness of speech; like the reformers of all ages, we must
call things
by their right names; like Jesus, we must be willing to make
ourselves of no
reputation , as without conflict there can be no victory—without
the cross, no
crown." When it came to declaring his tenets, careful
language was not a
concern.
Garrison certainly possessed a militant stance on speaking out
against
oppression. He did not, however, present his convictions at the
expense of
others. Indeed, for Garrison, truth was only possible if there was
freedom of
discus sion. People could not be persuaded towards the
"right" way unless they
were free to consider the alternatives. More importantly, he
believed that to
ignore the beliefs of others was a form of coercion for it
"forced" one ideology
to take precedence over others. As a correspondent from the
Providence Herald
wrote, in a piece reprinted in The Liberator: "We differ with
him, perhaps in
our views on slavery; certainly in our choice of a remedy for the
evil. But we c
annot wonder that our path seems to him, as his does to us, the
highway to
destruction, through turmoil and tribulation." The Liberator,
therefore, served
as the voice of many, not just Garrison and his supporters.
Garrison’s openness to differing opinions foreshadowed his
eventual acceptance
of violence by those who were not nonresistants, provided that the
violence was
committed for the greater good. In 1837 Garrison wrote: "If
the sla ves of the
South have not an undoubted right to resist their masters in the
last resort,
then no man, or body of men, may appeal to the law of violence in
self-defence—for none have suffered, or can suffer, more than
they." It is
evident that Garris on believed the slaves had suffered, and
suffered greatly,
but it could not justify violence. Evil could not be returned for
evil. Later,
however, his position was not so clear cut. In a piece included in
his
Selections from the Writings and Speeche s of William Lloyd
Garrison, published
in 1852, Garrison stated: "We grant that every successful
struggle for freedom
on the part of the oppressed, even with the aid of cannon and
bomb-shells, is to
be hailed with rejoicing; but simply in referen ce to its object,
and not to the
mode of its accomplishment." He claimed not to support the
use of violence, but
his unwillingness to refute its use clearly represented his
ambiguous position.
This seemingly vacillating position on the use of physi cal force
represented a
problem of consistency in the implementation of the nonresistants’
peace
principle.
The events of the 1850s put nonresistants’ principles to a severe
test. Henry
Clay, a prominent slaveholding politician from Kentucky, hoped to
calm the
increasing antagonism between North and South over the issue of
slavery by pro
posing a series of measures. Irritated by the Wilmot Proviso of
1846, the
dispute over the expansion of slavery had reached a peak, with
South Carolina
threatening disunion should the Proviso be passed. Clay’s proposals
included
several different measur es for resolving sectional disputes. The
Compromise
admitted California as a free state, abolished the slave trade in
the District
of Columbia, instituted popular sovereignty as the method of
determining whether
New Mexico and Utah would be slave or free states, provided a
settlement for the
boundary dispute in Texas, and included a more stringent fugitive
slave law. The
Compromise was supported, much to the chagrin of abolitionists and
nonresistants, by Daniel Webster, a congressman from Massachusetts
. The
Compromise was passed through Congress as separate bills in
September of 1850
and was signed into law by President Fillmore.
The Compromise of 1850 was significant to nonresistants because it
further
exemplified the coercive nature of the government and the power of
the slave
states. As early as February 1850, denunciations of the Compromise
had made the
ir way into the pages of The Liberator. The author of an article,
reprinted from
The New York Independent, adamantly demanded no compromise;
"If compromises of
the Constitution include requisitions which violate humanity, I
will not be
bound by them. Not even the Constitution shall make me
unjust." Garrison, as
editor of The Liberator, clearly indicated his unwillingness to
accept the
Compromise. This stance was hardly surprising given that one of
the main aspects
of non resistant ideology was an opposition to compromise with
slaveholders:
"For that fellowship requires sanction and cooperation in perpetuating
‘the sum
of all villainies.’" Selections from other newspapers which
appeared in The
Liberator, along with letters from readers, indicated the extent
to which
support of the Compromise was limited among radical abolitionists.
Discussion of
the Compromise constituted a significant portion of the newspaper
from the time
the measures were first propos ed until long after the Compromise
had been
enacted.
Criticism of the Compromise came to focus primarily on the new
Fugitive Slave
Law, which was much more stringent than the 1793 statute. Among
some of its
characteristics, the law appointed Commissioners in each state to
oversee ind
ividual cases, denied the fugitive a jury trial, refused the right
of the
fugitive to present a defense, paid the Commissioners $10 for each
fugitive
returned to slavery and only $5 for those not returned, subjected
those who
assisted fugitive slaves to h eavy fines and possible prosecution,
and, if a
fugitive was rescued after being turned over to the authorities by
the claimant,
the federal treasury would repay the slaveowner the value of the
slave. The new
Fugitive Slave Law was justifiably seen as a l aw that imposed
"upon every man,
woman, and child in this Union, a participation in slavery."
In September, Garrison vehemently presented his view of the
Fugitive Slave Law.
In The Liberator’s section, "Refuge of Oppression,"
Garrison introduced the new
law with the following statement: "It is a bill to be
resisted, disobeyed, and
trampled under foot, at all hazards." While Garrison did not
explicitly suggest
the use of violence as one of the "hazards," his
language certainly indicated a
vague willingness on his part towards the use of any means
necessary to oppose
the statute.
Garrison’s passionate response to the Fugitive Slave Law did not
stand alone.
Angry responses filled the pages of The Liberator. One subscriber
wrote, "If we
live not to see it repealed, we will teach our children to o ppose
it after we
are dead." Another demanded that if a fugitive is
"seized by any one" they
should "make the air resound with the signal-word" so
that others might come to
the fugitive’s aid, being "prompt in their hour of
peril." A set of resolutions
adopted by the Boston Protective Union resolved that "we recommend
the
appointment of a Vigilance Committee of 14 citizens, whose duty it
shall be to
see that no person is deprived of liberty without due process of
the law." The
Fugitive Slave Law would be vigorously rejected by nonresistants
and
abolitionists alike.
Of the nonresistants, Henry C. Wright was one of the most
outspoken in his views
on the Fugitive Slave Law. As early as 1842 Wright had
"rais[ed] the abstract
issue of slave revolts to fill out his critique of voting and
const itutional
government," comparing slave revolts to the struggles of the
revolutionary
heroes. Initially, Wright’s nonresistant philosophy had been to
encourage slaves
to refuse the acceptance of their bondage. After the Fugitive
Slave Law had been
e nacted, however, he no longer took that position, stating
instead that slaves
should escape from bondage "by running away, or by such other
means as, in their
opinion, are right." In a letter he wrote to Garrison,
published in The
Liberator< /I>, Wright demanded: "DEATH TO KIDNAPPERS!"
Immediately after this
impassioned declaration, he stated: "I am a non-resistant; I
believe it to be
the greatest crime that man can commit, to take, or to assume the
right to take,
the life of man; and would far rather die than stain my own hands
with a
brother’s blood." Furthermore, he reinforced this belief by
negating the
argument used by others that resistance to tyrants is obedience to
God. Yet in
the same letter, just after his rep udiation of physical violence,
Wright wrote:
If it ever was right for any man to kill those who seek to enslave
them or their
wives and children, I believe it is the right and duty of every
fugitive slave,
of every human being in the North, to inflict instant death,
without judge or
jury, on all who seek, with law or without law, to return the
fugitive slave to
his chains.
In the span of one paragraph Wright refuted the use of brute force
and justified
it, even suggesting that those who did not follow the tenets of
nonresistance
were "bound" to "inflict death, with [their] own
hand, on each and every man who
shall attempt to execute the recent law of Congress."
Wright’s reaction was, to be sure, more extreme than other
nonresistants.
William Jay, a judge and nonresistant, wrote an opinion on the law
compelling
people to avoid the use of forcible resistance. He believed that
the resort to
such actions would simply cause greater violence on part of the
slaveholders. He
also argued that if acts of violence were left to the
slaveholders, Northerners
would respond in outrage when seeing their "streets stained
with human blood,
shed by t he slave-catchers." Another correspondent to The
Liberator wrote that
an associate had announced boldly that he would open the doors of
his home to
those fugitive slaves seeking asylum, for it was as Jesus Christ
would have
done. Yet another wondered where the nonresistants had gone,
fearing that they
had given up their principles in a time of trial. He wondered that
others could
not see as clearly as he that as "the spirit of war subsides,
slavery must
correspondingly vanish."
Four distinct acts of opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law
revealed the
increasing willingness of abolitionists and nonresistants to adopt
violent
measures. These acts consisted of the rescue of escaping slaves
who had been
seized by the authorities. The first important fugitive slave case
took place in
Boston, in February 1851. A fugitive slave, by the nickname of
Shadrach, was
arrested and brought before the Commissioner. Through a writ of
habeas corpus, a
stay was granted unt il the case could be heard properly. At the
moment the case
was put over, "The door of the court room was pressed open by
a crowd of
sympathizing colored persons, who, without any deliberate
concert—without any
weapons in their hands—without any wis h or intention to do
personal violence to
any one," pulled Shadrach peacefully from the court room.
Once free, Shadrach
fled to Canada.
Garrison emphasized the lack of violence in the Shadrach rescue:
"Nobody
injured, nobody wronged, but simply chattel transformed into a
man, and
conducted to a spot whereon he can glorify God in his body and
spirit, which are
h is!" Nonresistants, as noted earlier, did not take a pledge
of inaction. Their
focus was simply to avoid using force, violence, or coercion as
means of
bringing about their desired result. It is not surprising,
therefore, that
Garrison and other n onresistants rejoiced in the actions taken to
rescue
Shadrach. The Shadrach rescue, for Garrison and nonresistants,
represented the
ideal; it was a peaceful opposition to an unjust law.
Later in the same year, however, a fugitive slave incident
concluded with quite
a different result. In September, 1851, a slaveowner, in the
company of his son
and several other men, came to Christiana, Pennsylvania looking
for a f ugitive
slave. The fugitive, aware that he was being hunted, fortified his
home. With
the aid of several black friends, they armed themselves, prepared
to defend the
supposed fugitive from the slavehunters. When the blacks were
fired upon they
returned the gunfire, killing the slaveowner and mortally wounding
the
slaveowner’s son. Despite Garrison’s oft-repeated views on
nonviolence, in
response to the episode he wrote: "The blacks are fully justified
in what they
did" because the example of the nation was one that declared
the legitimacy of
freedom through the use of armed resistance. Garrison continued to
avoid stating
explicitly that there was a justification for violence, but he was
becoming more
publicly tolerant of it, especially in t he cases of those who did
not claim to
be nonresistants; the unregenerate could resort to violence.
In October, to the relief of nonresistants, another successful
nonviolent
fugitive slave rescue took place, in Syracuse, New York. The
fugitive, "Jerry,"
was in custody and was having his case heard in the courthouse. A
large crowd
which had gathered outside broke into the courthouse and removed
Jerry. He was
soon recaptured, but a second attempt proved to be successful and
Jerry was able
to flee, much like Shadrach, to Canada. The only incidences of
violence
consisted of some rocks being thrown at the courthouse windows,
although police
did fire into the crowd in an attempt to prevent the rescue and
disperse the
gathering. Even though one Southern newspaper went so far as to
say that some
officers of the law were &qu ot;subjected to severe bodily
injuries," no one was
actually injured.
The Jerry Rescue is particularly interesting because it plainly
represented the
ambiguity of the nonresistant position on the use of physical
force. The results
of the rescue were nonviolent, but Samuel May, an ardent
nonresistant, preached
shortly before the incident that the Fugitive Slave Law ought to
be resisted,
even if the result was violent. On the day of the actual rescue,
May encouraged
the crowd to remain peaceful. When Garrison commented on the
rescue he noted
that May "filled every friend of humanity with joy" when
he "called upon the
free men and women of Syracuse to pledge their lives, their
fortunes, and their
sacred honor, to protect the trembling fugitive in his
distress." Garrison was
either not aware that May had advocated violence just before the
rescue or he
chose not to mention it when he reiterated that there was much to
learn from
this "peaceful, determined opposition to the Slave
Power."
In 1852 Garrison continued to advocate peaceful means in the
abolition of
slavery. In his introduction to a new year of The Liberator
Garrison wrote that
the purpose of the newspaper continued to be the "overthrow
of sl avery by moral
and peaceful instrumentalities, for the benefit alike of the
oppressor and the
oppressed." In April, however, he added an editorial note to
a letter from a
correspondent who wrote questioning the consistency and legitimacy
of advocati
ng slave resistance to capture under the Fugitive Slave Law, even
if resistance
ended in violence. His correspondent wondered where the violence
would end.
Garrison, in a condescending manner, responded by saying that the
letter was
"such a jumblin g together of assumed non-resistance,
Fugitive Slave and Maine
Liquor Law, pretended leverance for legislative enactments, and
false notions of
moral obligations." Garrison’s position remained ambiguous.
Despite his
continued support of nonviolent means, his opinions were wavering
and he
remained unwilling to come out completely against the use of brute
force.
Garrison further confused his position in a proposed amendment at
an antislavery
meeting. He suggested that violence may be justifiable after all:
if ‘resistance to tyrants,’ by bloody weapons is ‘obedience to
God,’ and if our
revolutionary fathers were justified in wading through blood to
freedom and
independence, then every fugitive slave is justified in arming
himself for prote
ction and defence... in taking the life of every marshall,
commissioner, or
other person who attempts to reduce him to bondage; and the
millions who are
clanking their chains on our soil find ample warrant in rising en
masse, and
asserting their ri ght to liberty at whatever sacrifice of the
life of their
oppressors.
As long as "resistance to tyrants was obedience to God"
was the rule followed,
then violence was legitimate. Only for those who advocated
nonresistance was
such brutality not acceptable. His resolution did little to
clarify his
position. One month later, at the New England Anti-Slavery Society
meeting,
Garrison was noted as closing the anniversary discussions
"with a most effective
statement of the methods of abolishing the slave
system—deprecating for our own
sakes, a nd for the slave’s sake, any nurturing of the spirit of
violence and
blood."
This gradual accommodation of nonresistants to violence did not go
unnoticed.
Micajah Johnson, for example, wrote to Garrison via The Liberator
expressing his
distress over Henry Wright’s embrace of "any means as they s
ee fit" in
preventing the return to slavery of an escapee. For Johnson, as
for the
correspondent criticized by Garrison above, Christian morality
made it abhorrent
to "justify war, or the use of carnal weapons in any
shape" and that such a
justification "lets down the purity of Jesus to the common
level of public
opinion." In the same paper, another correspondent, signing
as "A Friend of
Progress," wrote that "to do away with Slavery we must
have the spirit of Chr
ist." Not all nonresistants were ready to give up their
doctrines, at least not
in theory.
Numerous incidents related to the Fugitive Slave Law followed the
October Jerry
Rescue. In November, 1852, a group of slaves being transported
through the Port
of New York were encouraged by several abolitionists to go to
court to plead
their case. The court that heard the case determined that the
slaves were free
because "no one has a right to take slave through a country
where slavery does
not exist." Another case involved a charge brought against a
free black man, Ri
chard Neal, of "enticing" away slaves from the
neighborhood where he used to be
a slave. A writ of habeas corpus was issued, but when the claimant
failed to
appear, the charges against Neal were dropped. Yet another
incident occurred in
Septem ber, 1853, in Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. Whites accused
William Thomas of
being a fugitive slave and attacked him in the restaurant where he
was employed.
Supposedly not knowing why he was attacked, he fought back, fled,
and was
eventually aided in flee ing to Canada. The significance of this
particular case
actually involved those who had attempted to capture Thomas. The
Judge who
presided over their trial released them, claiming that he would
not allow those
who were merely doing their job to be &quo t;harassed at every
step in their
performance of their duties by every petty magistrate who chooses to
harass
them, or by any unprincipled interloper who chooses to make
complaints against
them." The decision reinforced the power of the pro-slavery
element to
nonresistants and abolitionists alike, and hardened the resolve to
oppose the
Fugitive Slave Law.
The culmination of resistance to the law was the case of the
fugitive slave
Anthony Burns. In Boston in May, 1854, Burns was being held at the
court house
on the charge of being a fugitive slave. A large group of people
had gather ed
outside the court house to protest his incarceration, but they
remained
peaceful. At a meeting at Faneuil Hall, abolitionists tried to
decide upon a
course of action. Those presiding, most notably Wendeall Phillips,
called for
nonviolence. At that m oment, however, the crowd learned that a
rescue attempt
was in process. A group had rushed the court house in an attempt
to get inside
and rescue Burns. During the rescue attempt a scuffle occurred.
One of the
slavecatchers was stabbed and several shot s were fired, although
no one was
wounded by the shooting. Abolitionists denied any responsibility
for the failed
rescue attempt. Garrison stated that it had been the "act of
some half dozen
impulsive and unreasoning persons, without plan or system of any
kind."
In the hopes of preserving peace, Boston’s Mayor called for more
military
personnel, and eventually soldiers surrounded the courthouse.
Protests remained
peaceful and a judge decreed that Burns would be sent back to
slavery. A mil
itary escort, followed by a large crowd in a silent procession,
took Burns to
the transport that would send him south. There were some isolated
incidences of
violence, mainly on the part of military personnel, but no one was
injured and
no rioting occurr ed.
This particular incident was especially irritating to
nonresistants because of
the massive use of troops to enforce what was seen as a bad and
unjust law.
Coercion and the threat of violence on the part of the troops to
"maint ain
peace at all costs," was offensive. There was a huge
outpouring in The Liberator
responding to the outrage. Perhaps one of the best examples of how
deeply this
fugitive slave incident affected people was in nonresistant
Angelina Grimke’s
letter, cited by Garrison in The Liberator, in which she repudiated
the peace
principle, stating her "hope that the arrest of every
fugitive slave may be
contested even unto blood." Slowly but surely nonresistants
were coming to the
con clusion that violence, with or without them, may be the only
way to end
slavery.
Garrison, however, continued to remain ambiguous and
contradictory. In the May
26 issue of The Liberator, printed on the very day of the
attempted rescue,
Garrison reiterated his nonviolent views. In a statement given to
th e American
Anti-Slavery Society, he wrote that he did not "believe in
killing any man for
any purpose." Yet just one month later, in the June 23 issue,
Garrison responded
to criticisms made by the newspaper, The Courier, stating that the
"‘murderous
blow struck by ruffians,’ was good in its quality, and as lofty in
its purpose,
as any blow struck during our revolutionary struggle." He
argued further that
since it was accepted by most of the American people that
individuals cou ld
defend their liberty, a fugitive too could then act in
self-defense should
someone try to take his liberty from him, even if his response
meant the use of
violence. Ironically, in the same essay Garrison continued to
claim that "we
have not couns eled violence or retaliation in any case, but only
patience and
forbearance." It was a curious dichotomy of views. The climax
of Garrison’s
outrage over the Burns incident came on July 4, 1854, when he
burned a copy of
the Fugitive Slave Law, a cop y of the court’s decision on the
Burns case, and a
copy of the Constitution. Although Garrison would claim to remain
a nonresistant
up until the Civil War, he had clearly come to the decision that
he could
support the resort to force, provided that it wa s done by those
who considered
it an appropriate measure.
The nonresistant accommodation to violence was gradual, taking
shape especially
in response to the provocation of the 1850s. Valarie Ziegler
states that "by and
large the nonresistants stuck to their principles" although
"some of the
faithful did slip, and certainly everyone considered doing
so." During the
second half of the 1850s, as violence increased substantially and
tensions
between the North and South escalated, nonresistants were led to
repudiate their
position. "Bleeding Kansas," the beating of Charles
Sumner, a senator from
Massachusetts, on the floor of the Senate, and John Brown’s raid
on Harper’s
Ferry in 1859 all lead inevitably to a repudiation of the
principles of
nonviolence. The Ci vil War, which was the penultimate act of
violence, was
ultimately accepted by most nonresistants, including Garrison. One
of the few
nonresistants who remained faithful to his principles and who
refused to accept
the Civil War was Adin Ballou. In the s ame issue that noted
Angelina Grimke’s
departure from nonresistance, Ballou stated, "Few (how few!)
remain faithful.
The rest have re-embraced the War Principle, or have become dumb
on the subject,
or while professing to be Non-Resistants themselves , spend their
main strength
in exhorting fighting people to be sure and fight on the right
side." On June
23, 1854 Garrison wrote:
Though a non-resistant myself, I am not willing to see contumely
heaped upon the
heads of those who abhor slavery, because they have forcibly
interposed, even to
the shedding of blood, to save a fellow-man from becoming a victim
to its
power—heaped by those who, in their own case, maintain that
‘resistance to
tyrants,’ to any extent, ‘is obedience to God.’ Surely, if there
be any one who
is worthy of death, it is, first of all, the slave-hunter; and,
next to him, the
wretch who is will ing to act as his accomplice, whether
officially or
otherwise.
Although Garrison continued to profess allegiance to the
principles of
nonresistance, by the mid-1850s his views were contradictory
enough to indicate
a clear acceptance of the use of violence in fighting against
slavery. This
gradual accommodation would ultimately allow him to exclaim,
"‘Thank God’ for
the war."