WEBVTT - REPLAY: ‘I Will Be Heard' 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:07.800 On July fourth, eighteen twenty nine, a twenty three year 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:12.000 old Boston printer, an anti slavery activist named William Lloyd Garrison, 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:15.760 accepted an invitation to give a Fourth of July address 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:19.439 to the Park Street Church in Boston. The fifteen hundred 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:23.680 white Congregationalists assembled in the large church were stunned by 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.840 what they heard. Garrison told them that Independence Day was 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:30.920 quote the worst and most disastrous day and the whole 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:33.960 three hundred and sixty five He said he was ashamed 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:36.879 of his country and the distance between its ideals and 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.800 its practices. This is Bruce Laurie, a professor of history 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.520 emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He makes 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:46.800 the argument that the key document in the US was 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:51.159 not the Constitutions, a declaration of independence. Garrison asked his 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.600 audience to imagine something how American slaves might make their 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:59.440 own declaration of independence from a tyrannical rule. Then he 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.280 adopted the exact cadence of Thomas Jefferson's original list of 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.920 grievances against King George the Third in the Declaration of Independence. 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:10.360 Garrison read out his own list on behalf of the 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:14.520 American slave He bellowed quote, they have sold us in 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.160 their market places like cattle. They have lacerated our bodies 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.120 with whips. In a word, what that speech did is 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:25.560 he read African Americans into the Declaration of Independence for 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.000 the first time. Garrison ended by asking the congregation to 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:33.160 imagine one more thing. Suppose he asked that the slave 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:37.160 should suddenly become white, would you keep quiet in the 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:43.319 face of their suffering? Then, answering his own question, Garrison roared, no, 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:51.720 your voice would peel like deep thunder. I'm an abolishicitionist, 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:57.440 high glory in the name. I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.480 the thread. This season, we've traced the ore of an 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.440 idea that has shaken the foundations of power across the 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:07.240 world for almost two centuries now. It is the principle 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.560 of non violent resistance, the counterintuitive notion that the best 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.680 way to overcome your enemies is to love them. The 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:18.560 best way to counter their blows is to absorb them. 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:21.160 We began the season with Martin Luther King Jr. And 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.040 his path to non violence. We then pulled on a 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.239 thread that took us backwards through time to South Africa 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.600 and India and Russia. And now four episodes later, we 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.160 are back in the United States and the early eighteen 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.359 hundreds to learn about the American who inspired the non 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:41.519 violent approach of Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist we covered 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.200 in the last episode. If you're joining us for the 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.840 first time, we encourage you to go back and listen 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:53.960 to episode one. I am anabolishist, then urged me not 0:02:54.280 --> 0:03:01.760 to pause for joyfully I do in missed in freedom, 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:25.639 sacred cause, the world and a soldier for Martin Luther 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.440 King Jr. Liked to talk about a promissory note that 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.240 the American founders had written to all Americans and the 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.920 Declaration of Independence. Well in the early days of the 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:37.920 New Republic, and at a time when very few Americans 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.360 cared to pay attention to that promise, William Lloyd Garrison 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.200 waived that note in the streets and hollered about it 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.600 at the top of his lungs. Garrison's searing words and 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:51.920 non violent protestations against slavery, like the civil rights protests 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.119 King would lead across the South over one hundred years later, 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.520 grabbed the collar of America and forced it to look 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:05.200 at itself in the mirror. William Lloyd Garrison was born 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.640 in Newberry, Massachusetts, in eighteen o five. He came from 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.520 humble origins Bruce Laurie again. His father was a mariner, 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:18.080 his mother a housekeeper and a devout Baptist. He um 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.240 He had a common school education. Like most Massachusetts children, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.920 uh never went on to higher education. Almost nobody did 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:30.760 in those days. Instead, um young young men, almost never 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.640 a young women were either sent to live with relatives, 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:39.520 to work on farms, or to um serve apprenticeships and 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:44.040 the skilled trades. Garrison became an apprentice printer. He later 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.400 referred to himself as a New England mechanic. He moved 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.080 to Boston in the late eighteen twenties. He met a 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.000 man named Benjamin Lundy who was a Quaker abolitionist, and 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.360 Lundy had a huge impact on him. Benjamin Lundy was 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:58.800 a harness maker who took up the printing trade just 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.000 so he could decry the evils of slavery. Lundie had 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:06.200 endured beatings, charges of libel and harsh public opinion. The 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:10.400 Quaker zeal And abolitionist views captivated Garrison, and the young 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.520 man began to write for Lundie's newspaper. Actually He served 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:15.680 two apprenticeships, if you think about it, one as a 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.760 printer and the other as an abolitionist. Lundie opened Garrison's 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:23.200 eyes to the evils of slavery. Garrison yearned to fight 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.200 the good fight and become an apostle of public virtue 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:29.960 like Lundie. Lundie was a Quaker, and you know, the 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.400 Quaker position is, you don't need you don't need a 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:36.039 clergy to tell you the word of God. Every person 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:40.040 his is his or her own church, his or her 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:44.800 own own inner light. And you can see that as 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:49.159 the beginnings of Garrisonian non resistance. Garrison was a Christian, 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:52.400 but he challenged the Church just as he did all authorities, 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:56.440 and you were either with him or against him. Garrison 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.240 was convinced that abolitionists should be asking for nothing less 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:03.440 than a media and complete emancipation for all slaves, and 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:07.680 he dedicated himself to the cause entirely. He even said quote, 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.640 I should deserve to be a slave myself if I 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:19.960 shrunk from that duty or danger. Slavery was abolished in 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.960 the US on fifty years ago, and it's difficult to 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.520 imagine what life was like in the eighteen twenties and 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:29.479 thirties and to appreciate the mindset of those times. It 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.599 was hard to find a national politician, even in the North, 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:34.680 who did not think that slavery should be left to 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:39.320 the individual states. Most American presidents had been slave owners. 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.600 Slavery was abolished by statute in many Northern states, but 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.640 a profound apathy towards the practice set in America's moral 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.920 indifference was deafening, and even among those opposed to slavery, 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.839 there was little appetite for granting African Americans equal rights. 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.240 The important thing about that abolitionist movement was it was 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:04.600 very qualified, ever conceded political rights to African Americans. Even 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:09.960 most abolitionists preached liberation without equality. Garrison changed all that. 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:14.320 With um knowledge he gained from local African Americans and 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:20.920 some nationally prominent African Americans, he combined equality with political rights. 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:25.120 Garrison attributed the American public's apathy towards slavery and the 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:29.600 abolitionist movements aversion to racial equality to ignorance, and he 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.560 set out to enlighten as many minds and change as 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:35.960 many hearts as he could. He just needed a vehicle. 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:38.480 You had to have an oregan Yeah, you had to 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.640 have a newspaper, and so he launches his in eighteen 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:46.280 thirty one. In a small office in Boston, the twenty 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.960 five year old Garrison pieced together his new newspaper on 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.160 a large oak table in a room with ink splattered windows. 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.160 He slept on a palette on the floor and worked 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:57.440 odd jobs during the day so he could produce the 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.000 newspaper at night. The first issue You of the Liberator, 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.360 came off the press on New Year's Day eighteen thirty one. 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.280 Garrison pledged in his paper quote, I will be as 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.920 harsh as truth and as uncompromising his justice. He promised 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.960 to rouse the apathetic in America with a trumpet call 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.560 that would resurrect the dead, and in large capital letters, 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:26.680 he proclaimed, I will be heard now. Thus began one 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:33.520 of the most remarkable ventures in American journalism. This is 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.800 historian and Garrison biographer Henry Mayer from a speech on 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:39.800 c SPAN he gave before his death in two thousands. 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:44.959 No American before Garrison had so dramatically challenged his government's 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:50.520 failure to realize its ideals. No citizen before Garrison at 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.080 staked the survival of a nation upon a spiritual revolution 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.959 accomplished by a minority, liberated from conventional politics and armed 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:04.520 only with a righteous conviction of truth. Garrison was a 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:08.160 wiry man with glasses who was going prematurely bald. He 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.560 wrote many of the early columns and editorials himself, mixing 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:16.000 in poems, meeting reports, and harrowing accounts of slavery. The 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.680 Liberator described in detail the living conditions of slaves. It 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:24.160 printed regular reports of kidnappings, whippings, and murders of African Americans. 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.439 It gave a voice to those who previously had none. 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:32.120 Bruce Laurie, the most important thing about The Liberator is 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:36.480 that it had a letter's page. The Liberator collects letters 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.240 and commentaries from all kinds of people, and so students 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.800 of abolitionism who want to hear the voice of more 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:49.040 obscure people need to consult The Liberator. Garrison attacked not 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.920 just slavery, but racial prejudice for at large. He advocated 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:55.439 for the immediate unconditional release of all two and a 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.800 half million slaves in America and to improve the living 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:03.119 conditions of all Africa in Americans. His newspaper routinely proclaimed 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:06.160 the principles that Garrison was willing to fight for, but 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:08.240 he still had to figure out what the nature of 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:11.360 that fight might be. Garrison really had not much to 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:15.960 say about violence early on in his career, but several 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:19.360 things happened to change his mind. Perhaps the most important 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.000 was a near death experience with a Boston mob in 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:26.360 eighteen thirty five. It was October. Local women were gathered 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:29.720 for a meeting of the Boston Female Anti Slavery Society. 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:34.920 A crowd of angry pro slavery protesters gathered outside. Police 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.079 escorted the women from the building for their safety. Garrison 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.360 and a few other male organizers were left behind. The 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:44.559 mob soon learned the outspoken Garrison was in the building, 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.640 they chanted out with him. Garrison escaped into a back 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:52.880 alleyway with a colleague and ducked into a carpenter's workshop 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:56.480 to avoid the crowd, but they found him. They wrapped 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.120 a rope three times around his chest and then marched 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:02.319 him into the street like an animal on a leash. 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:06.400 Hang him, someone yelled. The mob tore his clothes, broke 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.120 his glasses, and dragged him through the streets while they 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:13.160 debated whether to hang the abolitionist or tar and feather him. 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:18.640 At some point, the police intervened and shoot away the mob, 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.160 and he was his life was saved. The mayor of 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.360 Boston was forced to put him in jail for his 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.760 own protection. Garrison was shaken by the experience, but it 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.080 also stirred in awakening within him that made a huge 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:34.559 impression on him. Needless to add, was sort of a 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.240 one of those terminal moments in his life that that 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.880 I think turned him to a non violent resistor. Garrison's 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.200 firsthand experience of the mob's brutality opened his eyes even 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:47.559 further to the violence that lurked all around him in 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.080 American society, and he landed upon a new method for 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:54.960 combating that violence, one grounded in the Christian injunction to 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:59.600 resists not evil. What had in mind is for anti 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.760 slave people to resist violence of any kind, not to 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:08.960 engage in violence. Violence begot violence. Garrison became convinced of 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:13.880 the powerful relationship between abolitionism and pacifism. He realized that 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:18.360 abolitionists could not just publish protestations against slavery. They had 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.880 to refuse to cooperate with the system that perpetuated it. 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:26.440 But he becomes an advocate of what he called non resistance, 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.080 and that's the doctrine of non resistance that is one 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:34.559 of the cornerstones of the abolitionist movement in the United States. 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:40.240 He really does invent nonresistance out of whole cloth. Like Gandhi, 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:43.040 Garrison found that he had the courage to face the mob, 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:48.040 and so he redoubled his efforts to provoke them. Garrison realized, 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.920 as doctor King later did in Birmingham, that you had 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.080 to make injustice palpable to the public. You had to 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.480 make it vivid and real, and so, even without the 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:00.920 medium of television to serve as a megaphone, Garrison set 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.120 out to make Americans ashamed of their connection to slavery 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.000 in thirty years before the Civil War. Garrison kindled a 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.360 fire of outrage that would slowly spread across the country. 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.559 William Lloyd Garrison was a man ahead of his times. 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:23.400 The philosopher Henry David Threau first published his famous essay 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.040 on civil disobedience in eighteen forty nine. He argued that 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.439 individuals have a duty not to cooperate with unjust governments. 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.840 It is required reading in most American high schools today. 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:38.400 But William Lloyd Garrison preached and pursued civil disobedience for 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:42.280 more than a decade before Thorreau's famous work appeared. In 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:47.320 eighteen thirty eight, Garrison established the New England Non Resistance Society. 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:50.559 The group adopted a declaration that is likely the first 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.720 formal commitment to non violent resistance in history. The members 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:56.760 of the society vowed that they would not serve in 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.520 the military, that they would not even vote for public 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:04.760 official whose authority derived from physical force. The declaration, written 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:08.240 by Garrison condemned the use of violence in war, for 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:12.559 the death penalty and even in self defense. Bruce Laurie, 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:15.840 it's very, very powerful. Some people think it's the most 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.320 powerful thing ever said on non violence. It's quite starring. 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.960 I mean, he talks about the evils of violence, how 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:25.960 violence begets violence, and the importance of non violence as 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:29.720 a Christian doctrine. When the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy first 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.720 heard about Garrison's Non Resistant Society and its declaration more 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.880 than fifty years later, he said that he experienced a 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:40.880 spiritual joy. Tolstoy said that Garrison would be remembered as 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:45.800 one of the quote great reformers of true human progress. Still, 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:49.640 at the time, Garrison remained a lone voice in the wilderness, 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:54.560 which suited the crusading abolitionists just fine. Garrison may have 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.240 thought of himself as a latter day Jesus right, a 0:14:57.280 --> 0:15:01.200 man basically without a church, someone who uh moves in 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.520 and and and and and calls for peace among the 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:10.360 tribes and a higher order of morality. Garrison traveled the country, 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.160 giving lectures like a revival preacher, even at black churches. 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.200 His vivid, lurid depictions of the lives of American slaves 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.320 impressed the details of human bondage into the minds of 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:24.680 his audience. Once a good friend told Garrison that he 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:28.200 should take it easy, that he was quote all on fire. 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.160 Garrison took him by the shoulder and replied, I have 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.200 need to be all on fire. I have mountains of 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.920 ice about me to melt. Garrison could also be as 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:43.920 harsh as he was uncompromising. He could be um, extremely egocentric, 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.560 and difficult to deal with. He was a vicious correspondent 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:49.840 if um. If he did not like you, or he 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:52.040 disagreed with you, he would call you every name in 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:57.440 the book uh short of swearing so um. As a writer, 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:05.680 he was uncompromising, hectoring, disrespectful. He was sort of an extremist, 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:08.320 but with his wife and children. He was about as 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.240 extreme as a big puppy dog. In his private life, 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.360 he was the direct opposite. He was a loving husband 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.120 and father. His daughter liked to warm her hands on 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.000 his bald head in winter. Garrison would joke that at 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:23.000 least a hot blooded fanatic was good for something. He's 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:29.080 sort of a contradiction, provably tender, publicly impossible. And part 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.600 of being publicly impossible was Garrison's insistence that the issue 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.840 of slavery could not be resolved to the usual channels. 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.680 Garrison believed in what he called moral suasion. He believed 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.080 that the argument should be taken directly to the people. 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:46.000 Politics as usual was not an option. But really the 0:16:46.040 --> 0:16:51.320 eighteen thirties, Garrison argues, politicians are corrupt. Most people really 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:54.920 don't care much about politics. You couldn't rely on politicians 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:57.360 to get your work done for you because they were 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:02.120 distracted by other issues and triss So he developed this 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:05.879 idea that the most effective way of agitating for slavery 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:08.840 is outside of politics. The key to this where the 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.879 anti slavery societies that started to spring up around the 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:16.040 country during the eighteen thirties. By eighteen forty, over two 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:20.680 hundred thousand Americans, including some Southerners, belonged to abolitionist societies. 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:26.360 Garrison had his own movement. Like Tolstoy, Gandhi, Rustin, and King, 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.320 Garrison realized that non resistance did not mean retreat. It 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:34.600 meant courting conflict, extracting violence from society so as to 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.720 bring it fully into public view. It was not easy. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.560 One big obstacle facing the anti slavery movement, including Garrison's newspaper, 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:48.119 The Liberator, was the American government itself. By eighteen thirty 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:51.560 seven and thirty eight, the The Liberator was banned in 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:56.520 most Southern states, and also President Jackson prohibited it from 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:59.800 being mailed, so they shut down the U. S. Mails 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.640 and finally, from eighteen thirty seven until the early eighteen forties, 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.960 Congress refused to debate the question of slavery. This forced 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:12.119 Garrison and his fellow abolitionists to get creative. The Abolitionists 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:16.760 were the first American activists to figure out what publicity is. 0:18:17.160 --> 0:18:19.760 What the Garrisonians did was they figured out that if 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:22.240 you want to have people involved in the movement, you 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:24.760 have to give them something to do, even the most 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:27.399 seemingly trivial things to do in order to give the 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:33.240 movement publicity, so they launched things like called fancy fairs. 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:35.639 They would set up on the town common and sell 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.679 things to people with with abolitionists labels on them, and 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.760 they also gave people things to sign. Abolitionists would would 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:48.720 go around in communities with these petitions printed in advance 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.480 with lines on it so you could enter your name, pishing, 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:58.240 for instance, to have Congress debate slavery, petitioning against the 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:03.720 War with Mexico, petition against enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:08.159 The abolitionists also filled the mail with newspapers, declarations, and 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:12.000 propaganda sheets. By eighteen thirty seven and thirty eight, they 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:15.119 had produced over a million pieces of mail, and as 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:18.320 a result of the petitioning and the mail, the movement 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.719 looked a lot bigger than it was. In fact, some 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.440 Northerners thought that all Yankees were abolitionists, largely on a 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:29.359 basis of abolitionist propaganda, the abolitionists were very effective for 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.560 a relatively small activist community. By the eighteen fifties, they 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.720 succeeded at shaping the terms of a nationwide debate about 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.679 the practice of slavery. Garrison caught in America's attention in 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.800 a way that no agitator before ever had. Still, as 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.439 the nation grappled with its most violent institution, it became 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.639 clear to many that nonviolent resistance was not going to 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:56.080 be enough to free America's slaves. Up next, we look 0:19:56.119 --> 0:20:00.200 at how the American Civil War vindicated and decimated Lilliam 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:22.120 Lloyd Garrison's life work. At age twenty three, William Lloyd 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:26.159 Garrison wrote racial equality into the Declaration of Independence at 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.359 the Park Street Church in Boston, and throughout his career, 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:35.000 the firebrand continued to create spectacles with his words and deeds. Sometimes, however, 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.840 he overplayed his hand At a famous rally, He once 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.960 put a match to the Futuitive Slave Act and the 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:47.040 Constitution and abolitionists. Political abolitionists really didn't like that. They 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.160 thought it was sort of counterproductive because most Americans thought 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:54.400 of the Constitution as a sacred document. That's right, Garrison 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.240 set fire to a copy of the Constitution in public. 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:01.159 Garrison also continued to preach non violent resistance as the 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.040 means for accomplishing abolition, even as the growing rhetoric between 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:09.080 North and South made such a means very unlikely. As 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:13.159 the eighteen fifties wears on. More and more abolitionists in 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:18.480 Garrison's camp decide, look, we've got to compromise on two things. 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:23.479 One is on non resistance. It's not working right than 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.720 the other's politics. What happens is more and more abolitionists, 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:32.920 except for the hardline Garrisonians, endorsed Abraham Lincoln, and more 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:35.600 and more of them endorsed the idea that it will 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.440 take violence to end slavery. Garrison could not be persuaded. 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.480 He continued to argue for the power of moral suasion, 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.439 the need to convince a critical mass of Americans that 0:21:45.560 --> 0:21:48.680 slavery was untenable, and he did so even as many 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.240 of his former followers, including the slave turned social reformer 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.680 Frederick Douglas, abandoned him in the years before the Civil War. 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:59.119 People like Frederick Douglas argued that moral suasion is a 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:02.840 very limited form. You can't reach enough people, first of all, 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.879 and second, it's not gonna end slavery because slavery was 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.840 created by politics, the Constitution, for instance, and we'll have 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:17.119 to end through politics or through violence. And so Garrison 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:22.919 is really abandoned on the platform of moral suasion and 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:28.360 non resistance. The weight of the movement is running against him. 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:31.520 Yet Garrison was steadfast. Of course, he was wrong. It 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:37.240 took violence to end slavery, a lot of it. The 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:40.400 ending of slavery through violent warfare was a bitter irony 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:44.480 for Garrison. He ended up reluctantly supporting the war, sacrificing 0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:46.919 one set of his principles in order to pursue another. 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:49.600 And while the war took its toll on the pacifist 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:51.959 the result was what he had been fighting to achieve 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:56.560 for decades. Indeed, just after the war ended, thirty years 0:22:56.560 --> 0:22:59.680 after he was attacked by a mob in Boston, Garrison 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:02.960 was raised affectionately by crowds of liberated blacks in the 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:06.679 streets of Charleston, South Carolina. He becomes a huge figure 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.800 when he goes there in eighteen six, right after the war, 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:13.800 and he's he's really celebrated like a hero. It's like 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:18.560 sort of like a Roman triumph of adoration um and 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:24.639 really wild, wild respect. But the Civil War also destroyed 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:28.240 the non violent movement that Garrison so carefully built. One 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:31.359 month after the Civil War ended, the abolitionist declared his 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:37.399 life's work at an end. In eighteen six, Garrison announces 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:41.680 that um there's no there's nothing more for abolitionists to do. 0:23:42.400 --> 0:23:45.920 That their goal all along was simply to liberate the slaves, 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:48.919 and so he collapsed as a liberator and argues that 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:52.879 the Americans Anti slavery society should close its doors. But 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:57.120 other leaders, including Frederick Douglas, voted down that resolution. African 0:23:57.119 --> 0:24:00.720 Americans could not yet vote, and we're still not. It 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:03.760 took another hundred years before leaders like Bayard Rustin and 0:24:03.800 --> 0:24:06.720 Martin Luther King were able to advance the causes of 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:10.840 freedom and racial equality further. In doing so, however, they 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:14.240 rediscovered the power of non violence with a big assist 0:24:14.359 --> 0:24:17.920 from Gandhi and Tolstoy, and ensured that William Lloyd Garrison's 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:22.560 most revolutionary idea outlived its apparent demise during the Civil War. 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:32.560 Garrison died in eighteen seventy nine at age seventy three. 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.040 Black hands intertwined with white ones to carry his casket 0:24:36.080 --> 0:24:39.840 at his funeral. During the memorial service, Frederick Duclas said, 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:42.440 it was the glory of this man that he could 0:24:42.440 --> 0:24:47.400 stand alone with truth and calmly await the result Garrison 0:24:47.480 --> 0:24:50.880 stood up for in America conceived an equal citizenship when 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:55.120 few others dared to. Bruce Laurie Garrison was about as 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:58.760 Sara going an egalitarian um as there is in the 0:24:58.840 --> 0:25:02.800 nineteenth century, and like Martin Luther King, Garrison managed to 0:25:02.800 --> 0:25:06.320 build a social movement grounded in thousands of individual acts 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.480 of non cooperation. He learned how to face the mob, 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:13.240 to stand up for justice, and how not to fight back. 0:25:13.920 --> 0:25:17.159 He learned how to combine radical politics with love, and 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:21.119 how to provoke confrontation in order to grow awareness. He's 0:25:21.320 --> 0:25:26.640 iconic in in passive resistance circles um and probably justly so. 0:25:27.320 --> 0:25:31.080 I'm unaware of any thinker he appealed to in order 0:25:31.119 --> 0:25:34.440 to develop this strategy. He really is an original thinker 0:25:34.960 --> 0:25:39.680 and a most powerfully influential figure in American history. Garrison's 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:42.439 own story, however, still depends on the hands of fate, 0:25:42.560 --> 0:25:46.960 including some timely help at a key moment. Garrison's influential newspaper, 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:49.639 The Liberator, might never have made it to its second 0:25:49.680 --> 0:25:53.479 issue without the assistance of another largely forgotten figure from 0:25:53.520 --> 0:25:57.639 American history. Next week, in the final episode of this season, 0:25:57.880 --> 0:26:00.600 we complete our thread with the story of a remarkable 0:26:00.640 --> 0:26:06.119 African American businessman whose generosity saved Garrison's newspaper and his 0:26:06.240 --> 0:26:11.000 revolutionary idea, and in doing so, altered the course of history. 0:26:11.320 --> 0:26:14.560 We also learned about the surprising trait that King Rustin 0:26:15.000 --> 0:26:22.320 Gandhi and other non violent figures share. I am an abolitionist, 0:26:22.600 --> 0:26:29.400 Hi glory in the name Oh now by slaveries, men 0:26:29.840 --> 0:26:38.600 and his and covered or with shame it lovelight and 0:26:38.840 --> 0:26:46.080 how much word of the free who sponsis in the 0:26:46.480 --> 0:26:54.159 truck co Craven Soul The Threat is produced by Libby Coleman, 0:26:54.320 --> 0:26:58.520 Robert Coulos, Sophia Perpetua and me Sean braswell. Chris Hoff 0:26:58.600 --> 0:27:02.640 engineered our show. This episode features the Duchess Anti Slavery 0:27:02.680 --> 0:27:06.120