like a tiger,” he wrote.109 If the speech did not help him find employment in Boston, he told a friend he would return to Newburyport and plead with his former mentor, Herald publisher Ephraim Allen, for a job.110
The Park Street Church, which had seating for more than one thousand parishioners, was nearly full when Garrison delivered his address on the afternoon of July 4, 1829. Garrison startled his audience by demanding not only an end to slavery, but also full citizenship and equal rights for slaves and free blacks. “A very large proportion of our colored population were born on our soil, and are therefore entitled to all the privileges of American citizens,” Garrison said. “Their children possess the same inherent and unalienable rights as ours.”111 He challenged the audience to consider the humanity of the slaves. “Suppose that … the slaves should suddenly become white. Would you shut your eyes upon their sufferings and calmly talk of constitutional limitations?”112
The only significant response to his speech appeared in the American Traveler, a Boston newspaper that summarized Garrison’s speech as a combination of anti-American sentiment and procolonization advocacy. Garrison seemed destined to return to Newburyport. At this low point, Garrison received a letter from Benjamin Lundy. Lundy asked Garrison to join him in Baltimore to help publish his antislavery newspaper. On September 2, 1829, Garrison joined Lundy as the editorial assistant for the Genius of Universal Emancipation.
The differences between the two men were apparent from the outset of their partnership. At twenty-three, Garrison was seventeen years younger than Lundy, yet he had more practical experience in the newspaper trade. He had mastered the mechanics of typesetting and publishing at the Herald and served as the principal writer and editor for the National Philanthropist. While at the Free Press, Garrison drafted most of the articles and editorials without writing them out in advance; he acquired the mental discipline necessary to compose his stories as he set the type. In 1828 Garrison wrote in a more abrasive and fearless style compared to Lundy. Lundy once embraced slashing attacks on slavery and slaveholders, and paid a severe price. In December 1826, Lundy published an article that referred to a Baltimore slave trader as a “demon” and a “monster in human-shape.”113 Shortly thereafter, the man attacked Lundy—he choked him and repeatedly kicked Lundy in the head.114 “I was assaulted and nearly killed,” Lundy said.115 Lundy’s assailant was charged with assault, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty; the judge imposed a fine of one dollar. After defending slavery and noting its importance to Maryland’s economy, the judge told Lundy, “If abusive language could ever be a justification for battery, this was that case.”116 Lundy realized those who challenged slavery had few protections; from that point forward he tempered his antislavery commentaries.
The two editors did agree that ending slavery would take time; Garrison, Lundy, and nearly all opponents of slavery supported a gradual approach and colonization. Even that point of agreement, however, soon changed. While in Baltimore, Garrison discovered Lundy’s extensive library of antislavery literature. Garrison read The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, written by George Bourne in 1816. Bourne’s book, together with David Walker’s Appeal and a pamphlet written in 1824 by British abolitionist Elizabeth Heyrick, dramatically changed Garrison’s thinking about slavery.
George Bourne is regarded by some as the first man in America to call for the immediate emancipation of the slaves.117 In The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, the “book” was the Bible, and Bourne equated slavery with sin. “A gradual emancipation is a virtual recognition of the right, and establishes the rectitude of the practice,” Bourne wrote. “If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed for ever; and if it be inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated.”118
In 1824 British writer Elizabeth Heyrick reached the same conclusion as Bourne, summed up in the title of her booklet, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition. Heyrick wrote that delaying the end of slavery affirmed the institution and was the equivalent of doing nothing.119 “An immediate emancipation then, is the object to be aimed at,” Heyrick wrote. “It is more wise and rational, more politic and safe, as well as more just and humane, than gradual emancipation.”120 Benjamin Lundy promoted Heyrick’s pamphlet in his newspaper.121
In his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World in 1829, David Walker called for the immediate end of slavery. Lundy condemned Walker’s book because of Walker’s willingness to embrace violence as a means of destroying slavery. Garrison, however, was less critical. “It is not for the American people, as a nation, to denounce it as bloody or monstrous,” Garrison said. Garrison reminded readers that colonists violently took up arms to shoot and kill the British and win a war of freedom. “Mr. Walker but pays them in their own coin, but follows their own creed, but adopts their own language. … If any people were ever justified in throwing off the yoke of their tyrants, the slaves are that people.”122 After reading Bourne, Heyrick, and Walker, Garrison embraced immediate emancipation and rejected the idea of colonization—sending free blacks and slaves back to Africa—as dangerous and wrong.
Garrison’s partnership with Lundy concluded after six months. In that time, the Genius of Universal Emancipation suffered serious financial losses as the result of a libel suit filed against Garrison. Garrison accused merchant Francis Todd of Newburyport of transporting slaves on ships that Todd owned. During the course of the trial, Garrison proved that Todd in fact transported slaves. It made no difference. In the slave state of Maryland, the jury quickly returned a verdict of guilty. The judge fined Garrison fifty dollars plus costs, bringing the total fine to seventy dollars, and sentenced him to six months in the Baltimore jail beginning on April 17, 1830.123 Lundy published Garrison’s report of his trial and imprisonment, and he visited Garrison at the jail every day.124
Garrison received many visitors, sent many letters, and wrote protests on the prison walls. “The tyranny of the court has triumphed over every principle of justice, and even over the law—and here I am in limbo,” Garrison said.125 He spoke with escaped slaves who were held at the jail and befriended the warden, who allowed him to dine with his family. “True it is, I am in prison, as snug as a robin in his cage; but I sing as often, and quite as well, as I did before my wings were clipped,” Garrison wrote.126
For Benjamin Lundy, Garrison’s imprisonment meant the end of the Genius of Universal Emancipation as a weekly newspaper. As a result of “scanty patronage” and threats of more lawsuits, Lundy announced plans to scale back to a monthly publication.127 Shortly thereafter, Lundy received a letter from New York businessman Arthur Tappan. “I have read the sketch of the trial of Mr. Garrison with that deep feeling of abhorrence of slavery,” Tappan wrote. “If one hundred dollars will give him his liberty, you are hereby authorized to draw on me for that sum, and I will gladly make a donation of the same amount to aid you and Mr. Garrison in re-establishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation.”128 With Tappan’s gift, Lundy paid Garrison’s fine, and the sympathetic warden assisted in his early release from prison. On June 5, 1830, Garrison walked out of the Baltimore Jail after serving forty-nine days of his six-month sentence.129
Despite Arthur Tappan’s hope that Lundy and Garrison would continue their partnership, their differences in style and approach convinced them to go separate ways. In a farewell to their readers, Lundy praised Garrison’s “strict integrity, amiable deportment, and virtuous conduct.” Garrison added, “We shall ever remain one in spirit and purpose.”130 Garrison had no regrets. “In all my writings I have used strong, indignant, vehement language, and direct, pointed, scorching reproof,” Garrison said. “I have nothing to recall.”131
While in jail, Garrison resolved to dedicate his life to the eradication of slavery. “Everyone who comes into the world should do something to repair its moral desolation, and to restore its pristine loveliness,” Garrison wrote. “He who does not assist, but slumbers away his
