William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition fo Slavery

All on Fire is the title of Henry Mayer's thorough and inspiring biography of William Lloyd Garrison. As I read it, I thought to myself that I had really missed out by not reading about Garrison years ago. Anyway, isn't it exciting to find people whose life and struggles just thrill your soul.

In 1840 Garrison attended a meeting of the British anti slavery society and refused to come down out of the balcony to the main floor because women were not allowed to fully participate. Not only did he lead the abolitionist crusade but he helped nurture the early stages of the women's movement. He was an anti imperialist. Like Lincoln, he saw the Mexican War as part of the slave power's efforts to create more slave states and thus resist the efforts of the Northern states to limit slavery.

His newspaper, the Liberator, was initially supported mainly by black subscribers. Blacks and whites together tested the levels of tolerance on the trains in and around Boston in the 1850's. They were freedom riders a hundred years before heroic folks went south to face angry mobs and be jailed and have buses burned in the early 1960's.

Garrison knew the Scripture and called for Christians to live out the Gospel and come out from the oppressive Babylon of the church's support or tolerance of slavery. He called the church to repentance and many heard the call.

He advocated disunion. Better to have states that were truly free than be united with the slave power. Create a northern bastion of freedom and in the long run slavery would be undermined, he argued. In 1854,to dramatize his commitments and to call for greated dedication to the cause, he burned a copy of the Fugitive Slave law and the Constitution at the 4th of July gathering of the New England Anti Slavery Society.

He became a pacifist, believing in the power of resistance to evil by means of moral suasion. He was opposed to war, even though one son served wit the black Massachusetts regiment. Before Tolstoy, before Gandhi, before King, Garrison advocated and practiced non violent resistance. He was jailed, vilified, threatened--and he was praised and lived to see his lifelong struggle culminate in the legal end of slavery.

We live in awe of the universe's vast, fiery and empty beauty. But we live too in awe at the human struggle for justice and for love and for happiness. Garrison's life witnesses gloriously to that struggle.