Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous Part 9

In 1855 he again visited Europe; and four years later, California, where he was received with great demonstrations of honor and respect. In 1860 he was at the Chicago Convention, and helped to nominate Abraham Lincoln in preference to William H. Seward. Mr. Greeley had now become one of the leading men of the nation. His paper molded the opinions of hundreds of thousands. He had fought against slavery with all the strength of his able pen; but he advocated buying the slaves for four hundred million dollars rather than going to war,--a cheaper method than our subsequent conflict, with enormous loss of life and money. When he found the war inevitable, after General McClellan's defeat at the Chickahominy, he urged upon Mr. Lincoln immediate emanc.i.p.ation, which was soon adopted.

The "New York World" said after his death, "Mr. Greeley will hold the first place with posterity on the roll of emanc.i.p.ation."

In the draft riots in New York, in 1863, the mob burst into the Tribune Building, smashing the furniture, and shouting, "Down with the old white coat!" Mr. Greeley always wore a coat and hat of this hue. Had he been present, doubtless he would have been killed at once. When urged to arm the office, he said, "No; all my life I have worked for the workingmen; if they would now burn my office and hang me, why, let them do it."

The same year he began his "History of the Civil War" for a Hartford publisher. Because so constantly interrupted, he went to the Bible House, and worked with an amanuensis from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, and then to the "Tribune" office, and wrote on his paper till eleven at night. These volumes, dedicated to John Bright, have had a sale of several hundred thousand copies.

After the war Mr. Greeley, while advocating "impartial suffrage" for black as well as white, advocated also "universal amnesty." He believed nothing was to be gained by punishing a defeated portion of our nation, and wanted the past buried as quickly as possible. He was opposed to the hanging of Jefferson Davis; and with Gerritt Smith, a well-known abolitionist, and about twenty others, he signed Mr. Davis's bail-bond for one hundred thousand dollars, which released him from prison at Fortress Monroe, where he had been for two years. At once the North was aflame with indignation. No criticism was too scathing; but Mr. Greeley took the denunciations like a hero, because he had done what his conscience approved. He said, "Seeing how pa.s.sion cools and wrath abates, I confidently look forward to the time when thousands who have cursed will thank me for what I have done and dared in resistance to their own sanguinary impulses.... Out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and signing that bail-bond as the wisest act."

In 1872 considerable disaffection having arisen in the Republican party at the course pursued by President Grant at the South, the "Liberal Republicans," headed by Sumner, Schurz, and Trumbull, held a convention at Cincinnati, and nominated Horace Greeley for President. The Democratic party saw the hopelessness of nominating a man in opposition to Grant and Greeley, and accepted the latter as their own candidate.

The contest was bitter and partisan in the extreme. Mr. Greeley received nearly three million votes, while General Grant received a half million majority.

No doubt the defeat was a great disappointment to one who had served his country and the Republican party for so many years with very little political reward. But just a month before the election came the crushing blow of his life, in the death of his n.o.ble wife. He left his speech-making, and for weeks attended her with the deepest devotion. A few days before she died, he said, "I am a broken down old man. I have not slept one hour in twenty-four for a month. If she lasts, poor soul, another week, I shall go before her."

After her death he could not sleep at all, and brain-fever soon set in.

Friday, Nov. 29, the end came. At noon he said distinctly, his only remaining children, Ida and Gabriella, standing by his bedside, "I know that my Redeemer liveth;" and at half-past three, "It is done." He was ready for the great change. He had written only a short time before, "With an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope, I await the opening, before my steps, of the gates of the eternal world." Dead at sixty-one! Overworked, not having had "a good night's sleep in fifteen years!"

When his death became known, the whole nation mourned for him.

Newspapers from Maine to Louisiana gave touching tributes to his greatness, his purity, and his far-sightedness as a leader of the people. The Union League Club, the Lotos, the Typographical Society, the a.s.sociated Press, German and colored clubs, and temperance organizations pa.s.sed resolutions of sorrow. Cornell University, of whose Board he was a member, did him honor. St. Louis, Albany, Indianapolis, Nashville, and other cities held memorial meetings. John Bright sent regrets over "our friend, Horace Greeley." Congress pa.s.sed resolutions of respect for his "eminent services and personal purity and worth."

And then came the sad and impressive burial. In the governor's room in the City Hall, draped in black, surrounded by a guard of honor composed of the leading men of New York, the body of the great journalist lay in state. Over fifty thousand persons, rich and poor, maimed soldiers and working people, pa.s.sed in one by one to look upon the familiar face.

Said one workman, "It is little enough to lose a day for Horace Greeley, who spent many a day working for us." Just as the doors of the room were being closed for the night, a farmer made his way, saying, "I've come a hundred miles to be at the funeral of Horace Greeley. Can't you possibly let me in to have one last look?" The man stood a moment by the open coffin, and then, pulling his hat low down to hide the tears, was lost in the crowd.

From there the body was taken to Dr. Chapin's church, where it rested under a solid arch of flowers, with the words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"; and in front of the pulpit, "It is done." The coffin was nearly hidden by floral gifts; one of the most touching being a plow made of white camelias on a ground of violets, from the "Tribune" workmen,--a gift to honor the man who honored labor, and enn.o.bled farm-life at his country home at Chappaqua, a few miles from New York.

And then through an enormous concourse of people, Fifth Avenue being blocked for a mile, the body was borne to Greenwood Cemetery. Stores were closed, and houses along the route were draped in black. Flags on the shipping, in the harbor, were at half-mast; and bells tolled from one to three o'clock. Two hundred and fifty carriages, containing the President of the United States, governors, senators, and other friends, were in the procession. By the side of his wife and their three little children the great man was laid to rest, the two daughters stepping into the vault, and laying flowers tenderly upon the coffin.

The following Sabbath clergymen all over the country preached about this wonderful life: its struggles succeeded by world-wide honor. Mr.

Greeley's one great wish was gratified, "I cherish the hope that the journal I projected and established will live and flourish long after I shall have mouldered into forgotten dust; and that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligible inscription, 'Founder of the NEW YORK TRIBUNE.'"

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

For a great work G.o.d raises up a great man. Usually he is trained in the hard school of poverty, to give him courage and perseverance. Usually he stands alone among a great mult.i.tude, that he may have firmness and endurance.

William Lloyd Garrison was born to be preeminently the deliverer of the slave. For two hundred years the curse of African slavery had rested upon one of the fairest portions of our land. Everybody thought it an evil to keep four million human beings from even the knowledge of how to read and write, and a cruelty to sell children away from parents, to toil forever without home or kindred. Everybody knew that slavery was as ruinous almost to master as to slave; that labor was thereby despised, and that luxury was sapping the vigor of a race. But every slave meant money, and money is very dear to mankind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.]

Before the Declaration of Independence, three hundred thousand slaves had been brought to this country. Some of the colonists remonstrated, but the traffic was not stopped till 1808. The Quakers were opposed to human bondage from the first, and decided, in 1780, to free all their slaves. Vermont had freed hers three years previously, and other Northern States soon followed. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and others were outspoken against the sin; but it continued to increase till, in 1810, we had over a million slaves.

Five years before this time, in a plain, wooden house in Newburyport, Ma.s.s., a boy was born who was to electrify America, and the world even, on this great subject. William Lloyd Garrison's father was a sea-captain, a man who loved books and had some literary ambition; the mother was a n.o.ble woman, deeply religious, willing to bear all and brave all for conscience' sake, and fearless in the path of duty. She early taught her boy to hate oppression of every kind, and to stand everywhere for the right. Very poor, there was no chance for William, either in school or college. When he was seven, his mother, having found work for herself as a nurse for the sick, placed the child with a deacon of the town, where he learned to split wood and other useful things. At nine, the careful mother put him to the shoemaking trade, though he was scarcely large enough to hold the lap-stone. He was not happy here, longing for something that made him think.

Perhaps he would like to build tables and chairs better, so he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; but here he was no more satisfied than with the monotony of sewing leather. At his own request, the dealer cancelled the agreement, and the boy found a place to set type on the Newburyport "Herald." At last he had obtained the work he loved. He would some day own a paper, he thought, and write articles for it. Ah!

how often poor boys and rich build air-castles which tumble to the ground. It is well that we build them, for life soon becomes prosaic enough to the happiest of us.

At sixteen he wrote an article for the "Herald," signing it "An Old Bachelor." Imagine his surprise and delight when he saw it really in print! Meantime his mother, who was six hundred miles away, wrote him devoted letters, ever encouraging and stimulating him to be upright and temperate. A year later she died, and William was left to fight his battles alone. He missed the letters,--missed having some one to whom he could tell a boy's hopes and fears and temptations. That boy is especially blest who has a mother to whom he can confide everything; such a boy usually has a splendid future, because by her wisdom and advice he becomes well fitted for life, making no foolish experiments.

Reading as much as possible, at nineteen William wrote some political articles for a Salem paper, and, strange to say, they were attributed to Hon. Timothy Pickering! Surely, he could do something in the world now; so when his apprenticeship was over and he had worked long and faithfully, he started a paper for himself. He called it the "Free Press." It was a good t.i.tle, and a good paper; but, like most first literary adventures, it proved a failure. Perhaps he ought to have foreseen that one can do little without capital; but youth is about as blind as love, and rarely stops to reason.

Did one failure discourage him? Oh, no! He went to Boston, and found a place in a printing office. He soon became the editor of the "National Philanthropist," the first paper established to advocate total abstinence from intoxicants. His motto was a true one, not very popular, however, in those days, "Moderate drinking is the down-hill road to drunkenness." He was now twenty-two, poor, but G.o.d-fearing and self-reliant. About this time there came to Boston a man whose influence changed young Garrison's whole life,--Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, thirty-nine years of age. Leaving his father's home at nineteen, he had spent four years at Wheeling, Va., where he learned the saddler's trade, and learned also the cruelties of slave-holding. After this he moved to Ohio, and in four years earned three thousand dollars above his living expenses. When he was twenty-six he organized an Anti-slavery Society at his own house, and, promising to become a.s.sistant editor of an abolition paper, he went to St. Louis to dispose of his stock of saddlery.

Business was greatly depressed, the whole region being agitated over the admission of Missouri as a slave State; and, after spending two years, Lundy returned to Ohio, on foot, in winter, his property entirely gone.

None of his ardor for freedom having abated, he determined to start a monthly paper, though poor and entirely ignorant about printing. This sheet he called the "Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation," printed twenty miles from his home, the edition being carried on his back, each month, as he walked the long distance. He moved shortly after to East Tennessee, walking half of the eight hundred miles, and gradually increased his subscription list. Several times his life was in danger; but the slight, gentle Quaker kept quietly on his course. In 1824 he set out on foot for Baltimore, paying his way by saddlery or harness-mending, living on the poorest fare; and he subsequently established the "Genius" there. While he was absent from home, his wife died, leaving twins, and his five children were divided among friends.

Deeply sorrowing, he renewed his resolve to devote his life to worse than motherless children,--those sold into bondage,--and made his way as best he could to Boston. Of such material were the foundation stones of the anti-slavery cause.

At his boarding-place Lundy met Garrison, and told him his burning desire to rid the country of slavery. The heart of the young printer was deeply moved. He, too, was poor and unknown, but he had not forgotten his mother's teachings and prayers. After some time he agreed to go to Baltimore, and help edit the "Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation." Lundy was in favor of sending the slaves to the West Indies or Africa as fast as their masters would consent to free them, which was not very fast.

Garrison said, "The slaves are here by no fault of their own, and do not deserve to be sent back to barbarous Africa." He was in favor of immediate freedom for every human being.

Baltimore had slave-pens on the princ.i.p.al streets. Vessel-loads of slaves, torn from their homes, were sent hundreds of miles away to southern ports, and the auction-block often witnessed heart-rending scenes. The tender heart of Garrison was stirred to its very depths. In the first issue of his paper he declared for Immediate Emanc.i.p.ation, and soon denounced the slave-trade between Baltimore and New Orleans as "domestic piracy," giving the names of several citizens engaged in the traffic, among them a vessel-owner from his own town, Newburyport. The Northern man immediately arrested Garrison for "gross and malicious libel," and he was found guilty by a slave-holding court, and fined fifty dollars and costs. No one was ready to give bail, and he was thrown into prison. The young man was not in the least cast down, but, calm and heroic, wrote two sonnets on the walls of his cell.

Meantime, a n.o.ble young Quaker at the North, John G. Whittier, was deeply anxious for Garrison. He had no money to pay his fine, but, greatly admiring Henry Clay, whom he hoped to see President, wrote him urging that he aid the "guiltless prisoner." Clay would doubtless have done so, but Arthur Tappan, one of New York's n.o.ble men, sent the money, releasing Garrison from his forty-nine days' imprisonment. Wendell Phillips says of him, "He was in jail for his opinions when he was just twenty-four. He had confronted a nation in the very bloom of his youth."

Garrison had not been idle while in prison. He had prepared several lectures on slavery, and these he now gave when he could find a hearing.

Large churches were not opened to him, and n.o.body offered him two hundred dollars a night! The free colored people welcomed him gladly, but the whites were usually indifferent or opposed to such "fanatical"

ideas. At last he came to Boston to start a paper,--that city where brains and not wealth open the doors to the best society. Here, with no money nor influential friends, he started the "Liberator," with this for his motto, "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to speak or write with moderation. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch--_and I will be heard!_"

The North was bound hand and foot by the slave-trade almost as effectually as the South. The great plea was the fear lest the Union would be dissolved. Cotton factories had sprung up on every hand, and it was believed that slave-labor was essential to the producing of cotton.

Some thought it would not be safe to free the slaves; that a.s.sa.s.sinations would be the result. The real secret, however, was that each slave meant several hundred dollars, and freedom meant poverty to the masters. Meantime, the "Liberator" was making itself felt, despite Garrison's poverty. The Vigilance a.s.sociation of South Carolina offered a reward of $1,500 for the apprehension and prosecution of any white person who might be detected in distributing or circulating it. In Raleigh, N.C., the grand jury found a bill against the young editor, hoping to bring him to that State for trial. Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, having received a paper by mail, wrote to Harrison Gray Otis, Mayor of Boston, to ascertain the sender. Mr. Otis caused an agent to visit the office of the "Liberator," and returned answer to Mr.

Hayne, that he found it "an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy; and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all colors."

And where was this "obscure hole"? In the third story of a business block, "the walls dingy," says Mr. Oliver Johnson in "Garrison and his Times"; "the small windows bespattered with printers' ink; the press standing in one corner; the long editorial and mailing table covered with newspapers; the bed of the editor and publisher on the floor--all these make a picture never to be forgotten." Their food, what little they had, was procured at a neighboring bakery.

Soon Georgia pa.s.sed a law offering $5,000 to any person arresting and bringing to trial, under the laws of the State, and punishing to conviction, the editor or publisher of the "Liberator." What a wonder that some ruffian at midnight did not break into the "obscure hole," and drag the young man off to a slave-vessel lying close by in the harbor!

The leaven of anti-slavery was beginning to work. Twelve "fanatics"

gathered one stormy night in the bas.e.m.e.nt of an African church in Boston, and organized the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832.

The following year, as the managers of the American Colonization Society had sent an agent to England, it was deemed best to send Garrison abroad to tell Wilberforce and others who were working for the suppression of slavery in the West Indies, that it was not a wise plan to send the slaves to Africa. It was difficult to raise the money needed; but self-sacrifice usually leaves a good bank-account. The "fanatic," only twenty-eight, was received with open arms by such men as Lord Brougham, Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Daniel O'Connell. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton gave a breakfast in his honor. When the guests had arrived, among them Mr. Garrison, Mr. Buxton held up both hands, exclaiming, "Why, my dear sir, I thought you were a black man!" This, Mr. Garrison used to say, was the greatest compliment of his life, because it showed how truly and heartily he had labored for the slave. A great meeting was arranged for him at Exeter Hall, London. How inspiring all this for the young reformer! Here he met the eloquent George Thompson, and asked him to visit our country, which invitation he accepted.

On his return the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, Dec. 4, 1833, at Philadelphia, delegates coming from eleven States. John G.

Whittier was chosen Secretary. The n.o.ble poet has often said that he was more proud that his name should appear signed to the Declaration of Principles adopted at that meeting than on the t.i.tle-page of any of his volumes. Thus has he ever loved liberty.

The contest over the slavery question was growing extremely bitter.

Prudence Crandall of Canterbury, Conn., a young Quaker lady, admitted several colored girls to her school, who came from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The people were indignant at such a commingling of races.

Shopkeepers refused to sell her anything; her well was filled with refuse, and at last her house was nearly torn down by a midnight mob.

Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Western Reserve College, Hudson, O., with some others, were nearly broken up by the conflict of opinion.

Some anti-slavery lecturers were tarred and feathered or thrown into prison. In New York, a pro-slavery mob broke in the doors and windows of a Presbyterian church, and laid waste schoolhouses and dwellings of colored people. In Philadelphia, the riots lasted three days, forty-four houses of colored people being nearly or quite destroyed.

In Boston, a "most respectable" mob, composed, says Horace Greeley, "in good part of merchants," dispersed a company of women belonging to the Female Anti-Slavery Society, while its President was engaged in prayer.

Learning that Garrison was in the adjoining office, they shouted, "We must have Garrison! Out with him! Lynch him!"

Attempting to escape by the advice of the Mayor, who was present, he sought refuge in a carpenter's shop, but the crowd drew him out, and coiling a rope around his body, dragged him bareheaded along the street.

One man called out, "He shan't be hurt; he is an American!" and this probably saved his life, though many blows were aimed at his head, and his clothes were nearly torn from his body. The Mayor declaring that he could only be saved by being lodged in jail, Garrison pressed into a hack, and was driven as rapidly as possible to the prison, the maddened crowd clinging to the wheels, dashing against the doors and seizing hold of the horses. At last he was behind the bars and out of their reach. On the walls of his cell he wrote:--

"William Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a respectable and influential mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable and dangerous doctrine that 'all men are created equal,' and that all oppression is odious in the sight of G.o.d. Confine me as a prisoner, but bind me not as a slave. Punish me as a criminal, but hold me not as a chattel. Torture me as a man, but drive me not like a beast. Doubt my sanity, but acknowledge my immortality."