American abolitionist newspaper (1831?1865)
The Liberator
(1831?1865) was a weekly
abolitionist
newspaper, printed and published in Boston by
William Lloyd Garrison
and, through 1839, by
Isaac Knapp
. Religious rather than political, it appealed to the moral conscience of its readers, urging them to demand immediate freeing of the slaves ("immediatism"). It also promoted women's rights, an issue that split the American abolitionist movement. Despite its modest circulation of 3,000, it had prominent and influential readers, including all the abolitionist leaders, among them
Frederick Douglass
,
Beriah Green
,
Arthur
and
Lewis Tappan
, and
Alfred Niger
. It frequently printed or reprinted letters, reports, sermons, and news stories relating to American slavery, becoming a sort of
community bulletin board
for the new abolitionist movement that Garrison helped foster.
History
[
edit
]
Garrison co-published weekly issues of
The Liberator
from
Boston
continuously for 35 years, from January 1, 1831, to the final issue of December 29, 1865.
[1]
Although its circulation was only about 3,000, and three-quarters of subscribers (in 1834) were
African Americans
,
[2]
the newspaper earned nationwide notoriety for its uncompromising advocacy of "immediate and complete emancipation of all
slaves
" in the
United States
. Garrison set the tone for the paper in his famous open letter
"To the Public"
in the first issue:
... Assenting to the "self-evident truth" maintained in the American
Declaration of Independence
, "that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the
Genius of Universal Emancipation
at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My conscience is now satisfied.
[3]
I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;?but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest?I will not equivocate?I will not excuse?I will not retreat a single inch?
AND I WILL BE HEARD.
...
Rather than looking to politics to create change, Garrison utilized nonviolent means, such as
moral suasion
, as his message throughout the newspaper.
[4]
[5]
Garrison felt that slavery was a moral issue and used his way of writing to appeal to the morality of his readers as an attempt to influence them into changing their morally questionable ways. For example, "No Union with Slave-Holders" was a slogan utilized for weeks at a time throughout the newspaper's publication, advocating that the North should leave the Union.
[5]
The Liberator
continued for three decades from its founding through the end of the
American Civil War
. It had black columnists and reporters.
[6]
Garrison ended the newspaper's run with a valedictory column at the end of 1865, when the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment
abolished slavery throughout the United States. It was succeeded by
The Nation
.
[7]
Women's rights advocacy
[
edit
]
Between January 7, 1832 and May 4, 1833, the
Liberator
published six articles by
Maria W. Stewart
, an abolitionist and one of the first American women to lecture before mixed-race and mixed-gender audiences.
[8]
The
Liberator
also became an avowed women's rights newspaper when the prospectus for its 1838 issue declared that as the paper's objective was "to redeem woman as well as man from a servile to an equal condition," it would support "the rights of woman to their utmost extent."
[9]
In January and February 1838, the
Liberator
published
Sarah Grimke
's "Letters on the Province of Woman", and later that year published them as a book, to another of Garrison and Knapp's projects
Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
.
[10]
During the following decades, the
Liberator
promoted women's rights by publishing editorials, petitions, convention calls and proceedings, speeches, legislative action, and other material advocating women's suffrage, equal property rights, and women's educational and professional equality. The
Liberator
'
s printers,
Isaac Knapp
, James Brown Yerrinton (1800?1866) and James Manning Winchell Yerrinton (1825?1893), and Robert Folger Wallcut (1797?1884), printed many of the women's rights tracts of the 1850s.
Inspiration among abolitionists
[
edit
]
The
Liberator
inspired abolitionist
Angelina Grimke
to publicly join the abolitionist movement. She sent a letter to William Lloyd Garrison recalling her experiences as a member of an upper class, white, slaveholding family.
Angelina Grimke's letter to William Lloyd Garrison
was soon after published in
The Liberator
.
[11]
Frederick Douglass was at first inspired by
The Liberator.
As he commented upon in his first issue of
The North Star,
Douglass felt that it was necessary for African Americans, such as himself, to speak out about their own experiences with injustice. He claimed that those that experienced injustice were the ones that must demand justice.
[12]
Soon after, Douglass began writing his own abolitionist newspaper,
The North Star
.
[13]
By 1851 Douglass broke bitterly with Garrison and now worked for abolition and equality through the U.S. Constitution and political system.
[14]
in 1836, five years after he agreed to be
The Liberator
's agent in
Rhode Island
,
Alfred Niger
helped to found the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, one of only two Black men in the entire organization.
[15]
Resistance
[
edit
]
What changed
The Liberator
from a small abolitionist organ to a national one was the attention paid to it in the South. Southern papers reprinted and editorialized its articles and announcements, thus bringing them further to the attention of Northern readers and editors.
[16]
The Liberator
faced harsh resistance from several state legislatures and local groups: for example, North Carolina indicted Garrison for felonious acts, and the
Vigilance Association
of
Columbia, South Carolina
, offered a reward of $1,500 (equivalent to $45,780 in 2023) to those who identified distributors of the paper.
[17]
Garrison also faced resistance, even to the point of violence. In 1835, a Boston mob formed with support from local newspapers in resistance to the announcement that
George Thompson
would speak at the first anniversary meeting of the
Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
. The mob, unable to find Thompson, redirected their aggression towards Garrison who was in the society's meeting hall. Eventually escalation of the situation led to destruction of the society's antislavery sign, and even calls to
lynch
Garrison, around whose neck a piece of rope made into a noose was put. Garrison eventually managed a narrow escape; the mayor put him in the city jail for his protection.
[18]
Contents online
[
edit
]
- The Liberator
full online archives
at Fair Use Repository, including archives of full-page scans of all issues from 1831?1865 (Vols. I?XXXV).
- The Liberator Complete Archives
at the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Original copy owned by Garrison and served as the copy of reference at
The Liberator
offices
[19]
.
- The Liberator Files
searchable (basic search only) collection maintained by Horace Seldon, which says on its home page that it contains "only a tiny portion of what appeared in the 1,803 editions of the paper".
Garrison's articles
[
edit
]
Garrison wrote much of the content. He wrote while typesetting; that is to say, most was not written out on paper first. The following are examples of articles and editorials written by him:
- To the Public
, Garrison's introductory column, January 1, 1831.
- Truisms
, January 8, 1831.
- Walker's Appeal
, January 8, 1831.
- The Insurrection
, Garrison's reaction to the news of
Nat Turner's slave rebellion
in
Virginia
, September 3, 1831.
- The Great Crisis!
, December 29, 1832, one of Garrison's first explicit condemnations
of the Constitution and the Union
.
- Declaration of Sentiments
, adopted by the Boston Peace Convention September 18, 1838, reprinted in
The Liberator
, September 28, 1838.
- Abolition at the Ballot Box
, June 28, 1839.
- The American Union
, January 10, 1845.
- American Colorphobia
, June 11, 1847.
- On the Dissolution of the Union
, June 15, 1855.
- The Tragedy at Harper's Ferry
, Garrison's first public comments on
John Brown
's raid on
Harpers Ferry
, October 28, 1859.
- John Brown and the Principle of Nonresistance
, a speech given at a meeting in the
Tremont Temple
, Boston, on December 2, 1859, the day that John Brown was hanged, printed December 16, 1859.
- The War ? Its Cause and Cure
, May 3, 1861.
- Valedictory: The Final Number of
The Liberator
, Garrison's closing column, December 29, 1865.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Boston Directory
, 1831,
Garrison & Knapp, editors and proprietors Liberator, 10 Merchants Hall, Congress Street
- ^
Ripley, C. Peter (1991).
The Black Abolitionist Papers: Vol. III: The United States, 1830?1846
, p. 9. UNC Press.
ISBN
0807819263
.
- ^
"The Liberator"
.
Library of Congress
.
Archived
from the original on March 3, 2020
. Retrieved
March 3,
2020
.
- ^
"The Liberator | American newspaper"
.
Encyclopedia Britannica
.
Archived
from the original on 2022-06-07
. Retrieved
2017-05-22
.
- ^
a
b
"Book Review: All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, by Henry Mayer"
.
The Independent Institute
.
Archived
from the original on 2015-09-20
. Retrieved
2017-05-22
.
- ^
Hayden, Robert C. (1992).
African-Americans in Boston: More than 350 Years
. Trustees of the Boston Public Library. p. 112.
ISBN
0890730830
.
- ^
The Anti-Slavery Reporter,
August 1, 1865, p. 187.
- ^
Henderson, Christina (2013).
"Sympathetic Violence: Maria Stewart's Antebellum Vision of African American Resistance"
.
MELUS
.
38
(4): 52?75.
doi
:
10.1093/melus/mlt051
.
ISSN
0163-755X
.
JSTOR
24570017
.
- ^
Liberator
, December 15, 1837.
- ^
Grimke, Sarah
(1838).
Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman : addressed to Mary S. Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
. Boston:
Isaac Knapp
.
- ^
Berkin, Carol.
"Angelina and Sarah Grimke: Abolitionist Sisters"
. Archived from
the original
on 2017-12-04
. Retrieved
2017-05-24
.
- ^
"The North Star | American newspaper"
.
Encyclopedia Britannica
.
Archived
from the original on 2017-09-11
. Retrieved
2017-05-15
.
- ^
"Abolitionist Movement | HistoryNet"
.
www.historynet.com
.
Archived
from the original on 2014-12-31
. Retrieved
2017-05-15
.
- ^
David W. Blight,
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
(2018) pp. 216?220.
- ^
Martin, CJ (August 1, 2019).
"The "Mustard Seed": Providence's Alfred Niger, Antebellum Black Voting Rights Activist"
.
SmallStateBigHistory.com
.
Archived
from the original on August 10, 2021.
- ^
Thomas, John L. (1963).
The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison
. Little, Brwon And Company. p. 66.
- ^
"Baltimore Niles Register, Oct. 29"
.
nat-turner
.
Archived
from the original on 2021-08-24
. Retrieved
2021-08-24
.
- ^
Mayer, Henry (1998).
All on fire : William Lloyd Garrison and the abolition of slavery
(1st ed.). St. Martin's Press. pp.
200?205
.
ISBN
0312187408
.
- ^
"The Liberator (Boston, Mass. : 1831?1865) ? Digital Commonwealth"
.
www.digitalcommonwealth.org
.
Archived
from the original on 2021-01-24
. Retrieved
2020-11-28
.
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Fanuzzi, Robert A. " 'The Organ of an Individual': William Lloyd Garrison and the Liberator."
Prospects
23 (1998): 107-127.
- Jacobs, Donald M. "William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator and Boston's Blacks, 1830-1865."
New England Quarterly
(1971): 259-277.
online
- Nord, David Paul. "Tocqueville, Garrison and the perfection of journalism."
Journalism History
13.2 (1986): 56-63.
online
- Rohrbach, Augusta. " 'Truth Stranger and Stronger than Fiction': Reexamining William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator." in
Truth Stranger Than Fiction: Race, Realism, and the US Literary Market Place
(Palgrave Macmillan US, 2002) pp. 1-27.
- Streitmatter, Rodger (2001).
Voices of Revolution
. New York:
Columbia University Press
. pp.
21
?35.
ISBN
0231122497
.
- Williams, Cecil B. "Whittier's Relation to Garrison and the 'Liberator'."
New England Quarterly
(1952): 248-255.
online
Primary sources
[
edit
]
- Cain, William E. ed.
William Lloyd Garrison and the Fight Against Slavery: Selections from The Liberator
(Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1992)
- Garrison, William Lloyd.
Documents of Upheaval: Selections from William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, 1831-1965
(Hill and Wang, 1966).
External links
[
edit
]
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