In 1830, William Lloyd Garrison was sentenced to a six month term in prison for telling the truth about slavery, the slave trade, and the type of people who would engage in it. The technicality for which he was convicted of libel against Francis Todd of Baltimore was that in his news article he had described the slaves as being chained in the ship when Todd claimed they were not. As Garrison argued at the trial, such a technical error was pointless as it didn’t change the fact that Todd and all those involved in shipping slaves for him were “the enemies of their own species—highway robbers and murderers” for their part in helping to doom men, women, and children to a life of slavery. He wasn’t being imprisoned for libel, he was being imprisoned because he vehemently denounced slavery and all those involved in it, standing firm against such an infernal practice and those in power did not like that. Libel was merely the excuse. Garrison was in prison seven weeks before a group of abolitionist friends were able to get enough money for him to be released on bail.
The below excerpts (pgs. 187-189) are taken from a letter Garrison wrote to the editor of a rival newspaper that denounced his actions. In it he explains why he will not and cannot back down from challenging such a wicked cause as slavery and all those who participate in its system willingly. I find his words absolute thrilling and a great explanation of why I feel how I do about why I must denounce the State despite the fact that it finds general support among the masses and I am seen as a dangerous fanatic by those who see the bondage of the State as the only means of order for society- something I will discuss in by commentary along with the excerpts. Other than a few links and pictures of people and places Garrison mentions, the excerpted parts are re-printed here in their original, including emphasis. The section picks up with Garrison explaining why Todd’s claim that he wasn’t a slave trader but only transported slaves because he needed the revenue is both base and cowardly:
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How much nobler would have been his conduct, if he had adopted the language of the martyred patriot of England – the great Algernon Sidney! – “I have ever had in my mind, that when God should cast me into such a condition as that I cannot save my life but by doing an indecent thing, he shows me the time has come wherein I should resign it; and when I cannot live in my own country but by such means as are worse than dying in it, I think he shows me I ought to keep myself out of it.”
There is a lot of fear surrounding death in the world. I think a major proof of our conversion is if we are willing to die in order to keep the commandments of God. But it should be even less than that. When we allow the government to have such power that it can force us to either die or violate our most cherished virtues and values then we a choice to make – live as servants, if not slaves, or die as men and women. Algernon Sidney made his choice, he died as a man, beheaded for refusing to back down from his writings which renounced the tyranny of kings and promoted the rights of the individual above the prerogatives of the government, including the right of rebellion. When our choices are live as worms and corrupt or death, then death it should be. If we never allow the government to get away with the small evils it will ever be incapable of the larger ones. If we wish to take that power back then we must do so at every level, not merely the “big” issues.
If I am prompted by “vanity” in pleading for the poor, degraded, miserable Africans, it is at least a harmless, and, I hope, will prove a useful “vanity.” Would to God it were epidemical! It is a vanity calculated to draw down the curses of the guilty, to elicit the sneers of the malevolent, to excite the suspicion of the cold-hearted, to offend the timidity of the wavering, to disturb the repose of the lethargic; -a vanity that promises to its possessor nothing but neglect, poverty, sorrow, reproach, persecution and imprisonment—with the approbation of a good conscience, and the smiles of a merciful God. I think it will last me to the grave.
But why so vehement? So unyielding? So severe? Because the times and the cause demand vehemence. An immense iceberg, larger and more impenetrable than any which floats in the Arctic Ocean, is to be dissolved, and a little extra heat is not only pardonable, but absolutely necessary. Because truth can never be sacrificed, and justice is eternal. Because great crimes and destructive evils ought not to be palliated, nor great sinners applauded. With reasonable men, I will reasonable; with humane men, I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
The hearts of some individuals are like ice, congealed by the frigidity of a wintry atmosphere that surrounds, envelopes and obdurates. These may be melted by the rays of humanity, the warmth of expostulation, and the breath of prayer. Others are like adamantine rocks; they require a ponderous sledge and a powerful arm to break them in pieces, or a cask of powder to blow them up. Truth may blaze upon them with midday intenseness, but they cannot dissolve.
Garrison’s point about how his “vanity” may lead him into a life of poverty (and it did, he was never rich and often rode the line between surviving and starving) but that it would be a good life because he knew he lived in a way that met with God’s approval is advice that the world should follow. It would be a better place if people did so. It is one I have adopted and strive to live. I care not that by pouring out all the fire I can against those in power and the system that gives them that power that I may be dismissed as a buffoon, an idiot, or a lunatic. I do not live to be praised of men. With those who will use reason and open their eyes to the brutalities of the State, with those who will reject violence and oppression in all its forms, I will treat as kindred souls. But those whose hearts are hard, whose necks are stiff, whose eyes are intentionally blind and ears purposefully deaf? I see no reason to not blast them with the harrowing power of Truth, perhaps the coarse and ravaging winds will finally wear through the stone around their hearts and dissipate the dense fog from their minds.
Everyone who comes into the world should do something to repair its moral desolation, and to restore its pristine loveliness; and he who does not assist, but slumbers away his life in idleness defeats one great purpose of his creation. But he who, not only refusing to labor himself, endeavors to enlarge and perpetuate the ruin, by discouraging the hearts of the more industrious, and destroying their beautiful works, is a monster and a barbarian, in despite of his human nature and of civilization.
…Let them beware! Every one whom I detect in this nefarious business – merchant or master – shall be advertised to the world.
My punishment does not dishearten me. Whether liberated or not, my pen shall not remain idle. My thoughts flow as copiously, my spirit towers as loftily, my soul flames as intensely, in prison, as out of it. The court may shackle the body, but it cannot pinion the mind.
The world is a fallen place. It is full of sickness, disease, suffering, and terror; in essence, it is drenched in blood and horror. It is the role of every person to try and make it better. More than all others it is the role of the Christian to carry to the world the cure for what sickens it- the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which if honestly and truly lived even in its unrestored forms, would destroy the worst of the world’s evils in a single day. Even more than the general Christian it is the special calling and responsibility of the Saint to establish Zion, a society where all are one and poverty is non-existent.
The more we strive to rise to the occasion the more we will find and fulfill our purpose in life, the more we will live a life of meaning. The more we shrink from this cause, the more we hew from the cause of Zion for Babylon, the more miserable we will become. In the cause of Zion I see no greater organized enemy than the governments of the Earth. Their demand for total subservience and obedience, even when such orders are manifestly evil, are the antithesis of the Gospel and Kingdom of God. And, though sold as the “price of civilization,” the government’s foundation is upon pure violence and the willingness of those in power and their enforcers to beat, cage, or kill the disobedient is nothing but pure, unadulterated barbarism. To side with it is to side with monstrosity. It must be ended.
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Afterword
I have dedicated myself to that cause- of rejecting everything that is not Zion and settling for nothing less. For me it is as it was with the Saints of the past, The Kingdom of God- or Nothing! Those who seek to protect the governments of the world I will not hesitate to expose to the truth. If it gets me in trouble to teach the truth then I would rather be in trouble than be at ease in such a world. As the Prophet Joseph said:
As for the perils which I am called to pass through, they seem but a small thing to me, as the envy and wrath of man have been my common lot all the days of my life …deep water is what I am wont to swim in. It all has become a second nature to me; and I feel, like Paul, to glory in tribulation; for to this day has the God of my fathers delivered me out of them all, and will deliver me from henceforth; for behold, and lo, I shall triumph over all my enemies, for the Lord God hath spoken it.
Whether that triumph be that I walk free or whether it be I hold to the truth behind bars, triumph still it will be. I shall never cease until the truth is not just known, but understood and believed. Then there will be no war, no violence, no revolution. There will not need to be, for without the submission of the people the system itself will simply dissolve. I look forward to such liberty and the peace and prosperity that shall be its natural result.