BLACKWELL FAMILY
LUCY STONE

SPEECH: undatedHe applied with new energy of
people to the church

Gte's letter
Merchants Hell

Mother on Garrison
undated
Oberlin?

Sarah Pellet Sarah Stone
Lucy StoneThrough high above the sun of glory glow,
And far beneath, the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head,
And thus reward the toil, that to these summits
led."
So Garrison, who has kept steadily on
the great highway of reform, in advance
of the existing public sentiment, has met
on every hand, its frown, and bitter jeer.
But time the grand rectifier of all
mistakes, will surely award that approbation, 
which the present generation
so unjustly refuses to give.

a and nothing should
favor, and thus to place their names high
on fame's proud pinnacle. When they found
that to be a friend to the slave, and to the 
slave's friend, secured not the applause [of]
but the hatred of those whom the world call
ed great, they turned away, to find a less
thorny path to the object of their highest
ambition.  But they tell us 'twas Garrison who 
changed, that his course had become meteor-like
that infidelity's dark pall had shut out the
light of truth from his disordered vision, and 
that, having forgotten his first high resolve, 
he has sufferred himself to float out on
the dark ocean of fanaticism, whose
turbid waters, teem with errors so deep
and all destroying, as to quench the splender
of the dawning of his career, and to cover its
setting with infamy. But the Liberator which 
week by week cheers the friends of the Sane, 
tells truthfully, that he has neither abandoned
the high moral position he once occupied
nor forgotten to toil for the slave's redemption that
his heart still beats true to truth.
But it is not strange that the leader
of so great a reform, should be reviled.
The past teaches, that no generation
appreciates its own reformers. What the 
Poet has sung as the fate of Genesis, is
equally true of the benefactor of mankind.
"He who ascends the mountain tops
shall find
The loftiest peaks, most wrapped in clouds of snow
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
must look down on the hate of those below. 
eyes of the nation and of the world; but he
afford no other. He was called a no-government
man, because he believed that the Constitution
of the United States, which permits the 
slave, about to place his weary fleeing foot
on freedom's soil, to be hurled back into
interminable bondage, which [gives] permits the
suffrage of the slave to be in the hand of the master, and
which, should that inborn love of [freedom] liberty
which lives in every soul, burst into a flame
in the bosom of the slave, and urge him, to 
take for himself that God-given freedom of
which the evarice of man had washed [?]
him, pledges the entire military force of the
nation, to quench that flame in his own
blood; - because he believes such [an] a instrument
proslavery, and dares to say that no
consistent christian can take an oath to
support it, he is called a no-government
man; -- while it is well known, that with
a government, which has its basis and super
structure, in harmony with the law of God
he has no warfare. He is called truthfully
a nonresistant, because, being a subject
of that King whose kingdom is not of this 
world, he cannot fight. The charges of 
infidelity, opposition to the church &c. were circulated
so widely, and with such constancy,
that may friends of the cause, began to fear
lest, notwithstanding his continuing labor
and seeming zeal for the slave, he might
have some ulterior object, and in all honesty
they exposed that fear. Others who had attached
themselves to the cause of Emancipation
hoping on its ear, to side into popular
government, and grief the doors of every professedly
Christian church were closed against all appeals
for the slave, because, forsooth the Sabbath was the
holy a day; and the pulpit too sacred a place, in
which to "open the mouth for the drunk, in the cause
of all such as are oppressed." It was not strange
that this press, for the favor of a corrupt
public sentiment, should refuse to oppose that
sentiment. But it was strange that the professed
followers of the Prince of Peace, whose
great law was stone, and whose "Golden Rule 
to do to others, as we would that they should 
do to us," should refuse to "remember in 
bonds as bound with them." It was strange,
that while their sympathies were enlisted for
the far off South, [whose] for these, whose bodies
and souls needed a double redemption, then
was no tear to shed, no prayer to offer, no appeal
to make, no missionary to send. All heaven
looked on with interssest interest to see whether
this country, whose infant brow was baptized
in the blood shed for her own freedom, would
grasp her iron hand still tighter in the throat
of her sons, and hurl them down to a still
deeper degradation, or whitten [?] the Church
and her ministers taking the side of truth
against Error, of the weak against the strong, 
would thus teach the nation that "justice should
be done through heaven's fall." Hell through
its deep caverns uttered its hoarse murmur of
applause, as one after another proved recreant [?]
to Truth, and the cause of Bleeding Humanity.
But Wm. Lloyd Garrison "though perplexed, was
not in despair." A fire had been kindled, on
his soul's altar which could never go out.


Relying still upon the arm of Jehovah and
the justice of his cause, he established himself
in a narrow garret in Boston, and commenced
the publication of the Liberator, devoted to the
cause of the slave, and adopted as his motto
"my country is the world, my countrymen are
all mankind. During the first six months,
subsisting principally upon bread and water,
he published the paper; wrote its articles; set
the type; and when struck off he carried 
them through the city, giving to any who would
receive them. (For it had not a single subscriber.)
Some in indignation trampled them beneath
at their feet; others tearing them before his face
scatted the fragments to the wind, while others
still, carefully read, and considered the
subject to which it was devoted. They became
convinced that the cause was a righteous one,
and gave their influence in its favor. They
assisted the editor in its publication, so
that at the end of six months, he was enabled
with a respectable subscription list, to remove
the press to more convenient place. The cause
dearest to the heart of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, was
now beginning to arrest the attention of the public.
Many whose hearts beat true to the truth, and
justice, boldly evowed themsleves, that[?] ?
promising enemies of slavery, believing it to have
been "wrong it its origin, wrong in its continuance,
wrong in all its details, and wrong forever."
Others equally opposed to the system, believed
that it was so inwrought into the texture of our
[civil] religious and political being that it could
not safely be destroyed. But the great mass of the
people arranged themselves upon the side of the


oppressor. The dominant political party had just
placed a slaveholder in the Presidential Chair;
and entire religious denominations were giving the
right hand of fellowship, to Southern ministers [?].
But notwithstanding all this, Garrison
nothing daunted, devoted to his one great object,
continued week by week, to pour his ?
appeals in the ear of the nation, and
on its "naked heart to gather [?] the living
souls of truth." The friends of the slave all over the
country, began to rally for his rescue, while
his enemies, plied all the inquiry [?], which their 
evil hearts assisted by the father of his could
invent, to visit [?] his chains more closely.
The warfare grew intense. The whole country, from
Maine to Georgia, was rocking with the commotion.
Wm. Lloyd Garrison was thrown into jail in Baltimore
and having been liberated by his friends, a price
was then set upon his head. Five thousand gentlemen
of "property and standing," in Boston Mass., having
assembled to break up a prayer meeting by Anti-Slavery
women, found Garrison, and drew him
through the street, with a halter, until
the Mayor, to save his life placed him in jail.
The friends of the slave in other places received
similar treatment. But She [?] who knows how to [?]
the wrath of man praise him, so ordered that his
very treatment, raised up a host of true hearted
antislavery men, also went everywhere preaching
antislavery truth. The press began to lend its
aid. Many churches and ministers came up nobly
to cooperate with the advocates of Emancipation.
Public opinion was manifestly becoming in sympathy
with the slave. But he had still a magnitude
of bitter enemies, whose hatred became



bitterer and deeper, in anticipation of the unconditional
emancipation of all the slave population
which at that time, amounted to nearly three millions.

These haters of truth & justice in order to 
arrest the onward progress of the Anti Slavery 
Reform, attempted (with a zeal, worthy of a better
cause), to impair the influence of its advocate.
Accordingly Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who as the leader
in the cause, was the head and front of Anti Slavery 
offence, and who was also, the brightest star
in freedom's host, was first assailed.  The cry
ran through the Union "Garrison is an Infidel
a Sabbath breaker, opposed to the Church & Clergy,
a no-government-man, and lastly a non-resistant.  
A labored argument had been issued
from the fountain head of N. England theology
to prove that the bible sanctioned slavery.
Wm. Lloyd Garrison believed no such thing;
consequently he [?] [Infidel] did not believe
the bible, consequently he was an Infidel [did not believe the]
[bible] and consequently the charge so abundantly 
substantiated could not fail to obtain currency.  
He was a Sabbath breaker too; because 
on that holy day he committed the flagrant 
offence of not ceasing to plead for the 
down trodden, and the oppressed.  He was said
to be opposed to the Church & Clergy, because he
had not failed to show the hypocrisy of those 
churches and ministers, who persisted in the 
fellowship of the Slaveholders & Slave holding,
and who in the language of another, "found' for 
known sin an apology, and for heinous sin
a covering."  He had indeed uttered his scathing
rebuke, against a proslavery church & ministry
and made her deep guilt manifest in the 



[*L. S. on Garrison. Undated.*]

To one who loves the cause of the slave
and who looks with glad anticipation to the 
time of his deliverance, the names of those whose
untiring efforts were instrumental in creating 
a public sentiment in sympathy with the
bond man, cannot fail to be interesting.

Among these, first and foremost, as the great pioneer in the cause stands
Wm. Lloyd Garrison.  He came upon life's arena 
with no inheritance but an intellect
and a heart.  He looked over it's broad battlefield 
and saw that there was need that every
man should labor ; but to what department
should his energies be applied.  He saw the 
drunkard besotted, voluntarily a slave, but the
Temperance Armies were coming to his rescue.  

He heard the cry of the millions of heathens 
who were famishing for the bread of life rising from out
the wild jungles of India, echoing from the
walls of China, reverberated by the mountains
round about Jerusalem, and mingling with the 
sad wail, from the islands of the ocean, and 
from beyond the Rocky Mts; but these had
found a response, in the sympathies of the 
christian public, and from many an altar
once consecrated to heathen divinities, was this
arising the incense of pure offerings to the Everliving
and True God. But in our own country, he
saw two and a half millions of heathen, living
in degradation so deep, covered with woe so wide
that it found no utterance. The sympathies of his 
soul were stirred, as he saw these heathen, robbed
of their manhood, leveled with the brute, invoiceless agony, winding their way to the eternal 
world.  For these no tear was shed, to these no missionary
was sent, to point to them the way of Eternal life
or whisper in their ear that a time would come,
when the slave should be free from his master.
He chose these for whom none cared, as his field
of labor.  He girded on his armor for the conflict,
and to the slave, degraded, polluted, sunk in a
deep darkness of mental and moral night, he
gave the right hand of fraternal and Christian
fellowship, pledged to bring him up from
that horrible pit.  The entire current of public sentiment
set in favor of the oppressor.  That sentiment
must be changed, but how should it be 
done?  He sought again and again to secure
a place in the public prints where the wrongs of
slave might be spread before the peoples
and met only repulses and rebukes; but the opus
of Wm. Lloyd Garrisson could not be crushed by repulses, 
or terrified by rebukes, neither could the pent-up
energies of his soul be longer restrained.
Relying upon that God whose strong hand and
stretched out arm, had of old wrought deliverance,
for Israel, and broken the oppressor's rod 
He determined to place the lever of smith
beneath the system of slavery, with the
fulcrum on the hearts of the people, and then
seek so to increase the circulation of the moral
lifeblood of the nation, that the upheaving of
its mighty heart, should cause the abominable
system to totter to its overthrow.
He applied directly to the Church and her ministers
expecting to receive from them that cooperation 
and sympathy, which a corrupt public
press had withheld, but to his utter astonish-[?ment?]