Peaceful Hopes and Violent Experiences: The Evolution of Reforming and Radical Abolitionism, 1831-1837

Abstract

PEACEFUL HOPES AND VIOLENT EXPERIENCES: The Evolution of Reforming and Radical Abolitionism, 1831-1837 James Brewer Stewart Whatever else historians have said about William Lloyd Garrison, most have pictured him as a conceptual faddist who initially borrowed most of his radical doctrine from the opinions of otìiers. During late 1836 and 1837, according to standard interpretation, Garrison's mind suddenly, almost instinctively, succumbed to die unique dieories of John Humphrey Noyes, and after "tasting die heady wine of anarchism" Garrison 's "disorganizing" espousals of radicalism bred every increasing rancor within die abolitionist camp. Shocked, and fearing for the future of the movement, moderate and conservative leaders in 1839-1840 first attempted to restrain, then to repress the Boston editor and his circle. Failing this, die anti-Garrisonians themselves departed from the American Anti-Slavery Society.1 While some historians have recently begun to reconsider the validity of Garrisonian opinions and acts,2 they have as yet done little to re- ß The author wishes to acknowledge the generosity of the Macalester College Faculty Activities Committee for a grant which has helped to finance the research of this article and the larger, unfinished study of abolitionism of which it is a part. 1 The quotation is from Gilbert Hobbes Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 18301844 (New York, 1964), p. 93. Included among the many other works which, despite their sharply differing overall assessments of Garrison, suggest that he adopted quite unreflectively radical doctrines from others like Noyes and Wright are: Russell Blaine Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston and Toronto, 1955), p. 105; Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Shvery, 1830-1860 (New York, I960), pp. 120-121; John L. Thomas, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison: A Biography (Boston and Toronto, 1963), pp. 227-235; Walter Merrill, Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 216-19; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969), pp. 185-188. In Aileen Kraditor's admirable Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1854 (New York and Toronto, 1969), the author explores deeply the content of Garrison's radicalism, but the nature of her work did not demand that she trace the context of its development. A more developmental treatment of Garrison's ideas is found in Peter Brock, Radical Pacifists in Ante-Bellum America (Princeton, N.J., 1968), pp. 77-169. Brock, however, considers Garrison's theories exclusively within the context of the nineteenth-century peace movement, without specific regard to abolitionism. 2 See Kraditor, Means and Ends, passim; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "William Lloyd Garrison and Antislavery Unity: A Re-Appraisal," Civil War History, XIII (Mar., 1967), 5-24; Howard Zinn, "Abolitionists, Freedom-Riders, and the Tactics of Agitation " in Martin Duberman, The Antis^ery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abo293 294CIVIL WAR HISTORY examine the problem of how Garrison evolved towards espousing perfectionism , anticlericalism, women's rights and nonresistance. Neither has the increasing concern for moderation and respectable reformism in antislavery evinced by Garrison's opponents after 1836 been sufficiently explored. Aileen Kraditor and Bertram Wyatt-Brown have both pointed out that die split of 1840 divided reformers from revolutionaries —believers in the basic health of American society from those who deemed it utterly corrupt.3 What remains unclear is the process involved in each group's changing analysis of the American scene. In looking for new answers to these questions it may be in order to make a fresh appraisal of some of the abolitionists' initial expectations and goals during die early years of their crusade, and to assess how diese partisans variously interpreted society's responses to their efforts as the early 1830's wore on. By viewing die antislavery schism of 1838-1840 in light of abolitionists' changing hopes, aims, experiences and perceptions from 1831 to 1837, perhaps one can suggest more informed judgments tìian some of diose now current about what caused die divisive contest between conservatism and radicalism within die movement. After 1830, when the program of immediate abolition began to draw followers, it is quite clear that many leading converts were, and continued to be, motivated...