William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass: Racism in the Abolitionist Movement?

William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, was fundamental in moving the United States towards abolishing slavery. As most Americans know, the Civil war dragged on for years without Lincoln issuing an emancipation proclamation. Garrison relentlessly published his paper urging Lincoln and Congress to make the war about slavery and free the slaves. Every week, Garrison sent his paper to every member of the government. Every issue of the paper laid out Garrison's clear claim that slavery was evil and should be immediately abolished with no compensation to the owners. It was the same argument he had made for over 30 years, although at the time of the war, he was not alone in believing slavery was wrong because all of the years of publishing and lecturing and organizing had changed the country.

So why is Garrison's important work not studied more often? I believe the answer lies in what many critics have believed to have been prejudice on his part towards Frederick Douglass, whose slave autobiography has entered the canon of American Literature and is widely read in college classrooms. It was William Lloyd Garrison who first heard Douglass speak and tell his story. It was Garrison who took Douglass and introduced him to wealthy abolitionists in Boston and elsewhere and helped him not only publish his book but find work as an anti-slavery lecturer. Moreover, it was Garrison who promoted Douglass and helped him gain fame as the foremost of all African-American anti-slavery speakers.

However, both men were very strong personalities and both men liked their own way. Garrison had breaks with other friends and he and Douglass had a falling out when Douglass started his own anti-slavery newspaper, The North Star, which ran in competition with The Liberator. Garrison was not happy with Douglass, but it wasn't just because Douglass started his paper. Garrison and Douglass were on an anti-slavery lecture tour together in the west. Garrison became extremely ill and thought he was dying. As he started to recover, Douglass left. It isn't clear whether Garrison knew where Douglass was going, but shortly afterwards, Douglass's The North Star appeared. Garrison felt betrayed and never fully trusted Douglass again. However, in spite of the fact that The North Star threatened to take away The Liberator's always tenuous financial support, a positive review of Douglass and his paper appeared in the Liberator shortly after The North Star's debut.

Although these two men had a long and complicated relationship, two particular quotations by Douglass have shaped the way in which literary critics have viewed Garrison’s work. The first involves Douglass’s comment in his Narrative of the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1845) that he was converted to abolitionism by reading the Liberator and that Garrison was an almost god-like mentor to him:

The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire. Its sympathy for my brethren in bonds—its scathing denunciations of slaveholders—its faithful exposures of slavery—and its powerful attacks upon the upholders of the institution—sent a thrill of joy through my soul, such as I had never felt before!

I had not long been a reader of the “Liberator,” before I got a pretty correct idea of the principles, measures and spirit of the anti-slavery reform. I took right hold of the cause. I could do but little; but what I could, I did with a joyful heart, and never felt happier than when in an anti-slavery meeting. (118)

While on the surface, this comment by Douglass implies a positive relationship between the two of them, many literary critics have read this as implying a "paternalistic" attitude on Garrison's side. Other critics have leapt on this idea and suggested that Garrison's latent prejudice kept him from recognizing Douglass as an equal and promoting his status accordingly.

The second quotation by Douglass comes from his later autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855):

Tell your story, Frederick,” would whisper my then revered friend, William Lloyd Garrison, as I stepped upon the platform. I could not always obey, for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them. I could not always curb my moral indignation for the perpetrators of slave-holding villainy, long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room. (220)

Literary critics have generally used this quote in order to show that Garrison was both paternalistic and racist. They imply that Garrison was unwilling to believe that Douglass could or should speak anything outside of his own story. Garrison, in other words, was putting Douglass down. Moreover, they confirm this assessment by pointing out that Garrison objected to Douglass’s plan to start a newspaper and that Douglass eventually “broke” with Garrison over the interpretation of the Constitution.

The use of this quote in one collection of essays, Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays, edited by Eric J. Sundquist, is illuminating. In his introduction, Sundquist says, “The condescending instructions Douglass received from William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists required that he stick to the ‘facts’ and leave the ‘philosophy’ to others” (4). Wilson J. Moses, in “Writing Freely? Frederick Douglass and the Constraints of Racialized Writing,” uses this quote to formulate his thesis that Douglass was confined by the Garrisonian insistence that he remain in the “literary box” of the slave narrative (67). Jenny Franchot, in “The Punishment of Ester: Douglass and the Construction of the Feminine,” uses this section of the later autobiography to contend that Douglass’s relationship with Garrison went from hero-worship to appropriation of “charismatic patriarchal authority” (150). In one of the most interesting paraphrases, John R. McKivigan, in “The Frederick Douglass-Gerrit Smith Friendship and Political Abolitionism in the 1850s,” contends “Douglass soon tired of repeating personal anecdotes about his years of a slave and began to offer a more ideological denunciation of the institutions. His white coadjutors, however, warned Douglass that his true asset to the movement was not his rhetorical skill but his status as a fugitive slave. Even though this advice might have been well intentioned, it revealed a paternalistic attitude that many white abolitionist from all factions displayed toward their black colleagues” (207). Like many literary critics, McKivigan states the case too strongly. He attempts to use the evidence of Garrisonian paternalism to prove that the relationship Douglass formed with wealthy white abolitionist Gerrit Smith was more egalitarian but the details McKivigan supplies about the Douglass-Smith relationship seem to prove that within the abolitionist movement there was a constant pressure from all parts of the movement to gain the support of Douglass’s rhetorical power and influence.

James Olney, who led the canonization of Douglass’s Narrative, seems also to have led in forming the scholarly opinion of Garrison. In “The Founding Fathers—Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington,” Olney says: “I believe that it was his insistence that he was and would continue to be the author of the narrative of his life that caused Douglass’s quarrel and ultimate break with William Lloyd Garrison and the Garrisonians” (5). By implication, Garrison is the villain who attempted to wrest control of Douglass’ life away from him. In his history of slave narratives, To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865, William Andrews contends that in Bondage Douglass presents his rupture with Garrison as similar to his rupture with his slave master.

Similar descriptions of Garrison’s villainy towards Douglass have become commonplace in most discussions of the latter’s work. Unfortunately, few descriptions indicate the complexity of Garrison’s and Douglass’s relationship. Their friendship went through several stages, as might be expected between two such charismatic and opinionated individuals. At first they had an intense and intimate partnership and support during lecture tours. In fact they gave supportive encouragement to one another when other abolitionists disagreed with them. Garrison supported Douglass’s acceptance of money to buy his freedom, while Douglass supported Garrison during his battle against the militarism of some sides of the anti-slavery party. During the time they were running competitive newspapers, they had a bitter rivalry which was well known in abolitionist circles. At the same time they disagreed strongly over the whether or not the Constitution supported slavery, as well as differing in their approach to abolitionist tactics. Finally, after the war, they reconciled and came to peace with one another. In his eulogy for Garrison, Douglass said, “It was the glory of this man that he could stand alone with the truth and calmly await the result” (Mayer 372, 431-33, 631).

Using the Douglass quote from Bondage as proof of Garrison’s poor treatment of Douglass is not an accurate representation of how Douglass presents Garrison and the Liberator in that work. As a matter of fact, Douglass significantly expands his tribute to Garrison and the Liberator in Bondage, keeping the two paragraphs from Narrative and adding three more long paragraphs which describe his appreciation of Garrison and his paper in glowing terms. He states that “I not only liked—I loved this paper, and its editor,” noting that for Garrison “The bible was his text book,” and that this text made him believe “Prejudice against color was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the sky, the slaves, because most neglected and despised, were nearest and dearest to his great heart” (216). Though this section is somewhat shortened and re-written in Douglass’s third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,” these sentences remain intact and the overall tribute to Garrison’s work as an abolitionist is undiminished (213-214).

The accusation that Garrison was racist and did not allow African-Americans to lead in the movement ignores the fact that many other African-American leaders, such as Charles Remond, William Nell and William Wells Brown, had successful and multi-faceted careers as abolitionist speakers, agitators and writers while remaining in the Garrisonian camp. Brown was also a fugitive slave, but according to Brown’s biographer, William Edward Farrison, Garrison never seems to have attempted to prevent him from lecturing on various subjects or from writing literature, history and drama along with his narrative.

Perhaps as a result of this misleading representation of Garrison, no book-length manuscript has been published dealing with the Liberator as a work of importance to American literature. When I began looking my studies of the Liberator, they were only available on microfilm. Now that they are published online and are even indexed, I hope that literary critics and people interested in American history will examine this newspaper more closely to find out how the abolitionists used moral suasion to begin the process of unraveling the sin of slavery.