Then again: The roots of William Lloyd Garrison as a Vermont journalist – VTDIGGER

America probably never had a more influential journalist than William Lloyd Garrison. Social activist, calling, Garrison stood against unevenness (his father was an alcoholic who abandoned the family), a gambling and war. But his true passion was the struggle against slavery. Initially, he advocated for gradually emancipation, but his beliefs developed and ultimately supported an immediate and completed emancipation. While it was in the mid-1920s, he organized the Society to Combat Slavery in New England and the American Society for Combating Slavery, and for decades he has been conducting the widespread newspaper “Liberator” using it to shape the national debate and to help In order to secure the political climate that President Lincoln had to issue the proclamation of emancipation.

But in 1828, everything that was in the future. At that time, Garrison was a 22-year-old newspaper living in Boston and needed work. Until recently, he was the editor of the national philanthropist, a social reform newspaper. He left the philanthropist to take on a different job that did not work.

Fortunately for him, a group of prominent men from Bennington decided that this fiery young journalist is exactly the one they have to run a newspaper they plan to start. The group travels to Boston and offered Garrison the editorial office of The Times. Work will provide experience of a garrison, income and a place to promote the many social causes that he supports.

The Bennington men asked one thing from Garrison: that the newspaper strongly supports the re -election of President John Quincy Adams. It was during the American era “Party Press”, approximately from 1783 to the 1830s, when newspapers served essentially as gadgets for political parties. Recipients of party and government print contracts, the newspapers have come to line with one of the political parties and the political views of their owners.

Bennington’s band intended the Times magazine to serve as a counterweight for the Vermont newspaper, who supported democratic contender Andrew Jackson. Vermonters strongly supported Adams and his National Republican Party, but the organizers of the magazine did not risk. They hated Jackson and what he was standing for.

Adams and Jackson did not agree with the role of the government. Adams supported the so -called “American system”, in which a highly federal government will impose high tariffs and sell public lands to finance internal improvements, mainly roads and channels that will knit together. In contrast, Jackson was skeptical of centralized power and claimed that it would lead to a monarchy. Therefore, it opposed high tariffs and infrastructure projects. In the same way, Adams supported the creation of a national bank to help the economy while Jackson opposed it.

Applicants also differ in personality. Adams was the highly educated son of second President John Adams and was a former US Secretary of State. Jackson was born poor and received a limited education, but became rich through his marriage, a legal career, speculation on Earth and the use of slavery in his plantation. He was declared a military hero after leading the American victory in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

Adams’ supporters presented Jackson as illiterate and violent, saying he was a man of “blood and slaughter”. They announce that he has ordered the execution of men under his command for contested allegations that they have rebelled. They also told how during a military campaign in the southeast against the Native Americans, Jackson troops killed non -compliant and destroyed villages.

Garrison accepted Bennington’s work by signing a six -month contract that covered the election season. At that time, in order to comply with the local needs and times of harvesting, the federal law allowed countries to hold elections at any time during the 34-day period before the first Wednesday in December. In 1828, Vermont elections were scheduled for Tuesday, November 11th.

Garrison moved to Vermont and published the first edition of the newspaper on October 3. In it, the new editor presents the magazine to the public, explaining its values ​​and the reasons for its existence. He made fun of editors who lacked the courage to “hunt popular vices, to fight popular prejudices, to meet with the madness of the party, to tell the truth and to maintain the truth, to cost what he could attack the villain in Higher walks and undress a presumption of your vulgar garment to meet the enemy’s frosts with a friend’s smiles…. ”

Unlike the usual practice of the era to print edits with a larger type of the rest of the paper to attract the reader’s attention, Garrison chose a smaller font so that he can write longer pieces. He had a lot to say.

The rest of his editorial office details the reasons the diary will encourage. He called for “suppression of unequability and his associated defects, the gradual emancipation of every slave in the republic and the eternity of national peace.” The newspaper will also stand up for education “, not with a pot, dislike and impact of classical education, so -called – but popular, practical education.” The key to the economic future of the nation, Garrison added, was the continuation of the “American system” to protect the national industry and the construction of transport infrastructure.

Only at the end of the editorial board Garrison mentioned President Adams, the man whose re -election was hired to promote. As a matter of fact, Garrison was not so adams’ adherent as Jackson’s opponent.

Although he was convinced that the majority of Bennington district voters would vote for the President’s re-election, Garrison writes that Adams’ supporters had their confidence “abused, their views were missed, their feelings were offended … they were outraged … They were outraged from apostasy, with betrayal, with insincerity; And they are worn in their car as the endurance crosses its borders and the slander’s pen becomes unbearable. ”

A few days before the election, Garrison writes in the magazine that whatever the result of the vote is, “we will thank the god of our bent knees for being allowed to deny ourselves as unworthy … A person whose hands are distorted with innocent blood whose Oral lips are full of obsceneness that views “blood and carnage with philosophical self -control”, “slave countries”, “military despot who has violated the laws of his country” and who has occupied many offices and “failed in all S “

Adams’ Stymoses, the opportunity to lose this man, Garrison writes that “in the minority against him would be better than to receive the praise of a large and delusional majority. After the existence of this Republic, the chance of his continuation has never seemed so uncertain. ”

In the end, Adams’ supporters would have to comfort themselves, feeling that at least they had voted for the better person. Jackson lost Bennington County and the rest of Vermont, but won the national vote and election college to defeat Adams.

After the election, Garrison wrote grimly: “The great national conflict ended in a way so unexpected and catastrophic that it almost destroyed the hopes of every friend of its country. We saw the triumph of turbulence over order and ignorance of knowledge. The passions of the multitude, cunningly inflamed, have caused force. “

The magazine continued to criticize Jackson, saying that “(W) is not for the ridicule of our transatlantically contemptible”, it would be fun to hear the uneducated Jackson deliver the introductory address he wrote. Fortunately for Jackson, however, his speech was written by an associate who “dictated to flammable moods in a very passable language.”

With the election behind him, Garrison was able to turn his attention to other problems with social reform, expensive for him. It is significant that he dedicated his edition on December 12 to praise the work of Quaker Antislavery Benjamin Lundy activist, sometimes now called the “first cancellation”.

“The story of this individual will provide a topic of admiration and gratitude to the offspring,” Garrison writes. “If we survive, he will not lack a biographer.” In recent months, noted Garrison, the tireless Lundi has traveled 2,400 miles around New England and New York, including 1600 on foot to host 50 gatherings.

Garrison met Lundi in Boston for several months before the editorial office in Bennington was offered. During dinner, Lundi, who was a lecture, shared his strong views against slavery. The conversation convinced the garrison to deal with the question as one of his main causes of social reform. But given that Lundi called for immediate emancipation, Garrison at that time supported the gradual emancipation and “colonization”, a social movement that calls for the relocation of ex -enslaved people to settlements in West Africa, mainly liberia.

While Garrison was working in Bennington, Lundi received copies of a magazine at his home in Baltimore. He was pleased with what he read: Garrison used his position to argue forcibly and eloquently to eliminate slavery. In fact, Lundi was so pleased that he left Baltimore to Bennington to meet Garrison. Lundi went so much because it was cheaper than riding a horse or booking a passage on stage, and he wanted to keep what he had to improve the cause of removal. This meeting may have occurred in the early 1829s.

In Bennington, Lundi offered Garrison’s editorial office of his Antislavery newspaper, a genius of universal emancipation. When his six -month contract in Bennington expired in late March, Garrison returned to Boston while Lundi was on a mission in Haiti. (By traveling with a dozen ex -enslaved people, Lundi explores whether the island country will be a suitable object for additional efforts for “colonization.”)

A few months later, on July 4, 1829, Garrison exported his first major public speech to the evils of slavery before a crowd of about 1500 at the Park Street Church in Boston. By Parisphrating the Declaration of Independence, he pointed out the hypocrisy of slavery, existing in a country based on the principle of freedom, noting that “I do not claim the discovery as my own, that” all men are born equal “and that the irrevocable rights are” life, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness. ” “

Garrison was now fully committed to the cause of the anti -Slavic. He would soon leave Boston to join Lundi in Baltimore and devote the next three and a half decades to fighting slavery. When Garrison died in 1879, Frederick Douglas, the famous Afro -American social reformer, cancellation, speaker and writer, gives praise.

“Let us keep his memory as a valuable heritage,” said Douglas, “Let us teach our children the history of his life, let us try to imitate his virtues and strive for him, let’s leave the world more free, noble and better than we found it. “