This is a Sad and Mournful Hour: An Address Delivered in Washington, D.C., on June 2, 1879
THIS IS A SAD AND MOURNFUL HOUR: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, DC, ON 2 JUNE 1879
(n.p. , n.d.). Other texts in Wash-
ington , 3 June 1879; Speech File, reel 15, frames 312-17, 318-22,
reel 32, frames 552-56, FD Papers.
William Lloyd Garrison died on 23 May 1879. Douglass was the principal
eulogist at a memorial meeting on the evening of 2 June 1879 at the Fifteenth
Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. A large crowd of both blacks
and whites attended despite a heavy storm. Robert Purvis chaired the event.
The Washington reported that applause greeted Douglass, who, “taking
out a bundle of manuscript proceeded to read a very feeling and suitable
tribute to the distinguished dead.” The reporter regretted that Douglass was
obliged to read the speech: “An off-hand speech by Douglass on such a
subject as the life and service of Garrison would have no doubt been the effort
of his life.” Other speakers included Purvis and Richard Theodore Greener.
B. D. Fleet performed Mozart’s Requiem on the organ, and the Reverend
Alexander Crummell opened and closed the service with prayer. Washington
, 3 June 1879; Washington , 3 June 1879.
MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS: There are times when silence is more
potent than speech; when words seem too thin, tame and poor to express
our thoughts and feelings. I am impressed with a sense of this destitution
in contemplating the event that has brought us here to—night. An hour
spent here in silent meditation upon that solemn event, would perhaps be
more impressive than any formal addresses, however eloquent, can be.
But in the presence of great affliction and sorrow, the heart ever presses
for utterance. It seems meet that we of the colored race should speak at
such a movement, even though our speech should be thin, poor, broken
and imperfect. In a case like this any word, or sign of grief or gratitude,
of appreciation, affection or admiration will be tolerated if not applauded
in us.
To every anti-slavery man and woman in the land, to every friend of
impartial liberty at home or abroad, and especially to every colored man,
this is a sad and mournful hour. The abolitionists of this country were never
a numerous class. Their power and influence were always greater than their
numbers, for they had with them the invisible and infinite forces of the
moral universe. But lately death has been busy in reducing their already
thinned ranks. Some of the earliest, truest and most eminent of them all
have gone the way of all the earth, much in advance of their great leader.
Only a few of those noble and brave men and women who rocked the anti-
slavery movement in its cradle, who watched and worked during the first
year of its existence, and saw with grateful hearts its steady growth and
development, from the tiny thing it was at the beginning, to the giant it
became in the end, are still on the stage of busy life. Here and there at broad
intervals, one and another of that class may be found standing like stately
pillars of a fallen temple as belonging to another age.
Mr. President, you are fortunate. Only a few like yourself can now tell
from actual experience, from earnest participation, something of the
darkness and peril that brooded over the land when the anti-slavery move-
ment was born. You can name over the men who were then its friends, you
can trace its history. You can tell of the wondrous trials, persecutions and
hardships through which those early workers had to pass; how step by step,
the anti-slavery sentiment of the country rose from weakness to strength,
from conflict to victory, and from shame to glory. You can tell of the fire
and fury with which it was assailed in its infancy, how the Herods of that
day sought its infant life,1Douglass alludes to Herod the Great (37-4 B.C.), king of Judea, who slaughtered many infants in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the newborn Jesus Christ. Matt. 2: 1-18. how its friends were sometimes only rescued
from danger and death by hiding themselves from the wrath and fury of the
mob, as in dens and caves.
Mr. President, it is a thrilling story. Aftercoming generations will read
it and wonder at it. But soon the time will come when no living witness will
be left to tell it. One pillar after another, as I have said, has already fallen
and others are falling—one luminous star after another has disappeared.
We have witnessed their departure with throbbing hearts and silent awe.
and now the brightest and steadiest of all the shining hosts of our moral sky
has silently and peacefully descended below the distant horizon, whither
all are tending, no more to take part in the busy scenes of life.
In the death of William Lloyd Garrison, we behold a great life ended, a
great purpose achieved, a great career beautifully finished, and a great
example of heroic endeavor nobly established. For our own good and the
good of those who come after us, we cannot let this event sink too deep into
our hearts, we cannot too often recur to this noble life and thrilling history,
or too closely copy this great example.
The world has seen many heroes, some who have founded empires,
some who have overthrown governments, some who have with their strong
arms and broad swords hewed their way to power, fame and fortune. There
have been great Bishops, great Kings, great Generals, and great Statesmen;
but these great ones for the most part owed their greatness to circumstances
apart from themselves. Our great Bishops have had great Churches behind
them, our great rulers, great nations behind them, our great Generals, great
armies behind them. Their light was brilliant but borrowed. It was not so
with the great man whose memory we celebrate to-night. He owed nothing
to his early surroundings. He was born to poverty, to labor and to hardship.
He was his own counsellor, his own guide and his own college. He stood
among the learned and great of his day by his own exertion. He moved not
with the tide, but against it. He rose not by the power of the Church or the
State, but in bold, inflexible and defiant opposition to the mighty power of
both. It was the glory of this man that he could stand alone with the truth,
and calmly await the result. He went forth a slender youth, as we all know,
without purse, without scrip, without friends and without fame, to battle
with a system of boundless wealth and power. He had faith in the simple
truth and faith in himself. He was unusually modest and retiring in his
disposition; but his zeal was like fire, and his courage like steel, and during
all his fifty years of service, in sunshine and storm, no doubt or fear as to
the final result, ever shook his manly breast or caused him to swerve an
inch from the right line of principle.
No wonder that in their moral blindness men called him a fanatic and a
madman, for against such overwhelming odds it was thought that nothing
but madness would venture to contend. But there was nothing of madness
in the composition of William Lloyd Garrison, or in his espousal of the
cause to which he gave his mind and heart. On the contrary he was among
the sanest of men. He had duly measured the mighty system of slavery, and
knew the ten thousand sources of influence by which it was sustained. He
knew how it had dictated the policy of political parties, controlled the
action of statesmen, wielded the power of the Government, dominated the
pulpit, chained and fettered the Christian Church, sheltered itself from
attack in the Bible; forced itself into the Constitution, molded the manners,
morals and religion of the times into its own image; and created conditions
in all directions, favorable to its own existence, and permanence; but above
all, he knew the terrible strength and vehemence of the contempt, hate and
scorn everywhere felt for the class whose cause he undertook to plead, and
knew moreover that the same malign spirit of hate would attach to him; but
none of these things moved him. He knew the immeasurable heat of the
furnace through which he would be required to pass, no man knew it better,
while no man could fear it less, or bear it with more equanimity and
unflinching fortitude.
Massachusetts is a great State, she has done many great things; she has
given to our country many scholars, and statesmen, many poets and philos-
ophers, many discoverers and inventors; but no son of hers has won for her
a more enduring honor, or for himself a more enduring fame than William
Lloyd Garrison. No one of her sons has stamped his convictions in lines so
clear, deep and inefiaceable into the very life and future of the Republic. Of
no man is it more true than of him—that being dead he yet speaketh.2Douglass slightly misquotes Heb. 11: 4. The
lessons he taught fifty years ago from his garret in Boston are only yet half
learned by the nation. His work will not stop at his grave. Our General has
fallen; but his army will march on. His words of wisdom, justice and truth.
will be echoed by the voices and votes of millions, till every jot and tittle of
all his prophecies shall be fulfilled.
Mr. President, this is not the time and the place for a critical and
accurate measurement of William Lloyd Garrison; but no friend of his has
need to fear the application to him of the severest test of honest and truthful
criticism. He himself courted such criticism. His was no cowardly jour-
nalism. He never refused to see, or allow his readers to see in the “,” the worst that was thought, felt and said of him. A candid examina-
tion of his character and his work in the world, may disclose some things
we would have had otherwise. Speaking for myself I must frankly say I
have sometimes thought him uncharitable to those who differed from him.
Honest himself, he could not always see how men could differ from him
and still be honest. To say this of him is simply to say that he was human.
and it may be added when he erred here he erred in the interest of truth. He
revolted at halfness, abhorred compromise, and demanded that men should
be either hot or cold.
This great quality of the man though sometimes in excess, is one
explanation of his wonderful and successful leadership. What it cost him in
breadth and numbers, it gained him in condensation and intensity. He held
his little hand well in hand all the time and close to his person, no leader
was ever more loved by the circle about him. Absolute in his faith, no sect
could proselyte him, inflexible in his principles, no party could use him,
content with the little circle about him, he did not mingle directly and
largely with the great masses of men. By one simple principle he tried all
men, all parties, and all sects. They that were not for him were against him.
What his name stood for at the beginning, it stands for now, and will so
stand forever.
It is said that the wicked shall not live out half their days. This is true in
more senses than one. “For the coward and small in soul scarce do live.”
Mr. Garrison lived out his whole existence. For to live is to battle—and he
battled from first to last. Although he had reached a good old age, time had
not dimmed his intellect, nor darkened his moral vision, nor quenched the
ardor of his genius.
His letter published three weeks before his death on the Exodus from
Mississippi and Louisiana,3Ill health made it impossible for William Lloyd Garrison to attend a public meeting in Boston's Faneuil Hall on 24 April 1879. He instead wrote a letter expressing sympathy with the gathering’s efforts to raise funds for destitute blacks emigrating from Mississippi and Louisiana to Kansas. Boston’s daily newspapers published Garrison's letter along with reports of the meeting. Other periodicals reprinted the letter following Garrison's death on 24 May 1879. Garrison to Robert Morris, 22 April 1879, in Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames, eds., , 6 vols. (Cambridge. Mass, 1971—81), 6 : 578-82. had in it all the energy and fire of his youth.
Men of three score and ten4Ps. 90: 10. are apt to live in the past. It was not so with
Mr. Garrison. He was during his latest years fully abreast with his times.
No event or circumstance bearing upon the cause of justice and humanity
escaped his intelligent observation. His letter written a few months ago
upon the Chinese question was a crowning utterance.5On 15 February 1879, Garrison wrote a public letter to the editor of the New York to protest a bill under debate in Congress that would have curtailed Chinese immigration into the United States. New York , 17 February 1879. It was in harmony
with the guiding sentiment of his life. “My country is the world, and all
mankind are my countrymen.”6Douglass paraphrases the motto on the masthead of Garrison's : “Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.” , 15 December 1837. With him it was not race or color but
humanity.
Mr. President, our country is again in trouble. The ship of State is again
at sea. Heavy billows are surging against her sides. She trembles and
plunges, and plunges and trembles again. Every timber in her vast hull is
made to feel the heavy strain. A spirit of evil has been revived which we had
fondly hoped was laid forever. Doctrines are proclaimed, claims are as-
serted and pretensions set up, which were, as we thought, all extinguished
by the iron logic of cannon balls. I have great faith sir, that the nation will
deal with this new phase of affairs wisely, vigorously and successfully; but
in this conflict between the semi-barbarous past, and the higher civilization
which has logically and legally taken its place in this second battle for
liberty and nation we shall sorely miss the mind and voice of William Lloyd
Garrison. Firm and fearless, clear sighted and strong, quick to discern the
right, eloquent and able to defend it, he would in this, as in other trial hours
prove a fountain of light, and a tower of strength. Mr. President, in the first
year of my freedom while residing in the City of New Bedford, Mas-
sachusetts, it was my good fortune to see and hear, for the first time the man
who was then and will ever be regarded as the chief apostle of the immedi-
ate and unconditional emancipation of all the slaves in America. I was only
a few months from the house of bondage. I never shall forget the feelings
with which I went to hear this man. It was more than forty years ago, it was
in old Liberty Hall, it was a large, but dilapidated old place. Its wood work
was marred and defaced, its doors off hinges, and its windows broken by
stones and other missiles thrown to break up abolition meetings, for such
meetings then were like free meetings in the South outside of protection.
Upon first blush I saw as I sat in the gallery of this old Hall that the hour and
the man were well met and well united. In him there was no contradiction
between the speech and the speaker. This man and his cause were one. But
what a countenance was there! what firmness and benignity, what evenness
of temper, what serenity of mind, what sweetness of spirit, what sublime
intelligence were written as by the pen of an angel on that countenance! a
million of human faces might be searched without finding one like his, at
least so it then seemed to me. In him I saw the resurrection and life of the
dead and buried h0pe of my long enslaved people. As I now remember his
speaking he was not as the phrase goes, an orator. There were no striking
gestures, no fine flow of words, no dazzling rhetoric and no startling
emphasis. His power as a speaker was the power which belongs only to
manly character, earnest conviction, and high moral purpose. He complied
with Emerson’s7Ralph Waldo Emerson. idea of a true reformer. It was not the utterance, but the
man behind it that gave dignity, weight and effect to his speech. Though he
was quite young at the time I first saw him, Mr. Garrison was even then a
venerable looking man. His part in the battle of life had been at the front.
The serious work he had been called to perform had left its tracery upon his
matured features. Popular displeasure, and bitter persecution had poured
upon him their fiercest wrath. Two of the slave States had offered rewards
for his head. He had already become a tempting target for the assassin’s
bullet. A halter had been upon his neck, and the mad cry of hang him! hang
him! had sounded in his ears. He had felt the damp walls of more than one
prison, and had withstood the peltings of many furious mobs.
He had been driven from the doors of the Church he loved, and had
been made to feel the keen cutting edge of social ostracism. He had been
taunted, ridiculed, caricatured, misrepresented and denounced by the vul-
gar, and treated with contempt and scorn by the rich and great. Yet there he
stood, without bitterness, without hate, without violence in speech or act,
in thought or wish. Self poised, erect and serene. He neither bewailed his
hardships nor exulted over his triumphs. His one single purpose was to
excite sympathy for the enslaved, and make converts to the doctrine that
slavery was a sin against God and man, and ought to be immediately
abolished.
Now that this man has filled up the measure of his years, now that the
leaf has fallen to the ground as all leaves must fall, let us guard his memory
as a precious inheritance, let us teach our children the story of his life, let us
try to imitate his virtues, and endeavor as he did to leave the world freer,
nobler, and better than we found it.