Sacrifices of Early Anti-slavery Reformers by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 12, 1874

Sacrifices of Early Anti-slavery Reformers.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

I HAVE just been reading a series of articles on the sacrifices made and persecution endured by the first leaders in the anti-slavery movement. Now that the battle is over and the victory won and the leaders in it have become the heroes of their age, it is hard to realize that they were opposed, hated, and persecuted, by all classes, especially by ministers and churches, as they were. Mr. Garrison was cast into prison for speaking against slavery. In Boston he tried in vain to obtain a church in which to lecture against slavery. Ministers and churches opposed him. An infidel club finally consented to let him occupy their hall.

Of his sacrifices and struggles in starting a paper, the writer says:—

“It was no idle or empty boast on the part of the two young printers of The Liberator that they would print it as long as they could ‘subsist on bread and water, or their hands obtain employment.’ After the first three weeks, they were able to obtain, on credit, of the well-known type-founders, Greeley and Willis, a small font of second-hand type and a hand press. They rented a dingy office in the upper story of the old Merchants’ Hall, in Congress Street, where for a long time they did all the type-setting, press-work, mailing, etc., of the paper; Mr. Garrison doing most of his editorial work in the night, after laboring all day at case or press, and often putting his editorials in type without committing them to paper. The office, for at least a year and a half, was their home as well as their work-shop. Too poor to pay for better lodgings, they made their bed on the floor and lived upon bread and milk, cakes and fruit, obtained from a baker’s shop on the opposite side of the street, and a cake shop in the basement. I visited them frequently in these humble quarters, which they shared with a friendly cat that protected them from the depredations of mice.”

This shows the spirit of a true reformer and a moral hero. It reminds us of the way in which our own dear paper was started. May it encourage us to push on the good cause, hoping on till victory shall turn on our side, as it surely will in the end, not by the bringing over of the masses to our views, but by the appearing of Him who is soon coming for the deliverance of his people, and the vindication of his downtrodden truth.

D. M. CANRIGHT.