Civil Disobedience and The Liberator Book

In these essays, Wendy McElroy provides a concise but excellent commentary on these important works of political thought (in this series edited by George H. Smith).[return][return]"I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt." -- William Lloyd Garrison[return][return]"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."[return][return]So wrote Garrison in the inaugural issue of The Liberator. Clearly, this was a man who was not afraid to speak his mind, even in criticizing his fellow abolitionists when he felt they compromised the cause: "The public shall not be imposed upon and men and things shall be called by their true names. I retract nothing. I blot out nothing. My language is exactly such as suits me. It will displease many I know. To displease them is my intention."[return][return]And he was subject to some harsh criticism by them in turn. In a piece entitled "How to Make a Pope", for example, William Goodell wrote of him, "Take an ardent and strong-minded leader in a good but hated cause, place him in the fires of persecution, and surround him with devoted and generous friends. Just in proportion to the frequency of his proving himself in the right, when almost everybody said he was wrong, will the conviction fasten upon his admirers that he is infallible. Almost of necessity, the same idea will insinuate itself imperceptibly yet firmly into his bosom. He soon shows that he expects to be implicitly followed, and his expectations realized."[return][return]At the same time, however, he recognized the necessity of working with such people to achieve common goals. In telling the story of The Liberator, McElroy tells the story of Garrison the man and of the abolitionist movement.[return][return]---[return][return]"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."[return][return]So concluded Henry David Thoreau in his seminal essay, "Civil Disobedience". McElroy's treatment places the work in the broader context of Thoreau's life and thought, showing how he did not think civil disobedience was a duty (as the essay is sometimes misleadingly titled)---that one's primary concern should be to live his own life and pursue his own values---but that one does have a duty not to support evil in any way.