Before the Declaration of Independence, three hundred thousand slaves had been brought to this country. Some of the colonists remonstrated, but the traffic was not stopped till 1808. The Quakers were opposed to human bondage from the first, and decided, in 1780, to free all their slaves. Vermont had freed hers three years previously, and other Northern States soon followed. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and others were outspoken against the sin; but it continued to increase till, in 1810, we had over a million slaves.
Five years before this time, in a plain, wooden house in Newburyport, Mass., a boy was born who was to electrify America, and the world even, on this great subject. William Lloyd Garrison's father was a sea-captain, a man who loved books and had some literary ambition; the mother was a noble woman, deeply religious, willing to bear all and brave all for conscience' sake, and fearless in the path of duty. She early taught her boy to hate oppression of every kind, and to stand everywhere for the right. Very poor, there was no chance for William, either in school or college. When he was seven, his mother, having found work for herself as a nurse for the sick, placed the child with a deacon of the town, where he learned to split wood and other useful things. At nine, the careful mother put him to the shoemaking trade, though he was scarcely large enough to hold the lap-stone. He was not happy here, longing for something that made him think.
Perhaps he would like to build tables and chairs better, so he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; but here he was no more satisfied than with the monotony of sewing leather. At his own request, the dealer cancelled the agreement, and the boy found a place to set type on the Newburyport "Herald." At last he had obtained the work he loved. He would some day own a paper, he thought, and write articles for it. Ah! how often poor boys and rich build air-castles which tumble to the ground. It is well that we build them, for life soon becomes prosaic enough to the happiest of us.
At sixteen he wrote an article for the "Herald," signing it "An Old Bachelor." Imagine his surprise and delight when he saw it really in print! Meantime his mother, who was six hundred miles away, wrote him devoted letters, ever encouraging and stimulating him to be upright and temperate. A year later she died, and William was left to fight his battles alone. He missed the letters,--missed having some one to whom he could tell a boy's hopes and fears and temptations. That boy is especially blest who has a mother to whom he can confide everything; such a boy usually has a splendid future, because by her wisdom and advice he becomes well fitted for life, making no foolish experiments.