The Complexities of Factionalism: Letters of Elizur Wright, Jr. on the Abolitionist Schism, 1837-1840

THE COMPLEXITIES OF FACTIONALISM: LETTERS OF ELIZUR WRIGHT, JR. ON THE ABOLITIONIST SCHISM, 1837-1840 Edited by Richard O. Curry Lawrence B. Goodheart Antislavery unity was shattered by the abolitionist schism of 1837 to 1840. That Garrison's views on politics, women's rights, perfectionism and nonresistance anarchism generated bitter controversy is well known. What historians have not fully appreciated is that anti-Garrisonian abolitionistswere so divided in outlook thatby 1839 the splitin abolitionist ranks was no longer dichotomous, but a tripartite fissure consisting of the Garrisonians and two antagonistic anti-Garrisonian factions: the religiouslyorthodox evangelical abolitionists and the third party political abolitionists.1 The letters of Elizur Wright, Jr. (published below) are critically important in bringingclarityto thecomplexities offaction- ' It is not valid to argue that historians such as Gilbert H. Barnes, Dwight L. Dumond, Louis Filler, John L. Thomas, Walter M. Merrill, Aileen S. Kraditor, Lewis Perry, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and James B. Stewart fail to recognize the existence of three abolitionist factions in their highly disparate analyses of the abolitionist schism. It cannot be too strongly stated, however, that their views on factionalism are characterized by such a strong Garrisonian or anti-Garrisonian emphasis that their interpretations do not fully explain the origins, nature, and significance ofthe tripartitesplit. See Barnes, TheAntislavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (1933; reprint ed.. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), 161-70; Dumond,Antishvery: The CrusadeforFreedom inAmerica (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, 1961), 282-97; Filler, The Crusade against Slavery, 1830-1860 (New York: Harper and Row, I960), 130-36, 150-53; Merrill, Against Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Carrison (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963), 141-60; Thomas, The Liberator. William Lloyd Garrison, A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1963), 256-93; Kraditor, "An Interpretation of Factionalism in the Abolitionist Movement," in Richard O. Curry, ed., The Abolitionists (Hinsdale, 111.: Dryden Press, 1973), 76-83, and Means andEndsin AmericanAbolitionism: Garrison andHis Critics on Strategy and Tactics , 1834-1850 (New York: Pantheon, 1967), passim; Wyatt-Brown, "William LloydGarrison and Anti-Slavery Unity: A Reappraisal," Civil WarHistory 13 (1967): 5-24, and Lewis TappanandtheEvangelicalWaragainst Sioueri/ (Cleveland: CaseWestern Reserve Univ. Press, 1969), 185-204; Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antishvery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973), 158-87; Stewart, "The Aims and Impact of Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1840-1860," Civil War History 15 (1969): 197-209; "Peaceful Hopes and Violent Experience: The Evolution ofReformingand Radical Abolitionism, 1831-1837," Civil War History 17 (1971): 293-309; and Holy Warriors: The AbolitionistsandAmerican Slavery (New York: Hill and Wane, 1976), 89-96. Ronald C. Walters's TheAntislaveryAppeal: AmericanAbolitionism after1830 (Baltimore: Johns 246civil war history alism precisely because they delineatein unmistakable terms the origins, evolution, and significance of three distinct world views which not only made compromise among abolitionists impossible but the creation of three warring factions inevitable.2 The origins of this tripartite fissure date back to the summer of 1837 when a succession of clerical appeals attacked Garrison's views. Prominent antislavery ministers in Massachusetts strongly impugned Garrison 's recent espousal of nonresistant anarchism, a radical pietism that rejected the use of physical force in human relationships, stressed the potential for individual spiritual perfection on earth, and pledged sole allegiance to the moral government of God. His "breach" ofsexual decorum in encouraging Sarah and Angelina Grimké to give antislavery lectures to mixed audiences of men and women during the summer of 1837 further alarmed the socially conservative and religiously orthodox among the abolitionist fold. As the schism evolved, Wright became a leading opponent of Garrison 's advocacy of issues he considered extraneous to the abolitionist cause. He also vehemently disagreed with the obsessive opposition by the religiously orthodox anti-Garrisonians to an expanded role for women in the movement. "I cannot but regard," he wrote Garrison, "the Boston controversy as wrong, wrong, wrong, on both sides."3 Wright blamed both Garrison and the clerics for the fraticidal invective that threatened to disrupt the tenuous solidarity of the antislavery effort which Wright had labored to maintain as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Wright's anti-Garrisonian and anticlerical views are bluntly stated in letters to Garrison and to the...