The letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 6: To Rouse the Slumbering Land, 1868-1879 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS75 and extended these earlier conclusions. Viewed in a positive light, from a personal perspective, the publication of Cox's book has placed me at complete liberty to give absolute priority to other scholarly interests. Richard O. Curry University of Connecticut The letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. 6: To Rouse the Slumbering Land, 1868-1879. Edited by Walter Merrill and Louis Ruchames. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. Pp. 672. $45.00.) Writing to a friend in 1874, William Lloyd Garrison sadly admitted his new role in American affairs: "I am forced to be rather a looker-on than an actor in thestruggles of the times" (p. 344) . This volume of letters provides continual evidence that Garrison felt trapped—trapped by old age, by an invalid wife, indeed even by the end of the antislavery crusade. Yet in spite of his infirmities and troubles, Garrison found, in his last years, ample chance to comment and to evaluate. He even engaged in a controversy or two. Always a mixture of the conservative moralizer and the radical reformer , Garrison could, in his early career, unite both sides into a complex Christian anarchism. Yet, in his last years, he tended to choose the former as his most regularly used voice. His passionate support for Republican interests forced him to wink at corruption, to overstate Republican aid to southern blacks, only to feel betrayed by the Hayes stand on the South. Garrison's faith that "the cause of civilization is preeminently indebted for its advancement to the inventive faculty and the hand of industry" (p. 103) allowed him to reach the conclusion that the problems of workers lay "in sensual indulgence, in a licentious perversion of liberty, in the prevalence of liberty, and in whatever tends to the demoralization of the people" (p. 387). The more familiar radical does occasionally emerge in these letters. Garrison liked to revive his most hyperbolic style when discussing the evil located in the former slaveholding states. So too, his support for women's rights grew during his final decade; he came alive when castigating those fellow advocates who failed to meet his tests of sincerity or purity. The letters also reveal that Garrison's thought on the issues of the day occupied increasingly less of his time as a great deal else demanded his attention. These letters provide wonderful glimpses of Garrison's devotion to family, including an especially delightful series to his grandchildren . His wife, severely crippled after a stroke in 1863, received substantial doses of his loving attention; after her death, herecounted to one of his sons, "I wander from room to room in a state of bewilderment " (p. 400). Garrison took a deep interest in the affairs of his children, deriving pleasure from news of grandchildren, work, and 76CIVIL WAR HISTORY travels. The picture which emerges, then, is of a family life full of real warmth and affection, easily scorned as conventional, yet nevertheless inescapably touching. Beyond these many elements of the letters, one other aspect dominates : they of course reflect Garrison's view of the world from the vantage point of old age. He took numerous opportunities to sum up, to find some general meaning in his life's events, especially his role in "our old but sublime conflict" (p. 266). He hoped he might produce his own line of reformers. At the birth of a fourth grandchild, he proclaimed: "The adversary may take warning that there is to be warm work in the field of moral conflict, in due time" (p. 67). Garrison regularly and vigorously sought to settle old grudges and vindicate himself and his friends. Indeed, this aspect of these letters is so rich that historians of American reform movements might consider this final part of reformers' lives with some of the thoughtfulness that has recently gone into the study of their childhoods. Walter Merrill and the late Louis Ruchames have produced an excellent final volume, full of wonderfully useful notes and an introduction particularly valuable for students of the history of the family. A few minor complaints should not be thought to take anything away from this accomplishment. Footnotes on John Calvin, Martin Luther, and other well-known figures...