Henry Highland Garnet

Henry Highland Garnet (December 23, 1815 – February 13, 1882) was an African-American abolitionist, minister, educator and orator. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family, he grew up in New York City. He was educated at the African Free School and other institutions, and became an advocate of militant abolitionism. He became a minister and based his drive for abolitionism in religion.

Garnet was a prominent member of the movement that led beyond moral suasion toward more political action. Renowned for his skills as a public speaker, he urged black Americans to take action and claim their own destinies. For a period, he supported emigration of American free blacks to Mexico, Liberia, or the West Indies, but the American Civil War ended that effort. In 1841 he married abolitionist Julia Williams and they had a family. Stella (Mary Jane) Weems, a runaway slave from Maryland, lived with the Garnets. She may have been adopted by the Garnets or worked as a governess for them. When Henry would preach against slavery he would bring up Stella. Stella would talk about her own experiences and about her family still enslaved in Maryland. While on a trip preaching in England Garnet was hired by a Scottish church as a missionary. They moved to Jamaica in 1852. However, they were not there long when the family came down with yellow fever. Stella died and was buried there. Garnet and his family, though sickened, boarded a ship for America. After the war, the couple worked in Washington, DC.

On Sunday, February 12, 1865, he delivered a sermon in the U.S. House of Representatives, "the first colored man who has on any occasion spoken in our National Capital", on the occasion of Congress's passage on January 31 of the Thirteenth Amendment, ending slavery.

Early life and education

Henry Garnet was born into slavery in Chesterville (then New Market), Kent County, Maryland, on December 23, 1815. " s grandfather was an African chief and warrior, and in a tribal fight he was captured and sold to slave-traders who brought him to this continent where he was owned by Colonel William Spencer." According to James McCune Smith, Garnet's father was George Trusty and his enslaved mother was "a woman of extraordinary energy." In 1824, the family, which included a total of 11 members, secured permission to attend a funeral, and from there they all escaped in a covered wagon, via Wilmington, Delaware, where they were helped by the Quaker and Underground Railroad stationmaster Thomas Garrett.

When Garnet was ten years old, his family reunited and moved to New York City, where from 1826 through 1831, Garnet attended the African Free School. His education there was interrupted in 1828 when Garnet had to find employment, twice making the sea route to Cuba as a cabin boy and once as a cook and steward on a schooner running between New York City and Alexandria, Virginia. It was when he returned from the latter voyage in 1829 that he found that his family had been located by slave hunters. His sister, Eliza (born Mary), was arrested, but was able to free herself by proving residence in the free state of New York. His father jumped off of the roof of a two-story building to escape the slave catchers. Garnet, likely with his mother in mind, who had escaped by running to a corner store, took a knife and walked onto Broadway, waiting to be found and confronted by the slave catchers. His friends found him instead and took him out of the city to Jericho, Long Island, where he stayed under the protection of Quaker Thomas Willis. He then became an indentured servant to Captain Epenetus Smith of Smithtown, Long Island, but suffered an injury to his right leg and managed to be released from his indentures later in 1829, whereupon he returned to the African Free School for a year.

While in school, Garnet began his career in abolitionism. His classmates at the African Free School included Charles L. Reason, George T. Downing, and Ira Aldridge. From 1831, he continued his studies at the Phoenix High School for Colored Youth. While a student there he began to attend a Sunday school at the First Colored Presbyterian Church and was baptized as a Christian by Reverend Theodore Sedgwick Wright, with whom he was friends for the remainder of Wright's life.

In 1834, Garnet, William H. Day, and David Ruggles established the all-male Garrison Literary and Benevolent Association; "Garrison" is a reference to the famous abolitionist Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and indicates the character of the association. It garnered mass support among whites, but the club ultimately had to move due to racist feelings.

In 1835, Garnet enrolled at the new Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, but anti-abolitionists soon destroyed the school building and forced the Negro students out of town. He completed his education at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, which had recently begun admitting all races. Here he was acclaimed for his wit, brilliance, and rhetorical skills. The year after graduation in 1839, he injured his knee playing sports. It never recovered, and his lower leg had to be amputated in 1840 or 1841.

Julia Williams

In 1841, Garnet married Julia Williams, whom he had met as a fellow student at the Noyes Academy. She had also completed her education at the Oneida Institute. Together they had three children, only one of whom survived to adulthood.

Ministry

In 1839, Garnet moved with his family to Troy, New York, where he taught school and studied theology. In 1842, Garnet became pastor of the Liberty Street Presbyterian church, a position he held for six years. With his friend William G. Allen, also an Oneida alumnus, he published the ''National Watchman'', an abolitionist newspaper. Closely identifying with the church, Garnet supported the temperance movement and became a strong advocate of political antislavery. ^{What is political antislavery?}

Garnet sheltered fugitive slaves in his Liberty Street church, and philanthropist Gerrit Smith announced in his church his plan for giving grants of land to disenfranchised Black men (see Timbuctoo, New York).

He later returned to New York City, where he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and frequently spoke at abolitionist conferences. One of his most famous speeches, "Call to Rebellion," was delivered to the 1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens, in Buffalo, New York. "Upon the conclusion of the Negro national convention of 1843, Garnet led a state convention of Negroes assembled in Rochester."

These conventions by black activists were called to work for abolition and equal rights. Garnet said that slaves should act for themselves to achieve total emancipation. He promoted an armed rebellion as the most effective way to end slavery. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, along with many other abolitionists both black and white, thought Garnet's ideas were too radical and could damage the cause by arousing too much fear and resistance among whites.

In 1848 Garnet relocated from Troy to Peterboro, New York, home of the great abolition activist Gerrit Smith. Garnet supported Smith's Liberty Party, a party of reform that was eventually absorbed into the Republican Party.

Anti-slavery role

Women's participation in the abolitionist movement was controversial and resulted in a split in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, "and a group of Black ministers, including Henry Highland Garnet" founded the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFAS). It "was committed to political abolitionism and to male leadership at the top levels."

By 1849, Garnet began to support emigration of blacks to Mexico, Liberia, or Haiti, where he thought they would have more opportunities. In support of this, he founded the African Civilization Society. Similar to the British African Aid Society, it sought to establish a West African colony in Yorubaland (part of present-day Nigeria). Garnet advocated a kind of Black nationalism in the United States, which included establishing Black colonies in the sparsely-inhabited Western territories. Other prominent members of this movement included minister Daniel Payne, J. Sella Martin

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