Apr 20, 2009
Video Blog: The Liberator
This was one of the first songs written for the “Boston” record, and it’s still one of my personal favorites. The Liberator was an abolitionist newspaper from the mid-1800s published by a man named William Lloyd Garrison, who was himself a prominent abolitionist and activist. Published during the years leading up to the American Civil War, The Liberator grew in circulation and popularity and gave a voice to those who some wanted to keep silent, at a time when slavery still plagued this country and a black man couldn’t even cast a vote. That said, it was especially cool to get to play this song at a benefit show for the Artist Mentorship Program on November 7th of last year – 3 days after a black man was elected President of the United States. It wasn’t about politics – it was about an incredible moment in the history of this country – and it was about time. I think William Lloyd Garrison would have loved that moment, too.
“Liberator” is on our current EP, “New England” (available over on the right), and will be on our new album, “The King Can Drink the Harbor Dry”, due out this summer. You can also find it on our Myspace and Facebook pages – stop by and say hi!
Have a great week and if you live on the west coast, check those tour dates…we may be headed to a town near you -
Johnny
[...] our friend Ryan for the camera work on these… (in case you missed it, free to check out the Liberator video blog here). Both songs will be on our upcoming album, “The King Can Drink the Harbor Dry“, [...]
I love this song, and William Lloyd Garrison, the subject of it. About Garrison, Murray Rothbard wrote in his essay “Why be a libertarian?”(1974):
In framing principle, it is of the utmost importance not to mix in strategic estimates with the forging of desired goals. First, goals must be formulated, which, in this case, would be the instant abolition of slavery or whatever other statist oppression we are considering. And we must first frame these goals without considering the probability of attaining them. The libertarian goals are “realistic” in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on their desirability, and that, if achieved, they would bring about a far better world. The “realism” of the goal can only be challenged by a critique of the goal itself, not in the problem of how to attain it. Then, after we have decided on the goal, we face the entirely separate strategic question of how to attain that goal as rapidly as possible, how to build a movement to attain it, etc.
Thus, William Lloyd Garrison was not being “unrealistic” when, in the 1830s, he raised the glorious standard of immediate emancipation of the slaves. His goal was the proper one, and his strategic realism came in the fact that he did not expect his goal to be quickly reached. Or, as Garrison himself distinguished:
“Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas, be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend.”
Actually, in the realm of the strategic, raising the banner of pure and radical principle is generally the fastest way of arriving at radical goals. For if the pure goal is never brought to the fore, there will never be any momentum developed for driving toward it. Slavery would never have been abolished at all if the abolitionists had not raised the hue and cry thirty years earlier; and, as things came to pass, the abolition was at virtually a single blow rather than gradual or compensated.[
But above and beyond the requirements of strategy lie the commands of justice. In his famous editorial that launched The Liberator at the beginning of 1831, William Lloyd Garrison repented his previous adoption of the doctrine of gradual abolition:
“I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren, the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity.”
Upon being reproached for the habitual severity and heat of his language, Garrison retorted: “I have need to be all on fire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.”
It is this spirit that must mark the man truly dedicated to the cause of liberty.