William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison (Вильям Ллойд Гаррисон; 1805–1879) was an American journalist who campaigned for the freeing of the slaves.¹

In The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Garrison’s 1838 declaration is the first document quoted in The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Царство божие внутри вас, 1890–93). His son wrote to Tolstoy that he had found in What I Believe thoughts like those his father had expressed in 1838, and sent him the declaration (I.10).² Tolstoy tells how it arose: in a peace society that existed in America in 1838, Garrison concluded that universal peace could rest only on open acknowledgement of the commandment of non-resistance to evil by violence (Matt. 5:39) in its full meaning, “as understood by the Quakers, with whom Garrison happened to be on friendly relations”. He drew up a declaration, and many members signed it (I.11).³ Tolstoy gives it in full (I.12–26).

He then tells what became of it. The society and its journal did not last; most of Garrison’s fellow workers for the freeing of the slaves feared the radical programme would keep people from the practical work and gave up the principle (I.27–28). The declaration, “so powerful and eloquent an expression of a confession of faith”, was unknown in Europe and hardly known even in America (I.29).⁴ The same silence fell on Adin Ballou (I.30). Garrison’s work convinced Tolstoy, even more than his letters from the Quakers, that the departure from Christ’s law had long been seen; his fate, and still more Ballou’s, convinced him of “a kind of tacit but steadfast conspiracy of silence” about all such efforts (I.87).⁵

The Declaration of Sentiments

Tolstoy’s Russian heads it «Провозглашение» (“proclamation”). The PSS commentary gives its English title, Declaration of Sentiments.⁶ Tolstoy translated it himself and corrected his translation many times in the drafts.⁷

The 1838 text

The convention met in Boston on 18–20 September 1838. On the Thursday afternoon, 20 September, Garrison, as chairman of the committee, reported the declaration, and after discussion it was adopted by 27 votes to 5.¹⁹ The Liberator printed it on 28 September 1838, under the heading “Declaration of Sentiments adopted by the Peace Convention, held in Boston, September 18, 19, & 20, 1838”. The page, p. 154, is the nearest thing to a facsimile found so far: archive.org scan of The Liberator, vol. 8, no. 39. The declaration fills the two right-hand columns; the convention’s proceedings, its roll and the constitution of the New-England Non-Resistance Society fill the rest of the page.

The original

The convention voted that the declaration be “engrossed upon parchment”, and that all members, “whether present or absent, have liberty to sign it”; William Bassett was to see to it.²⁰ Where that parchment is today has not been found. A large lithographed broadside of 1838 (T. Moore’s Lithography, Boston, about 90 × 60 cm) reproduces the text with 44 facsimile signatures, 20 of them women’s. A bookseller’s description gives library copies at the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New York Public Library, Duke and Swarthmore. That list is from the bookseller, not checked in the libraries’ own catalogues, and no digitized copy of the broadside has been found.

What Tolstoy left out

Set against the 1838 text, Tolstoy’s version (I.12–26) is shortened throughout. Among the passages he omits:

• the opening words, “Assembled in Convention, from various sections of the American Union, for the promotion of peace on earth and good will among men”;
• “neither can we oppose any such government by a resort to physical force”;
• the kingdom “not of this world”, “which has no State lines, no national partitions, and no geographical boundaries; in which there is no distinction of rank, or division of caste, or inequality of sex”;
• the Prince of Peace, “who came not to destroy, but to save, even the worst of enemies” (Garnett marks this cut with “....”);
• the dagger and pistol of one man set against the cannon and bombshells of nations;
• the pillory and the gallows (the Russian and Garnett have “exile or execute” instead), and “Vengeance is mine—I will repay, saith the Lord”;
• the sentence that names “the cause of Temperance and of Abolition” as the example the society would follow;
• “the ungodly and violent” and “spiritual wickedness in high places” among those who may combine to crush them, and “If we suffer with him, we know that we shall reign with him”;
• at the end, “in solemn testimony of our faith in their divine origin” and “giving ourselves no anxiety as to what may befal us”.

Tolstoy’s own changes run the other way in places: “our fundamental principle of not opposing evil by evil” (I.22) is his, not Garrison’s.

Garnett’s English

Garnett did not simply translate Tolstoy’s Russian. Where Tolstoy kept a sentence of Garrison’s, she gives Garrison’s own English; where he shortened or changed it, she translates the Russian. So the Russian reads «Мы не проповедуем революционного учения. Дух революционного учения есть дух мести, насилия и убийства» (“We do not preach a revolutionary doctrine. The spirit of the revolutionary doctrine is the spirit of revenge, violence and murder”), and Garnett restores Garrison’s “We advocate no Jacobinical doctrines. The spirit of Jacobinism is the spirit of retaliation, violence, and murder” (I.22).⁸ But in the same paragraph her “our fundamental principle of not opposing evil by evil” follows the Russian, as do “exile or execute” (I.20) and “the impartial Author of our existence”, where Garrison has “Author of human freedom and equality” (I.16). The reader text is therefore a mix of two authors’ English and one translator’s.

The capitals in “the Lord Almighty”, “Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords” and “the Son of God” are Garrison’s: the 1838 printing sets them in capitals and small capitals.

Hedberg’s Swedish

Walborg Hedberg’s Swedish translation of 1894 (Frälsningen finnes hos dig själf) does not leave the declaration out. It gives the whole of Tolstoy’s version, pp. 3–8, headed “Proklamation af de trossatser, som antagits af föreningen för den allmänna fredens upprättande bland människorna. Boston, 1838.” It follows Tolstoy, not Garrison: “Vi predika ingen upprorisk lära” (“We preach no rebellious doctrine”), with no Jacobins. At the end, where the Russian has «мы передаем души свои богу» (“we commit our souls to God”, I.25), Hedberg has “Sålunda öfverlämna vi våra vapen åt Gud” (“Thus we surrender our weapons to God”). That looks like French âmes (“souls”) misread as armes (“weapons”), which, with her title (Le salut est en vous was the French title of 1893), suggests she translated from the French. The National Library of Sweden has a free digital copy.

The Non-resistant

After the declaration Garrison founded a society of non-resistance and a journal, the Non-resistant («Непротивляющийся»), “in which the doctrine of non-resistance was advocated in its full significance and in all its consequences, as it had been expounded in the declaration” (I.27).⁹ Society and journal were short-lived: most of his fellow workers in the anti-slavery cause feared that “the too radical programme of the journal” would keep people away from the practical work of freeing the slaves, gave up the principle, and both ceased to exist (I.28).¹⁰ Tolstoy took this from the life of Garrison written by his sons.¹¹

The correspondence with his sons

Wendell Phillips Garrison’s first letter is lost. Tolstoy’s draft reply, written between March and 15 April 1886, survives. The declaration, he wrote, “is truly an era in the history of mankind”; it expresses the sentiments “which we profess now and which all people will profess”, because they express “the eternal law of God for men, revealed by Christ”.¹² He asked two questions: was there a short life of Garrison, and did the non-resistance society still exist? The second question, he added, was a strange one to ask, since the non-resistance society “is properly the one church, which began with Christ and can never cease”.¹³ The sons sent a short life, two photographs, and later their life of their father in several volumes (New York, 1885–89).¹⁴ In chapter I Tolstoy reports the son’s answer to the second question: as far as he knew the society had broken up and there were no followers. Ballou was living at Hopedale at the time (I.30).

Drafts of the book call Garrison “one of the greatest men not only of America but of the whole world”; the final text does not keep it.¹⁵

The 1903 preface

In 1903 Tolstoy wrote a preface to the English life of Garrison compiled by Vladimir Chertkov and F. Holah. Reading it, he says, he lived again “my spring of awakening to true life”, and recalled the spiritual joy of learning twenty years earlier that the law of non-resistance had been proclaimed by Garrison and made the basis of his practical work for freeing the slaves (“I learned of Ballou later”). That joy came with bewilderment: how could this truth, made clear by Garrison fifty years before, “be so hushed up” that he had had to state it as something new?¹⁶

The preface reads Garrison’s stand this way: the abolitionists argued that slavery was unlawful, unprofitable and cruel, and its defenders answered with the dangers of freeing the slaves; neither side convinced the other. Garrison, seeing negro slavery as only one case of universal violence, put forward a general principle that could not be denied: that no one has the right, on any pretext, to use violence on his fellows.¹⁷

Open questions

• The parchment. Where the signed parchment of 1838 is kept, if it survives, is not found. Garrison’s papers at the Boston Public Library would be the first place to ask.
• Ballou’s signature. The roll of the convention in The Liberator lists “Adin Ballou” of Mendon among the members, but he is not in the recorded vote of 27 to 5. The parchment was open to members who signed later, so Tolstoy’s draft, which says Ballou signed, may still be right. The broadside’s facsimile signatures would settle it.
• Hedberg’s source. Checking her declaration against Le salut est en vous (Paris, 1893) would confirm whether she worked from the French.
• The 1838 text used here is the archive.org scan of The Liberator, read through its machine-read text, and a modern edited transcription (nonresistance.org, archive.org item DeclarationOfSentiments). Quotations above were checked against the scan where its text was legible.
• Which society? The PSS commentary says Garrison founded an anti-slavery society in Philadelphia and wrote the declaration on its behalf.⁶ The Liberator settles the 1838 declaration as the Boston Peace Convention’s, as Tolstoy and Garnett have it (I.12–13). An earlier anti-slavery declaration was made in Philadelphia in 1833, which suggests the commentary has merged the two; that is general knowledge, not checked against a source here.
• One son or several. The Russian says the biography was «составленной его сыновьями» (“compiled by his sons”, I.27); Garnett has “the work of his son”. In I.30 both have the son alone.
• The 1885–86 date. The commentary dates Wendell Garrison’s letter to March 1886, not 1885 as Tolstoy’s drafts have it.¹⁸

Dive provenance

• 1890-1893-the-kingdom-of-god-is-within-you: the text of chapter I (PSS 28:3–8), N. K. Gudzy’s history of the writing (PSS 28:333–371), the letter to Wendell Garrison (PSS 63, No. 503) and the 1903 preface (PSS 36:95–99). Johan’s reader notes of 12 October 2026 asked for this page and for the Non-resistant section, and for the declaration research: The Liberator, 28 September 1838, and Hedberg’s Swedish translation (Stockholm, 1894).