Henry Highland Garnet

Henry Highland Garnet (December 23, 1815 – February 13, 1882) was an American abolitionist, minister, educator, orator, and diplomat. Having escaped as a child from slavery in Maryland with his family,

In 1841, Garnet married abolitionist Julia Ward Williams and they had three children. Stella (Mary Jane) Weems, a runaway slave from Maryland, lived with the Garnets. She was likely adopted by them and employed as their governess. When Henry preached against slavery, he brought her up to talk about her own experiences and about her family still enslaved in Maryland.

In 1852, Garnet became a missionary with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He traveled to Jamaica with his family until 1855, when he returned to the United States due to health concerns.

On Sunday, February 12, 1865, he delivered a sermon in the U.S. House of Representatives while it was not in session, becoming the first African American to speak in that chamber. His sermon was given on the occasion of Congress' passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and the end of slavery.

Biography

Early life and education

thumb|Lithograph of [[African Free School which Garnet attended]]

Henry Garnet was born into slavery in Chesterville (then New Market), Kent County, Maryland, on December 23, 1815. "[H]is 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, traveling twice to Cuba as a cabin boy, 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 that 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 reform party 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."

On August 17, 1843, at the 1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens in Buffalo, New York, Garnet proposed that the meeting issue an address directly to enslaved people in the South. In his address, he advocated for a "general strike" among enslaved people, advocating for rebellion against their masters by refusing to partake in work until freedom from slavery and compensation for their labor had been granted.

Stanley Harrold describes a split between ideological factions within the Liberty Party, including those who supported Smith and Garrison's more moderate ideas of non-violent abolitionism. As a result of their "considerable influence" over the convention, Garnet's speech was not accepted by the greater body, and ultimately went unpublished until 1848. The address marked the rise of a new, more "aggressive" form of abolitionism, which proposed that enslaved people take direct action to destroy the institution of slavery.

Frederick Douglass, who was present at the convention, rallied the opposition against the adoption of Garnet's address. He advocated for the continuation of non-violent means of abolition, and criticized the speech for being too aggressive. His advocacy against Garnet's address contributed to its defeat, initially by one vote, and later by a greater margin. Despite his initial opposition to Garnet's ideas, Douglass acknowledged the "principle of violence to free the slave" by 1849.

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, Rufus L. Perry, Henry M. Wilson, and Amos Noë Freeman.

In 1850, Garnet went to Great Britain at the invitation of Anna Richardson of the free produce movement, which opposed slavery by rejecting the use of products produced by slave labor. He was a popular lecturer, and spent two and a half years lecturing. At first, the work separated Garnet from his family, who remained back in New York State. While Garnet was abroad, his seven-year-old son, James Crummell Garnet, died on March 1, 1851. His wife Julia, his young son Henry, and their adopted daughter Stella Weims joined Garnet in Great Britain later that year.

In 1852, Garnet was sent to Kingston, Jamaica, as a missionary for the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He and his family spent three years there; his wife Julia Garnet led an industrial school for girls. After Garnet developed health problems, he and his family returned to the United States in 1855. He was described as "friend and admirer" of "the heroic John Brown".

In 1859 Garnet was president of the African Civilization Society, whose declared goal was "to engage in the great work of christianizing and civilizing Africa". When the Civil War started, Garnet's hopes ended for emigration as a solution for American Blacks. In the three-day New York draft riots of July 1863, mobs attacked Blacks and Black-owned buildings. Garnet and his family escaped attack because his daughter quickly chopped their nameplate off their door before the mobs found them. He organized a committee for sick soldiers and served as almoner to the New York Benevolent Society for victims of the mob.

When the federal government approved creating Black units, Garnet helped with recruiting United States Colored Troops. He moved with his family to Washington, DC, so that he could support the black soldiers and the war effort. He preached to many of them while serving as pastor of the prominent Liberty (Fifteenth) Street Presbyterian Church from 1864 until 1866. During this time, Garnet was the first Black minister to preach to the US House of Representatives, addressing them on February 12, 1865, about the end of slavery, on occasion of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Later life

After the war in 1868, Garnet was appointed president of Avery College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Later he returned to New York City as a pastor at the Shiloh Presbyterian Church (formerly the First Colored Presbyterian Church, and now St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem). In 1878, while living at 102 West 3rd Street, in a neighborhood often referred to as Little Africa, Garnet hosted a reception for Cuban revolutionary leader Antonio Maceo.

His first wife, Julia Williams, died at their home in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, on January 7, 1870. In 1875, Garnet married Sarah Smith Tompkins, who was a New York teacher and school principal, suffragist, and community organizer.

Ambassador to Liberia

Garnet's last wish was to go, even for a few weeks, to Liberia, where his daughter Mary Garnet Barboza resided,

Frederick Douglass, who had not been on speaking terms with Garnet for many years because of their differences, still mourned Garnet's passing and noted his achievements.

Personal life

In 1841, Garnet married Julia Ward 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.

The Garnet School at 10th Street and U Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C., was named in his honor in 1880. It was merged with the Patterson school in a new building erected in 1929 and renamed Shaw Middle School at Garnet-Patterson. It was closed in 2013.
Garnet High School, Charleston, West Virginia, was named for him from 1900 until 1956 when it closed with desegregation. The building served as John Adams Junior High until 1969 when a new John Adams school was built. Garnet's name was restored as the Garnet Adult Education Center and is now Garnet Career Center.
Garnet is included on a New Hampshire historical marker (number 246) commemorating Noyes Academy in Canaan.

Notes

References

External links

Henry H. Garnet, "An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America", Buffalo, NY, 1843, Digital Commons
Henry H. Garnet, "The Past and the Present Condition, and the Destiny, of the Colored Race" (1848), Digital Commons
Henry H. Garnet, "Let Slavery Die" (1865), preceded by introductory material, from The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It
Underground Workshop