PDF Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tatics 1834-1850 by Aileen S. Kraditor in History

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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Principles; Politics; Slavery; LibertarianismBy Conza“…It follows; from the abolitionist’s conception of his role in society; that the goal for which he agitated was not likely to be immediately realizable. Its realization must follow conversion of an enormous number of people; and the struggle must take place in the face of the hostility that inevitably met the agitator for an unpopular cause… The abolitionists knew as well as their later scholarly critics that immediate and unconditional emancipation could not occur for a long time. But unlike those critics they were sure it would never come unless it were agitated for during the long period in which it was impracticable…To have dropped the demand for immediate emancipation because it was unrealizable at the time would have been to alter the nature of the change for which the abolitionists were agitating. That is; even those who would have gladly accepted gradual and conditional emancipation had to agitate for immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery because that demand was required by their goal of demonstrating to white Americans that Negroes were their brothers. Once the nation had been converted on that point; conditions and plans might have been made…Their refusal to water down their "visionary” slogan was; in their eyes; eminently practical; much more so than the course of the antislavery senators and congressmen who often wrote letters to abolitionist leaders justifying their adaptation of antislavery demands to what was attainable. The abolitionist; while criticizing such compromises; would insist that his own intransigence made favorable compromises possible. He might have stated his position thus: "If politics is the art of the possible; agitation is the art of the desirable. The practice of each must be judged by criteria appropriate to its goal. Agitation by the reformer or radical helps define one possible policy as more desirable than another; and if skillful and uncompromising; the agitation may help make the desirable possible. To criticize the agitator for not trimming his demands to the immediately realizable—that is; for not acting as a politician—is to miss the point. The demand for a change that is not politically possible does not stamp the agitator as unrealistic. For one thing; it can be useful to the political bargainer; the more extreme demand of the agitator makes the politician’s demand seem acceptable and perhaps desirable in the sense that the adversary may prefer to give up half a loaf rather than the whole. Also; the agitator helps define the value; the principle; for which the politician bargains. The ethical values placed on various possible political courses are put there partly by agitators working on the public opinion that creates political possibilities…“— Murray Rothbard quoting Aileen Kraditor’s brilliant study of the strategy and tactics of the Garrison wing of the abolitionist movement entitled Means and Ends in American Abolitionism; 1969; pp. 26-28).