(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
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abolitionist educator minister orator
Henry Garnet was born into slavery in New Market, Kent County, Maryland, on December 23, 1815. His father, George Trusty, was the son of a Mandingo warrior prince, taken prisoner in combat.
The family of a neighboring grocer had sheltered his mother.
Williams had studied at Prudence Crandall's school in Canterbury, Connecticut, and also at Noyes Academy. He continued his schooling, and in 1831 he entered the newly established high school for blacks, rejoining Alexander Crummell as a fellow student.
Even though Garnet was not yet ordained, he had been called as minister to the newly established Liberty Street Presbyterian Church at Troy, New York.
In 1842 Garnet was licensed to preach and in the following year ordained a minister.
Teaching and the ministry hardly filled all of Garnet's time.
Closely interwoven with Garnet's church work was his work in the Temperance Movement, in which he took a leading part.
By 1843 he received a stipend of $100 a year from the American Home Missionary Society for his work for abolition and temperance.
His work for temperance was widely recognized.
Garnet worked for the extension of black male voting rights in New York state, but a property holding qualification was imposed upon blacks.
He presented several petitions to the legislature on this subject.
In 1839 the Liberty Party came into existence with abolition as one of its major planks.
Garnet became an early and enthusiastic supporter of this reform party.
He was also able to secure the endorsement of the revived National Convention of Colored Men, held in Albany in August 1843 for the party.
The year 1844 marked a peak for the party.
Garnet was late and unenthusiastic in supporting the Republicans. Garnet's turn towards activism marked his break with leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who rejected politics in favor of moral reform.
Garnet moved from Troy to Geneva in 1848.
The following year he was joined by his family.
There he remained for two and a half years, undertaking a very rigorous schedule of engagements.
Both James McCune Smith and Frederick Douglass felt he was doing especially well because he was the first American black of completely African descent to appear there to speak in support of abolition.
He did effective work there until a severe prolonged illness caused his doctors to order him north.
In conjunction with this trip he established a civil rights breakthrough by insisting that his passport contain the word Negro.
Before this time the handful of passports issued to blacks had managed to skirt the issue of whether blacks were or were not citizens of the United States by labeling the bearer with some term such as dark.
Although Garnet's and Martin Delany's efforts at colonization at this time were running in parallel and not coordinated, the pair agreed on aims.
Garnet proposed a visit to Africa to follow up Delany's 1859 efforts there, but the plan fell through with the outbreak of the Civil War.
With the outbreak of the war, Garnet joined other blacks in urging the formation of black units.
When this goal was realized during the beginning of 1863, he traveled to recruit blacks and served as chaplain to the black troops of New York State, who were assembled on Ryker's island for training.
He led the work of charitable organizations that worked to overcome the unfavorable conditions initially facing the men due to wide-scale corruption and anti-black sentiments in the city. In March 1864 Garnet became pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church of Washington.
There he delivered a sermon in the chamber of the House of Representatives on February 12, 1865, the first black to do so, and also one of the first blacks allowed to enter the Capitol.
As an assignment Garnet undertook a four month trip to the South at the end of the war, which included a visit to his birthplace.
Crummell reported that Garnet went into a physical and mental decline about 1876.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
The leg injury may have sobered Garnet, who became more studious and turned his thoughts to serious consideration of religion.
Garnet also devoted his life to ministry in the Presbyterian Church.
George Garnet became an exhorter in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
In the latter part of 1852, the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland sent Garnet to Jamaica as a missionary.
Garnet worked to build up black institutions and was an advocate of colonization in the 1850 and after.
Garnet married Julia Ward Williams in 1841. Together they had three children, only one of whom survived to adulthood. Julia Garnet died in 1870, and about 1879 he married Susan Smith Thompkins, a noted New York teacher and school principal.
