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Then Again: William Lloyd Garrison’s roots as a Vermont journalist – VTDigger

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Then Again: William Lloyd Garrison’s roots as a Vermont journalist – VTDigger


A statue of William Lloyd Garrison as an older man sits beside Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

America has probably never had a more influential journalist than William Lloyd Garrison. A social activist by calling, Garrison railed against intemperance (his father was an alcoholic who abandoned the family), gambling and war. But his real passion was the fight against slavery. He originally advocated gradual emancipation, but his beliefs evolved, and he eventually championed immediate and complete emancipation. While in his mid-20s, he organized the New England Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society, and for decades ran the widely circulated newspaper The Liberator, using it to shape the national slavery debate and help provide the political climate that President Lincoln needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. 

But, in 1828, all that was in the future. Garrison was then a 22-year-old newspaperman living in Boston and in need of a job. He had until recently been editor of the National Philanthropist, a social reform newspaper. He’d left the Philanthropist to take a different job, which hadn’t materialized. 

Fortunately for him, a group of prominent men from Bennington decided that this fiery young journalist was just who they needed to run a newspaper they planned to launch. The group traveled to Boston and offered Garrison the editorship of the Journal of the Times. The job would provide Garrison experience, an income and a venue to promote the many social causes he supported. 

The Bennington men asked one thing of Garrison: that the newspaper strongly support the re-election of President John Quincy Adams. This was during America’s “party press era,” roughly lasting from 1783 through the 1830s, when newspapers served essentially as adjuncts to political parties. Recipients of party and governmental printing contracts, the newspapers aligned themselves with one of the political parties, and with the political views of their owners.

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The Bennington group intended the Journal of the Times to serve as a counterweight to the Vermont Gazette, which backed Democratic challenger Andrew Jackson. Vermonters heavily supported Adams and his National Republican party, but organizers of the Journal weren’t taking chances. They hated Jackson and what he stood for. 

Adams and Jackson disagreed over the role of government. Adams supported the so-called “American System” in which a strong federal government would impose high tariffs and sell public lands to fund internal improvements, principally roads and canals that would knit the country together. In contrast, Jackson was skeptical of centralized power and argued it would lead to monarchy. He therefore opposed the high tariffs and infrastructure projects. Similarly, Adams supported creation of a national bank to help the economy, while Jackson opposed it. 

The candidates also differed in personality. Adams was the highly educated son of the second president, John Adams, and was a former U.S. secretary of state. Jackson was born poor and received a limited education, but grew rich through his marriage, legal career, land speculation and use of slave labor on his plantation. He was heralded as a war hero after leading the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. 

Adams’ supporters portrayed Jackson as illiterate and violent, saying he was a man of “blood and carnage.” They publicized that he had ordered the execution of men under his command over disputed claims that they had mutinied. They also told of how, during a military campaign in the Southeast against Native Americans, Jackson’s troops had slaughtered noncombatants and razed villages.  

Garrison accepted the Bennington job, signing a six-month contract that covered the election season. At the time, in order to accommodate local needs and harvest times, federal law allowed states to hold elections anytime during a 34-day period before the first Wednesday in December. In 1828, Vermont’s elections were scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 11. 

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A detailed black and white engraving of a man with curly hair, wearing a high-collared shirt and dark coat, looking directly at the viewer.
William Lloyd Garrison was only 22 years old when he was recruited to became editor of a newspaper being launched in Bennington. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Garrison moved to Vermont and on Oct. 3 published the newspaper’s first edition. In it, the new editor introduced the journal to the public by explaining its values and the reasons for its existence. He ridiculed editors who lacked the courage “to hunt down popular vices, to combat popular prejudices, to encounter the madness of party, to tell the truth and maintain the truth, cost what it may, to attack villainy in its higher walks, and strip presumption of its vulgar garb, to meet the frowns of the enemy with the smiles of a friend….” 

Unlike the common practice of the era to print editorials in larger type than the rest of the paper in order to draw the reader’s attention, Garrison chose a smaller font, so he could write longer pieces. He had lots to say.

The rest of his editorial detailed the causes the Journal would promote. He called for “the suppression of intemperance and its associate vices, the gradual emancipation of every slave in the republic, and the perpetuity of national peace.” The newspaper would also advocate for education “not the tinsel, the frippery, and the incumbrance of classical learning, so called—but a popular, practical education.” Key to the nation’s economic future, Garrison added, was continuation of the “American System” to protect national industry and build transportation infrastructure. 

Only at the end of the editorial did Garrison mention President Adams, the man whose re-election he was hired to promote. In truth, Garrison wasn’t so much a supporter of Adams, as an opponent of Jackson. 

Though he was confident that the vast majority of Bennington County’s voters would vote to re-elect the president, Garrison wrote that Adams’ supporters have had their confidence “abused, their views misrepresented, their feelings insulted…they have been upbraided with apostasy, with treachery, with insincerity; and they have in their meekness borne till endurance has passed its bounds, and the pen of the slanderer become intolerable.” 

A few days before the election, Garrison wrote in the Journal that whatever the vote’s outcome, “we shall thank God on our bended knees that we have been permitted to denounce, as unworthy … a man whose hands are crimsoned with innocent blood, whose lips are full of profanity, who looks on ‘blood and carnage with philosophic composure,’” a ”slaveholder,” “a military despot, who has broken the laws of his country,” and who has held many offices and “failed in all.”

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Steeling Adams supporters to the possibility of losing to this man, Garrison wrote that being “in the minority against him would be better than to receive the commendations of a large and deluded majority. Since the existence of this republic, the chance of its continuance has never seemed so precarious.”  

In the end, Adams’ supporters would have to console themselves by feeling they had at least voted for the better man. Jackson handily lost Bennington County and the rest of Vermont, but won the national vote and Electoral College to defeat Adams.

In the election’s aftermath, Garrison wrote grimly: “The great national conflict has terminated in a manner so utterly unexpected and disastrous, as to almost annihilate the hopes of every friend of his country. We have seen the triumph of turbulence over order, and of ignorance over knowledge. The passions of the multitude, cunningly inflamed to violence, have taken reason by force.”

The Journal continued to criticize Jackson, saying that “(w)ere it not for the ridicule of our transatlantic scorners,” it would be entertaining to hear the uneducated Jackson deliver an inaugural address that he himself had written. Fortunately for Jackson, however, his speech was being written by an associate who would “dictate flaming sentiments in very passable language.”

With the election behind him, Garrison was able to turn his attention to other social reform issues dear to him. Significantly, he devoted his Dec. 12 editorial to praising the work of Quaker antislavery activist Benjamin Lundy, sometimes now referred to as “The First Abolitionist.”

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“The history of this individual will furnish a theme for the admiration and gratitude of posterity,” Garrison wrote. “If we survive him, he shall not lack a biographer.” In recent months, Garrison noted, the tireless Lundy had travelled 2,400 miles around New England and New York, including 1,600 on foot, to host 50 antislavery gatherings. 

Garrison had met Lundy at a Boston boardinghouse several months before being offered the editorship in Bennington. Over dinner, Lundy, who was on a lecture tour, shared his strong anti-slavery views. The conversation persuaded Garrison to take up the issue as one of his main social reform causes. But whereas Lundy called for immediate emancipation, Garrison at the time supported gradual emancipation and “colonization,” a social movement that called for relocating formerly enslaved people to settlements in West Africa, primarily Liberia.

While Garrison was working in Bennington, Lundy received copies of the Journal at his home in Baltimore. He was pleased with what he read: Garrison was using his position to argue forcefully and eloquently for slavery’s eradication. Lundy was so pleased, in fact, that he walked from Baltimore to Bennington to meet with Garrison. Lundy walked so much because it was cheaper than riding a horse or booking passage on a stagecoach, and he wanted to conserve what little money he had to further the abolitionist cause. This meeting probably occurred in early 1829.  

In Bennington, Lundy offered Garrison the editorship of his antislavery newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation. When his six-month contract in Bennington expired at the end of March, Garrison returned to Boston, while Lundy was on a mission to Haiti. (Traveling with a dozen formerly enslaved people, Lundy was exploring whether the island country would be a suitable site for additional “colonization” efforts.)

A couple of months later, on July 4, 1829, Garrison gave his first major public speech on the evils of slavery before a crowd of roughly 1,500 at Boston’s Park Street Church. Paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence, he highlighted the hypocrisy of slavery existing in a country founded on the principle of freedom, remarking that “I do not claim the discovery as my own, that ‘all men are born equal,’ and that among their inalienable rights are ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”

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Garrison was now fully committed to the antislavery cause. He would soon leave Boston to join Lundy in Baltimore and devote the next three and a half decades to fighting the scourge of slavery. When Garrison died in 1879, Frederick Douglass, the famed African American social reformer, abolitionist, orator and writer, gave the eulogy.

“Let us guard his memory as a precious inheritance,” Douglass said, “let us teach our children the story of his life, let us try to imitate his virtues, and endeavor as he did, to leave the world freer, nobler and better than we found it.”





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Vermont

Levine stepping down as Vermont health commissioner

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Levine stepping down as Vermont health commissioner


BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont’s health commissioner is stepping down. The governor announced on Friday that Dr. Mark Levine will retire at the end of March.

Levine was appointed by Gov. Phil Scott to lead the Vermont Health Department in 2017, making him one of the administration’s longest-tenured commissioners.

Levine became a familiar face to Vermonters during the COVID pandemic, often standing by the governor’s side during news briefings, helping to shepherd the state through the trials and tribulations of the pandemic.

In a statement, Levine said serving in the position has been a career and life-changing opportunity.

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“The work we do is so meaningful, challenging, necessary, and gratifying. While proud of our accomplishments, none of them would have been possible without the professional, dedicated, resilient, and passionate team at the Department of Health. They join me each day in enthusiastically getting up for work and striving to honor and accomplish the mission of the department,” he said.

The governor called Levine a tremendous asset to the state and wished him well.

“Dr. Levine has been a tremendous asset, to not only me, but the entire State of Vermont. I know this decision weighed heavily on him, as he deeply loves helping others, which was apparent throughout his career in medicine as well as his last eight years in public service,” said Scott, R-Vermont, said in a statement. “I will be forever grateful for his advice and counsel over the years, but especially during the pandemic, as he appeared with me daily at press conferences during those difficult days, giving much comfort to Vermonters as our very own “Country Doc.” I wish him well in the next chapter of his life.”

There’s no word yet on who will replace Levine as health commissioner.

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Grand jury indicts woman charged in Border Patrol agent’s death in Vermont – The Boston Globe

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Grand jury indicts woman charged in Border Patrol agent’s death in Vermont – The Boston Globe


A woman charged in the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont was indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday, according to court documents.

Teresa Youngblut, 21, is facing two counts in connection to the death of Border Patrol Agent David Maland, 44, who was killed in a shootout last month on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vt., near the Canadian border.

The indictment charges Youngblut with one count of using a deadly weapon (firearm) “while knowingly and forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating, and interfering with an officer and employee of the United States.”

The second count charges her with carrying, brandishing, and discharging a .40-caliber Glock handgun “during and relation to a crime of violence,” according to the indictment.

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Youngblut has remained in custody after a federal judge ordered her held indefinitely in connection to Maland’s death.

Federal authorities allege Youngblut was driving a 2015 Toyota Prius hatchback with Felix Bauckholt, a German national, in the passenger seat when Maland stopped the car around 3 a.m. on Jan. 20, according to an FBI affidavit.

When multiple Border Patrol agents approached the vehicle, Youngblut allegedly “drew and fired a handgun toward at least one of the uniformed Border Patrol Agents without warning when outside the driver’s side of the Prius,” the affidavit said. “Bauckholt then attempted to draw a firearm. At least one Border Patrol agent fired at Youngblut and Bauckholt with his service weapon.”

Maland and Bauckholt were both killed during the shooting, officials said.

After the shooting, authorities seized a number of items from the Prius, including a ballistic helmet; a night vision monocular device; a tactical belt with holster; a magazine loaded with cartridges; two full-face respirators; 48 rounds of .380-caliber, hollow-point ammunition; a package of shooting range targets, some already used.

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Youngblut was also struck by gunfire and was taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire.

Youngblut’s parents had reported her missing in May after she moved out of the family’s home in Washington state, taking her personal belongings in duffel bags, including her passport and medical records, according to a police report.

Her parents said they “were concerned that [she] may be being forced to take these actions or that she may be in a controlling relationship,” the report said. They described her as “emotionally immature.”

The killing of Maland appears to be linked to a fringe group of vegan activists on the West Coast whose members have been tied to at least three other slayings, including the murder of a state’s witness in California and the killing of an older couple in Pennsylvania, the Globe has reported.

Youngblut’s fiance, Maximilian B. Snyder, was arrested last month on a separate murder charge in California for allegedly stabbing an 82-year-old man who owned an industrial lot in Vallejo, Calif., where members of the group had squatted years earlier.

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The guns allegedly used by Youngblut and Bauckholt in the Vermont shooting were purchased by someone federal prosecutors have described as a “person of interest” in the 2022 slaying of Richard and Rita Zajko in Chester Heights, Pa. The Zajkos’ daughter, Michelle Zajko, has also been linked to the West Coast activist group.

Before he joined the Border Patrol, Maland served in the Air Force and worked security at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 terror attacks. His family told the Associated Press that he served nine years in the military and worked in the federal government for 15 years.

“He was a devoted agent who served with honor and bravery,” the family said in a statement to the wire service.


Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.

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Vermont African American Heritage Trail tells stories of Black history in the state

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Vermont African American Heritage Trail tells stories of Black history in the state


Black history in Vermont includes some of the major events and personalities of Black history in America. The Underground Railroad passed through the Champlain Valley. Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered impassioned speeches in the state. The son of the Great Emancipator lived in a Vermont house that to this day hosts discussions about the inequalities of race in America.

There are also the quieter stories of Black history in Vermont. A Chittenden County farm became one of the largest African-American farms in the state. A small African-American community thrived in southern Chittenden County starting in the late 1700s. One Black Vermonter is said to be the first Black college graduate in the U.S., while another became the nation’s first African-American college president.

The state has designated these moments and more as part of the Vermont African American Heritage Trail consisting of buildings and markers commemorating significant moments in Black history. Consider visiting some of these sites in February to celebrate Black History Month. You might also want to keep them in mind to travel to when the weather is warmer and more of these sites are open, with the idea that Black history is a topic for every month of every year.

Sites in the Champlain Valley

Winooski United Methodist Church – Many of the renowned Buffalo Soldiers, a Black regiment known for fighting in the West and during the Spanish-American War, came to Fort Ethan Allen in Colchester in 1909 and became members of this nearby house of worship. “These church members played an active role in rebuilding the church, donating both time and money,” according to the church’s website.

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Clemmons Family Farm – This 138-acre site in Charlotte protects the historic farm as “a model for preserving other African-American owned agricultural land,” according to its website. The Clemmons Family Farm also collaborates with artists from the African diaspora and, as its website notes, strives to “build a loving multicultural community around African-American/African diaspora history, arts and culture.”

Rokeby Museum – “Rokeby was the home of the Radical Abolitionist and devout Quaker Robinson family,” the Vermont Historical Society writes on its website about the Ferrisburgh home. “Rowland and Rachel Robinson wrote extensively, organized meetings, and lobbied on anti-slavery issues. They were part of the Underground Railroad network.” The museum presents exhibits and programs telling those stories.

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Middlebury College/Town of Middlebury – The college was the first institution to grant an honorary degree and a Bachelor of Arts to men of African descent and was the first to graduate a Black man and a Black woman, according to the brochure for the Vermont African American Heritage Trail. The town, the brochure reads, was the site of the founding of the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society.

Sites elsewhere in Vermont

Senator Justin S. Morrill State Historic Site – The U.S. senator who lived in a brightly toned Gothic Revival home in Orange County sponsored an 1890 act to prevent racial discrimination in admissions policies for colleges receiving federal funding. The home’s website notes that it celebrates Morrill’s work toward dismantling of slavery and affirming equal rights while acknowledging “the shortcomings and unfulfilled promises of some aspects of his work.”

Orleans County Historical Society/Old Stone House Museum – This Northeast Kingdom site tells the story of Alexander Twilight, who, the Vermont African American Heritage Trail brochure notes, was “an African American educator, preacher, and Vermont’s first Black legislator.” The museum’s website mentions that “Middlebury claims him to be the first African-American to earn a baccalaureate from an American college or university.”

Rutland Sculpture Trail – The sculpture trail in this central Vermont city covers many sites and stories, some of which highlight Black history in the region. The trail displays depictions of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment that included Black soldiers from Vermont as well as a bust of Martin Henry Freeman, an abolitionist, educator and first African-American college president (at the all-black Allegheny Institute).

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Hildene, the Lincoln family home – Robert Lincoln, the son of President Abraham Lincoln (“the Great Emancipator”), was president of the Pullman Palace Car Co. when he moved to southern Vermont in the early 1900s. “The site’s 1903 Pullman Car and ‘Many Voices’ exhibit highlight the history of the company and the story of the Black Pullman Porters,” according to the Vermont African American Heritage Trail brochure.

  • Hildene, the Lincoln family home, 1005 Hildene Road, Manchester. www.hildene.org

A selection of historic markers

Thaddeus Stevens – A marker in Danville commemorates the town native who became a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and, according to the marker, “was both renown and reviled for his eloquent call for the abolition of slavery.”

Andrew Harris – Located at the University of Vermont in Burlington, the sign honoring the 1838 UVM graduate remarks that he was one of the first African Americans to earn a college degree and co-founded the American & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

Centennial Field – The Vermont African American Heritage Trail brochure notes that the three ballparks that have occupied the current’s park’s space at the University of Vermont hosted exhibition games for Negro League baseball clubs.

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Early Black settlers – A sign at Lincoln Hill and North roads in the town of Hinesburg pays tribute to “at least six related families by the end of the Civil War (who) cleared the land, joined the local Baptist church, had home manufactories, and exercised their voting rights at Freeman Meetings.”

The Great Convention” – “Frederick Douglass delivered a fiery abolitionist speech here in July 1843,” reads a marker on U.S. 7. “The Ferrisburgh meeting, organized by local activist Rowland T. Robinson, was one of the ‘100 Conventions’ sponsored by the American Anti-Slavery Society.”

Court Square – The first Addison County courthouse in Middlebury had an 1804 court case involving a man trying to reclaim an escaped slave. Justice Theophilus Harrington famously declared he would accept “Nothing short of a bill of sale signed by God Almighty Himself.” The former slave went free.

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If you go

Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh is presenting events during Black History Month in February:

  • 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, free museum day includes an opportunity to visit the site’s main exhibit, “Seeking Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Legacy of an Abolitionist Family.”
  • 6-7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, the virtual winter book discussion group talks about “The Life of Frederick Douglass” by David F. Walker, Damon Smyth and Marissa Louise
  • www.rokeby.org

For more information

Vermont African American Heritage Trail – www.vtaaht.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.



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