The American Guide Series, produced by the Federal Writers’ Project, is one of the most well-known WPA projects. Written as a collection of travel guides, the series included suggested tour routes as well as essays on the history and culture of each U.S. state and territory. Major U.S. cities and several regions were also given their own separate guidebooks.
The state guides give a fascinating snapshot of American life in the 1930s. Written in a lively and approachable style, they detail and celebrate the rich diversity that our country displayed at that time. The writers’ enthusiasm is infectious and their guide is as much fun to read today as it must have been for travelers in the 1930s.
Several historians have written about the American Guide Series over the past 80 years, but no one, to my knowledge, has used them as current-day travel guides. That is just what I set out to do. I am an American historian, art photographer, and enthusiastic traveler. I have read each of these guides. I love them for their wonderful enthusiasm and their curiosity about every aspect of regional life—from food, to linguistics, to folklore, to statistics, to geography, to environment, to history—and especially for their liberal attitudes and respect for diversity. In this series, I will be posting photo essays and articles based upon tours recommended in the guides.
Fern L. Nesson
Massachusetts claims William Lloyd Garrison as a native son. Garrison founded of the anti-slavery movement in our state and was among its most powerful spokespersons. Garrison is best know as the editor of The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper, founded in 1830, and as the co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. His leadership of these two organizations constituted the heart and soul of the abolitionist movement.
Garrison condemned slavery on the first page of the first issue of the Liberator and his words served as the call to action for the burgeoning movement:
“In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this moment to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity.
A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September 1829. My conscience is now satisfied.
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.
No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.
I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.”
Despite the central role that Garrison played in the abolition of slavery, the WPA Massachusetts Guide is not as effusive as it could (or should) be about his life’s work. Ever faithful to the conservative views of 1930s Harvard historians who wrote the Guide, it credits Garrison with launching the anti-slavery campaign but peppers its paragraphs with disparaging words and tone and asserts that the movement would not have been successful had it not been taken up by more “respectable” Boston Brahmins:
“It was in Boston that William Lloyd Garrison established his newspaper The Liberator in 1831, committed to the immediate emancipation of all humans held in bondage and vitriolic in the abuse which it heaped on slaveholders.”
Massachusetts Guide, p. 42.
“William Lloyd Garrison had no respect for the interests of cotton, whether expounded by planters or manufacturers. He invaded Boston and founded the Liberator (1831) […]
Garrison attacked the Constitution because it recognized slavery as legal, and Boston patriots could hardly suffer so sacred a document to be disparaged […]
Garrison’s fervor attracted Wendell Phillips, a brilliant orator whose lineage was almost as old as Boston, […] and [Brahmins] Channing, Parker, Lowell, Longfellow [and] Dana and under the championship of such ultra-respectable persons, the anti-slavery crusade gained ground rapidly.”
Massachusetts Guide, p. 142 (emphasis added).
The Guide’s section on Newburyport fails to mention Garrison at all. Instead, it focusses only on the remarkable Federalist mansions in the town (which still exist in glorious profusion today.)
“ONCE seagoing vessels huddled so close in the Merrimack that they almost bridged the river from the Newburyport to the Salisbury shore. Now the great river runs placidly by the city, and the harbor is clogged with sand. Along the shore still stand a few factories, their red-brick walls faded and picturesque against the background of moving water.
A dignified and charming city rises from the river level […] a monument to the glorious days of Newburyport’s maritime supremacy. Shipowners and their captains built the stately houses which border High Street for several miles; square three-storied dwellings with hip roofs, often crowned by cupolas, their severity of line relieved by cornices, doorways, and window treatments, skillfully executed by men who had learned their craft as shipwrights in the famous Newburyport yards. Throughout the country the street is known as a distinguished survival of the best in Federal architecture.”
Massachusetts Guide, p. 293.
Newburyport was, in fact, Garrison’s hometown and the city itself has not forgotten him. Garrison, son of a merchant seaman, was born on School Street in 1805 just a block from Newburyport Harbor and within two blocks of High street, the site of the truly impressive mansions of shipowners and rum manufacturers. His intimate knowledge of the city’s economic structure directly influenced his anti-slavery position.
Newburyport’s astonishing wealth came from slave labor—a fact hat the Guide neglects to mention. It was a major participant in “the triangle trade” in which England captured slaves in Africa, shipped them to Caribbean sugar plantations where the slaves produced molasses which was then shipped it to the US (including Newburyport) and used to make rum. Garrison objected to the exploitation of slaves in the creation of Newburyport’s wealth and he began his journalistic career by publishing anti-slavery articles in the Newburyport Free Press well before he moved into Boston.
One would be hard-pressed to find any of this rich history with only the Guide in hand. The only reference to Garrison in the Newburyport entry is a short note on p. 294 indicating that there is a statue of him in Brown Square with no explanation of why that might be so.
I discovered all the rest when I went to Newburyport to see the mansions and happened to stay overnight in one that was now an inn named “The Garrison.” Just outside, on a small square, was the statue to which the Guide referred. This got me thinking. A short web search revealed the rest.
It turned out that the “The Garrison Inn” was originally the home of Moses Brown, an early 19th century rum manufacturer whose factory and wharves are still nearby (now filled with upscale gift shops and restaurants.) Brown himself owned no slaves but he was a direct beneficiary of their labor as a purchaser of molasses from the Caribbean sugar plantations.
In the Civil War, Newburyport sided with the abolitionists and, in, 1893, the city commissioned a statue of Garrison and placed it right in Brown’s front yard, directly in front of his former mansion. In 1923, when Brown’s last great-grandchild died, the purchaser of his house turned its 24 (!) bedrooms into The Garrison Inn—a gesture of renaming that would certainly please the modern proponents of this practice.
Garrison’s modest home and his newspaper office are still standing in Newburyport but they are privately owned and cannot be visited. Since both are listed on the National Register, their exteriors cannot be changed in any significant details, and they look as they did when Garrison lived there.
Take the guide with you to Newburyport when you visit. It is wonderful in describing the mansions. But think of Garrison as well. The city has not forgotten him. Throughout its extraordinarily beautiful streets, there are echoes and reminders of him everywhere.
July, 2022
