George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

282 GEORGE WH1TEFIELD
Negroes, but at the instigation of South Carolina and Georgia,
which had never attempted to restrain the importation of
slaves, and still wished to continue it, the clause was struck
out. Georgia became one of the worst of the slave States. It
offered, in 1831, a reward of five thousand dollars for William
Lloyd Garrison, the leader of American Negro Emancipation,
which was a bribe to any ruffian to seize him and convey him
South, whence it is certain he never would have come out alive.
The reward was on his head for thirty-four years, when Lincoln's
Proclamation of Emancipation annulled it. But Providence had
a strange revenge for Whitefield's fault, for in the house next
to that in which he died at Newbury Port, Garrison was born,
and over the ramparts of Fort Sumter, Charleston, S.C., from
which the first shot was fired by the South on the Federal flag,
Garrison and a band of Abolitionists, invited by the Govern
ment to be present, had the joy of seeing that flag raised again
as the symbol of liberty for all, black and white alike. In New
England, which had shared so largely in the revival, was
generated the force that destroyed slavery. The good over-
came the evil. Nevertheless, evangelist i and ministers should
be warned by this painful part of Whitefield's life not to give
their support, either directly or indirectly, to anything, under
any pretext whatsoever, that is a violation of justice, lest
thereby they do more harm than by all their labours they do
good. Whitefield might not have been able to prevent the
introduction of slavery into Georgia, but he would have been
honoured for failing in an attempt to stop it, and he need not
have availed himself of the right to hold slaves.
On March 30, 1 75 1, Whitefield writes from Plymouth: 'I
suppose the death of our Prince has affected you. It has
given me a shock.' The Prince of Wales counted many of
Lady Huntingdon's friends among his political supporters,
and she herself, before her conversion, often attended his