William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)

Sources

Abolitionist, reformer

Dedication to the Cause. Garrison was born on 10 December 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to a poor family. When he was thirteen he became a printer’s apprentice, leading to a career in journalism. At twenty-one he was coeditor of the temperance paper, the National Philanthropist, that brought him into contact with other reform movements. The Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy convinced him to devote his energies to abolitionism in 1828, and Garrison helped Lundy edit the antislavery paper Genius of Universal Emancipation, which promoted the colonization of freed slaves in Africa.

Leader. Soon Garrison came to reject colonization as an effective method of emancipation, and he broke with Lundy to form his own abolitionist paper, The Liberator. In his new paper Garrison called for immediate emancipation of the slaves without compensation for their owners. He also adopted a militant tone that gained him such notoriety that in the South rewards were offered for his capture and delivery to stand trial. “On this subject I do not wish to think, speak, or write with moderation,” he wrote in the first issue of The Liberator. “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I WILL BE HEARD.” Through his writing and his leadership in the American AntiSlavery Society, Garrison became the most prominent spokesman for the abolitionist cause. When he visited England in 1833 British abolitionists welcomed him as the leader of the movement in America. But back home many other abolitionists disapproved of his extreme rhetoric, which often provoked mob violence. Others within the American Anti-Slavery Society disagreed with his insistence that moral suasion to change the hearts of individuals was the only route to ending slavery and favored direct political action. The society split in 1840, with Garrison and his followers maintaining control of the weakened organization.

Reformer. In addition to his commitment to abolition Garrison supported other reforms such as temperance and women’s rights. His advocacy of the latter was so strong that he refused to participate in the World AntiSlavery Convention in London in 1840 when women were barred from participation. Garrison believed that the equal rights of women were necessary in the fight to abolish slavery, a position that lost him many of his followers. “Garrisonianism” became a general term for radical reform, pressing well beyond the bounds with which most Americans were comfortable. After the passage of the harsh Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, however, Garrison’s position suddenly seemed less radical. By 1859, when other prominent abolitionists were lionizing John Brown for his attempt to start a slave uprising, Garrison only reluctantly supported Brown’s violent action; the radicalism of the movement had gone beyond that of the man who had once burned a copy of the Constitution for its tacit endorsement of slavery.

End of the Fight. When the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, was passed in 1865, Garrison ceased publication of The Liberator, feeling that the fight against slavery was over. But he continued to battle for equal rights for African Americans and women until his death in 1879 at the age of seventy-three.

Sources

Walter M. Merrill, Against the Wind and Tide: A Biography of William Lloyd Garrison (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963);

Russel B. Nye, William Lloyd Garrison and the Humanitarian Reformers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1955).