William Lloyd Garrison in Abolitionists

William Lloyd Garrison in Abolitionists

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was one of the most prominent and uncompromising abolitionists of the nineteenth century.

He published The Liberator, an antislavery newspaper, from 1831 until the day that all American slaves were freed.

So, he published a lot of issues, because that was a long 34 years later...

Garrison also organized the first Anti-Slavery Society in New England, and co-founded the first nationwide organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society. Southerners and anti-abolitionists often condemned him as a troublemaker who sought to incite their otherwise contented slaves to insurrection. Though a pacifist all his life, Garrison did celebrate the notion of slave rebellions after John Brown's failed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

Garrison was anything but a moderate. In 1832, he published Thoughts on African Colonization, which savaged the colonization effort, arguing that colonization would actually solidify the institution of slavery. By simply eliminating the "problem" of free Blacks in society and providing a convenient means for disposing of elderly and ill slaves, the country would only be tossing the true race problem aside. 

He acknowledged that many people with good intentions had joined the Colonization Society, but argued the Society must fall together with slavery itself. Garrison also disapproved of the small religious sects that had formed to oppose slavery, on the grounds that his American Anti-Slavery Society should not be weakened by disunity.

Additionally, Garrisonians wanted a new government that forbade slavery from the start, and they labeled the Constitution a proslavery document, illegal in its denial of freedom to African Americans. The position alienated Garrison's supporters, brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan, who split with Garrison in 1840 to pursue a more moderate route through the new Liberty Party.

That same year, Garrison's insistence that women be allowed to serve as delegates to abolitionist conventions led to a split in the American Anti-Slavery Society and the formation of the Foreign and American Anti-Slavery Society, also founded by the Tappans.