William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison

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Monday, February 17, 2014

Vol XCIII, No. 311

Finding His Passsion

Start in Journalism

Backround Information

• When Garrison was 13 years old, he was appointed to a seven-year apprenticeship as a writer and editor under Ephraim W. Allen, the editor of the Newburyport Herald. It was during this apprenticeship that Garrison would find his true calling.

• He soon began writing articles, often under the pseudonym Aristides. (Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general nicknamed "the Just.")

• Garrison and a young printer named Isaac Knapp bought their own newspaper in 1826, the short-lived Free Press. One of their regular contributors was poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier.

• In 1828, he was appointed editor of the National Philanthropist in Boston, Massachusetts, the first American journal to promote legally-mandated temperance.

Early Life

Time Frame

Shapeing Views

• Lived December 10, 1805-May 24, 1879

• He was one of the most fiery and outspoken abolitionists of the Civil War period

• This new era introduced FACTORIES, with machines and predetermind tasks producing items to be shipped and sold elsewhere.

• The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800

• New Technology-The most famous inventors in American history secured patents including Eli Whitney for the cotton gin in 1794 (reignited slavery), Eleuthere du Pont for the improved manufacture of gunpowder in 1804, and Robert Fulton for the steamboat in 1809.

• Born the son of a merchant sailor in Newburyport, Massachusetts who abandoned his family

• Garrison’s mother, a devout Baptist named Frances Maria, struggled to raise Garrison and his siblings in poverty. As a child, Garrison lived with a Baptist deacon for a time, where he received a rudimentary education. In 1814, he reunited with his mother and took an apprenticeship as a shoemaker, but the work proved too physically demanding for the young boy. A short stint at cabinetmaking was equally unsuccessful.

• He grew up in an atmosphere of declining New England federalism and lively Christian benevolence, twin sources of the abolition movement, which he joined at age 25.

• In 1829, with pioneer abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, Garriaon became co-editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore

• While working for the Genius he became convinced of the need to demand immediate and complete emancipation.

• 1831, Garrison co-founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, with his friend Isaac Knapp.

• 1834 it had two thousand subscribers, three-fourths of whom were blacks. Benefactors paid to have the newspaper distributed to influential statesmen and public officials. Although Garrison rejected physical force as a means for ending slavery, his critics took his demand for immediate emancipation literally. Some believed he advocated the sudden and total freeing of all slaves, and considered him a dangerous fanatic.

I will be heard

Victory

The Impact

The Liberator gradually gained a large following in the northern states. By 1861 it had subscribers across the North, as well as in England, Scotland, and Canada. It was received in state legislatures, governor's mansions, Congress, and the White House. After the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment, Garrison published the last issue (number 1,820) on December 29, 1865, writing a "Valedictory" column.

Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Virginia just seven months after The Liberator started publication fueled the outcry against Garrison in the South. A North Carolina grand jury indicted him for distributing incendiary material, and the Georgia Legislature offered a $5,000 reward for his capture and conveyance to the state for trial.