Newburyport native William Lloyd Garrison became one of America’s foremost spokesmen for the abolition of slavery through radical views, fiery rhetoric, and forceful advocacy for the immediate and unconditional eradication of slavery. He also strongly supported women’s equality and suffrage, denounced discrimination, alcohol, and New England churches for not taking a strong stand against slavery, and gained a national reputation as a radical in 1829 when he publicly challenged merchant Francis Todd as a “highway robber and murderer” and wrote that captain Nicholas Brown should be “sentenced to solitary confinement for life” for shipping about 80 slaves chained below deck; for this he was charged with libel and jailed for 44 days. In 1831 he founded the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, published it for more than three decades despite barely making a living, and founded the New England, Massachusetts, and American Anti-Slavery Societies. Harsh, brilliant, militant, and articulate, he thrived on controversy over slavery, called the American Constitution a “covenant with death” and an “agreement with hell” for its partial embrace of slavery, and publicly burned a copy in 1854. Far ahead of most white Americans, he rode in segregated rail cars with his African American associates, helped launch Frederick Douglass’s career in 1841 before later splitting with him, and eventually embraced the Civil War despite its break with his earlier pacifism, non-violence, opposition to voting, and advocacy of separation from the southern states. He is recognized as central to the transformation of public opinion that ultimately led to the freeing of enslaved people in the United States.

Photo: William Lloyd Garrison; via Boston Public Library (PD)

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller

Newburyport, Massachusetts · USA