William Lloyd Garrison
Morgan Duren
Biographical Excerpt.
William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts on December 12th, 1805 to a merchant sailing master and his wife. In 1808, his father deserted the family which forced them to scrounge for food from more prosperous families and forcing young William to work by selling homemade molasses candy and delivering wood.
The Newburyport Herald.
In 1818, after suffering many apprenticeships, Garrison began to work for the Newburyport Herald as a writer and editor. Jobs like this would give him the skills he would need when he later published this own newspaper.
The Abolition Movement.
When Garrison was 25, he joined the Abolition Movement. He became associated with the American Colonization Society which was an organization that believed free blacks should emigrate to a territory on the west coast of Africa. At first people believed that this was for the happiness of the black but it turned out that the number of free blacks leaving the country were a minority and most members didn't wish to free slaves. Their only goal was to reduce the number of free black in the country and preserve the institution of slavery.
The Liberator.
By 1830, Garrison had rejected the programs of the American Colonization Society. By this time he had been the co-editor of an anti-slavery started by Benjamin Lundy in Maryland, The Genius of Universal Emancipation and on January 1st, 1831, he published the first issue of his own anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator.
Who is William Lloyd Garrison?
Women and the Anti-Slavery Movement.
Garrison believed that women should be allowed to participate in the Anti-Slavery society. In 1840 there was a major rift in the Society which resulted in the founding of two additional organizations: the Liberty Party, and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery society, both of which did not admit women.
After the Civil War.
Although Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was an official government decree, Garrison supported it and in 1865 after the Civil War, Garrison published his last issue of the Liberator concluding his work with thirty five years of experience and 1,820 issues.