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William Lloyd Garrison: The Liberator Roars

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

Not all people affiliated with the Underground Railroad were conductors or station keepers. Some were on the sidelines cheering on the participants, fighting for the end to slavery in America, and sometimes even advocating resistance. One such cheerleader was William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator. This man and his periodical influenced a young Frederick Douglas and also featured writings of one famed abolitionist Captain Jonathan Walker, the Man with the Branded Hand. Captain Walker named a son Lloyd Garrison Walker in honor of this publisher.

William Lloyd Garrison was born in December of 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Massachusetts had long been a state that fought against slavery; indeed John and Samuel Adams sought the abolition of slavery in the Declaration of Independence in 1776! Garrison's father was a merchant sailing master. It appears that the family fell on hard times, owing in part to the Embargo Act of 1807. In 1808 the father deserted the family, forcing them to beg and scrounge for daily needs. Young William took to selling homemade molasses candy and delivering wood.

Garrison went through several apprenticeships before he found a vocation to his liking. In 1818 he began work for the Newburyport Herald as a writer and editor. This and subsequent newspaper jobs helped to build up William's skills to utilize so expertly with The Liberator.

At the age of 25 Garrison joined the Abolition movement and became associated with the American Colonization Society. This Society believed free blacks should emigrate to a territory on the west coast of Africa. While it seemed the society seemed to promote the freedom and happiness of blacks, and some members encouraged freedom for slaves, it turned out that the number of members advocating freedom was a minority. Most members had no wish to free slaves but to reduce the numbers of free blacks in the United States and in essence preserve the institution of slavery. The Society had begun in 1816. Perhaps the lasting legacy of this Society was the creation of the present nation of Liberia, where freed blacks were "colonized."

In 1830 Garrison rejected the programs of the American Colonization Society. He was already working as a co-editor of an antislavery paper started by Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, in Maryland called The Genius of Universal Emancipation. Garrison wrote one article criticizing a merchant involved in the slave-trade. Garrison was imprisoned for libel as a result. 1 January 1831 saw Garrison publish the first issue of his own anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator. The Liberator would be published without fail until the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th. Amendment in 1865. He felt his work on Emancipation at that point was done.