Basic Information
Name: William Lloyd Garrison
Nickname: The Notorious W.L.G., Old No Excuses
Born: December 10, 1805
Died: May 24, 1879
Nationality: United States of America
Hometown: Newburyport, Massachusetts
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Journalist, Newspaper Publisher, Anti-Slavery Activist
Education: After his father abandoned the family when he was three, Garrison lived with a Baptist deacon who made sure he got the basics of reading and writing and 'rithmetic. After a couple of failed apprenticeships, he got on-the-job training as a journalist.
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: Abijah and Frances Maria Lloyd Garrison
Siblings: Maria, Caroline, and James
Spouse: Helen Eliza Benson Garrison (1811-1876, m. 1834-her death)
Children:
"Dordie" George Thompson (1836-1904)
William Lloyd, Jr. (1838-1909)
Wendell Phillips (1840-1907)
Charles Follen (1842 -1849)
"Fanny" Helen Frances (1844-1928)
Elizabeth Pease (1846-1848)
Francis Jackson (1848-1916)
Friends: John Greenleaf Whittier, Frederick Douglass (until about 1850)
Foes: Slaveholders and supporters of slavery, Frederick Douglass (after about 1850)
Analysis
William Lloyd Garrison—not to be confused with William Henry Harrison, or George Harrison, or Frank Lloyd Wright—was one of the leaders of the abolition movement in the early 19th century. He probably deserves most of the credit for organizing it into a coherent movement with clear goals and strategies.
Why are we talking about him here? Well, his newspaper, The Liberator, was a huge influence on Frederick Douglass, especially in the early years of Douglass' activism.
The Apprentice Activist
Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1805. After his father abandoned the family when he was three, his mother struggled to support him and his siblings. Garrison lived for a few years with a Baptist deacon who gave him a basic education, which was as good as it got for most Americans in 1805.
Between the ages of nine and thirteen, Garrison tried out apprenticeships in shoemaking and cabinetry, but it was physically demanding work and he just wasn't suited for it.
In 1818, he began an apprenticeship as a writer and editor for the Newburyport Herald, which makes our summer jobs seem pretty tame. When he "graduated" in 1826, he bought The Newburyport Essex Courant. (We have to ask—how many newspapers did Newburyport, Massachusetts need, anyway? Kind of a small town.)
Garrison had already caught the political bug, and he renamed the newspaper The Newburyport Free Press. Because Garrison was a Hamilton fan, he used his newfound voice to promote old school Federalist Party ideas. Come on, Garrison, the Federalists were on the way out—even in the 1820s.
Lots of subscribers couldn't stomach Garrison's strong political ideas (like temperance, women's rights, and abolition), and the paper folded in six months.
Out of a job, Garrison moved to Boston, where he worked at The National Philanthropist, a newspaper all about temperance. In the 19th century, a newspaper was like a Facebook group. Got a cause? Start a newspaper. All the kids are doing it.
Garrison fit right in with the Second Great Awakening, believing that life was a battle against all kinds of sin. While abolition was his main jam, and what he's known for, he had a lot of side tracks against drinking, violence, theaters, tobacco, and capital punishment.
Benjamin Lundy, the editor of Vermont's The Genius of Emancipation tapped Garrison to become an editor on his paper, and the rest, as they say, is history. Twenty-three-year-old Garrison was into the abolition movement for life.
After a brief fling with the American Colonization Society, Garrison renounced its goal of moving black people to the west coast of Africa. He'd initially thought the ACS's heart was in the right place, but he soon realized that the Society's goal was just to reduce the number of freed black people in the United States. So... racist.
An Activist Is Born
In 1830, the Garrison we know came to light when he began publishing The Liberator, the famous abolitionist paper that had a huge influence on a young Frederick Douglass—and the speech "The Church and Prejudice." The motto of the paper was, "Our country is the world—our countrymen are mankind."
We'll let it slide for now that Garrison didn't mention women because he was generally for women's rights. His vocab just hadn't caught up.
Throughout the 1830s, Garrison worked to organize the abolition movement, forming the New England Antislavery Society and the American Antislavery Society.
But wait—all was not sunshine and roses among the abolitionists. Like any movement, they took to fighting among themselves. Garrison was a pacifist, and he believed that the best way to end slavery was to appeal to people's better natures by writing and speaking about its wrongs.
Because, sure, appealing to people's better natures always works.
Garrison said, "With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost" (source).
Now this begs the question of exactly how he planned to give no quarter to tyrants, because Garrison didn't believe political action was the answer. But quite a few people did want to take political action rather than just speaking and writing, so they broke with Garrison around 1840 and formed the American and Foreign Antislavery Society.
To Be or Not to Be...A Union of States?
But bigger fish were frying.
It's not like in 1861, everybody hit the pause button on America and said, "Well, seems like maybe we should have a civil war now! Been four score and seven years." In fact, ever since the American Revolution, people had looked at the middle of North America and thought, "Wow, that seems like a pretty big place. Maybe it should be more than one country."
This led to a big crack in the abolition movement. People like Garrison believed the Constitution was pro-slavery and thought the Union should be dissolved along free state-slave state lines. But other people believed the Constitution was anti-slavery, and the Union should stay together. At first, Frederick Douglass sided with his mentor, Garrison. In fact, in 1847, the two of them made forty anti-Union speeches together in a month.
(Hope they got specially made tour t-shirts.)
But Douglass eventually found himself siding against Garrison, believing that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document and that activists should work to end slavery through political action.
Garrison also thought the Bible was a pro-slavery text, so he wasn't into the Bible or churches. He called New England churches "cages of unclean birds" (source) and he had an ongoing tiff with the New England clergy. Unfortunately, through his opposition to the church, he may have hurt the abolition movement more than he helped it.
Garrison's biggest problem? Being too much of a bulldog. His most famous quote today is this: "I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard" (source).
It's great that he was all in for abolition, but most people really don't like to be yelled at right off the bat, and you catch more flies with honey, y'know? While Garrison did a lot for abolition, his uncompromising style may have lost him more sympathizers that it gained.
During the Civil War, Garrison kept on criticizing the Constitution, but he surprisingly supported Abraham Lincoln, even though Lincoln didn't make emancipation a war goal until 1863 and many abolitionists were anti-Lincoln in the election of 1864 because of it. He also supported the war, even though he was a pacifist.
After the war, Garrison turned his attention, like many activists, to racial equality and women's rights. He died on May 24, 1879.
Today, Garrison is the most famous white abolitionist of the 19th century. While he didn't always win friends, he did influence people. Even though the abolition movement turned more toward political action after 1840 and in some ways left him behind, Garrison's voice was still one of the strongest in changing the hearts and minds of the nation.
He was one of the first to point out the hypocrisy in documents like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and in the differences between what the United States claimed to be (the land of the free) and what it actually was (the home of the slaves).