Garrison grew up in a poor household. His dad, a sailor merchant, left his family when he was only age three. His mom wanted to provide the best she could so she sent Garrison away to live with a baptist deacon.
Garrison spent five years with the deacon where he went through a very limited education. He was reunited with his mom and siblings when he was eight years old.
Immediately after his return home Garrison started to look for work. He became an apprentice to a shoe maker and then a cabinet maker. Both of these jobs were too much for eight year old Garrison so he was forced to look for something else.
When he was around 13 years old he was offered a job at a local newspaper. He was offered a writers and editors position at the Newburyport Herald which would last as a seven year apprenticeship. Having an editor only being 13 was very unorthodox but Ephraim P. Allen, printer of the paper, was very willing to give him a chance.
When he was 20 years old he bought The Newburyport Essex Courant and shortly after moved to Boston and became editor of the National Philanthropist, a newspaper that focused a lot of their stories on temperance and reform.
Garrison created his most famous piece of work, The Liberator shortly after his move to Boston. The first issue came out on January 1, 1831 and would last for 35 years. It was an anti-slavery paper and would publish anything and everything to do with the issues of slavery.
Garrison worked along with Issac Knapp and together they created this abolitionist paper. The Liberator was a weekly paper and never missed a single week when putting out the paper. They didn't have a wide audience, somewhere around 3,000 people, but the controversial articles they were publishing got the attention of a wide audience. He believed in non-violence and passive resistance to all slavery institutions.
The Liberator was a very relevant paper during the civil war as well in which Garrison would publish articles persuading the North to secede before the war started to avoid a big fallout. When the war started Garrison stayed out and didn't support it until the Emancipation Proclamation. That was where he saw the change happening.
Garrison was able to live long enough to witness the Emancipation and the 13th amendment come into effect. He was able to see what he worked for his entire life pay off.
While running The Liberator he was also able to advocate another way. He founded two anti-slavery societies, New England Anti-Slavery Society and The American Anti-Slavery Society.
Garrison is remembered for having a "fierce" opposition to slavery and for dedicating his life to be an abolitionist. He died on May 24, 1879 in Boston, Massachusetts. We remember him as one of the many leaders of the anti-slavery movement.
https://www.hilbert.edu/social-justice-activists/william-lloyd-garrison
https://www.ushistory.org/us/28a.asp
https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/william-lloyd-garrison
https://www.nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org/william-lloyd-garrison.html
No comments:
Post a Comment