William Lloyd Garrison: not just wishin' for abolition

I do not know how to worship God and Mammon at the same time. If other men choose to go upon all fours, I choose to stand erect, as God designed every man to stand. If, practically falsifying its heaven-attested principles, this nation denounces me for refusing to imitate its example, then, adhering all the more tenaciously to those principles, I will not cease to rebuke it for its guilty inconsistency. Numerically, the contest may be an unequal one, for the time being; but the author of liberty and the source of justice, the adorable God, is more than multitudinous, and he will defend the right. My crime is that I will not go with the multitude to do evil. My singularity is that when I say that freedom is of God and slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say. My fanaticism is that I insist on the American people abolishing slavery or ceasing to prate of the rights of man ....

– by William Lloyd Garrison, from “No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was an American journalist and social reformer best known for his stance against slavery in the United States. As founder and editor of The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper, Garrison was instrumental in changing public opinion on the institution of slavery. Born in Newburyport, MA, Garrison became involved in the anti-slavery movement as early as the 1820s, eschewing a gradualist position from the start and demanding immediate emancipation for all slaves in the country. Later in life, he became an ardent advocate of the women’s suffrage movement.