Born in 1805 the son of a merchant sailor, Garrison came from humble beginnings due to the Embargo Act of 1807
Forced to take up many apprenticeships to provide for his family after his father left, Garrison began work for The Newburyport Herald as a writer and editor in 1818, giving him the experience he needed to start his own paper
At the age of 25, Garrison joined the abolition movement
He worked as the co-editor of an anti-slavery newspaper called The Genius of Universal Emancipation started by Benjamin Lundy
He went on to publish the first issue of his own newspaper on January 1st, 1831: The Liberator
The Liberator is considered to be the most well-known and widely spread anti-slavery newspapers of the antebellum period and the Civil War
William Lloyd Garrison published the paper in Boston, MA, where Garrison voiced his opinion honestly and forcefully
His intense abolitionist arguments quickly gathered support and also hate
Garrison’s main goal was to shift the beliefs of those involved in the purchasing and owning of slaves
“I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.”
The Liberator would not have been as successful as it was if it had not been for the free African Americans who subscribed, who made up over seventy-five percent of the paper’s readers
Garrison was decades ahead of most other northern white abolitionists as he constantly demanded the immediate emancipation of all enslaved people and the restoration of the natural rights of the slaves
The Liberator officially ended its run in 1865 with 1,820 issues when the Civil War ended
At the end of the paper’s run, Garrison stated, “my vocation as an abolitionist is ended”
He then turned his attention to women’s suffrage, pacifism, and condemning the post-Reconstruction actions of southern states against African Americans
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