What Was William Garrison's Influence

William Garrison grew up in Massachusetts, but the War of 1812 leeched his town of economic prosperity. In the end, this drove Garrison’s father to eventually run away from the family. Garrison’s mother was forced to send him and his siblings to live with neighbors as she alone could not support them. William was sent to live with the publisher of the Newburyport Herald, where Garrison later took on an apprenticeship. This apprenticeship fostered his to love for printing and the “world of words”. The apprenticeship is also where Garrison’s political ideas developed, in union with the influence of his American idealism and his mother’s morals. It is important to note the nature of his upbringing as it shaped much of his philosophy as an activist;
he was more concerned with principle and the identification and removal of inequality and sin, rather than an expedient solution to an issue.
After his apprenticeship, Garrison took up editorship at his own newspaper in Newburyport.
However he was a loyal Federalist, despite the fact that the party had died out a decade before, and this corrupted his chances on succeeding in Newburyport. When his newspaper collapsed, he went to Boston, aligning himself with other people of high morals such as missionaries, temperance advocates, and pacifists. He also gained editorship of a temperance newspaper, but that too failed. Garrison then attached himself to Benjamin Lundy, publisher of The Genius of Universal Emancipation. He traveled the South and anonymously reported on slavery to make a case for abolition. While this “friendship” did not last long, it instilled in Garrison a passion for the fight against slavery and made it his life's
work.
At the time, opposition to slavery was new and relatively rare as most other countries had slavery and many societies and religions did not come out against it.
Despite this, the American and French Revolutions had great influence on the mindset as a result of the recurring theme that all men are created equal, which is represented in the Declaration of Independence as well as the Declaration of Rights of Man. Slavery was still flourishing, however, as it was deeply rooted in the American economy. Even some southern New England states and Middle states struggled to eliminate the practice or only planned to eliminate it gradually, over generations. This struggle in the North signified the mammoth challenge of eliminating it in the South. Additionally, a lot of Americans saw it as less a slavery issue than a race one. Many thought that enslavement made slaves, once freed, unfit for participation in society. Whites simply had no desire to live with equality to blacks. Many slaveholders fermented and cemented this ideology blasting the message that free blacks would not work, demand political rights and seize power—all of which seemed abominable. Many states in the North, with free black populations, passed laws limiting their rights by preventing suffrage, refusing to grant trial by jury and prohibiting the bearing of arms. Such refusal to allow free blacks to assimilate into American culture promoted the thought among abolitionists, including Benjamin Lundy, that the only way
to successfully rid the nation of slavery was to promise to deport freed slaves. These abolitionists said that freed slaves should be sent to a colony in Liberia where they would have the same rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. Further, the freed slaves would be able to spread, republicanism, capitalism and Christianity. William Garrison disagreed acutely, arguing that blacks should be able to remain in America and be treated fairly.
It was in this spirit that William Garrison set out to found The Liberator. The goal was to renounce slavery and advocate for its abolition by reasserting that it was against the Declaration of Independence, was immensely immoral and was a sin in God’s eyes. Furthermore, the newspaper emphasized that there should be no compromise regarding slavery, as it was too immoral to bargain over, and that there should be no slave uprisings, as violence only would lead to more violence. Essentially, it set out to force the country to face the moral dilemma, defined that it was not a matter of partisan politics, but rather morals and challenged not only slavery, but the systematic racism and racial inequality in both the North and South. While there were many threats to the newspaper, with prevention of sale in Washington, indictments for Garrison in North Carolina and a bounty for his capture in Georgia, Garrison fought on to elevate slaves, eliminate slavery and elevate the nation it its highest ideals. The effects of the newspaper were monumental; it broke the silence on slavery and eliminated the thought of colonization and replaced it with the idea of immediate emancipation. The newspaper also inspired many moderates to establish parties that might overturn slavery through elected means. Also, the Liberty party put forth its first candidate with the sole intention of eliminating slavery. A lot of this new movement towards the abolition of slavery can be attributed to Garrison for his unequivocal approach to the importance of eliminating slavery and growing to be a more inclusive culture in America.