All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery
Boylan, James
ALL ON FIRE: WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON AND THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
BY HENRY MAYER. ST. MARTIN’S PRESS. 707 PP. $32.50.
The Liberator, which never paid its own way, was nonetheless a successful newspaper; it never missed a weekly issue and never lost sight of its cause – that slavery must end unconditionally, even at the price of splitting the Republic. With the end of slavery, it ceased publication, thirty-five years to the week after its editor made his famous declaration: “I WILL BE HEARD.” That editor, of course, was William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), and Henry Mayer has devoted this immense new biography to restoring Garrison’s centrality in the movement that achieved a distant goal that, at the start, seemed beyond reach. It is a remarkable story – a poor, self-educated Massachusetts printer who seized on the idea that slavery was a sin and devoted his life to agitating for its abolition, setting his own type, raising his own voice, risking his own neck against mob violence. Mayer does much to dissipate the stereotyped view of Garrison as a thin-lipped, cold fanatic, emphasizing his pacifism, his gentle manner, his warm family life, and the enormous affection that came to him in the end.
Copyright Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism Jan/Feb 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved
