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It is easy to explain why Garrison has never been adopted as a popular hero in America.
He gave a purge to his countrymen, and the bitter taste of it remained in our mouths ever after.
Moreover, the odium of Slavery, which he branded on America's brow, seemed to survive in the very name of Garrison, and we would willingly have forgotten the man. After the Civil War there was not, apparently, time for our scholars to think about him. Certain it is that the educated American has known little about him, and shies and mutters at his name.
And yet equally certain is it that the history of the United States between 1800 and 1860 will some day be rewritten with this man as its central figure.
How soon will that day come, and what will be the signs of its dawning?
The laws of mind and nature are not likely to be reversed to save the feelings and prejudices of the American people, a people who are not given to historic speculation and who have been mentally enfeebled by success.
It is not for Garrison that I am concerned, but for a people that praises the prophets, builds altars to courage, enshrines the idea of the Individual Soul; but a people, it would seem, who cannot see a real man when he appears, because he makes them uncomfortable.
Garrison made his compatriots
Boston, the. Atlantic Monthly. Press, 1921.
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