Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

‘ [234] for the paper in Philadelphia, and upwards of thirty in New York; which number, I am assured, will swell to at least one hundred in a few weeks. This, then, is my consolation: if I cannot do much, in this quarter, towards abolishing slavery, I may be able to elevate our free colored population in the scale of society.’

Exceptions to this ‘acclamation’ were not wanting in the writer's native New England, whose ‘time-serving,¹ unprincipled and heartless’ editors were prompt to denounce his ‘violent and intemperate attacks on slaveholders,’ and his ‘mawkish sentimentality.’ That transplanted New Englander, George D. Prentice, newly put in charge of the Louisville (Ky.) Journal, wrote in his issue of January 25: ‘Mr. Garrison knows that we² are his personal friend, and that we regard him as one of the ablest writers and warmest philanthropists of the age; but, after all, some of his opinions with regard to slavery in the United States are no better than lunacy.’ The American (Washington) Spectator regretted ‘to³ observe the late talented and persecuted Junior Editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation in the dying ranks of this opposition [to African colonization]. We hoped that his good sense would ere long withdraw him even from the side of abolitionists.’ Journals further south were sparing of compliments. The Camden (S. C.) Journal, edited by an ‘apostate Yankee,’ threatened to⁴ hand his ‘scandalous and incendiary budget of sedition . . . to the proper authorities, as the ground of a prosecution,’ in case he should venture within the State. Mr. Garrison bids him do so, ‘and tell them that as soon as we can make our arrangements, we intend removing the office of the Liberator to South Carolina, or one of the slave States, where we can meet the enemy on his own ground. This is too great a distance to fire our cannon: the South gets merely its echoes, when she ought to receive its contents.’

As time went on, the abuse thickened. In reply to a colored committee who had sent him a donation in