Ernest Crosby, Garrison the non-resistant

[61] the first editorial in the Liberator, “I am in earnest, . . .and I will be heard,” and teaches a profound lesson to the young American as to the possibilities of the career of the prophet, even at this late day. What man walking the streets of Boston in the winter of 1831 would have guessed that the most important bit of contemporary history was being transacted in an obscure garret? Their minds were occupied with the doings of Congress and the dispatches from London and Paris, but the real motive power of society rarely shows itself on the surface. What man who looked on at the Boston mob of 1835 would have supposed for a moment that the hatless, coatless, bewildered victim of the crowd would conquer in the end, and that the men who were threatening him would live to be ashamed of their cause? I think it was Whittier who advised young men to seek for some just and despised cause and attach themselves to it. Even from the standpoint of worldly wisdom, this is not such bad advice. The man who loses his life finds it. Garrison might have become a leading editor, or author, or poet, or statesman (for he possessed the gifts necessary for these callings), and he might have left a comfortable fortune to his children; but it is doubtful if in any other way than as a prophet he would have won a monument for himself.