Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[388] Mr. Garrison was, nevertheless, reflected President, but declined and withdrew from the society. The controversy was renewed at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in January, 1866. But here again a large majority voted against dissolution. Warm words fell from both Garrison and Phillips and their respective supporters, which tried sorely the friendship of the two leaders.

In accordance with his views touching the discontinuance of the anti-slavery societies, Garrison discontinued the publication of the Liberator after the completion of its thirty-fifth volume in December, 1865. He did not mean by this act to cease his labors for the negro. Far from it. For he, like Phillips, stood for his absolute equality before the law. But he perceived that old things had passed away, and with them the need of the old instruments, and that what remained to be done for the black man required to be done with new means. “The object,” said he in his valedictory, “for which the Liberator was commenced, the extermination of chattel slavery, having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalites (of which I hope to avail myself), under new auspices, with more abundant means, and with millions instead of hundreds for allies.”

With the discontinuance of the Liberator Garrison's occupation, from which he had derived a regular though somewhat uncertain income for the support of his family, was gone. He was not in destitute circumstances,