Archibald H. Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison the Abolitionist

[113] obstacles vanish; the impossible becomes the attainable. As Garrison burned to be about his work, help came to him from a man quite as penniless and friendless as himself. The man was Isaac Knapp, an old companion of his in Newburyport, who had also worked with him in the office of the Genius, in Baltimore. He was a practical printer, and was precisely the sort of assistant that the young reformer needed at this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a man like himself acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited capacity for the endurance of unlimited hardships. Together they worked out the financial problems which blocked the way to the publication of the paper. The partners took an office in Merchants' Hall building, then standing on the corner of Congress and Water streets, Boston, which gave their joint enterprise a local habitation. It had already a name. They obtained the use of types in the printing office of the Christian Examiner, situated in the same building. The foreman, Stephen Foster, through his ardent interest in Abolition, made the three first numbers of the paper possible. The publishers paid for the use of the types by working during the day at the case in the Examiner's office. They got the use of a press from another foreman with Abolition sympathies, viz., James B. Yerrington, then the printer of the Boston Daily Advocate. Thus were obtained the four indispensables to the publication of the Liberator-types, a press, an office, and an assistant.

When at length the offspring of such labor and sacrifices made its appearance in the world, which was on January i, 1831, it was, in point of size, insignificant