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[181] raising a national testimonial to Mr. Garrison, in grateful and honorable recognition of his part in bringing about the great consummation of universal freedom and homogeneous institutions in the United States. Ex-Governor Andrew accepted the chairmanship with great1 heartiness, and wrote the Address to the Public, to which a national character was unmistakably given by the approving signatures—gladly appended in every case— of the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Chief Justice of Massachusetts, the State's Senators and Representatives in Congress, Senators and Representatives from sixteen other States (including Missouri), the Chief Justice of the United States, the President of the Senate, the eminent2 poets and litterateurs of the country, and leading citizens3 of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Chicago. The press also cordially endorsed the movement, which was so quietly initiated that Mr. Garrison knew nothing of it for several weeks, and was taken utterly by surprise when it was announced to him. The following is a transcript of the circular to the Public:

National Testimonial to William Lloyd Garrison.

The accomplishment of the Great Work of Emancipation in the United States directs our minds to the duty of some fit public recognition of the man who must in all future time be regarded as its visible leader.

William Lloyd Garrison, then in the twenty-sixth year of his age, established the Liberator newspaper in 1831, and thenceforward devoted his abilities and his career to the promotion of ‘immediate and unconditional emancipation.’ After the lapse of thirty-five years of the most exacting labor, of controversy, peril, and misconception, he has been permitted to see the object gained to which he, at first almost alone, consecrated his life. The generation which immediately preceded ours regarded him only as a wild enthusiast, a fanatic, or a public enemy. The present generation sees in him the bold and honest reformer, the man of original, self-poised, heroic will, inspired by a vision of universal justice made actual in the practice of nations; who, daring to attack without reserve the worst and


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