The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison's Abolitionist Newspaper

First published on January 1, 1831, The Liberator quickly became the foremost abolitionist newspaper in the United States. Edited by the fiery activist William Lloyd Garrison, the Boston weekly attacked slavery and its defenders, urged readers to act, and championed equal rights for all. As one historian has observed, Garrison understood what every organizer knows: building a movement means communicating, again and again.

The first illustrated masthead of The Liberator, printed on its 17th issue, April 23, 1831. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Garrison's paper

The paper reflected Garrison's own convictions. He demanded an immediate end to slavery without compensation to enslavers, attacked both the churches and the Constitution as tools of the oppressors, and argued for change and racial equality through peaceful moral suasion — appealing to people's consciences. He used the paper for other reforms too, including women's rights, pacifism and opposition to capital punishment. In a section called the Refuge of Oppression, he printed the writings of opponents, which gave him the chance to answer them sharply.

Built on Black support

Some of the paper's strongest support came from Boston's Black community. The Reverend Thomas Paul, the Reverend Samuel Snowden and businessman James Barbadoes endorsed it publicly, and a committee of Black women led by Elizabeth Riley and Bathsheba Fowler raised money to launch it. In its early years, Black Bostonians and African Americans across the North made up roughly 75% of subscribers.

William Cooper Nell, who worked as a journalist for Garrison at The Liberator. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Garrison readily published Black writers such as Maria Stewart and William Cooper Nell, who began as a teenage apprentice at the paper, learning publishing and journalism. Nell shared Garrison's belief that The Liberator would bring the "revolution in public sentiment" Black activists sought, and he wrote for it throughout its run, apart from a short spell in Rochester, New York, working on Frederick Douglass's paper, The North Star.

The paper is a rich record of Black Boston, reporting decades of meetings and campaigns for abolition and equal rights, many held at the African Meeting House and the Abiel Smith School, both now sites on the Black Heritage Trail.

A station of the Underground Railroad

The Liberator was part of Boston's Underground Railroad network. It reported on fugitive slave cases and on aid groups such as the New England Freedom Association and the Boston Vigilance Committee. With his longtime general agent, Robert F. Wallcut, Garrison used the paper's office as a clearinghouse for donations, clothing, information and job leads — and sometimes as a temporary refuge for freedom seekers newly arrived in the city.

William Lloyd Garrison. Image from the National Park Service's page.

"I will be heard"

Garrison's radicalism drew criticism from defenders of slavery and from antislavery activists who rejected his extreme positions. He answered them in his very first issue:

"I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.… I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD."

The nation did hear him. Garrison published The Liberator every week for thirty-five years without missing an issue. It ended in December 1865, the same month the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified, its final issue explaining that the object for which it was started had been accomplished: "What a grand and sublime triumph!"

Its influence

The paper's impact is impossible to measure, but it roused countless others to the cause. Frederick Douglass, soon after escaping slavery and settling in Massachusetts, wrote:

"The paper became my meat and my drink. My soul was set all on fire."

Sources

• National Park Service, "The Liberator" (Boston African American National Historic Site; Boston National Historical Park): https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-liberator.htm
• The NPS article cites The Liberator (January 1, 1831, and December 29, 1865); Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845); Henry Mayer, All on Fire; and Donald Jacobs on The Liberator and Boston's Black community. A modern historian's comment is paraphrased here.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.