Books by William Lloyd Garrison

Despite provocation, Garrison was a proponent of nonresistance during this period, though he continued to advocate the emancipation of slaves. Set against a background of wide-ranging travels throughout the western U.S. and of family affairs back home in Boston, these letters make a distinctive contribution to antebellum life and thought.

Though plagued by illness and death in his family in the years covered here, Garrison strove to win supporters for abolitionism, lecturing and touring with Frederick Douglass. He continued to write for The Liberator and involved himself in many liberal causes; in 1849 he publicized and circulated the earliest petition for women's suffrage.

This volume covers the five-year period in which Garrison's three sons were born and he entered the arena of social reform with full force.

Garrison's letters offer an insight into the mind and life of an outstanding figure in American history, a reformer-revolutionary who sought radical changes in the institutions of his day, and who, perhaps more than any other single individual, was ultimately responsible for the emancipation of the slaves.