Editing William Lloyd Garrison (section)

==Career==
===Reformer===
At the age of 25, Garrison joined the anti-slavery movement, later crediting the 1826 book of [[Presbyterian Church|Presbyterian]] [[John Rankin (abolitionist)|Reverend John Rankin]], ''Letters on Slavery'', for attracting him to the cause.<ref>Hagedorn, p.&nbsp;58</ref> For a brief time, he became associated with the [[American Colonization Society]], an organization that promoted the "resettlement" of free blacks to a territory (now known as [[Liberia]]) on the west coast of Africa. Although some members of the society encouraged granting freedom to enslaved people, others considered relocation a means to reduce the number of already free blacks in the United States. Southern members thought reducing the threat of free blacks in society would help preserve the institution of slavery. By late 1829–1830, "Garrison rejected colonization, publicly apologized for his error, and then, as was typical of him, he censured all who were committed to it."<ref>{{cite book |last=Cain |first=William E. |title=William Lloyd Garrison and the fight against Slavery: Selections from the Liberator}}</ref> He stated that anti-colonialism activist and fellow abolitionist [[William J. Watkins, Sr.|William J. Watkins]] had influenced his view.<ref>{{Cite web|title=William Watkins MSA SC 5496-002535|url=https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5400/sc5496/002500/002535/html/002535bio.html|website=msa.maryland.gov|access-date=May 20, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200612094549/https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5400/sc5496/002500/002535/html/002535bio.html|archive-date=June 12, 2020|url-status=live}}</ref>

===''Genius of Universal Emancipation''===
[[File:William Lloyd Garrison portrait.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait of William Lloyd Garrison in ''[[The Century Magazine]]'']]
In 1829, Garrison began writing for and became co-editor with [[Benjamin Lundy]] of the [[Quaker]] newspaper ''[[Genius of Universal Emancipation]]'', published at that time in [[Baltimore, Maryland]]. With his experience as a printer and newspaper editor, Garrison changed the layout of the paper and handled other production issues. Lundy was freed to spend more time touring as an anti-slavery speaker. Garrison initially shared Lundy's gradualist views, but while working for the ''Genius'', he became convinced of the need to demand immediate and complete emancipation. Lundy and Garrison continued to work together on the paper despite their differing views. Each signed his editorials.

Garrison introduced "The Black List," a column devoted to printing short reports of "the barbarities of slavery{{snd}}kidnappings, whippings, murders."<ref>Thomas, 119</ref> For instance, Garrison reported that Francis Todd, a shipper from Garrison's hometown of [[Newburyport, Massachusetts]], was involved in the domestic [[History of slavery|slave trade]], and that he had recently had slaves shipped from Baltimore to [[New Orleans]] in the [[coastwise trade]] on his ship the ''Francis''. (This was completely legal. An expanded domestic trade, "breeding" slaves in [[Maryland]] and [[Virginia]] for shipment south, replaced the importation of African slaves, prohibited in 1808; see [[Slavery in the United States#Slave trade]].)

Todd filed a suit for libel in Maryland against both Garrison and Lundy; he thought to gain support from pro-slavery courts. The state of Maryland also brought {{clarify|date=April 2025|text=criminal charges}} against Garrison, quickly finding him guilty and ordering him to pay a fine of $50 and court costs. (Charges against Lundy were dropped because he had been traveling when the story was printed.) Garrison refused to pay the fine and was sentenced to a jail term of six months.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Masur|first1=Louis|title=1831, Year of Eclipse|url=https://archive.org/details/1831yearofeclips00masu|url-access=registration|date=2001|publisher=Hill and Wang|location=New York|isbn=978-0809041183|edition=7th}}</ref> He was released after seven weeks when the anti-slavery philanthropist [[Arthur Tappan]] paid his fine. Garrison decided to leave Maryland, and he and Lundy amicably parted ways.

===''The Liberator''===
In 1831, Garrison, fully aware of the press as a means to bring about political change,<ref>{{cite journal
|title=Press
|first=Marcy J.
|last=Dinius
|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/322
|journal=[[Early American Studies]]
|volume=16
|number=4
|year=2018
|pages=747–755
|via=[[Project MUSE]]
|doi=10.1353/eam.2018.0045
|s2cid=246013692
|access-date=July 31, 2020
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190502061720/https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/322
|archive-date=May 2, 2019
|url-status=live
}}</ref>{{rp|750}} returned to New England, where he co-founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, ''[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]]'', with his friend [[Isaac Knapp]].<ref>{{citation |title=Boston Directory |year=1831 |url=https://archive.org/stream/stimpsonsbostond3132adam#page/4/mode/1up |quote=Garrison & Knapp, editors and proprietors Liberator, 10 Merchants Hall, Congress Street |access-date=December 11, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160327053823/http://archive.org/stream/stimpsonsbostond3132adam#page/4/mode/1up |archive-date=March 27, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref> In the first issue, Garrison stated:

{{blockquote|In Park-Street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this moment to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice, and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the ''Genius of Universal Emancipation'' at Baltimore, in September 1829.  My conscience is now satisfied.

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest{{snd}}I will not equivocate{{snd}}I will not excuse{{snd}}I will not retreat a single inch{{snd}}{{em|and I will be heard}}. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.<ref>[http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/Liberator.html William Lloyd Garrison, ''The Liberator'' (Inaugural editorial)<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040329190225/http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/Liberator.html |date=March 29, 2004 }}</ref>}}

Paid subscriptions to ''The Liberator'' were always fewer than its circulation. In 1834 it had two thousand subscribers, three-fourths of whom were black people. Benefactors paid to have the newspaper distributed free of charge to state legislators, governor's mansions, Congress, and the White House. Although Garrison rejected violence as a means for ending slavery, his critics saw him as a dangerous fanatic because he demanded immediate and total emancipation, without [[compensated emancipation|compensation to the slave owners]]. [[Nat Turner]]'s slave rebellion in Virginia just seven months after ''The Liberator'' started publication fueled the outcry against Garrison in the South. A North Carolina grand jury indicted him for distributing incendiary material, and the Georgia Legislature offered a $5,000 reward ({{inflation|US|5000|1832|fmt=eq}}) for his capture and conveyance to the state for trial.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://prezi.com/x_p5ntprhbyf/william-lloyd-garrison/|title=William Lloyd Garrison|website=prezi.com|language=en|access-date=April 3, 2020}}</ref>

Knapp parted from ''The Liberator'' in 1840. Later in 1845, when Garrison published a eulogy for his former partner and friend, he revealed that Knapp "was led by adversity and business mismanagement, to put the cup of intoxication to his lips,"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.theliberatorfiles.com/death-of-isaac-knapp/|title=Death of Isaac Knapp|website=theliberatorfiles.com|language=en|access-date=October 30, 2021}}</ref> forcing the co-authors to part.

Among the anti-slavery essays and poems that Garrison published in ''The Liberator'' was an article in 1856 by a 14-year-old [[Anna Elizabeth Dickinson]]. ''The Liberator'' gradually gained a large following in the Northern states. It printed or reprinted many reports, letters, and news stories, serving as a type of [[community bulletin board]] for the abolition movement. By 1861 it had subscribers across the North, as well as in England, Scotland, and Canada. After the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]], Garrison published the last issue (number 1,820) on December 29, 1865, writing a "Valedictory" column. After reviewing his long career in journalism and the cause of abolitionism, he wrote:

{{blockquote|The object for which the ''Liberator'' was commenced{{snd}}the extermination of chattel slavery{{snd}}having been gloriously consummated, it seems to be especially 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 instrumentalities, (of which I hope to avail myself,) under new auspices, with more abundant means, and with millions instead of hundreds for allies.<ref>[http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1865/12/29/valedictory Valedictory (1865-12-29): by William Lloyd Garrison<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060218063921/http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1865/12/29/valedictory |date=February 18, 2006 }}. The first part of the column included the following: "Commencing my editorial career when only twenty years of age, I have followed it continuously till I have attained my sixtieth year{{snd}}first, in connection with ''The Free Press'', in Newburyport, in the spring of 1826; next, with ''The National Philanthropist'', in Boston, in 1827; next, with ''The Journal of the Times'', in Bennington, Vt., in 1828–29; next, with ''[[The Genius of Universal Emancipation]]'', in Baltimore, in 1829–30; and, finally, with the ''Liberator'', in Boston, from January 1, 1831, to January 1, 1866 – at the start, probably the youngest member of the editorial fraternity in the land, now, perhaps, the oldest, not in years, but continuous service, – unless [[William Cullen Bryant|Mr. Bryant]], of the [[New York Evening Post|New York ''Evening Post'']], be an exception. ..."</ref>}}

===Garrison and Knapp, printers and publishers===
{{main|List of publications of William Garrison and Isaac Knapp}}

===Organization and reaction===
In addition to publishing ''The Liberator'', Garrison spearheaded the organization of a new movement to demand the total abolition of slavery in the United States. By January 1832, he had attracted enough followers to organize the [[New-England Anti-Slavery Society]] which, by the following summer, had dozens of affiliates and several thousand members. In December 1833, abolitionists from ten states founded the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] (AASS). Although the New England society reorganized in 1835 as the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, enabling state societies to form in the other New England states, it remained the hub of anti-slavery agitation throughout the antebellum period. Many affiliates were organized by women who responded to Garrison's appeals for women to take an active part in the abolition movement. The largest of these was the [[Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society]], which raised funds to support ''The Liberator'', publish anti-slavery pamphlets, and conduct anti-slavery petition drives.

The purpose of the American Anti-Slavery Society was the conversion of all Americans to the philosophy that "Slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God" and that "duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned, require its ''immediate abandonment'' without expatriation."<ref>Quoted in: Clifton E. Olmstead (1960): ''History of Religion in the United States''. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., p. 369</ref>

The threat posed by anti-slavery organizations and their activity drew violent reactions from slave interests in both the Southern and Northern states, with mobs breaking up anti-slavery meetings, assaulting lecturers, ransacking anti-slavery offices, burning postal sacks of anti-slavery pamphlets, and destroying anti-slavery presses. Healthy bounties were offered in Southern states for the capture of Garrison, "dead or alive".<ref>David Brion Davis, ''Inhuman Bondage. The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World'', Oxford University Press, 2006, {{ISBN|0195140737}}, p. 263.</ref>

On October 21, 1835, "an assemblage of fifteen hundred or two thousand highly respectable gentlemen", as they were described in the ''[[Boston Commercial Gazette]]'', surrounded the building housing Boston's anti-slavery offices, where Garrison had agreed to address a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society after the fiery British abolitionist [[George Thompson (abolitionist)|George Thompson]] was unable to keep his engagement with them. Mayor [[Theodore Lyman (militiaman)|Theodore Lyman]] persuaded the women to leave the building, but when the mob learned that Thompson was not within, they began yelling for Garrison. Lyman was a staunch anti-abolitionist but wanted to avoid bloodshed and suggested Garrison escape by a back window while Lyman told the crowd Garrison was gone.<ref>Mayer, 201–204</ref> The mob spotted and apprehended Garrison, tied a rope around his waist, and pulled him through the streets toward [[Boston Common]], calling for [[tar and feathers]]. The mayor intervened and Garrison was taken to the [[Leverett Street Jail]] for protection.<ref>{{cite news
|title=Boston Gentlemen Riot for Slavery
|publisher=[[New England Historical Society]]
|access-date=October 5, 2019
|url=https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/boston-gentlemen-riot-for-slavery/
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191229022804/http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/boston-gentlemen-riot-for-slavery
|archive-date=December 29, 2019
|url-status=live
}}</ref>

Gallows were erected in front of his house, and he was [[burned in effigy]].<ref>{{cite book
|pages=14, 71–72
|title=American radicals : how nineteenth-century protest shaped the nation
|first=Holly
|last=Jackson
|location=New York
|publisher=[[Crown Publishing Group|Crown]]
|year=2019
|isbn=978-0525573098}}</ref>

===The woman question and division===
[[File:Anne Whitney, William Lloyd Garrison.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Anne Whitney]], ''William Lloyd Garrison'', 1879, [[Massachusetts Historical Society]]]]
Garrison's appeal for women's mass petitioning against slavery sparked controversy over women's right to a political voice. In 1837, women abolitionists from seven states convened in New York to expand their petitioning efforts and repudiate the social mores that proscribed their participation in public affairs. That summer, sisters [[Angelina Grimké]] and [[Sarah Grimké]] responded to the controversy aroused by their public speaking with treatises on woman's rights{{snd}}Angelina's "Letters to Catherine E. Beecher"<ref>[https://archive.org/details/letterstocather00beecgoog "Letters to Catherine E. Beecher"], Knapp (1838), Boston</ref> and Sarah's "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Condition of Woman"<ref>[https://archive.org/details/lettersonequali00grimgoog "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Condition of Woman"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160402091912/https://archive.org/details/lettersonequali00grimgoog |date=April 2, 2016 }}, Knapp (1838), Boston</ref>{{snd}}and Garrison published them first in ''The Liberator'' and then in book form. Instead of surrendering to appeals for him to retreat on the "woman question," Garrison announced in December 1837 that ''The Liberator'' would support "the rights of woman to their utmost extent." The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society appointed women to leadership positions and hired Abby Kelley as the first of several female field agents.

In 1840, Garrison's promotion of woman's rights within the anti-slavery movement was one of the issues that caused some abolitionists, including New York brothers [[Arthur Tappan]] and [[Lewis Tappan]], to leave the American Anti-Slavery Society and form the [[American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society]], which did not admit women. In June of that same year, when the [[World Anti-Slavery Convention]] meeting in London refused to seat America's women delegates, Garrison, [[Charles Lenox Remond]], [[Nathaniel P. Rogers]], and William Adams<ref>{{cite web|last1=Seldon|first1=Horace|title=The 'Women's Question' and Garrison|website=The liberator files |url=http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/the-woman-question-and-garrison/|access-date=December 9, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141214103223/http://www.theliberatorfiles.com/the-woman-question-and-garrison/ |archive-date=December 14, 2014|url-status=live}}</ref> refused to take their seats as delegates as well and joined the women in the spectators' gallery. The controversy introduced the woman's rights question not only to England but also to future woman's rights leader [[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]], who attended the convention as a spectator, accompanying her delegate-husband, [[Henry B. Stanton]].
[[File:Oliver Johnson (1809-1889).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Oliver Johnson (writer)|Oliver Johnson]]]]
Although Henry Stanton had cooperated in the Tappans' failed attempt to wrest leadership of the AASS from Garrison, he was part of another group of abolitionists unhappy with Garrison's influence{{snd}}those who disagreed with Garrison's insistence that because the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slavery document, abolitionists should not participate in politics and government. A growing number of abolitionists, including Stanton, [[Gerrit Smith]], [[Charles Turner Torrey]], and [[Amos A. Phelps]], wanted to form an anti-slavery political party and seek a political solution to slavery. They withdrew from the AASS in 1840, formed the [[Liberty Party (United States, 1840)|Liberty Party]], and nominated [[James G. Birney]] for president. By the end of 1840, Garrison announced the formation of a third new organization, the [[Friends of Universal Reform]], with sponsors and founding members including prominent reformers [[Maria Weston Chapman|Maria Chapman]], [[Abby Kelley|Abby Kelley Foster]], [[Oliver Johnson (writer)|Oliver Johnson]], and [[Amos Bronson Alcott]] (father of [[Louisa May Alcott]]).{{citation needed|date=March 2017}}

Although some members of the Liberty Party supported woman's rights, including [[women's suffrage]], Garrison's ''Liberator'' continued to be the leading advocate of woman's rights throughout the 1840s, publishing editorials, speeches, legislative reports, and other developments concerning the subject. In February 1849, Garrison's name headed the women's suffrage petition sent to the Massachusetts legislature, the first such petition sent to any American legislature, and he supported the subsequent annual suffrage petition campaigns organized by Lucy Stone and Wendell Phillips. Garrison took a leading role in the May 30, 1850, meeting that called the first National Woman's Rights Convention, saying in his address to that meeting that the new movement should make securing the ballot to women its primary goal.<ref>"Women's Rights Convention," ''Liberator'', June 7, 1850</ref> At the national convention held in Worcester the following October, Garrison was appointed to the National Woman's Rights Central Committee, which served as the movement's executive committee, charged with carrying out programs adopted by the conventions, raising funds, printing proceedings and tracts, and organizing annual conventions.<ref>Million, Joelle, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ydeGAAAAMAAJ&q ''Woman's Voice, Woman's Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Women's Rights Movement.''] Praeger, 2003. {{ISBN|027597877X}}, pp. 104, 109, 293 note 26.</ref>

===Controversy===
In 1849, Garrison became involved in one of Boston's most notable trials of the time. [[Washington Goode]], a black seaman, had been sentenced to death for the murder of a fellow black mariner, Thomas Harding. In ''The Liberator'' Garrison argued that the verdict relied on "circumstantial evidence of the most flimsy character&nbsp;..." and feared that the determination of the government to uphold its decision to execute Goode was based on race. As all other death sentences since 1836 in Boston had been commuted, Garrison concluded that Goode would be the last person executed in Boston for a capital offense writing, "Let it not be said that the last man Massachusetts bore to hang was a colored man!"<ref>{{cite news
|title=Shall He Be Hung?
|first=William Lloyd
|last=Garrison
|newspaper=[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]]
|date=March 30, 1849
|page=2
|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/34644555/washington_goode_shall_he_be_hung/
|via=newspapers.com}}</ref> Despite the efforts of Garrison and many other prominent figures of the time, Goode was hanged on May 25, 1849.

Garrison became famous as one of the most articulate, as well as most radical, opponents of slavery. His approach to emancipation stressed "[[moral suasion]]", non-violence, and passive resistance. While some other abolitionists of the time favored gradual emancipation, Garrison argued for the "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves." On July 4, 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, condemning it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell," referring to the [[three-fifths compromise]] that had written slavery into the Constitution.<ref>{{cite journal
|title=Garrison's Constitution. The Covenant with Death and How It Was Made
|date=Winter 2000
|volume=32
|url=https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/winter/garrisons-constitution-1.html|number=4
|journal=[[Prologue Magazine]]
|first=Paul
|last=Finkelman
|authorlink=Paul Finkelman}}</ref>

In 1855, his eight-year alliance with [[Frederick Douglass]] disintegrated when Douglass converted to classical liberal legal theorist and abolitionist [[Lysander Spooner|Lysander Spooner's]] view (dominant among political abolitionists) that the Constitution could be interpreted as being anti-slavery.<ref>{{cite news
|title=The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
|first=Lysander
|last=Spooner
|date=1845
|url=https://www.lysanderspooner.org/works
}}</ref>

[[File:Broadside of John Brown's last speech.jpg|thumb|upright |Broadside of John Brown's last speech]]
The events in [[John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry]],  followed by Brown's [[Virginia v. John Brown|trial and execution]], were closely followed in ''The Liberator''. Garrison had Brown's last speech, in court, printed as a broadside, available in the ''Liberator'' office.

[[File:William Lloyd Garrison carte de visite.jpeg|thumb|left|upright|Photograph of Garrison]]
[[File:Garrison Thompson Phillips ca1850 bySouthworth and Hawes Beinecke (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.15 |Garrison and fellow abolitionists [[George Thompson (abolitionist)|George Thompson]] and [[Wendell Phillips]], seated at table, [[daguerreotype]], c. 1850–1851]]
Garrison's outspoken anti-slavery views repeatedly put him in danger. Besides his imprisonment in Baltimore and the price placed on his head by the state of [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], he was the object of vituperation and frequent death threats.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/William_L._Garrison |title=William L. Garrison |publisher=Ohio History Central |website=www.ohiohistorycentral.org|language=en|access-date=November 10, 2017}}</ref> On the eve of the Civil War, a sermon preached in a Universalist chapel in [[Brooklyn, New York]], denounced "the bloodthirsty sentiments of Garrison and his school; and did not wonder that the feeling of the South was exasperated, taking as they did, the insane and bloody ravings of the Garrisonian traitors for the fairly expressed opinions of the North."<ref>''[[Brooklyn Daily Eagle]]'', December 31, 1860, p. 3; the paper pronounced this an "admirable discourse."</ref>

===After abolition===
[[File:Mr. Wm. Lloyd Garrison - DPLA - 3767a7d663a98924d1fcad8ac7f613aa (page 1).jpg|alt=Photograph of William Lloyd Garrison; an annotation in pencil reads "Mr. Lloyd Garrison W"|left|thumb|upright|Wm. Lloyd Garrison, [c. 1859–1870]. Carte de Visite Collection, Boston Public Library]]
After the United States abolished slavery, Garrison announced in May 1865 that he would resign the presidency of the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] (AASS) and offered a resolution declaring victory in the struggle against slavery and dissolving the society. The resolution prompted a sharp debate, however, led by his long-time friend [[Wendell Phillips]], who argued that the mission of the AASS was not fully completed until black Southerners gained full political and civil equality. Garrison maintained that while complete civil equality was vitally important, the special task of the AASS was at an end, and that the new task would best be handled by new organizations and new leadership. With his long-time allies deeply divided, however, he was unable to muster the support he needed to carry the resolution, and it was defeated 118–48. Declaring that his "vocation as an Abolitionist, thank God, has ended," Garrison resigned the presidency and declined an appeal to continue. Returning home to [[Boston]], he withdrew completely from the AASS and ended publication of ''The Liberator'' at the end of 1865. With Wendell Phillips at its head, the AASS continued to operate for five more years, until the ratification of the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] granted voting rights to black men. (According to [[Henry Mayer (historian)|Henry Mayer]], Garrison was hurt by the rejection and remained peeved for years; "as the cycle came around, always managed to tell someone that he was ''not'' going to the next set of [AASS] meetings" [594].){{Citation needed|date=November 2017}}

After his withdrawal from AASS and ending ''The Liberator'', Garrison continued to participate in public reform movements. He supported the causes of [[civil rights]] for [[African American|blacks]] and woman's rights, particularly the campaign for suffrage. He contributed columns on [[Reconstruction Era|Reconstruction]] and civil rights for ''The Independent'' and ''[[The Boston Journal]]''.{{Citation needed|date=November 2017}}

In 1870, he became an associate editor of the women's suffrage newspaper, the ''Woman's Journal'', along with [[Mary Livermore]], [[Thomas Wentworth Higginson]], [[Lucy Stone]], and [[Henry B. Blackwell]]. He served as president of both the [[American Woman Suffrage Association]] (AWSA) and the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. He was a major figure in New England's woman suffrage campaigns during the 1870s.<ref>, Merk, Lois Bannister, "Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement." Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1958, Revised, 1961, pp. 14, 25.</ref>

In 1873, he healed his long estrangements from [[Frederick Douglass]] and [[Wendell Phillips]], affectionately reuniting with them on the platform at an AWSA rally organized by Abby Kelly Foster and Lucy Stone on the one-hundredth anniversary of the [[Boston Tea Party]].<ref>Mayer, 614</ref> When [[Charles Sumner]] died in 1874, some Republicans suggested Garrison as a possible successor to his Senate seat; Garrison declined on grounds of his moral opposition to taking office.<ref>Mayer, 618</ref>

===Antisemitism===
Garrison called the [[Israelites|ancient Jews]] an exclusivist people "whose feet ran to evil" and suggested that the [[Jewish diaspora]] was the result of their own "egotism and self-complacency."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Michael |first1=Robert |last2=Rosen |first2=Philip |author-link= |date=2007 |title=Dictionary of Antisemitism from the Earliest Times to the Present |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d5927rY-UgoC&dq=William+Lloyd+Garrison+%22feet+ran+to+evil%22&pg=PA173 |location=lanham, Maryland / Toronto / Plymouth, UK |publisher=The Scarecrow Press, Inc. |page=173 |isbn=978-0810858626}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Garrison |first1=William Lloyd |title=The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison. Edited by Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames |last2=Ruchames |first2=Louis |last3=Merrill |first3=Walter M. |date=1981 |isbn=978-0-674-52666-2 |location=Cambridge, Mass., Belknap press of Harvard university press |pages=429}}</ref> When the Jewish-American sheriff and writer [[Mordecai Manuel Noah]] defended slavery, Garrison attacked Noah as "the miscreant Jew" and "the enemy of Christ and liberty." On other occasions, Garrison described Noah as a "Shylock" and as "the lineal descendant of the monsters who nailed Jesus to the cross."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://whyy.org/articles/who-cares-if-bernie-sanders-is-jewish/ |title=Who cares if Bernie Sanders is Jewish? |publisher=[[WHYY-TV|WHYY]] |accessdate=May 7, 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://forward.com/culture/213776/the-powerful-example-of-the-jewish-abolitionists-we-forgot/ |title=The Powerful Example Of The Jewish Abolitionists We Forgot |date=January 30, 2015 |publisher=[[The Forward]] |accessdate=May 7, 2022}}</ref>

However, Garrison acknowledged prejudice against Jews in Europe, which he compared to prejudice against African-Americans, and opposed a proposed amendment to the [[Constitution of the United States]] affirming the divinity of Jesus Christ on the basis of religious freedom, writing that "no one can fail to see that the Jew, Unitarian, or Deist could not worship in his own way, as an American citizen, precisely because the Constitution, under which his citizenship exists, would make faith in the New Testament and the divinity of Jesus Christ a national creed."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ruchames |first1=Louis |title=The Abolitionists and the Jews |journal=Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society |date=1952 |volume=42 |issue=2 |page=147{{ndash}}148 |jstor=43057515 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43057515 |access-date=September 18, 2024 |issn=0146-5511}}</ref>