William Lloyd Garrison, the antislavery champion

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 13, 2002

The result of a ten-year effort, All on Fire restores abolitionist Garrison to his rightful place in history as "an authentic American hero who, with a Biblical prophet's power and a propagandist's skill, forced the nation to confront the most crucial moral issue in its history."

Garrison demanded more than immediate emancipation: he championed the natural rights view that individuals own themselves and insisted upon equal rights for blacks. Despite personal poverty and death threats, Garrison published his radical ideas for 35 years in his newspaper, The Liberator, and recruited the best abolitionist orators including Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass. Inspiring!