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About Douglass' Circle

William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was the nation's most well known abolitionist. Challenging the prevailing notions of his time that slaves should be gradually set free and colonized outside of America, Garrison argued that slaves must be freed immediately and integrated into American society. Garrison founded the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator in 1831. He also adhered, at least until John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859, to the philosophy of nonresistance and abhorred all violence, even when committed in self-defense. John Garraty and Mark Carnes, eds., American National Biography Oxford University Press. New York 1999.