re of it,--into truly national
prominence. This was the Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia,--a negro
uprising under the leadership of a genuine African slave who knew the
Bible by heart, who claimed to have communication with the Holy Spirit,
and who finally employed an eclipse of the sun as a sign to his
followers that they were to arise and slay their masters. The massacre
which resulted lasted forty-eight hours, and sixty-one white people on
the neighbouring plantations lost their lives. Retribution followed
swiftly, and where the slightest suspicion of guilt was to be found,
negroes were shot at sight or burned against the nearest tree.
Southampton County saw a veritable reign of terror. A storm of
indignation swept over the South; thousands of slave owners living on
their great estates, miles from the nearest military station, feared
themselves victims of a servile insurrection. The cause of the uprising
was at once sought for, and a hundred writers laid the blame at the door
of the Boston _Liberator_. Garrison was indicted for felony in North
Carolina. The legislature of Georgia offered a reward for $5,000 to any
one who would kidnap him and deliver his body within the limits of the
state. With one voice the entire South cried out that the _Liberator_
must be suppressed.

Later it became clear that Garrison's part in the Nat Turner rebellion
was nil. The _Liberator_ had not a single subscriber in the South; Nat
Turner had never seen a copy of the paper,--and Garrison had been
specific in his statements that he did not believe in active resistance
to authority, or in the use of force of any kind. But the storm had
broken, and Garrison had to fight his way through it.

Even in Boston Garrison had to face the mob, and meet the scorn of the
ruling classes of the city. His movement had no popular support, in the
true sense of the word, as it had twenty years later, when Wendell
Phillips led the forces of abolition. Cotton was king, and the fear of
losing the Southern trade sent the mercantile classes into a panic of
fear. Garrison's enemies were by no means confined to the South. He was
like David with his sling; and slavery, with all its vassals, North as
well as South, was Goliath armed with steel. But for Garrison there were
only two words, Right and Wrong, and he would not compromise concerning
either.

Within two years he succeeded in organizing in Philadelphia the American
Anti-Slavery Society; by 1835 he convin