cherished, not only in America, but
around the world, wherever men aspire to individual liberty and personal
freedom.

William Lloyd Garrison was in earnest. He neither temporized nor
compromised with the enemies of human freedom. He gave up all those
comforts, honors, and rewards which his unusual talents would easily
have won for him in behalf of the cause of freedom which he espoused. He
stood for righteousness with all the rugged strength of a prophet. Like
some Elijah of the Gilead forests, he pleaded with this nation to turn
away from the false gods it had enshrined upon the altars of human
liberty. Like some John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, he called
upon this nation to repent of its sin of human slavery, and to bring
forth the fruits of its repentance in immediate emancipation.

William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 10, 1805. He
came of very poor and obscure parentage. His father, who was a seafaring
man, early abandoned the family for causes supposed to relate to his
intemperance. The whole career of Garrison was a struggle against
poverty. His educational advantages were limited. He became a printer's
apprentice when quite a lad, and learned the printing trade. When he
launched his paper, _The Liberator_, which was to deal such destructive
blows to slavery, the type was set by his own hands. The motto of _The
Liberator_ was "Our country is the world, our countrymen mankind."

Garrison did not worship the golden calf. His course could not be
changed, nor his opinion influenced by threats of violence or the bribe
of gold. Money could not persuade him to open his mouth against the
truth, or buy his silence from uncompromising denunciation of the wrong.
He put manhood above money, humanity above race, the justice of God
above the justices of the Supreme Court, and conscience above the
Constitution. Because he took his stand upon New Testament righteousness
as taught by Christ, he was regarded as a fanatic in a Christian land.
When he declared that "he determined at every hazard to lift up a
standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of
Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty," he was regarded as a
public enemy, in a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to freedom!

Garrison drew his arguments from the Bible and the Declaration of
Independence, only to be jeered as a wild enthusiast. He would not
retreat a single inch from the straight path of liber