ty and justice. He
refused to purchase peace at the price of freedom. He would not drift
with the current of the public opinion of his day. His course was
up-stream; his battle against the tide. He undertook to create a right
public sentiment on the question of freedom, a task as great as it was
difficult. Garrison thundered warnings to arouse the public conscience
before the lightnings of his righteous wrath and the shafts of his
invincible logic wounded the defenders of slavery in all the vulnerable
joints of their armor. He declared: "Let Southern oppressors
tremble--let their secret abettors tremble; let their Northern
apologists tremble; let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks
tremble." For such utterances as these his name throughout the nation
became one of obloquy and reproach.

He was not bound to the slave by the ties of race, but by the bond of
common humanity which he considered a stronger tie. In his struggle for
freedom there was no hope of personal gain; he deliberately chose the
pathway of financial loss and poverty. There were set before his eyes no
prospect of honor, no pathways leading to promotion, no voice of popular
approval, save that of his conscience and his God. His friends and
neighbors looked upon him as one who brought a stigma upon the fair name
of the city in which he lived. The business interests regarded him as an
influence which disturbed and injured the relations of commerce and of
trade; the Church opposed him; the press denounced him; the State
regarded him as an enemy of the established order; the North repudiated
him; the South burned him in effigy. Yet, almost single-handed and
alone, Garrison continued to fight on, declaring that "his reliance for
the deliverance of the oppressed universally is upon the nature of man,
the inherent wrongfulness of oppression, the power of truth, and the
omnipotence of God." After the greatest civil war that ever immersed a
nation in a baptism of blood and tears, Garrison, unlike most reformers,
lived to see the triumph of the cause for which he fought and every
slave not only acknowledged as a free man, but clothed with the dignity
and powers of American citizenship. William Lloyd Garrison has passed
from us, but the monumental character of his work and the influence of
his life shall never perish. While there are wrongs to be righted,
despots to be attacked, oppressors to be overthrown, peace to find and
advocate, and freedom a voice, the na