took the ground that since
slavery was wrong, every slave had a right to instant freedom, and that
immediate emancipation was the duty of the master and of the state.

Baltimore was at that time one of the centres of the slave trade. There
were slave-pens on the principal streets, and Garrison soon witnessed
scenes which would have touched a less tender heart. In the first issue
of his paper, he denounced this traffic as "domestic piracy," and named
some men engaged in it, among them a vessel-owner of his own town of
Newburyport. This man immediately had Garrison arrested for "gross and
malicious libel," he was found guilty, fined fifty dollars and costs,
and as there was no one to pay this, was thrown into prison.

Garrison took his imprisonment calmly enough, but his old friend, John
G. Whittier, was deeply distressed and appealed to Henry Clay to secure
the release of the "guiltless prisoner." This Clay would probably have
done, but he was anticipated by another friend of Garrison's, Arthur
Tappan, of New York, who sent the money to pay the fine, and the young
agitator was free again, after an imprisonment of forty-nine days. He
had not been idle while in prison, but had prepared a series of lectures
on slavery, which he proceeded at once to deliver. Then, on the first
day of January, 1831, he began in Boston the publication of a weekly
paper called the "Liberator," which he continued for thirty-five years,
until its fight was won and slavery was abolished.

How well that fight was waged history has shown. In his first number he
announced: "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as
justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, to speak, or write with
moderation. No! No! Tell the man whose home is on fire to give a
moderate alarm; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the
fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a
cause like the present. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will
not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--and I will be heard."

And heard he was. The whole land was soon filled with excitement; the
apathy of years was broken. From the south came hundreds of letters
threatening him with death if he did not desist, and the state of
Georgia offered a reward of $5,000 for his apprehension. In the north,
anti-slavery societies were formed everywhere, and the movement grew
with great rapidity, in spite of powerful efforts to crush it. There
we