William Lloyd Garrison Quotes
Better to be always in a minority of one with God — branded as madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel — frowned upon by "the powers that be," and mobbed by the populace — or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose "soul is marching on," though his "body lies moldering in the grave," or burnt to ashes at the stake like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross like him who "gave himself for the world," — in defense of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of a multitude crying, "It is the voice of a God, and not of a man!".
William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879, Editor & Abolitionist "Valedictory", The Liberator, December 29, 1865
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John Brown, in a futile effort to start a slave insurrection, raided the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry. His raid failed and he was captured and hanged. However, he became a martyr to the abolitionist movement, and his death is still sung of gloriously to this day. See {584889} and {604003}.
Brown was executed for trying to steal federal arms and start a slave rebellion. However, to many Americans, his moral judgment was correct. He became a martyr for many abolitionists, and some Northern Civil War songs extolled him and saw his as an early forerunner of a great moral struggle. See Thoreau {633849} as an example. There were many other Americans who were abolitionists and did not approve of either of the method his violent raid or its purpose of arming the slaves as they feared a bloodbath of vengeance.
He was a Protestant liberal and opposed to the English rule of Ireland and the discrimination against the Catholics. To make an example to inhibit Irish protestants from joining the Society of United Irishmen, he was accused of giving an oath to a British Soldier that he would support Irish independence. This had been made a capital crime shortly before. Actually, it was another member of the Society who administered the oath, but the prosecutor arranged for perjured testimony to convict the more prominent Orr. His execution was remembered by liberal Catholics and Protestants alike and in the rebellion the following year the rebel battle cry was “Remember Orr”.
William Lloyd Garrison, who signed and printed his name Wm. Lloyd Garrison, was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely-read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which he founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by Constitutional amendment in 1865. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and promoted immediate and uncompensated, as opposed to gradual and compensated, emancipation of slaves in the United States.
