William Lloyd Garrison began in Boston the publication of the Liberator;
in August there occurred in Southampton, Virginia, an insurrection of
slaves led by a negro, Nat Turner, in which sixty-one white persons
were massacred; and in December the Virginia Legislature began its long
debate on the question of slavery.

On the part of the abolitionists there was at no time any sudden break
in the principles which they advocated. Lundy did nothing but revive and
continue the work of the Quakers and other non-slaveholding classes
of the revolutionary period. Birney was and continued to be a typical
slaveholding abolitionist of the earlier period. Garrison began his
work as a disciple of Lundy, whom he followed in the condemnation of the
African colonization scheme, though he went farther and rejected every
form of colonization. Garrison likewise repudiated every plan
for gradual emancipation and proclaimed the duty of immediate and
unconditional liberation of the slaves.

The first number of the Liberator contained an Address to the Public,
which sounded the keynote of Garrison's career. "I shall contend for the
immediate enfranchisement of our slave population--I will be as harsh as
truth and as uncompromising as justice on this subject--I do not wish to
think, or speak, or write with moderation--I am in earnest--I will not
equivocate--I will not retreat a single inch, and I WILL BE HEARD!"

The New England Anti-Slavery Society, of which Garrison was the chief
organizer, was in essential harmony with the societies which Lundy had
organized in other sections. Its first address to the public in 1833
distinctly recognized the separate States as the sole authority in
the matter of emancipation within their own boundaries. Through moral
suasion, eschewing all violence and sedition, its authors proposed to
secure their object. In the spirit of civil and religious liberty and by
appealing to the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty party of 1840
and 1844, by the Freesoil party of 1848, and later by the Republican
party, and that nearly all of the abolitionists continued to be faithful
adherents to those principles, are sufficient proof of the essential
unity of the great anti-slavery movement. The apparent lack of harmony
and the real confusion in the history of the subject arose from the
peculiar character of one remarkable man.

The few owners of slaves who had assumed the role of public defenders of
the institution were