in the habit of using violent and abusive language
against anti-slavery agitators. This appeared in the first debate on
the subject during Washington's administration. Every form of rhetorical
abuse also accompanied the outbreak of mob violence against the
reformers at the time of Garrison's advent into the controversy. He was
especially fitted to reply in kind. "I am accused," said he, "of using
hard language. I admit the charge. I have not been able to find a soft
word to describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it." This
was a new departure which was instantly recognized by Southern leaders.
But from the beginning to the bitter end, Garrison stands alone
as preeminently the representative of this form of attack. It was
significant, also, that the Liberator was published in Boston, the
literary center of the country.

There is no evidence that there was any direct connection between the
publication of the Liberator and the servile insurrection which occurred
during the following August. * It was, however, but natural that the
South should associate the two events. A few utterances of the paper
were fitted, if not intended, to incite insurrection. One passage
reads: "Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed and the
oppressor--the weapons being equal between the parties--God knows that
my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor.
Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave
insurrections." Again: "Rather than see men wearing their chains in
a cowardly and servile spirit, I would, as an advocate of peace, much
rather see them breaking the heads of the tyrant with their chains."

* Garrison himself denied any direct connection with the Nat
Turner insurrection. See "William Lloyd Garrison, the Story
of His Life told by His Children," vol. I, p. 251.

George Thompson, an English co-laborer with Garrison, is quoted as
saying in a public address in 1835 that "Southern slaves ought, or
at least had a right, to cut the throats of their masters." * Such
utterances are rare, and they express a passing mood not in the least
characteristic of the general spirit of the abolition movement; yet
the fact that such statements did emanate from such a source made it
comparatively easy for extremists of the opposition to cast odium upon
all abolitionists. The only type of abolition known in South Carolina
was that of the extreme Garrisonian agitators,