The Principal collections of William Lloyd Garrison's papers are at Boston Public Library, Smith College, and Houghton Library, Harvard University.

William Lloyd Garrison (10 December 1805-24 May 1879) is remembered as the foremost journalist of the anti-slavery cause, but he was intimately involved with the whole spectrum of humanitarian reform in the early nineteenth century, including the crusades for peace, for temperance, and for woman's rights, as well as abolition. He was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to parents recently arrived from Nova Scotia. After his father deserted the family in 1808, William Lloyd's childhood became a series of difficult adjustments. He served a partial apprenticeship as a shoemaker, ran away from another as cabinetmaker, and finally found his niche as a printer's apprentice in 1818. His youthful associations were solidly Baptist and Federalist; their rigidity imposed itself on Garrison's mind.

During his years as a printer's apprentice, Garrison, like Benjamin Franklin before...