SOURCE: Fredrickson, George M. Introduction to Great Lives Observed: William Lloyd Garrison, edited by George M. Fredrickson, pp. 1-8. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

In the following essay, Fredrickson summarizes Garrison's theories of reform, nonviolent resistance, and social progress, while critiquing some of the more radical elements of his political position.

William Lloyd Garrison did not, in any real sense, lead the American antislavery movement. Abolitionism was a decentralized enterprise subject to local variation and internal factionalism, and Garrison's control of tactics and strategy never extended far beyond the borders of New England (it often was challenged even there). Furthermore, the influence of his brand of abolitionism upon Northern opinion, which never was very great, did not increase with time. His refusal to endorse political activity left him outside the mainstream antislavery efforts of the 1840's and 1850's that resulted in the Free Soil movement and influenced the...