SOURCE: Macy, Jesse. “The Turning Point.” In The Anti-Slavery Crusade: A Chronicle of the Gathering Storm, pp. 54-66. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1919.

In the following excerpt, Macy recounts pivotal events in the American anti-slavery movement during the year 1831, including the first publication of Garrison's newspaper the Liberator and the Nat Turner slave rebellion.

The year 1831 is notable for three events in the history of the anti-slavery controversy: on the first day of January in that year 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...