In the midst of the growing activities of the revival season of the anti-slavery movement, Garrison had some personal experiences of a distressing nature.  One of these was the case of his quondam friend and partner in the publication of the Liberator, Isaac Knapp.  He, poor fellow, was no longer the publisher of the paper.  His wretched business management of his department tended to keep the Liberator in a state of chronic financial embarrassment.  When the committee, who assumed charge of the finances of the paper, took hold of the problem, they determined to let Knapp go.  He was paid $150 or $175 as a quid pro quo for his interest in the Liberator.  Unfortunate in the business of a publisher, he was yet more unfortunate in another respect.  He had become a victim of intemperance.  His inebriety increased upon him, accelerated, no doubt, by his business failure.  Notwithstanding Garrison’s strong and tender friendship for Knapp, the broken man came to regard him as an enemy, and showed in many ways his jealousy and hatred of his old friend and partner.  Very painful was this experience to the pioneer.

An experience which touched Garrison more nearly arose out of the sad case of his brother James, who, the reader will recall, ran away from his mother in Baltimore and went to sea.  He ultimately enlisted in the United States Navy, and what with the brutalities which he suffered at the hands of his superiors, by way of discipline, and with those of his own uncontrolled passions and appetites, he was, when recovered by his brother William, a total moral and physical wreck.  But the prodigal was gathered to the reformer’s heart, and taken to his home where in memory of a mother long dead, whose darling was James, he was nursed and watched over with deep and pious love.  There were sad lapses of the profligate man even in the sanctuary of his brother’s home.  The craving for liquor was omnipotent in the wretched creature, and he was attacked by uncontrollable desire for drink.  But William’s patience was infinite, and his yearning and pity at such times were as sweet and strong as a mother’s.  Death rung the curtain down in the fall of 1842, on this miserable life with its sorry and pathetic scenes.

About this time a trial of a different sort fell to the lot of Garrison to endure.  The tongue of detraction was never more busy with his alleged infidel doctrines or to more damaging effect.  Collins, in England, seeking to obtain contributions for the support of the agitation in America found Garrison’s infidelity the great lion in the way of success.  Even the good dispositions of the venerable Clarkson were affected by the injurious reports in this regard, circulated in England mainly by Nathaniel Colver, a narrow and violent sectary of the Baptist denomination of the United States.  It was, of course, painful to Garrison to feel that he had become a rock of offence in the path of the great movement, which he had started