Garrison did not have to wait for posthumous appreciation from his countrymen.  His steady and discriminating support of the Government, and his ardent sympathy with the arms of the North won him appreciation in his lifetime.  Indeed, there came to him, if not popularity, something closely akin to it during the war.  His visit to the capital in June, 1864, well illustrates the marvelous changes which had taken place in the Union touching himself and his cause.  On his way to Washington the pioneer stopped over at Baltimore, which he had not revisited for thirty-four years, and where the Republican Convention, which renominated Lincoln was in session.  He watched the proceedings from the gallery, and witnessed with indescribable emotions the enthusiastic demonstrations of joy with which the whole body of delegates greeted the radical anti-slavery resolution of the Convention.  To the reformer it was “a full indorsement of all the Abolition fanaticism and incendiarism” with which he had been branded for years.  The jail where he had been held a prisoner for seven weeks, like the evil which he had denounced, was gone, and a new one stood in its place, which knew not Garrison.  In the court-house where he was tried and sentenced he was received by a United States judge as an illustrious visitor.  Judge Bond hunted up the old indictment against the junior editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, where it had lain for a generation, during which that guiltless prisoner had started a movement which had shaken the nation by its mighty power, and slavery out of it.  “Eight or nine of the original jurymen who gave the verdict against Mr. Garrison are still living,” wrote Theodore Tilton, at the time, to the Independent, “and Judge Bond jocosely threatened to summon them all into Court, that Mr. Garrison might forgive them in public.”

At Washington the pioneer’s reception seemed to him like a dream.  And no wonder.  He was heartily received by President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton.  He was accorded the most marked attentions on the floor of both branches of Congress.  On every side there rose up witnesses to the vastness of the revolution which had taken place, and to the fact that the great Abolitionist was no longer esteemed an enemy of the Republic but one of its illustrious citizens.  This was evinced in a signal and memorable manner a little later when the National Government extended to him an invitation to visit Fort Sumter as its guest on the occasion of the re-raising over it of the Stars and Stripes.  He went, and so also went George Thompson, his lifelong friend and coadjutor, who was the recipient of a similar invitation from the Secretary of War.