William Lloyd Garrison. The Library of Congress.

United States 1831

Synopsis

Seeing slavery as an abomination to God and determined to force its immediate end in the United States, William Lloyd Garrison founded the nation's first militant antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831 in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper aimed to shame whites for their support of slavery by exposing northern links to bondage, by revealing the horrors of slave life, and by showing the cruelty behind the nascent movement to gradually end slave labor. Southerners banned Garrison's publication and blamed his relentless attacks on the institution of slavery for causing the violent Nat Turner-led slave revolt. Despite repeated attempts to suppress his newspaper, Garrison persevered to spark the rise of abolitionist sentiment in the North.

Timeline

• 1808: U.S. Congress bans the importation of slaves.
• 1812: The War of 1812, sparked by U.S. reactions to oppressive British maritime practices undertaken...