William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison
Portrait of William Lloyd Garrison by Nathaniel Jocelyn, oil on panel, 1833, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Born	(1805-12-10)December 10, 1805 Newburyport, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	May 24, 1879(1879-05-24) (aged 73) New York City, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Abolitionist
Known for	Editor of The Liberator
Spouse(s)	Helen Eliza Benson
Children	7
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William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 – May 24, 1879) was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he founded with Isaac Knapp in 1831 and published in Massachusetts until slavery was abolished by Constitutional amendment after the American Civil War. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United States. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the woman suffrage movement.

Garrison was born on December 10, 1805, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the son of immigrants from the British colony of New Brunswick, in present-day Canada. Under An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen, Abijah Garrison, a merchant sailing pilot and master, had obtained American papers and moved his family to Newburyport in 1806. The U.S. Embargo Act of 1807, intended to injure Great Britain, caused a decline in American commercial shipping. The elder Garrison became unemployed and deserted the family in 1808. Garrison's mother was Frances Maria Lloyd, reported to have been tall, charming, and of a strong religious character. She started referring to their son William as Lloyd, his middle name, to preserve her family name. She died in 1823, in the town of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Garrison sold home-made lemonade and candy as a youth, and also delivered wood to help support the family. In 1818, at 13, Garrison began working as an apprentice compositor for the Newburyport Herald. He soon began writing articles, often under the pseudonym Aristides. Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general nicknamed "the Just." After his apprenticeship ended, Garrison and a young printer named Isaac Knapp bought their own newspaper in 1826, the short-lived Free Press. One of their regular contributors was poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. In this early work as a small town newspaper writer, Garrison acquired skills he would later use as a nationally known writer, speaker and newspaper publisher. In 1828, he was appointed editor of the National Philanthropist in Boston, Massachusetts, the first American journal to promote legally-mandated temperance.