To the Public

“During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free states—and particularly in New England—than at the South.”

Having toured the United States giving speeches against slavery, Garrison finds that the audiences most receptive to abolition reside in the North, especially in the Northeast. His observation calls attention to the problem of sectionalism in the United States, with different regions adhering to different values. It also shows that his purpose is to arouse the passions of his readers and listeners and that changing those passions is the key to advancing the abolitionist cause.

“I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave-owners themselves.” 

Garrison couches his criticism of slave owners in highly emotional terms. Representing them as inflexible and virtually unpersuadable to the abolitionist cause, he sets them up as an enemy for himself and his readers. The passage also uses the literary devices of repetition and parallelism with five “more” phrases in a row.

“I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty.”

With his enemy identified, Garrison uses metaphors of battle to describe how the abolitionist project will proceed. His new publication, The Liberator, will serve as abolitionism’s flag, “the standard of emancipation,” and he chooses Boston as its home, with its powerful associations with the American Revolution, such as Paul Revere’s ride, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Boston Massacre.