His lectures were attended by large audiences, and awakened in some minds a permanent interest in the anti-slavery cause. His experiences as a lecturer, however, convinced him that Boston rather than Washington was the best location for an anti-slavery journal, and that a revolution of public sentiment at the north must precede emancipation at the south. He accordingly issued the first number of the "Liberator" in Boston, Jan. 1, 1831, taking for his motto, My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind;" and declaring, in the face of the almost universal apathy upon the subject of slavery:I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." Mr. Isaac Knapp was his partner in the printing and publishing department. As they were without capital or promise of support from any quarter, they were unable to open an office on their own account. The foreman in the office of the Christian Examiner," being a warm personal friend of Mr. Garrison, generously employed him and his partner as journeymen, taking their labor as compensation in part for the use of his types. Mr. Garrison, after working mechanically in the daytime, spent a large portion of the night in editorial labor.

Having issued one number, thev waited anxiously to see whether they would find encouragement to proceed. The receipt of $30 from James Forten, a wealthy colored citizen of Philadelphia, with the names of 25 subscribers, was the first cheering incentive to perseverance, and the journal was issued without interruption from that day. At the end of three weeks they opened an office for themselves; but for nearly two years their resources were so restricted that they made the office their only domicile. The "Liberator" attracted general attention, not only at the north, but at the south. The mayor of Boston, Harrison Gray Otis, having been appealed to by a southern magistrate to suppress it if possible by law, wrote in reply that his officers had "ferreted out the paper and its editor, whose office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors." Almost every mail, at this period, brought letters threatening Mr. Garrison with assassination if he did not discontinue his journal; and in December, 1831, the legislature of Georgia passed an act, offering a reward of $5,000 to any person who should arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction, under the laws of that state, the editor or the publisher.

On Jan. 1, 1832, he secured the cooperation of eleven other persons in organizing the New England (afterward Massachusetts) anti-slavery society, upon the principle of immediate emancipation. This was the parent of those numerous affiliated associations by which the anti-slavery agitation was for many years maintained. In the spring of 1832 he published a work entitled Thoughts on African Colonization," etc, in which he set forth at length the grounds of his opposition to that scheme. He went immediately afterward to England, as an agent of the New England anti-slavery society, to solicit the cooperation of the people of that country in measures designed to promote emancipation in the United States, and to lav before them his views of the colonization project. He was warmly received by Wilberforce, Brougham, and their associates. In consequence of statements made by Mr. Garrison, Wilberforce and eleven of his principal coadjutors issued a protest against the American colonization society, pronouncing its plans delusive, and its influence an obstruction to the abolition of slavery. He also succeeded in inducing Mr. George Thompson, one of the most prominent champions of the anti-slavery cause in Great Britain, to come to the United States as an anti-slavery lecturer.

Soon after Mr. Garrison's return, the American anti-slavery society was organized at Philadelphia, upon the principles of which he was the champion. The "Declarationof Sentiments issued by the association-an elaborate paper, setting forth its principles, aims, and methods-was prepared by him. The agitation previously excited was now greatly intensified, and at length awakened a resistance which manifested itself in a mobocratic spirit, insomuch that for several years the holding of an anti-slavery meeting almost anywhere in the free states was a signal for riotous demonstrations, imperilling property and life. Mr. Thompson's arrival from England in 1834 inflamed the public mind to such a degree that at length, by the advice of his friends, he was induced to desist from his labors and return to his native land. In October, 1835, a meeting of the female anti-slavery society of Boston was riotously broken up by a collection of persons, described in the journals of the day as "gentlemen of property and standing." Mr. Garrison, who went to the meeting to deliver an address, after attempting to conceal himself from the fury of the mob in a carpenter's shop in the rear of the hall, was violently seized, let down by a rope from the window to the ground, and, partly denuded of his clothing, dragged through the streets to the city hall; whence, as the only means of saving his life, he was taken to jail by order of the mayor, upon the nominal charge that he was a disturber of the peace." He was released on the following day, and, under protection of the city authorities, escorted to a place of safety in the country.

These scenes of violence were followed by a discussion of the peace question, in which ho took an earnest part as a champion of non-resistance; and in 1838 he led the way in the organization of the New England non-resistance society. About this time the question of the rights of women as members of the anti-slavery societies began to be mooted, Mr. Garrison contending that, so far as they wished to do so, they should be permitted to vote, serve on committees, and take part in discussion, on equal terms with men. Upon this question there was a division of the American anti-slavery society in 1840; and in the"World's Anti-Slavery Convention," held that year in London, Mr. Garrison, being a delegate from that society, refused to take a seat because the female delegates from the United States were excluded. In 1843 he was chosen president of the society, and continued to hold the office till 1865, when, slavery having been abolished, he resigned, deeming the time had come for the dissolution of the society. In 1846 he made his third visit for anti-slavery purposes to Great Britain. In 1843 a small volume of his Sonnets and other Poems" was published in Boston; and in 1852 appeared a volume of "Selections" from his writings.

He was ever earnestly opposed to the formation of a political party by the abolitionists, from a conviction that such a measure would inevitably corrupt the purity of the movement and postpone the day when emancipation might be secured. He never sought or contemplated the abolition of slavery in the states by congress or any other branch of the national government, his views as to the powers of that government over the subject being the same that were generally held' by statesmen of all parties at the north, as well as by many at the south. His first idea was that slavery might he abolished by moral influence, with such incidental aid as the national government could constitutionally afford, and without disturbing the union of the states; but upon this point he at length changed his opinions, his observation of the movements of political parties and his reflections upon the provisions of the constitution relating to the subject leading him to the settled conclusion that some of the conditions of compact between the free and the slave states were immoral, and that a dissolution of the Union was necessary to the freedom of the north and the emancipation of the slaves.

He continued to urge this opinion until the breaking out of the civil Avar in 1801 changed the entire aspect of the slavery question, and he saw clearly that the system must inevitably be overthrown by the exercise of the war powers of the national government. Thenceforth he bent his energies to the work of hastening that consummation; and in April, 1865, by invitation of the secretary of war, he joined the party of northerners who went to South Carolina to see the flag of an emancipated Union raised upon the battlements of Fort Sumter. The first number of the Liberator," issued in 1831, found the whole nation asleep over the wrongs and dangers of slavery; the last number, issued on the last of December, 1865, after 35 years of conflict with the slave power, recorded the ratification of an amendment to the constitution of the United States, for ever prohibiting the existence of slavery. The paper was thus discontinued at the very moment when the object for which it was established was fully consummated. Soon after the close of the war, a large number of persons, including some of the most eminent in the land, united in presenting to Mr. Garrison the sum of about $30,000, in token of their appreciation of his unremitting labors for the abolition of slavery.

In 1867 he once more visited Great Britain, where the most distinguished citizens and statesmen united in honoring him for his devotion to the cause of the oppressed.