ABSTRACT
Written to the editor of a British evangelical periodical on the completion of a tour of the British Isles, Garrison's letter illustrates his sharply critical view of American Christians who fell short of his requirements for a true religious abolitionism—recognition of the sinfulness of slaveholding, the need for immediate abolition and consequent rejection of the compromises of politics and institutional religion. Thus he opposed the Free Church of Scotland's links with southern Presbyterians and ridiculed the inability of the Evangelical Alliance's convention earlier in 1846 to decide clearly that support of slaveholding was incompatible with membership. William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) had become increasingly controversial as the editor of the abolitionist The Liberator and leading 'extremist' within American antislavery. Claims that he was an 'infidel' he saw as the product of sectarian intolerance by his (largely) evangelical opponents.
