ABSTRACT
William Goodell's magazine, The Christian Investigator, was given over to probing the possibilities of church schisms and unity, in the interest of abolition. It was in the pattern of schisms and debates, which divided the churches of North and South, that the antislavery forces went their separate ways. National churches, other national institutions, and the national antislavery society were required to clarify their views. Garrison and his cohorts were largely confined to New England: the area farthest removed from any real stake in slavery. Those partisans were many and varied, and largely concerned with church policies on slavery. It was evident to them that the future of their antislavery enterprises depended on their ability to force their churches to repudiate slavery. It is significant that the leader of the antislavery movement within the Methodist Episcopal Church should have been a New Englander influenced by Garrison and the Liberator.
