ABSTRACT
The antislavery impulse swept through the North and by 1838 had established some 1350 societies with perhaps two hundred and fifty thousand members and many more sympathizers. The most extraor dinary fact respecting this tide of abolitionism was that it did not submerge Garrison. And this despite the sharp or bitter criticism
which he attracted from numerous distinguished new leaders of the movement. These included men of the stature of John Greenleaf Whittier, Channing (who in 1835 stirred the country with his Slavery, which reversed his earlier opinions), the Tappan brothers, wealthy New York merchants, and many others. They deemed Garrison “ex cessive” in his criticism of well-intentioned slaveholders, and repel lent to hundreds of thousands of American citizens, North and South, who might be willing to help the abolition cause, but who could not tolerate association with Garrison. Evidently, something in Garrison’s message and approach made it impossible to forget him.
