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and heart of Anti-slavery activity.
He was the channel into which the new streams flowed.
If a drop of Abolition fell from the sky anywhere in America, it was found in the Liberator upon the following morning.
This drawing of the new men into a knowledge of each other made magical heat.
Every Abolition act or thought went immediately into the general Abolition consciousness.
It was Garrison who caused the heat-lightning of 1825 to turn into the thunderbolts of 1835.
His gift of doing this was his greatness.
We must imagine Garrison then, as always, behind and underneath the machinery and in touch with all the forces at work, writing away at his terrible Liberator--fomenting, rebuking, retorting, supporting, expounding, thundering, scolding.
The continuousness of Garrison is appalling, and fatigues even the retrospective imagination of posterity: he is like an allnight hotel: he is possessed: he is like something let loose.
I dread the din of him. I cover my head and fix my mind on other things; but there is Garrison hammering away, till he catches my eye and forces me to attend to him. If Garrison can do this to me, who am protected from dread of him by
Boston, the. Atlantic Monthly. Press, 1921.
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