Convince me that one man may rightfully make another man his slave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration of Independence.
William Lloyd Garrison
The Public Record
William Lloyd Garrison was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. His widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator was a driving force that fueled the abolitionist era, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. He supported the rights of women, and during the 1870s became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement.
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Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire.
I do not know how to worship God and Mammon at the same time.
If other men choose to go upon all-fours, I choose to stand erect, as God designed every man to stand.
If, practically falsifying its heaven-attested principles, this nation denounces me for refusing to imitate its example, then, adhering all the more tenaciously to those principles, I will not cease to rebuke it for its guilty…
Numerically, the contest may be an unequal one, for the time being; but the Author of liberty and the Source of justice, the adorable God, is more than multitudinous, and he will defend the right.
My crime is, that I will not go with the multitude to do evil.
My singularity is, that when I say that Freedom is of God, and Slavery is of the devil, I mean just what I say.
My fanaticism is, that I insist on the American people abolishing Slavery, or ceasing to prate of the rights of man.
My hardihood is, in measuring them by their own standard, and convicting them out of their own mouths.
Where are there such unbelievers in the natural equality and freedom of mankind?
I do not know how to espouse freedom and slavery together.