To the Public

In 1830s America, the question of whether slavery should endure was prominent in national political discussions. Slavery had been contested going back to colonial times. Many religious groups, especially Quakers, had long advocated abolition, and the need for abolition was often framed as a moral and religious argument. Influential theologians, such as John Wesley, argued that slavery was incompatible with the Christian virtues of justice and charity. Despite such arguments, slavery remained firmly rooted in American culture, particularly because the plantation economies of the South relied on it.

When the newly independent North American colonies came together to form the United States, the ethical and economic considerations around slavery engendered a series of compromises that put off the question of abolition until another time. The new Constitution did not explicitly allow nor forbid slavery; similarly, prominent founders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson at times decried slavery, even as they continued to enslave people. Some new states entering the Union allowed slavery, while others banned it outright. The result was a tenuous balance of power between slave states and free states.

By the 1830s, the compromises were growing less satisfactory to both sides. Legislation such as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which divided the United States into a slave-holding South and a free North, could not satisfy the religious and moral criticisms of abolitionists. At the same time, Great Britain, the nation many Americans viewed as the symbol of oppression, was on the verge of abolishing slavery throughout its empire. In 1833, when the British Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in all its colonies, it ironically meant that, had the American colonists lost their War of Independence—a war fought in the name of freedom and equality—enslaved persons in the United States could have been liberated sooner.

The rising tide of abolitionist sentiment in the United States was boosted by Black Americans speaking on their own behalf. Black activists such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet raised their voices in support of immediate abolition. Abolitionism, temperance (the campaign against alcohol), and the fight for women’s rights began to flourish in this period, and many figures were leaders in several different movements. A sense of what was right in the eyes of God was seen as a powerful motivator in advocating for fundamental social change.

Garrison became involved in abolitionism at an early age. He read Presbyterian minister John Rankin’s Letters on Slavery in his early twenties and quickly converted to the cause. Within a few years, he was co-editor of the leading abolitionist publication Genius of Universal Emancipation. Only two years later, he founded his own paper, The Liberator, by which time he was one of the nation’s leading and most radical abolitionist writers and speakers. “To the Public” was published on the first page of the first issue of The Liberator.