In 1832, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was organized in Boston, and the campaign for "immediate and unconditional emancipation" begun. The Colonization Society, which Mr. Garrison formerly supported but later denounced, became the object of special attack as an ally of the slave power, and, to counteract its designs, he sailed for England, May 2, 1833, to expose its proslavery purposes to the English abolitionists. He was cordially received by Wilberforce, Buxton, Zachary, Macaulay, Daniel O'Connell, and their associates in the struggle for West India emancipation, and before he left the kingdom he witnessed the passage of the Emancipation Act, and was present at the funeral of Wilberforce, in Westminster Abbey. Returning from his successful mission abroad he narrowly escaped the hands of a New York mob on landing upon his native soil.
In December, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, in Philadelphia, and Mr. Garrison drew up its famous Declaration of Sentiments, which numbered among its signers many of the men and women destined to be distinguished in the anti-slavery cause, among whom was the poet Whittier.
On September 4, 1834, Mr. Garrison was married to Miss Helen Eliza Benson, of Brooklyn, Conn.; a fortunate and happy union.
In 1835, the eminent English orator, George Thompson, came by invitation to the United States to assist in the emancipation of the American, as he had of the West Indian, slave. The announcement that he would speak at a meeting of the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, held in Boston, October 21st, of the same year, was the occasion of a mob composed of wealthy and respectable citizens of Boston who aimed to suppress free speech and tar and feather Mr. Thompson. He was, however, prevented from attending by his friends, but the fury of the mob fell upon Mr. Garrison, who was seized and led through the streets with a rope around his body, from which position he was rescued through the efforts of Mayor Lyman and imprisoned for safety in the Leverett Street jail. This outrage created new friends and gave fresh impetus to the abolition movement.
In 1840 Mr. Garrison again visited England as a delegate of the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, in which body, however, he declined to sit, because the women who were his fellow-delegates from America were excluded.
Occupied continuously with the care of The Liberator and in lecturing, Mr. Garrison led an intensely active life, not confining himself alone to the anti-slavery reform but embracing among other reforms those of temperance, non-resistance, women's rights, and religious freedom. For, while educated by his mother in the strict tenets of the Baptist faith, he early experienced a change of theological views and cast off sectarian bonds. The Liberator was used for the expression of his individual beliefs and was not the organ of any society.
In 1846, the Free Church of Scotland having sent emissaries to the United States to collect funds from the slaveholders, Mr. Garrison again went to England to urge the Church to return the money thus contributed, and, in company with George Thompson, Frederick Douglass, Henry C. Wright and others, agitated the question throughout Scotland.
Convinced that the constitutional compact of the North with the South to guard and protect slavery was immoral and unjust, in 1843 Mr. Garrison raised the banner of No Union with Slave-Holders, and advocated the dissolution of the Union for the sake of freedom, a step which added fresh fuel to the flames of persecution and incurred the loss of many lukewarm adherents.
In 1850, the apostasy of Daniel Webster and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law increased the national ferment. The same year witnessed the famous Rynder's mob, in New York, and the anti-slavery meeting at the Tabernacle, at which Mr. Garrison spoke, was violently broken up.
The abolition movement had now assumed formidable proportions, dominating the national parties and dictating issues. The Whig party fell to pieces in consequence, and to it succeeded the Republican party, with Sumner, Seward, Wilson, Giddings, and other earnest men as leaders. Meanwhile Harriet Beecher Stowe, by her famous novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," had given a vivid picture of the wrongs of American slavery to the world. The "irrepressible conflict" was now rapidly tending to its crisis, and, on the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency by the Republican party, in 1860, the signal for civil war was given, and, in 1861, the struggle of arms inaugurated by the attack on Fort Sumter replaced the peaceful crusade of the abolitionists.