The moral agitation of thirty years had produced its legitimate results, and when, in 1863, the President promulgated the emancipation proclamation the anti-slavery chapter was closed. The Union, which heretofore had been paramount to liberty, was now subordinated to it, and Mr. Garrison's antagonism necessarily ceased with the new amendment to the Constitution. He had been accustomed to denounce that instrument as a "covenant with death and an agreement with hell," but, as he expressed it, he had "never expected to see Death and Hell secede." Foreseeing the inevitable consequence of the war, he gave heartily his moral support to the Government in the struggle between it and the slave power. His non-resistance principles and abhorrence of war in no way diminished his interest in the great conflict, and his sympathies of necessity were with the soldiers of freedom. His eldest son, George Thompson Garrison, not sharing his father's scruples, enlisted in the Fifty-fifth Colored Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, attaining the rank of captain.
The renomination of Lincoln for a second term, in 1864, developed a breach in the ranks of the old abolitionists, Mr. Garrison and his adherents supporting Lincoln, and others, under the lead of Wendell Phillips, advocating the choice of General Frémont. The latter candidate, however, withdrew from the field before the election.
In April, 1865, Mr. Garrison, with his English friend George Thompson, was invited by the Government to be present as its guest at the ceremony of raising the Stars and Stripes above the surrendered Fort Sumter, and was received at Charleston with great enthusiasm by the emancipated slaves. The news of President Lincoln's assassination hastened the return of the party to the North.
The practical extermination of the slave system by the adoption of the 13th Amendment convinced Mr. Garrison that the purpose of the Anti-Slavery Society and of The Liberator had been accomplished. He therefore withdrew from one and discontinued the other. After thirty-five years of a stormy and precarious existence the last number of The Liberator was issued December 29, 1865. "Nothing could have been more in keeping with the uniform wisdom of your anti-slavery leadership than the time you chose for resigning it," wrote Lowell to Mr. Garrison a year later.
The recognition of the pioneer's unselfish service thereupon took shape in a national testimonial reaching a sum exceeding thirty thousand dollars, thenceforth lifting his life above the pecuniary cares which had so long weighed upon it. A domestic grief in the shape of a paralytic shock to his faithful wife occurred in December, 1863, compelling a change of home from the city to an attractive suburban house in Roxbury, known as Rockledge.
Although his great life-work was finished, Mr. Garrison abated no activity in the various reforms in which he had enlisted. Both with voice and pen he reached a wider and more attentive public, pleading for justice to the freedman, for the legal emancipation of women, the right of the Chinese to free immigration and Christian treatment, freedom of trade (for he early eschewed his youthful belief in the protective system), and for kindred causes.
Visiting England for the fourth time in 1867, a public breakfast was given in Mr. Garrison's honor at St. James's Hall, June 29th. John Bright presided, and among the addresses of welcome were those of Earl Russell, the Duke of Argyll, John Stuart Mill, George Thompson, and W. Vernon Harcourt. Later the freedom of the city of Edinburgh was conferred upon the American abolitionist, and in August he attended the International Anti-Slavery Conference at Paris, representing the American Freedman's Union Commission, and meeting Laboulaye, Cochin, and other eminent Frenchmen.
The troubled period of reconstruction, involving the defence of the freedmen's rights, found no more interested observer and participant than Mr. Garrison. The former hostile treatment which had been meted out to him by press and party was of the past, and, like Lincoln,
"He heard the hisses change to cheers,
The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both in the same unwavering mood."
Unique among reformers, he received in life the reverence that usually reveals itself in post-mortem honors which indicate the late awakening of public consciousness and suggest the pathos of their delay.