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William Garrison and the Abolitionist Movement

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The Abolitionist movement was a reform movement that pursued to terminate the enslavement of Africans and people of African descent in American, Europe, and Africa. Abolitionist thoughts and ideas became more and more noticeable in Northern politics and churches starting in the 1830s, which subsidized to the hatred and bitterness between North and South leading up to the Civil War. One important abolitionist in this movement was William Lloyd Garrison. He was an American journalist and a militant abolitionist who helped lead this popular and successful abolitionist movement against slavery in the United States.
William Garrison was born on December 10, 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. In 1818, at the age of 13 years old, Garrison was chosen and selected to a seven-year training and apprenticeship as an editor and a journalist. During this apprenticeship, he believed that this was his calling, which was to start journalism. Through Garrison’s numerous and different newspaper jobs, he developed adequate skills to be capable of running his own newspaper. After he finished his training in 1826, Garrison lent money from his last boss and bought The Newburyport Essex Courant. He then changed the name of the paper the Newburyport Free Press and used it as a political instrument for conveying the feelings and ideas of the old Federalist Party. In this newspaper, he also issued John Greenleaf Whittier’s early poems. John Whittier and William Garrison became very good friends

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