Includes bibliographical references (p. 139) and index.

William Lloyd Garrison didn't mind the threatening letters. In fact, he expected them. After all, he was the most famous-and outspoken-abolitionist in the United States. In 1831, when Garrison started his antislavery newspaper, most white Americans simply accepted slavery as a fact of life. Whether in the North or South, whites assumed that they would always be free and that blacks-at least of them-would always be slaves. So when Garrison called his fellow white Americans hypocrites and criminals for supporting slavery, he wasn't surprised that some people responded with angry letters.