William Lloyd Garrison and so many of the abolitionists he inspired chose not to engage in the political struggle against racial discrimination. Garrison failed to realize that it was his genius that had transformed abolitionism from a complex, multi-issue political project with unclear battle lines and objectives into a simple, single-issue moral project: slavery was evil, and those racists justifying or ignoring slavery were evil, and it was the moral duty of the United States to eliminate the evil of slavery. Garrison did not use his genius again for antiracism, in declaring that racial
...more
