Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

William Lloyd Garrison, storied leader of the organization, announced that it was time to go their separate ways. “My vocation, as an Abolitionist, thank God, is ended.” Armed conflict had taken the nation to a place few could have imagined four years earlier. The war had set in motion the destruction of slavery, and Congress had finished the task by passing a constitutional amendment that outlawed the institution everywhere. Their ultimate goal achieved, Garrison and many of his allies believed it was time to turn their attention elsewhere.1 Frederick Douglass did not share that view. Douglass had not been close to Garrison since the early 1850s, when Douglass embraced the political antislavery movement. Now, Douglass argued with Garrison again, insisting that abolitionists must work for the repeal of the racist laws that had long oppressed free African Americans, North and South.