An address delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, February 14, 1854

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was a prominent United States abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the radical abolitionist newspaper The Liberator and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

When he was 25, he joined the Abolition movement. For a brief time, he became associated with the American Colonization Society, an organization that believed free blacks should immigrate to a territory on the west coast of Africa. Although some members of the society encouraged granting freedom to slaves, the majority saw the relocation as a means to reduce the number of free blacks in the United States and thus help preserve the institution of slavery. He ended the run of The Liberator at the end of 1865, and in May of that year announced that he would resign the Presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and proposed a resolution to declare victory in the struggle against slavery and dissolve the Society.

After the abolition of slavery in the United States, Garrison continued working on other reform movements, especially temperance and women's suffrage.