THE LIBERATOR. Vol. XXXV No. 52.Whole No. 1803. Garrison, William Lloyd [editor]:

The final issue of William Lloyd Garrison's long-running and highly influential abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Dated December 29, 1865, the issue was published to coincide with the ratification of the thirteenth amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, earlier that same month. The Liberator had debuted thirty-five years before, with the first issue having appeared on January 1, 1831. As Garrison here explains, publication of The Liberator was begun "without a subscriber," and the paper, from the beginning, was met with "fierce hostility" from "Southern slaveholding villany on the one hand, and Northern pro-slavery malice on the other." Carrying on publication in the face of such opposition, Garrison observes, required both "rare moral courage" and "singular personal independence" on the part of both patrons and publisher, and the paper continued to run every week for the next thirty-five years, ending with this, the final issue on December 29, 1865, for which Garrison set much of the type himself. Like earlier issues, the present issue features original material together with selections reprinted from other publications sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. As the final issue, however, this one is distinctive for its celebratory and triumphant tone and contains numerous letters of congratulation and farewell from such figures as Samuel E. Sewell, Samuel J. May, and Henry C. Wright. Fittingly, it reprints Garrison's 1831 "Salutatory" from the first issue of The Liberator. Accompanying the "Salutatory" is a "Valedictory" in which Garrison reflects on "the immense change wrought in the national feeling and sentiment on the subject of slavery" in the years since The Liberator's first appearance. He then proceeds to offer an explanation for bringing the publication to an end: "The object for which the Liberator was commenced the extermination of chattel slavery having been gloriously consummated, it seems to me specially appropriate to let its existence cover the historic period of the great struggle; leaving what remains to be done to complete the work of emancipation to other instrumentalities." Among the selections reprinted from other publications are an editorial by Lydia Maria Child, a column entitled "Danger Ahead" addressing the growing number of "unreconstructed Southerners" fleeing the United States for Latin America, and recent speeches by Thaddeus Stevens and Henry Wilson. Additional contents include various letters to the editor (most notably one from Elizabeth Cady Stanton on the "Political Rights of Woman"); a report about schools for Blacks and the formerly enslaved in Washington, D.C.; a "Poetry" section containing five original poems; and various advertisements and notices, including an announcement for the upcoming meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, a call for subscribers to the antislavery journal The Commonwealth, and an announcement for the new religious magazine The Radical. The final issue of The Liberator exists in two editions, of which this is the second. Having already printed copies of the first edition, Garrison issued another, resetting the type on pages 3 and 4 to include a note of thanks to one of The Liberator's longtime supporters, the Reverend Samuel May, Jr., and to reprint a farewell letter from the Boston abolitionist-publisher William C. Nell. The landmark final issue of America's longest-running and most influential abolitionist newspaper, commemorating the passage of the thirteenth amendment and the abolition of slavery in the United States. LIBRARY COMPANY, AFRO-AMERICANA 5845. DANKY, AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS 3524. Manisha Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2016), pp.586-90. Elephant folio newspaper, 26 x 18¾ inches. Light edge wear, some minor splitting along old folds resulting in loss to a few letters of text on recto and verso of second leaf, minimal tanning and soiling. V