Walker’s language alarmed both slaveholders and many white critics of slavery. When free black sailors secretly distributed the pamphlet in the South, some southern states put a price on Walker’s head. Walker, however, did not create an abolitionist organization, and he died in mysterious circumstances in 1830. Not until the appearance in 1831 of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly journal published in Boston, did the new breed of abolitionism find a permanent voice. “I will be as harsh as truth,” Garrison announced, “and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation.... I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.”
And heard he was, partly because southerners, outraged by his inflammatory rhetoric (one editorial called slaveowners “an adulterous and perverse generation, a brood of vipers”), reprinted Garrison’s editorials in their own newspapers in order to condemn them, thus providing him with instant notoriety. Some of Garrison’s ideas, such as his suggestion that the North abrogate the Constitution and dissolve the Union to end its complicity in the evil of slavery, were rejected by many abolitionists. But his call for the immediate abolition of slavery echoed throughout antislavery circles. Garrison’s pamphlet, Thoughts on African Colonization, persuaded many foes of slavery that blacks must be recognized as part of American society, not viewed as aliens to be shipped overseas. Other antislavery publications soon emerged, but The Liberator remained the preeminent abolitionist journal.