On 29 December 1865 William Lloyd Garrison brought out the last issue of the Liberator, the fiery abolitionist newspaper he had founded in 1831. Though his friends urged him to continue the paper, he felt that with chattel slavery dead, the Liberator's work was done. In a valedictory editorial, Garrison bade farewell to his small congregation of faithful readers who had sailed with him, "against wind and tide," for thirty-five tempestuous years. He declared, with characteristic fervor, that the struggle for freedom must go on, in the South and everywhere. But now the "beacon lights of liberty" must be kindled by a new generation of men and women.

The production of this last issue of the Liberator took on the aura of a sacramental rite. As Garrison wrote his final editorial, he handed it, line by line, to his assistants to be set into type. The final paragraph he typeset...