SOURCE: Stewart, James Brewer. “Petitions, Perfectionists, and Political Abolitionists.” In Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery, pp. 89-96. New York: Hill and Wang, 1976.

In the following excerpt, Stewart surveys the broad-based, political radicalism associated with the term “Garrisonism.”

William Lloyd Garrison, without question, served as … [a] focal point of dissension. It was he who first associated abolitionism with an even more radical opposition to religious and political institutions. As early as 1835, Arthur Tappan had shown discomfort over Garrison's harsh attacks on orthodox New England Calvinists. But by 1837 it seemed to many as if Garrison had begun to act as a magnet of fanaticism, drawing to the cause all manner and mode of eccentricity. Essays which denied the authority of ministers, questioned the authenticity of Scripture, and repudiated the observance of the Sabbath began to appear regularly in the Liberator. Garrison's editorials also vigorously endorsed full equality for...