This reciprocal sentiment first emerged in Balti- more where Garrison spent some eight months during 1829— 30 assisting Benjamin Lundy in editing The Genius of Universal Emancipation. The Garrison-Negro bond of affection was sealed upon Garrison's return to Boston to launch The Liberator. Its first issue, dated January 1, 1831, struck the militant note so typical of the new school. He was in earnest and he would be heard, wrote Garrison; moreover, he would be "as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice." The twenty-five-year-old editor had a special message "to our free colored brethren," seeking their support and promising them his, inasmuch as "we know that you are now struggling against wind and tide."
During the early months of 1831 Garrison traveled to half a dozen cities, New York and Philadelphia among them, giving to Negroes a standard speech written with them in mind. In it he promised to devote his life to their service in order to make atonement for the wrongs done them by persons of his own color. "Small wonder," wrote his children, "that there were some who took Mr. Garrison for a black man."
Partly as a result of his growing familiarity with the Negroes' opinions, Garrison reversed his stand on colonization to make it conform to theirs. "It was their united and strenuous opposition to the expatriation scheme that first induced Garrison and others to oppose it," wrote abolitionist Lewis Tappan. Garrison's Thoughts on African Colonization, published in 1832, was the sharpest and most sustained attack on the American Colonization Society up to that time. Significantly, the entire second half of the small book is devoted to portraying the negative attitude of Negroes toward emigration to Liberia. Garrison's blast changed many minds, doing much to dislodge colonization from the abolitionist movement.
The Negro's response to this "Daniel come to judgment" was immediate and full. As his black townsmen later pointed out, "We had good doctrine enough before Garrison, but we wanted a good example." Concrete evidence of this regard for Garrison was the support given to The Liberator. On the day before the first issue was scheduled to appear, James Forten sent the money for twenty-seven subscriptions, a $54 windfall that enabled Garrison and his publishing associate, Isaac Knapp, to buy the necessary ream of paper. "I seriously question whether there would ever have been a Liberator printed," wrote Garrison later, "had it not been for that timely remittance." Five weeks later Forten sent $20 for additional subscriptions. For the first three crucial years the majority of the paper's subscribers were Negroes; in April 1834 whites comprised only one-quarter of the 2300 subscribers.
Critical Pamphlets of Slavery and Formation of Abolitionism Discourse
