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From Border Ruffian To Abolitionist Martyr: William Lloyd Garrison’S Changing Ideologies On John Brown And Antislavery, Devon Proudfoot

HIST 4800 Boston (Herndon)

The master narrative portrays a strict boundary between the pacifist abolitionists, and the militant abolitionists. My project looks at the letters of correspondence sent by William Lloyd Garrison in the six months following John Brown’s killings at Kansas in 1856 and Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. My research aimed at gauging Garrison’s responses to the militaristic approaches taken by Brown, which differed from his self-proclaimed pacifist views. I looked at fourteen letters from June to November 1856 and ten from November 1859 to April 1860. The recipient of these letters ranged from Garrison’s son, to local ministers, and …