This was followed by the organization of his
adherents into the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, and the
active dissemination of the immediate abolition principle by tracts,
newspapers, and lecturers.
The anti-slavery struggle thus begun, never ceased until, in 1865, the
Liberator ceased to be published, with the final abolition of slavery.
In its inception and in all its development the movement was a distinct
product of the democratic spirit. It would not have been possible in
1790, or in 1810, or in 1820. The man came with the hour; and every new
mile of railroad or telegraph, every new district open to population,
every new influence toward the growth of democracy, broadened the
power as well as the field of the abolition movement. It was but the
deepening, the application to an enslaved race of laborers, of the work
which Jeffersonian democracy had done, to remove the infinitely less
grievous restraints upon the white laborer thirty year before. It could
never have been begun until individualism at the North had advanced
so far that there was a reserve force of mind--ready to reject all the
influences of heredity and custom upon thought.
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