non-violence as a principle. The most significant one in the United
States has been the abolition crusade before the Civil War. Its most
publicized faction was the group led by William Lloyd Garrison, who has
had a reputation as an uncompromising extremist. Almost every school boy
remembers the words with which he introduced the first issue of the
_Liberator_ in 1831:


"I _will_ be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as
justice.... I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not
excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD."


He lived up to his promise during the years that followed, and it is no
wonder that Parrington called him "the flintiest character amongst the
New England militants."[85] In the South they regarded him as an inciter
to violence, and barred his writings from the mails.

Garrison's belief in "non-resistance" is less often stressed, yet his
espousal of this principle was stated in the same uncompromising terms
as his opposition to slavery. In 1838 he induced the Boston Peace
Convention to found the New England Non-Resistance Society. In the
"Declaration of Sentiments" which he wrote and which the new Society
adopted, he said:


"The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that
physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration; that the
sinful dispositions of men can be subdued only by love; that evil
can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness."[86]