William Lloyd Garrison’s self-described roles were those of agitator, moral censor, prophet, and “universal reformer.” A white abolitionist and advocate for women’s rights, his gifts were his extraordinary skills as an editorial polemicist and his resolve to follow the implications of his religious illuminations wherever they might lead him. In an age of rapidly multiplying editorial voices, Garrison proved to be a master of making himself (as he put it) “heard!” In 1844 he published a strongly disunionist essay, “Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States,” in his abolitionist newspaper the Liberator, arguing that the Constitution held Black Americans in bondage and that the North should secede from the government and, as he forcefully put it, have “NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS.”