The Liberator

The Liberator was first published in January of 1831, in Boston. William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass edited the newspaper. It was America's longest-running abolitionist newspaper that was based on politics, and it was published periodically. Each newspaper was only four pages. It was published every week through December of 1865. If someone in the Southern states was caught with a copy of The Liberator, they would get arrested. Legislators put a $5,000 reward on Garrison, the editor. If you gave legislators his head, in other words kill him, you would get a $5,000 reward. The newspaper caused Nat Turner, a slave, to revolt and kill more than 50 whites. The newspaper included politics, fiction, anti-slavery speeches, travel literature, slave narratives, and debates. John Greenleaf Whittier frequently had his poems put in the newspaper. People, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, James Russell Lowell, Lousia May Alcott, and John Rankin, a former slave, had their writing put into the newspaper. Even the famous southern poet, Edgar Allen Poe, had his famous poem, "The Raven" was put into the newspaper in February of 1845. Also slaves would use the newspaper to announce their arrival in Canada. They would also announce the freedom they had gained using the Underground Railroad. Lastly, the newspaper forced people in the south to see what terror they caused the slaves.