All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery

So impressed by the book and the author!

Outstanding is a limited word for All on Fire . Not only Garrison's place is restored to its rightful place in history, but Mayer infuses us with the vision and devotion that saw beyond the emancipation proclamation to a world where all humans could live as truly free with rights and mutual respect. This is an essential book for those who want to understand our history and many of the courageous people who dedicated their lives to the cause of human rights.

So glad this finally made it to Kindle! One of the best biographies ever written. Garrison is an inspiration and role model for anyone interested in social justice, he was preternaturally gifted at both strategy and what we now call media, and so I'm grateful for this in-depth exploration of his life, ideas, views, and achievements, which I reread periodically.

This book traces W. L. Garrison's life from boyhood to his demise. His personal story is interwoven with the political events of his life. However, it is not about everything that was transpiring in the 1830, 40's and 50's - only those directly touching on what Garrison thought pertinent in the struggle against slavery.The author admires Garrison, that is plain to see and by the time I was finished reading I admired him very much, too.I enjoyed sitting down with this book over a span of several days. I was always eager to get back and see what Garrison was up to or what setbacks he was suffering.Lots of history, lots of family love, lots to be proud of. A truly outstanding American character was William Lloyd Garrison.

Garrison decided that slavery was wrong, and devoted his entire life to publishing The Liberator, a newspaper whose only mission was to end slavery. He did so, week after week, often without money, and occassionally despite violent attacks by pro-slavery forces. He refused compromise. He refused to accept "workable" solutions. Slavery was morally bankrupt, and he fought against it, using the power of words alone.When he began his crusade, slavery was accepted, and most people thought it was here to stay. Garrsison was a voice crying in the dark. When he closed down The Liberator, slavery was over, and the vast majority of the country thought it was wrong.Anyone who reads, anyone who fights for social justice, and certainly anyone who writes should read this book. It is hard to imagine anyone whose life reflects the axiom: "the pen is mightier than the sword" better than Garrison.

A few days before his death, Abraham Lincoln said, “I have only been an instrument. The logic and moral power of Garrison, and the anti-slavery people of the country and the army, have done all.” Henry Mayer's All on Fire captures Garrison, and the logic and moral power he gave to his country, as no other work has. It is one of the great American biographies of one of the greatest Americans: psychologically acute; sympathetic but open-eyed about its subject; deeply knowledgeable about the times it chronicles; keenly analytical; gracefully and powerfully written. For anyone who cares about American history, the place of religion in public life, and the role of the agitator in democratic politics, it is a book worth pondering and savoring.

I found this a five star book for three reasons:--The author shows how the womens' sufferage movement arose from the antislavery movement;--the author demonstrates at length the difficult relationship between the abolitionist movement and the Repbulican Party. This reminded me a bit of the 20th Century's ideological fights between Communists and Socialists.--And he ties Garrison in with the tradition of witness and agitation found more famously in Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.Finally, by tracing Garrison's life this biography explains how antislavery sentiment arose first in Quakers and evangelical Christians. It took years for them to get the "nice" people interested in abolition. The aspect of class in the North and abolition was new to me.

For those that have grown accustomed to thinking of the Civil War as some kind of athletic contest, rather than a war of ideas, this book should be on the "must read" list.One of the best biographies I've read in a lifetime of reading biographies, Mayer's 'All on Fire' covers the full sweep of mid-Nineteenth Century American history from the perspective of an activist organizer and outsider rather than the centrist perspective we're used to. Ten years in the making, the book is detailed but not boring. Mayer is a great writer who allows us to see, and feel, the mounting crisis as Americans in the past Century saw and felt it.I can't rate it high enough.