VOL. XXXI/ NO. 18/ WHOLE NO. 1584 - BOSTON. 4pp., 6 columns, measuring 18 x 24.5”.  Moderately yellowed and semi-fragile, w fold marks, and with light chipping at the extremities and along the center-fold line. Else VG, and entirely legible.

This famed abolitionist periodical was edited by William Lloyd Garrison, with  the credo: “No Union With Slaveholders---The United States Constitution is a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.”

This issue appeared three weeks after the Confederate Fort Sumter attack that began the war. The front page features a “Refuge of Oppression” column which describes the rebel tone of Baltimore, and quotes at length the Governor of North Carolina calling for a secessionist convention; also a fiery speech by “The Rebel Traitor Stephens”—i.e. Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy.

Other columns offer news of  “A Northern Sea Captain and His Son Whipped and Imprisoned” in Encero, Georgia, and of a slave woman being whipped to death in southwest Missouri, and of the brief sojourn of a New York Times correspondent in a Charleston, SC, prison.

Intact copies of Garrison’s Liberator are scarce. An excellent collectible.