A veteran of the War of 1812 and a barber with his own shop, Vashon was Garrison's chief benefactor during The Liberator's first years. In December 1832 Vashon sent Garrison $50, which the lat- ter preferred to consider a loan. Eleven months later when Vashon sent $60, the grateful Garrison expressed the wish that it be considered only "an extension of the loan." Garrison was less inclined to demur when a Negro group in Boston sent $30 for life membership in the recently organized New England Anti-Slavery Society for him and his publishing associate, Isaac Knapp.
Money furnished by Negroes enabled Garrison to take his first trip abroad. In the spring of 1833 Garrison decided to go to England for the threefold purpose of spreading the new gospel of freedom, raising money for a Negro manual labor school, and upsetting the fund-raising efforts of Elliot Cresson of the American Colonization Society. Garrison had no money for the trip, but his Negro admirers took up collections, rais- ing nearly $400. Individual gifts ranged from 50 to $5, and group gifts from $4 to $124. Some groups, such as the Colored Female Religious and Moral Society of Salem, sent bon voyage presents. On the eve of embarkation he was presented a silver medal by the Juvenile Garrison Independent Society, a group of "colored youth pursuing virtue and knowledge" in Boston.
When Garrison, after four months in England, prepared to return to America, he was again without funds. This time he turned to Nathaniel Paul, a Negro Baptist clergyman then traveling in the British Isles to raise money for the Wilberforce settlement in Canada. Paul advanced Garrison $200, "so that I could return home without begging," as he phrased it in a letter to Lewis Tappan. Upon his return to Boston his Negro admirers held a public reception at Marlboro Chapel, presided over by John T. Hilton, fraternal leader and reformer.
Negroes sought to protect Garrison from bodily harm. Fearing that he might be waylaid by enemies, they followed him late at night wherever he walked the three miles from his office to his Roxbury home, "Freedom's Cottage." These unsolicited protectors were armed with cudgels; therefore it was just as well that Garrison, a nonresistant, was unaware of their services. Negroes were powerless, however, to prevent the daytime mobbing of Garrison on October 21, 1835, when he was led through the streets of downtown Boston with a rope around his middle. Put in jail for safekeeping, Garrison was visited by John B. Vashon, who brought him a new hat, "at a venture as to the precise size required." The pair of pants which had been torn off Garrison became the prize possession of William H. Logan, who solicited them from the sheriff.
Emerging Abolitionist Leaders
