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

The book deserves five stars for its scholarship, fine writing, and importance of its subject, William Lloyd Garrison, who started an antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, when almost nobody thought slavery should be abolished. Garrison considered slavery to be evil, and he wanted slavery abolished immediately, rather than gradually. This ideal led him to be called a radical, and even people in favour of abolition considered him to be too extreme. He had no patience for those who, even if they knew slavery was wrong, still thought slavery should be maintained for political expediency. By the end of his life, Garrison was a witness to Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the Thirteen Amendment.

The book is especially good at documenting Garrison's early career, when he and his few supporters faced mob attacks at his speaking engagements, and when few established churches or politicians gave Garrison and radical abolitionists support. The book aims to restore Garrison's reputation, which has been damaged by criticism that he was an egotist who wanted to destroy America's institutions.

Indeed, he did want to destroy America: he wanted to destroy a nation that allowed slavery to continue. He wanted a new America that treated all people as equal, as the Declaration of Independence claimed.

The United States needs someone like Garrison to agitate for the revocation of the Second Amendment.