The Smithsonian
Collections
Timeline
Resources
Slavery & Abolition
Abraham Lincoln
First Blood
Soldiering
Weapons
Leaders
Cavalries
Navies
Life & Culture
Appomattox
Winslow Homer
Mathew Brady
Home
Site Index
Comments
     
 


 

 

 




 

William Lloyd Garrison


Garrison’s militance initially inspired hostility even in his native New England, where a mob once came close to hanging him. But inevitably he was most hated in the South. Beginning in 1831, Georgia had a standing offer of a $5,000 reward for his capture. Garrison sat for this portrait just before he left for England in 1833 to raise money for a school for free blacks. Reluctant to pose at first, he declared the picture a “tolerable likeness” at its completion but predicted that “those who imagine that I am a monster, on seeing it will . . . deny its accuracy, seeing no horns about the head.”


Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796–1881)
Oil on wood, 1833
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Bequest of Garrison Norton

 

Home SI