In him he found what he had discovered in no one else, anti-slavery activity and perseverance.

He had often found men who protested loudly their benevolence for the negro, but who made not the slightest exertion afterward to carry out their good wishes.

"They will pen a paragraph, perhaps an article, or so--and then--_the subject is exhausted!_" It was not so with his young friend, the Bennington editor.
He saw that "argument and useful exertion on the subject of African emancipation can never be exhausted until the system of slavery itself be totally annihilated." He was faithful among the faithless found by Lundy.

To reassure his doubting leader, Garrison took upon himself publicly a vow of perpetual consecration to the slave.

"Before God and our country," he declares, "we give our pledge that the liberation of the enslaved Africans shall always be uppermost in our pursuits.