The anti-slavery schoolmaster was abroad, and was beginning to turn New England and the North into one resounding schoolhouse, where he sat behind the desk and the nation occupied the forms.
So effective was the agitation prosecuted by the society during the first year of its existence that it was no empty declaration or boast of the _Abolitionist_, the new monthly periodical of the society, that "probably, through its instrumentality, more public addresses on the subject of slavery, and appeals in behalf of the contemned free people of color, have been made in New England, during the past year (1832) than were elicited for forty years prior to its organization." The introduction of the principle of association into the slavery agitation, and the conversion of it into an organized movement was an achievement of the first importance.

To Garrison, more than to any man, or to all others put together, belongs the authorship of this immense initiative.

He it was, who, having "announced the principle, arranged the method" of the Abolition movement.

The marshaling of the anti-slavery sentiment of New England under a common standard, in a common cause, was a master stroke of moral generalship.

This master stroke the leader followed up promptly with a second stroke not less masterly.