Ambition in the young William Lloyd Garrison

Even before his earliest public speeches, and two years before starting the Liberator, here is a taste of his determined confidence, and some would say, Garrison’s ego.  In 1838, he writes in two Boston newspapers, asserting “that , if my life be spared, my name shall one day be known so extensively as to render private enquiry unnecessary, and known, too in a praiseworthy manner.  I speak in the spirit of prophecy, not of vainglory  — with a strong pulse, a flashing eye, and a glow of the heart.”