Young Garrison absorbed paternalist civilizing ideology through New England religious and literary culture

Evidence

His older brother had been a difficult boy to raise, but William Lloyd was a model child, seeking only to please his mother. In 1818, when he was twelve, he had begun a seven-year indenture to Ephraim W. Allen, the talented editor of the Newburyport Herald. When he was not busy learning the printing trade or writing letters to his mother, who had moved to Baltimore, he was usually intent on educating himself through reading. He devoured the works of Cotton Mather and tracts by politicians and other clergyman proclaiming New England’s peculiar destiny to civilize the world. He especially enjoyed the novels of Sir Walter Scott, whose heroes changed the world through the might of their character and their readiness to sacrifice their blood for human justice. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 429

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the reader’s broader interest in how racist ideas are culturally transmitted before any policy encounter — the latent seed of Garrison’s later views.