(This is a comment regarding William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and other slavery abolitionists. I think that it is interesting in that it points to how mental illness can have a profound impact upon the course of history. People who suffer with long term obsession have a poor prognosis. As I point out within the comment, there is really only a single way to resolve (cure, if one would) the illness (save death). The obsessed with whatever cause or issue think they are right…and often they are. They tend to be both intelligent and perceptive. Thus, mental illness can sometimes further the cause of morality and ethics in profound ways.)
Garrison and the other abolitionists campaigned for thirty-five years to abolish slavery and were no closer to that goal than when they began. Yet, they succeeded in the end in a manner they never envisioned let alone planned. Their constant propaganda against slavery and slaveholders, culminating with John Brown’s seemingly insane raid, hardened the South’s resolve and paranoia and pushed them into their ill-conceived and totally unnecessary revolt that ultimately ended the “peculiar institution” which otherwise would have endured for God only knows how long into their future. So could Garrison and other mainstream abolitionists really take credit for the accomplishment? I think only Brown could have in actuality. In a perverse way, Brown was one of the most prescient men to have ever lived as his death speech evidenced. He warranted his epithet of being “the meteor of the war.”
Garrsion was a very interesting man on a psychological basis. He had been literally obsessed with this issue for decades. This is why, I think, he closed his newspaper on the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and left the task of integrating the freed slaves to others, declining to continue into another cause at the time. To a person clinically obsessed, there are only two ways to ever resolve the issue. One is with the person’s death and the other is to have the obsessive desire fulfilled. Garrison wanted closure, the final fulfillment of his obsession. He could finally rest in peace. I have known people obsessed with causes and they all have one thing in common. Like both Garrison and Brown, they all have had numerous children. Why? Because having sex is one of the few ways, if not the only way, to offer even temporary relief from the obsessive thought patterns save unconsciousness.
