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conclusion Different Ends and Parallel Fame of Two Iconic Radicals In the later years of their lives, Garrison and Mazzini seemed to diverge from their parallel paths as a result of very different historical circumstances . After the 1865 passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which abolished slavery—Garrison abandoned several of his radical activities and, most of all, his primary role as a voice in opposition to the American government. In contrast, Mazzini, after the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and the consequent shattering of his hope to form an Italian republic, was more than ever the voice of opposition to the Italian government headed by the House of Savoy, and he renewed his efforts to provoke a revolution. Thus it is not surprising to see that the two men died in very different circumstances and with very different states of mind: Garrison comforted by his family and convinced of his success, Mazzini hunted by the police and consumed by his failure. Yet we need to recognize that the difference that characterized the later parts of Garrison’s and Mazzini’s lives, and even their deaths, pales in comparison to the much longer and more significant parallel paths they had walked for well over thirty years. From the time they began publishing the Liberator and La Giovine Italia in 1831–32, to the time they founded the American Anti-Slavery Society and Young Europe in 1833–34, through the time of divisions in the American abolitionist and the Italian democratic movements and then of national crises in the 1840s and 1850s, and even at the beginning of the American Civil War and at the birth of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Garrison and Mazzini had shared visions of radical thought and action that were consistently in opposition to those of the governments in power in their countries and 192 W illi a m Ll oyd Ga r r ison a nd Giuseppe M a zzini that were part of an activist milieu of radical ideas of freedom and equality spread across the Euro-American world. The reason for their opposition was that their visions were egalitarian in a way that transcended boundaries considered immutable—boundaries imposed by slavery and racial prejudice and by national oppression and monarchical authority. This was perhaps the deepest sense of Garrison’s explanation of his friendship with Mazzini: “We shared the same hostility to every form of tyranny.” Even though unaware of this deep connection between the two men, the immense crowds that spontaneously gathered for Garrison’s and Mazzini’s funerals in the United States and Italy ultimately showed the true valor and significance of the two long, parallel, and radical struggles for freedom that Garrison and Mazzini had engaged in for most of their lives.1 In his late years, Garrison conveyed the impression that he felt fulfilled, that he had successfully concluded his life with the permanent ending of slavery in the United States. Even Wendell Phillips, despite his alienation from Garrison as a result of his opposite views, could not help but notice, “He seems wholly at rest.” In time, Phillips and Garrison became close again, first supporting together the 1875 Civil Rights Act and then, tragically, as a result of the death of Garrison’s wife Helen in 1876. Remarkably, in 1877 Garrison managed to take one last trip to England, where he bade farewell to what was left of the old Atlantic abolitionist clique, and especially to George Thompson. In a moving recollection of the meeting between the two men—both once capable of influencing their countries’ public opinions with their radical abolitionist activities and now weak and at the end of their lives—Garrison’s son Francis noticed how Thompson “embraced Father in silence, the tears coming into his eyes.” Thompson was certainly moved by seeing his old friend, but he also grieved with him about the fact that the great, heroic times of Atlantic abolitionism were well and truly finished . Garrison might also have felt that his sense of fulfillment came with an acute nostalgia. It was not only a result of the death of so many who were dear to him. This was clearly revealed by his particularly nostalgic travel back to the headquarters of the Newburyport Herald in October 1878, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the beginning of his apprenticeship there.2 Afterward, finally having relented to his daughter Fanny’s pleas that he...

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