The first thing I wanted to do when I arrived in Boston the next day was to visit old friends. William Garrison was the closest to Elizabeth Peabody’s house on Beacon Hill, where I was staying. His statue, erected upon his death, was the first figure to greet visitors to what the citizens of Boston planned to be a mile-long sculpture walk down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. The late afternoon sun glinted off his bald bronze head. His sculptor had seated him in an armchair with a paper clutched in one hand and his head turned to the right as if he were listening to someone. No doubt he was embroiled in a discussion about his latest abolitionist treatise. 

           The...

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