Why was Massachusetts one of the few Northern states to grant African-American males the right to vote? Why did it pass personal liberty laws, which helped protect fugitive slaves from federal authorities in the two decades immediately preceding the Civil War? Beyond Garrison finds answers to these important questions in unfamiliar and surprising places. Its protagonists are not the noble supporters of American abolitionism grouped around William Lloyd Garrison, but, rather, ordinary men and women in country towns and villages, encouraged by African-American activists throughout the state....