Incompletion is an essential condition of cultural history, and particularly the idea of the fragment became a central element of Romantic art which continued being of high relevance to the various strands of modernist and contemporary aesthetics.

Despite provocation, Garrison was a proponent of nonresistance during this period, though he continued to advocate the emancipation of slaves. Set against a background of wide-ranging travels throughout the western U.S. and of family affairs back home in Boston, these letters make a distinctive contribution to antebellum life and thought.