Turning Point Reaction In August 1841, at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford, the 23-year-old Douglass saw his hero and his “true friend”, William Lloyd Garrison, for the first time. A few days later, Douglass spoke before the crowd attending the annual meeting of the Massachusetts branch of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison immediately recognized Douglass's potential as a speaker, and hired him to be an agent for the society. As a traveling lecturer accompanying other abolitionist agents on tours of the northern states, his job was to talk about his life and to sell subscriptions of the Liberator and another n