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 newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Standard (Douglass, 36