Two weeklies, which were unpopular from the first, began to be published at Boston early in 1831. Kneeland's _Investigator_ was pledged "to contend for the abolition of slavery" and "advocate the rights of women." It was friendly to labour reform as well as to scientific education, and opposed capital punishment, imprisonment for debt, and legislation about religion; but its predominant tone has been skeptical to the present day. Garrison was too orthodox in 1831 to favour the emancipation of women; he was in sympathy with other reforms; but his chief theme was the "pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition." The next mistake of his _Liberator_ was the prominence given to negro insurrection and other crimes against whites. The Southerners were naturally afraid to have such subjects mentioned, even in condemnation; and guilty consciences made slave-holders think the danger much greater than it was. The first number of the _Liberator_ contained Garrison's verses about the horrors of the revolt which might bring emancipation. He announced at the same time that he was going to review a recent pamphlet which he described thus: "A better promoter of insurrection was never sent forth to an oppressed people." His contributors spoke often of the right of slaves to resist, and asked, "In God's name, why should they not cut their masters' throats?" Many women and children were massacred by rebel slaves in Virginia that autumn; and Garrison promptly declared that the assassins "deserve no more blame than our fathers did for slaughtering the British," and that "When the contest shall have again begun, it must again be a war of extermination." Similar language was often used in the _Liberator_ afterwards. Garrison was too firm a non-resistant to go further than this; but the majority of Northerners would have agreed with the Reverend Doctor Wayland, President of Brown University, who declared slavery "very wicked," but declined to have the _Liberator_ sent him, and wrote to Mr. Garrison that its tendency was to incite the slaves to rebellion. Of course this was not the editor's intention; but history deals mainly with causes and results.