Abolitionist Frederick Douglass' move to Rochester, New York, in 1847 was a major step in his finding his own intellectual path. Along with much of the rest of western New York, Rochester became fertile ground for an antislavery movement that dissented from that led by William Lloyd Garrison, with whom Douglass had previously been aligned. Unlike the Garrisonians, who believed the Union established by the United States Constitution must be dissolved in order to abolish slavery, many Rochester activists began to see both the Constitution and the political process as invaluable instruments for achieving that goal. During the 1840s and 1850s, many abolitionists had become frustrated by the failure of Garrison's method of moral persuasion. They turned instead to politics to fight slavery.